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‘Me remember growing up and smelling lanolin everywhere and wisps of wool floating around,” first-time author Marcia Hutchinson said of her hometown of Bradford, a Yorkshire mill town, where she was born to Jamaican parents in late 1962. She found herself subjected to constant racism and hatred and cold, wet weather and inadequate housing. The Mother’s Prize for Fiction.
Hutchinson’s alter ego, Mercy Hanson, makes her stubborn, happy to be known “in the coldest of the 20th century”, speaking to us directly from her mother’s womb. “Mother” is a God-fearing person and often attracts God with fear, “five bare feet” with a small waist even though she is pregnant. Four older children have been left “Back Home”, some adopted by white families. Mercy is the third girl born to Mummy and Daddy in England; Another daughter is desired, a spoiled son soon follows.
Compassion is born early, at home; The mother cuts the umbilical cord herself. The light of the first winter is “cold and anemic”, the paraffin burner disperses the smoke; Soon after, Mercy was hospitalized with pneumonia, which was called the “New Monya”. Hutchinson perfectly combines the Jamaican patois and Yorkshire dialect throughout, as well as the “Speaky-Spokey” RP that his mother adopts when speaking in “Hinglish”.
Mercy spends her first year estranged from the family at the hospital, and thereafter feels alienated from her siblings, an alienation that is exacerbated by her habit of sitting on the hall steps and watching the daily happenings from her “Mercy Step”. He is mean and brave, jealous of his mother’s time and attention. Dad is a “tall, tall, fit giant” puffing on Capstan Full Strength, watching the horse races on “Tee Vee”, rarely without a hat: “Trilby keeps him going forever”. The red glow of his cigarettes is very visible to Mercy as a sign of the “Devil” and he threatens her from afar, even knocking over a small child in her bedroom. “This is not good,” the baby tells us. Beating children is given randomly by both parents, but domestic violence and coercive control of the Father over the Mother has ended.
Hutchinson characterizes Mercy’s reaction to the ongoing torture as an entry into a non-conformist space; but despite the domestic horrors this book does not discourage. For every weary pastor or merciless teacher there is encouragement – from the benevolent librarian or from Mona, Mercy’s older sister, the free spirit of the game.
The book ends with Mercy’s admission to grammar school aged 11. Although it veers dangerously in some places and there are some odd comparisons – the family dog is compared to a cat and a rabbit, for example – keeping a consistent timeline corrects some of the founder’s mistakes. It is through reading and games that Mercy strives to climb up and out. There is an interesting moment of early political awareness when he and his classmates inform their PE teacher that they are not “black” but “Black”, led by the black salute of the 1968 Olympics performed on the podium by three athletes. As it ends, The Mercy Step is associated with an extended period of empowerment.
