Free Black British by Hebe de Souza Page B

called Keds for sport were the norm. A navy blazer with school badge embroidered in gold thread on the breast pocket, a navy cardigan and a blue striped tie were added in winter.
    Our sports uniform, however, was plain stupid. To preserve our adolescent modesty during running and jumping, we were required to wear something known as divided skirts . These were knee-length culottes in thick white drill .
    Above our normal underwear were extra undergarments: baggy bloomers bound by tight elastic at waist and thigh. It was not uncommon for schoolgirls to line up in front of a nun while she, in a totally asexual way, put her hand up our skirts to check the length of the bloomer.
    â€œJump higher!” snarled Mrs Lawrence, our sports teacher. “How can we consider winning competitions if that’s the best you can do?” But my bloomers were so voluminous they weighed me down; my waistband so constricting I was almost chopped in half and the elastic around my thighs so tight my legs were in imminent danger of auto-amputation.
    â€œHow do you manage?” I asked Sarita, one of the Indian girls in my class, as she sailed through manoeuvres with apparent ease.
    â€œOh them!” Sarita’s focus was on the sports field. “I line up like everyone else, then when the teachers aren’t looking I go to the bogs and take them off.”
    I gaped at this duplicity, especially from one with such an innocent gaze, who was held up to me as a role model. Still looking at the field, Sarita added, “We all do it!”
    While my mouth hung open she laughed without humour. “ You can’t do it. You argue with the nuns all the time so they expect you to be wicked. They’re so busy watching you, they can’t watch us. After all,” her reasoning was sound, “there are many more of us than them. They can’t watch all of us all the time.”
    Never were the differences between my classmates and me so apparent, never had I felt so alienated from my school friends. Having gained admission to an elite school from which most of their parents had been barred, my classmates focused on education as their path to a prosperous future. Theirs was not to reason why – whatever their individual inclination.
    On the other hand, because of our religion, the nuns were stuck with me, a Catholic girl caught in the trap of a Catholic school. In my life it was the only place where every move had the potential to be recorded as a misdemeanour rewarded by a refined form of punishment. And it was the nuns, those terrestrial brides of Christ, who owned and controlled a whole array of punishments.
    Their power lay in what was supposed to be adult maturity and wide experience of life, which they took as the right to control me by constant criticisms and dire predictions about my future. To further demonstrate their authority I was often locked away for lengthy detentions, which I turned to my advantage. I soon found Shakespeare and Milton gave me the best quotations to clinch arguments with the nuns.
    Challenging the status quo was my burden not my choice. Poor logic always sat uneasy with me, forcing the compulsion to question.
    As an institution, the nuns espoused feminist views way ahead of their time. In the 1960s when opportunities for girls were restricted to household roles, they were role models of working women who demonstrated a belief in higher education. They provided science and humanities courses to a university entrance standard and without actually saying so, imparted the belief that hard work would achieve boundless ambition. The school motto, emblazoned on badge and blazer, read Nihil Sine Labore – nothing without labour.
    Even the domestic science course had a commercial approach with the underlying premise of efficiency. Students were taught budget and staff management, the production of meals using minimum resources and appreciation of household furnishings. The attitude was, if any of