This is my earliest memory. It might not be accurate but I can’t recall anything before it with any degree of measurable clarity: I’m in a nursery. I must be about five years old. Maybe I’m standing on a short wooden box and screaming my head off. Two female members of staff are rubbing a cold, slimy pink cream liquid (calamine) all over my body. The staff  ask me to stand still. They say I have chickenpox and this is for my own good. I’m only five years old and haven’t yet learned to shout fuck off, so my manic over the top wailing will have to do. 

 Eventually I’m taken down from the box and I look on as my brother Earl is lifted up onto the box. The horrible staff rub more of the same horrible pink liquid over my little brother’s trembling body. Earl more than matches my previous wailing and I’m a little concerned that the staff might feel his suffering is worse than mine. I really want to get back up onto that box and scream my head off just so no one is any doubt about which Johnson is in the most pain. 

The door opens. A group of black women enter the room and make a fuss over myself and Earl. I’ve never see so many black women together before. I think, I hope, that one of them is my mother and I become convinced that my mother has come to collect me and take me away from the nursery When the women leave the room and disappear - without taking me and Earl with them - I am very, very, very confused and somewhat angry.  The anger builds and it doesn't go away.