What Would Beyoncé Do?! Read online

  2.

  ONCE I WAS 7 YEARS OLD (WELL, ABOUT 9)

  Born in 1982, I was originally one of four children. I have three brothers, so I grew up with boys, all boys, and trust me when I say boys are dull. I was hilarious. I have only ever really known funny women; some funny men, but predominantly funny women. I used to watch anything with Whoopi Goldberg in it and Lord does that woman make me howl.

  My parents got divorced when I was very young. In the week we lived with my mum in Farnborough and at weekends my brothers and I would go see my dad in Bristol. He lived on his own round the corner from my granny. She is also Polish and hardly spoke any English.

  Polish was my first language, but I went to an English school. I felt really embarrassed to be one of the only foreign kids in the school (along with my bros), plus I had divorced parents. I didn’t want another reason to stand out, so I learnt English and quickly disassociated from my Polish roots. At school at least.

  My babcia (Polish for granny) would often look after us when we were in Bristol. She was beautiful and very Catholic, with a wicked sense of humour. We would have the Carry On films playing all day and she would howl. My brothers would always try and sneak 18-rated films on to the VHS; not the porno ones, just the ones with lots of blood and gore. My babcia didn’t speak English but she cottoned on pretty quickly that the opening scenes of Robocop weren’t suitable for four kids under 12. Instead, she put on Sister Act because she thought it was about church. That became my favourite film of all time. When Sister Mary Robert gets the high note in ‘Hail Holy Queen’, oh boy, what a pause and rewind moment; they nearly topped it with Ahmal’s go at ‘Oh Happy Day’ in the school hall performance in Sister Act 2 – those are two of my favourite scenes in movie history. ‘Give it some of that deep shoulder, action!’ Well, plus the ‘scared of leaving this room and never feeling’ in Dirty Dancing and ‘Dad, dad, come on, you gotta get up’ in The Lion King, but I digress.

  I loved being with my granny at the weekends; sure, it was great to see my dad, but hello, the real hero was Babcia. She would stay over at my dad’s house whenever we were in Bristol and I would share a bed with her. We would sleep back to back as it kept us both warm. Often before we fell asleep we would play mime games like charades. One of our favourite games became to recite scenes from films or TV we had watched that day. I would recite lines from Sister Act with act-outs, and she would really laugh; she loved it, and I loved how this made me feel. Selfish really, making other people laugh because it made me feel happy, but rather that than, I don’t know, making them cry.

  The next day after church her friends would come around and Babcia would get me in the living room and ask me to act out the film again. Her friends would smile politely with expressions that can best be described with acronyms like WTF?! But I didn’t care, it was fun entertaining my grandma and that was what mattered.

  At school, though, I was still the awkward Polish kid. I didn’t feel like I fitted in, so I created my own world. I was quite happy entertaining myself. I had always wanted to perform, ever since I was really small. I was a shy kid, but I loved showing off when I was comfortable. I would put household objects on the couch and perform to them (milk bottles and a Hoover are surprisingly great laughers). As a child, it was simple: when I grow up, I am going to be a famous artist. As long as I am always comfortable and there is a Henry in the corner, that is what I am going to do.

  Around this time, if people ever asked me what I wanted to be, I would always say an actress. My parents divorced when I was seven, and it was a turbulent, drawn-out process. I grew up in a house with a lot of arguments, tension and uncertainty, but I found that being funny could quickly eradicate and relieve the tension. I hated the transition of being playful and free with my grandma at the weekend and then feeling totally withdrawn and like the class weirdo at school.

  My mum did the best she could with four small children and broken English; she went to classes in the evenings and eventually met my stepdad, Johnny. Johnny is a kind British man; he knew of my acting aspirations and decided to sign me up to dance classes, which he thought would help me bond with other girls in my school. I was nine years old with a crew cut; all the other girls were so pretty and pristine and I just rocked up with a frown on my face like someone had farted. I felt so awkward all the time, to be anywhere near British girls in leotards.

  When I went to the classes, something weird would happen. I could follow the class, but as soon as the teacher stopped to turn around and watch us, I felt so self-conscious and wanted the floor to swallow me up. The fear was debilitating; I would freeze, every time. People would be dancing to the routine and it was like my limbs would go ‘No’ and I would just stand there and front it out. I learnt very quickly, when I was scared: don’t show fear, just don’t show anything. So I would stand there, hold a pose and not dance, fronting it out.

  It was so weird. At home, at my granny’s house, I could sing and show off for her friends and not care that they didn’t like it. I felt good because she did. But here in Farnborough, I felt completely out of my depth.

  Some weekends, when we weren’t at my dad’s, we would go and visit Johnny’s sister; they lived in London and were pretty well off. Private-school-educated, million-pound house, well connected. Me and my brothers would rock up, have a delicious lunch and then as we would leave, Johnny’s family would offer us hand-me-downs. Not in a bad way at all, they were lovely to us, but it was Johnny bringing his new partner and her four small children, and it just always felt weird. We were never really part of the family; as hard as they tried, I always felt like an outsider with my brothers.

  One of these cousins was an actress. I was so excited to meet her and tell her that that was what I wanted to be too! She told me that to be famous and successful as an actress you had to go to drama school and it cost a lot of money and not everyone could get in. You could only do well if you had an agent, and it was hard to get an agent. She was speaking generally, and in hindsight I can see her own struggles with it. But at the time it just made me feel so embarrassed to admit that acting was what I wanted to do. And she was right: we had no money, there was no way I could afford to get into drama school, and there was no way my freeze dance moves would get me a scholarship.

  However, there was a secondary school down my road that was a private school known for its drama department. When I left primary school, I was desperate to go; I’d heard that the school had links with people at the BBC, so if I could get in, I could end up on EastEnders. The only problem was the school cost £11,000 a year. You could do a test to try and get a scholarship, and I was desperate to sit the exam, but my mum wouldn’t let me. She said it would be a very difficult test, and even if I got the scholarship, she wouldn’t be able to afford all the uniform.

  So instead I caught the bus every day and went to a comprehensive seven miles away in the next town.

  I felt like an oddball at school, though I loved Fridays. Fridays the tuck shop was open and you could get a bag of penny sweets for 10p. My favourites were flying saucers. Sometimes if you were really lucky you could get a bag with two flying saucers. Flying saucers and pink lemonade, the Fridays of dreams. Apart from that, I wasn’t a fan of the rest of the week; it was the weekends that shaped me.

  My parents seemed to have the longest divorce, it went on for a few years and it made it very difficult for me to make sense of the world. It seemed to me that my dad had a lot of hate towards my mother and would call her all the names under the sun whenever he would mention her. We were all under 12 at the time.

  He would come and pick us up on a Saturday morning, but he would never come to the house. He didn’t want to see my mum and so wouldn’t come to the door. It was before mobile phones, so he would arrange the week before to pick us up at the bottom of the road at midday. Me and my brothers would take it in turns to run down the street and wait for him. Sometimes he would be there at 12, other times at 3 p.m.; you never knew. When I saw his shiny Orion
come round the corner, I would feel so excited and run towards the car.

  Social workers were involved and there were lots of court dates and legal battles. It all left my mum pretty broken. My mum always felt he hadn’t allowed or encouraged her independence, it was all about staying at home with the children, so she wasn’t allowed to drive or to work. Friends were not allowed over and although we had a phone line, my mum wasn’t allowed to use it. The first thing she did when she left was to have one installed. My father hated it.

  I, on the other hand, was in love with him; he was my hero, I couldn’t have adored him more. I found him really funny and loved being around him. Often when he picked us up I would sit in the front as I was the only girl and he would put on Cher tapes. I would sing my heart out and my dad would laugh and applaud. I loved making him happy. He would be like ‘Luisa, do a show for us’ and that meant I would sing and dance along in the car to whatever ’80s power ballad he was playing. It would drive my brothers in the back of the car crazy but my father loved it.

  He hated that my mum had met someone else so quickly and got pregnant with my awesome little sister. But Johnny saved my mum; she says that if she hadn’t got away when she did, she wouldn’t be here now. Johnny encouraged her to live independently, to have driving lessons, and he would buy us takeaway kebabs at weekends. I liked him.

  My mum had Asia. And I was delighted, yay, a girl! My father was furious. He used it against my mum in the courts and then filed for custody of me and my brothers. We didn’t know at the time that he had fathered two other children; they used to always be at his house whenever we stayed, but he denied they were his kids and just said he was babysitting.

  We kinda got suspicious 19 years later when he had photographs of him attending their graduations, but hey, some babysitters are just really passionate about their work.

  One of the memories that sticks out the most was when my dad asked me where I wanted to live. We were sat in the garden of my grandma’s house, and he pulled me to one side, put his arm around me and asked me which of my parents I wanted to live with, him or Mum. I was so confused. I loved him, but I loved my mum more, and she had just had Asia and Asia was really fun, plus she let us have kebabs and my dad never let us order takeaway ever. I remember weighing up the pros and cons and literally because my mum was nicer to me and I preferred her cooking I said, ‘Er probably best if I stay with Mum?’

  My dad unwrapped his arm from around my shoulders and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the weekend. On the car journey home there was no singing, and he didn’t ask me to do a show. He just played really sad music, suggested I was no daughter of his and then refused to talk to me. I was heartbroken. Looking back now, I guess he was too. But I didn’t know that at the time.

  The courts decided it was best to split us down the middle, so my elder two brothers with my dad and me and my younger brother with my mum. The weekend before we split it was agreed we would have one last big Christmas together at my mum’s house and then my dad would pick up the two boys and that would be the start of the custody.

  We had just had the first half of the holidays at my father’s and he was dropping us off for the final week at my mum’s. Johnny walked past the car as we were saying goodbye. He interrupted, words were exchanged and they ended up getting into a fist fight. I managed to grab my little brother and ran up to the house to get my mum. She ran out but as she did my dad locked the older two boys in the car and drove off. It was Christmas Eve.

  It was all pretty horrible. I will never forget the pain etched on my mother’s face as she chased my father’s car and ran after her sons as he drove off with them. I think my father hated it that his family was broken up and my mother hated it that her family was broken up and everyone seemed to be to blame but nobody could seem to fix it. I learnt not to trust my own instincts after that; I didn’t know who was right or wrong, what to believe or how to make sense of anything. It made trusting reality very hard.

  I guess comedy and performing to objects in the living room was my way of escaping the real world. I loved it, I loved anything that was showing off by myself. I used to sneakily watch Band of Gold when I was younger, a TV show about prostitutes, and I remember thinking the women were so glamorous; they had male attention and validation. I had no idea what they were doing, but would spend afternoons dressing up in my bedroom and rolling my skirt up with my hand on my hips. Lord, I was a paedophile’s dream. I read somewhere how Dolly Parton said she once saw the town tramp and decided that she wanted to be just like her. I figured I was in good company.

  My dad knew of my aspirations to work in acting and he would often say, ‘Well, if you lived with me, I could have put you in a school where they have a great theatre, not like your mother who put you in a comprehensive.’

  I would feel really anxious that I was missing out on something because I chose to stay with my mum. It wasn’t my fault I liked kebabs so much. At weekends, when all four of us were together at my dad’s, I would be in my element because I had my boys back. My brothers were happier at my father’s; ever since Asia was born, Johnny had become really strict towards them. My mum said it was because he was jealous of the attention she showed them. I never understood that, how a grown-ass man could be jealous of a child, of a mother’s love for her children. How fragile are these guys?

  My dad didn’t seem fragile; he was the opposite, he was so alpha, but he wasn’t strict at all, apart from the ban on takeaways. He just left us to it really, which was cool as we could just hang out with my granny, and we loved spending time with her. It was one of the reasons the boys moved to my dad’s, ’cos my gran was so amazing. But she died a year after they moved in and slowly things started unravelling.

  Weekends at my father’s involved babysitting his ‘non-children’, playing Sega and going to Tesco to buy big bags of Wotsits. But our favourite thing to do was to go to Makro; before my dad got custody, he would take us all and buy us loads of sweets. Makro with my father was one of my favourite childhood memories. Some kids love being taken to Alton Towers. Not for me mate, get me with my dad to a wholesalers and I will show you a happy face! I could get a massive box of my favourite flying saucers and they would last me for weeks.

  My dad got really upset and angry after the custody though. I think he was hurt that me and my little brother were still living at my mum’s. I remember one time in Makro I picked up a colouring book and went to put it in the trolley. He took it from me and put it back on the shelf and said, ‘If you lived with me you could have that, but you decided to live with your mother so she can buy it for you.’ And then put two colouring books for the boys in the trolley.

  Leaving him and my brothers at weekends was hard. I would cry myself to sleep every Sunday. My mum loved us very much but she had Johnny now and a new baby, and I felt quite isolated. Johnny had bought the house next door and they’d knocked the walls through, so now instead of a semi, we lived in quite a big detached house with two sets of stairs, one to go up and one to go down, or vice versa.

  I would come back from my dad’s with my little brother and just run to my room, put on Cher music and wait to fall asleep. I would feel awful on Sunday nights, but knew that as soon as I was back in school, I would snap out of it and be a different person. Sure enough, on Monday I would wake up and not feel the urge to cry; I would be fine, a new and different Luisa, who functioned and went to school like a normal person until it was time to see my dad and brothers again. It was difficult having all these feelings of sadness but having none of the maturity to understand my surroundings or other people’s pain.

  At 15, I took GCSE drama classes. I loved getting up and improvising and imitating classmates. The room of people laughing gave me confidence. At 16, I went to college. I had to pick three subjects, but I only really wanted to do performing arts, so the other two were just filler. Psychology because I thought it would help me understand characters and emotions better, and French because . . . I don’t know why I chose F
rench. I think I fancied the teacher.

  In performing arts, we did a lot of drama, all that stand-in-the-middle-of-the-room-and-pretend-to-be-a-tree shit. That wasn’t what I wanted to do; I wanted to get up and move people, get people to emotionally react and engage. But for now, I guess, being a really good maple would have to do. I loved it when we could improvise, that was when I felt in my element. It was only ten minutes of any lesson but it was my favourite ten. Any time I could do funny, that made me feel good.

  I signed up for a local amateur dramatics group outside of school. It was held every Tuesday in an old man’s pub and consisted of three men in their sixties and two women in their forties putting on a production of Peter Pan. One of the older dudes wanted to play Peter. I thought with my crew cut I would be the obvious choice, but apparently this guy, the 60-year-old, really had never grown up! Oh how they laughed every time he said that. Every time.

  They wouldn’t even let me play Tinker Bell; instead I became part of the ‘boat ensemble’. I tried to talk to my mum about it, but she was busy with the stress of being a mum, and she was grieving my brothers I guess. Even though she saw them once every two weeks, she never seemed happy and was always sad about it.

  I talked to my dad about acting, but he said it was a stupid idea and it wasn’t too late to study to become a lawyer. I had never expressed an interest in law, but for some reason he seemed to think I would excel at it. He reminded me again that if I lived with him I would get an excellent education like my brothers, but I’d chosen to live with my mother.

  So I spoke to Johnny, who said I should be grateful, and that I was lucky to be in the Peter Pan production. He tried to inspire me with ‘I once saw a play where a woman had no lines but came on stage and moved a chair, and she stole the show!’ but all I heard was ‘I once went to see a really shit play.’