The Shame of Silence

I was on the H14 bus that travels between Hatch End and Northwick Park hospital. Harrow, where I live, is a multicultural area and the journey is a familiar route and routine. The bus was full, and I sat in the first section of the bus where ‘older’ or disabled people sit. I usually avoid this row of seats because I don’t see myself as ‘old’. But today I sat there, pressed against the window as a young Asian woman sat down next to me.

At the next stop a Black women boarded the bus with an elderly white couple behind her.

“Do not touch me” I heard her saying loudly to the couple behind.

She stopped in the short corridor of the bus, next to the seat I was in.

“Do not touch me” she said again.

She spoke with a Caribbean accent, looked to be in her early 40’s, wore glasses and had a scar across her right cheek, as if she had been in an accident many years ago. She was angry and distressed, she sucked her teeth and spoke in a mixture of English and Caribbean Creole, glancing behind her at the elderly couple.

“You should learn not to push in front of people, you should learn how to behave in this country,” the white woman said.

“Come and stand here,” a Black woman called out to the Caribbean woman from the back of the bus. She made a tut-tutting sound as if commiserating with her about the rude white couple. But this tableau of the white couple and the Caribbean woman remained jammed in the front short corridor of the bus between the seated ‘old’ people.

“Why don’t you know how to behave? You should go back to where you came from. It is people like you are responsible for how Britain is today - making it into a pig sty!” The white man said, “Go and live in the filth of your own country!”

“FUCK YOU,” said the Caribbean woman. Very loudly.

I was unable to move from my seat, my heart was racing, I wanted to stop the tirade from the white man and his wife.

‘Do you want to sit here?’ I asked the white couple.

‘No thank you, we are getting off soon’ he said, smiling at me as if I was supporting him.

‘You remember what Harrow used to be like” he said to the seated passengers. They all just looked ahead.

I started to cry.

“I don’t agree with what the man says…, I hate prejudice’” I said to the woman next to me.

“Yes,” she said softly and looked away from me.

When the bus stopped at the station, the Caribbean woman was standing directly behind me and I reached across to touch her arm, I wanted to talk to her, I wanted to say I was sorry. She backed away and her new friend stepped between us and shouted

“What do you want?”

“I am just so sorry” I said, tears streaming down my face.

“What for?” she said disdainfully.

“For what those people said, please tell that lady, I am so sorry.”

“Why…” she looked angrily at me, “… are you their family?”

“No, it has just really upset me, because I am an immigrant too - and no one deserves to be treated like that”

She gave me one more contemptuous glance and then looked away. I got off the bus, I could hardly see I was crying so much.

But, in truth, when the woman asked,

“Why? Are you their family?”

I should have replied. “Yes, I am, and I am so ashamed of what we have done and continue to do.” This shame is part of who I am, a scar, at times in livid profile against my pale skin.