Cracker

By Cheryl Diane Parkinson

Cracker is a harrowing tale of a girl living in a world of reverse racism where white people are living the experience of people of color. Michaela finds herself navigating through her young life as a White girl who is constantly othered by society. She faces being bullied and ostracized by her peers in school simply for the color of her skin. Cracker takes some interesting twists and turns when it comes to taking a perspective on race, and allows the reader to reflect on how racism challenges them…or how it doesn't.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lemons & Gold Publishing
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223195177

Cheryl Diane Parkinson

Cheryl Diane Parkinson, Ph.D. is a prolific British-Caribbean Author, Educator, and Mother from Norfolk, UK.  Dr. Parkinson has an immensely distinct writing voice, very lyrical and filled with prose. Her patois (patwa) in  Berthas comes through the pages so seamlessly and eloquently, you can hear each character as an individual, you can distinguish between Aunt Ivy and Uncle Glanford, and the many other lovable characters you will meet in the story. If you are not so familiar with Caribbean patois, the message is still quite the same. With her Ph.D. in Creative Writing with Studies in Dissociative Identity Disorder from Birmingham University, Cheryl has published several works including The Revolving Door (2018); Racial Biases in Education (2020), and Black Girl Rising (2021). Her novel, Berthas, will be published in Spring 2022 by Lemons & Gold Publishing.

Book preview

Cracker

Cheryl Diane Parkinson

There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how - Toni Morrison

Prologue

20 years ago.

'Run!' He screamed. ‘Run, Mickey... RUN!’

Mickey didn’t need telling twice.

He flew down the road; feet so fast his mind thought he was flying.

Together, thighs thundering, they bombed it down the dark street.

Oblong eyes watched from buildings above.

Dwayne stole a glance backwards.

They were close.

The rapid sound of feet slapping on hard concrete overlapped the clapping of their coats as they too, ran through the darkness in a relentless pursuit.

Through the silvery moonlight and the yellow glow of the streetlights, he could just make out their weapons: a baseball bat, a machete, a screwdriver - a knife.

'Mickey! This way!' He called.

'Mickey!' He called again, but there was silence.

Dwayne’s footsteps faltered and stopped.

He glanced around him.

He was alone.

The street, bathed in a still, orange light, was empty. He turned, eyes scanning to see something, anything of Mickey.

But there was nothing.

The darkness hung. Its hinges creaking in the gentle breeze.

His own ragged breathing pounded in his ears as he tried to listen beyond the hammering of his own heart. 

Where was he?

He ran back, light footed and cautious, careful not to draw the attention of anyone following him.

Suddenly, a noise broke the silence - a garbled, muffled scream.

His ears pricked.

The sound  echoed out,  like ripples from a skipping stone on a river. Waves of sound rolled out in the air reaching Dwayne as he stood frozen to the spot.

He tensed.

Fear flashed through him.

It was Mickey.

He knew it.

‘Mick -’ He whispered.

Slowly and silently his white trainers met the black tarmac and took him to the corner of the dimly-lit street. 

And there he saw them - a murder of callous coal crows.

Their dark bodies, sniffing out weakness and vulnerability and their sharpened unforgiving frames. All angles of hate.

They honed in, surrounding Mickey who lay awkwardly on the ground.

Dwayne could hear him whimpering as his leg twitched trying to stand and get away from the predators. Eyes wide, heart firing, fear flowing out of him in sweat, Dwayne found he could not move.

He was fastened to the floor; stuck in an animated absurdity.

Terrified to attract their attention, and terrified to do nothing. Time slowed as he watched the black figures flock before they suddenly, collectively, pounced.

Punching, kicking, stabbing and thumping, they attacked.

‘You fuckin’ blanker...’ one of them spat.

‘Skin that Cracker alive..’ another cried aloud as he landed a kick in Mickey’s chest.

Mickey screamed out as some kicks cracked ribs, snapped others. A foot stamped on his chest, breaking his sternum.

He coughed.

Blood bubbled up through his teeth and dribbled down his chin.

Curled up, he tried to protect himself from the onslaught of blows, shielding his head as best as he could.

Dwayne stumbled forward, adrenalin flowing fast.

Every fibre in his being screamed at him to help.

But he stopped, and stepped back.

One of the crows raised the blade. It hovered above Mickey, visible in the black.

Dwayne’s blood screamed for him to move.

To shout.

To get help.

Something!

But his feet stubbornly stuck to the ground.

And the knife came down.

Mickey groaned.

His legs curled closer to his body, his swollen and bloody lips mouthed words that no one could hear.

And although Dwayne was far enough away not to be able to see his face, he knew.

Dark red flowed, soaking the black bomber jacket Mickey had borrowed from his brother that morning to impress Shanell at the Youth Club.

The warm liquid slinked onto the pavement and streamed into the waiting gutter.

From his position Dwayne heard the death rattle.

Eyes wide, he backed away, spun round, and ran as fast as he could down the quiet side road.

Covering ground at what seemed like inhuman speed, he flew down the empty street, cut across the main road and ran down the alleyway behind the residential houses he knew so well.

He had to get as far away as possible. Guilt and shame roiled in his stomach.

But all he could do was run.

1.

Bindweed

It grows everywhere.

Green hooks grow at super speed.

Groping.

Grabbing at anything to anchor itself. But, only when you’re not looking.

Blind man's bluff.

You turn away one minute and the next it's covered the garden fence; or that wall you walk past everyday.

Filling in the cracks, pasting the crap with heart shaped leaves like love.

Creeping in corners.

Trailing tendrils on train tracks and green wire fences.

Dark diamond hollows assimilate into a wall of live green.

It exists in the margins of the world.

Hiding in plain sight.

Giving you the side eye.

And then, white trumpets serenade you as you go by, like your own private coronation.

Recognising you for the royalty you are.

Weeds: plants better beware. They are gonna take over the world.

SUNDAY

Michaela

I remember everything, y’know?

Well, everything except one particular thing, but we will get to that later. It’s lucky that I do.

Someone needs to keep an account of things.

This is a recount.

It needs to be documented.

And I am just the person to do it.

I am Maëlle. Or Michaela. Or Kayla.

I’ve even been known to be called Mickey.

Our names are ours. Unless of course, they are not.

It’s not like what they say.

About memory.

Mine isn’t untrustworthy.

If a dog attacks me, my mind doesn’t focus on only the mouth and teeth so that my memory recalls only the mouth and teeth and nothing else, no.

I remember not only the dog, but the breed; the colour of its eyes; the length of its fur; the texture of its coat, shit, I can even remember the weather of that particular day.

I’m telling you, my memory is ac-u-rate.

So when I tell you I remember what happened to papa, then I remember.

Even though, part of me, really wishes I didn’t.

And despite me beginning this on a Sunday, I am going further back than that.

Right back to the beginning of the end of everything.

And that memory starts off with white.

It was a white day.

A Sunday.

Unfriendly, suffocating.

Like fog.

Sharpened icy whiteness. 

Home was nothing like where I ended up - some country with upside down seasons.

Hot when it should be cold.

I mean, what kind of normal place has a hot Christmas?

But, the bit I am remembering was before.

When the seasons were the right way around and I lived in my own country.

It was the day that everything went to shit. And really? I should’ve known then.

That particular Sunday, the world had imploded with a smash of metal.

Glass showered over me, forcing me to shut my eyes.

Cold light fell on my eyelids.

Momentarily blinded, I blinked.

The window to my left was open and I could feel the wintry air.

My skin prickled and my chest felt heavy with pain.

Stiff, whimpering, the world had punched a hole in my life, and I was getting sucked into the white oblivion.

A silhouette fell across my face.

Like a silent shadow, he moved swiftly.

Reaching me with inhuman speed, passing through obstacles like they were air.

And although somewhere inside I knew him, I still didn’t know him.

His glasses were gone and his face was blurry.

But I remembered his halo.

A burning around his head like those pictures of Jesus in stained glass windows.

He was... aglow.

He approached me.

I smiled.

My lips stretched too wide, creaking and splitting in the effort.

I whimpered as the taste of copper spread across my tongue.

Neon blue flashed in the corners of my eyes, and I cried as panic swelled within me.

Through the forced, stuffed silence, I could hear his voice, shouting in the distance.

My papa. 

He was talking to me, stroking my head while his fingers worked on loosening the straps.

I watched him move in slow motion.

His mouth spoke in slow deliberate movements.

His face crumpled in what I later realised was fear.

It took me a while to properly focus on what he was saying so I could understand him, but I managed to focus on ‘papa.’

But then the whoosh of the fire flamed up around me.

Time tripped, jerked and sped forward with the roaring of the flames.

I began a panicked, full on scream.

I remembered my Peppa Pig ball.

Her face shimmered, then slowly went from pink, to brown, to black before exploding.

Now, I often think about what would have happened to me if papa wasn’t there.

Would I have gone from pink to brown to black and then exploded?

Do people’s bodies do that?

The hot tongues spat and danced their way through the vehicle I was trapped in, excitedly jumping from the back seat, to my seat.

And as they settled and grew roots, they became stronger and louder and their bite was fierce.

I turned around to face papa.

The doors were jammed.

He had gotten in through the smashed window.

‘Papa!’

There were footsteps rushing around the car, people were yelling and yelling but I couldn’t work out what they were saying.

The flames were no longer dancing and laughing, but roaring and smothering.

Billowing black smoke was obscuring my vision as the choking fumes slipped effortlessly down my raw throat.

‘Papa!’

His face was scratched and bleeding, but he still smiled.

He still called me his bébé. 

‘Maëlle.... Maëlle? C'est moi... Regarde papa’ he said. ‘Ne t'inquiète pas bébé. Ne t'inquiète pas...Papa va te sortir d’ici.’

And I knew then he was gonna get me out.

‘As-tu mal ma chérie?’ he asked, scanning me all over with his eyes.

Checking the damage. 

‘Ok bébé, ok bébé. Ton dos vous te fait mal?’ He said, and I nodded.

‘Ok ma chérie. Papa va te sortir d’ici.’

He smiled.

A tight knot in my chest relaxed somewhat and papa reached out his hand.

I remember how big his hand seemed.

It swallowed mine.

Papa was saving me.

I wasn’t going to be barbecued, and the car wasn’t going to explode with me in it.

Papa was here. And he was gonna get me out.

‘Qu’est-ce que tu dis? On sort d’ici?’ he had said.

I nodded.

Abso-fuckin-loutely.

‘Alors sortons d'ici.’ he said.

I remember his blue eyes.

I remember his mousy brown hair.

And I remember that he saved my life that day.

And despite me remembering everything, I don’t remember how I got out.

It’s gone.

Dunno where, but I don’t have access to those memories.

Like, it’s locked away in a personal file or something.

Under ‘restricted.’

Maybe for a good reason.

Either way, I am barred.

That was the end of the good ol’ days.

The days where I had a normal mama and papa.

Where I had a home and school and friends.

My brave papa got me out of the car, and that was the last time I saw him.

Like I said, I don’t really remember what happened.

We did try though, y’know? To carry on like normal.

Go to school, cook dinner, play with friends, watch tele.

Continue with a boring life but it was all wrong.

Nothing was the same again.

Mama lasted about five years before she decided that she couldn’t stay in that house.

I asked her about it later, and she said that she was haunted.

And it hurt.

I didn’t quite understand at the time. 

Emigrating was his dream.

And so before I knew it, we said our goodbyes and I found myself with mama and Joquette on a plane to some hot country.

Totally different to home.

Totally upside down.

Totally shit.

When the plane doors opened it was like I was hit by the warm breath of life.

The oppressive heat had a spark of life.

Everything grew here.

I think Mama hoped we would grow here too.

It was the sun. It makes everything want to live.

This is what mama had wanted.

She wanted us to grow.

So she planted us in fertile soil, and watered us within this oppressive concoction of heat.

My chest shuddered, the air felt too thick to breathe.

Mama said I would get used to it, but that wasn’t the only thing that was different.

People were cold in that heat.

And then of course, there were the colours.

I hadn't noticed people of different colours before.

I was white, mama was white, papa was white, everyone was white. And suddenly, people were not white.

People were brown and black and yellow.

Not a big deal, I hear you say, but it kind of isn’t.

And it kind of is.

Still.

I just accepted.

Kids are like that though, aren’t they?

The first time I went to school was the day I saw people use umbrellas to shield themselves from the heat. And I remember being shocked because umbrellas are used for rain, right?

And I remember asking mum why it was so hot and she told me about the equator or something. But I remember thinking that at home the spring flowers would be coming up in the garden and the birds would be singing.

Papa liked to put bird food up and mama always took it down. Said it wasn’t fair because the cat liked to catch the birds.

I was with papa.

The birds are smarter than to be fooled by some stupid cat.

And our cat was stupid. And old.

But mama