I was talking about feelings. Yes, these new feelings, which I must be expressing in my letter to you with a vengeance you had not known before, are feelings more normal for a woman, a mother who follows her child into another land, with words of love and reminiscence to express. And in the case of most women, this kind of love and reminiscence need not be pure love. It could be her transmitting the cord of birth, the maternal cord, the umbilical restriction that reminds the child, the daughter, that she owes an unpayable debt for being born. It is important that you do. I do not wish you to miscalculate my motives, even if they are devious.
I have, and I probably transmit feelings to you which state that I am not only your old, irrelevant father, but am behaving as if there is a piece of the woman, the mother, inside my advice and words. And I hope that as a wise man, with the blood of your dead mother’s veins inside you, an Edgehill, that you will disregard all the advice I have been giving you, because I am speaking a different language, and breathing in a different air. Disregard it as a modus vivendi: but regard it as a piece of history, to be used as a comparison. Having now absolved you from all filial encumbrances of the mind, let me now incarcerate you immediately for your choice of a philosophical position which is not valid, or tenable, precisely because, as I have said earlier, you have assumed that there was not a history before your time, and you made the mistake of calling it a political situation.
You said you wrote a paper on the British Constitution, and that the professor gave you a B. You showed your paper to a Canadian friend, and he asked you to let him use it as his own submission. In the same course, you said. To the same professor, you said. The same length, you said. The identical paper, you said. The only change in the paper, you said, was that your Canadian friend put his name, a different name from yours, on the paper. You said all these things. Those are the facts of the case. And your Canadian friend got an A for the paper, you said. And you ask me now, if this is not racial discrimination, or bigotry, or unfairness. It is not so much your shock that it happened, and to you, but that there was no explanation, no regret, no forgiveness from anyone when you pointed it out to them.
I myself am shocked that you would have confronted the professor with his own bigotry. I am also shocked that you expected an apology and did not get one from him. You seem to feel that all these incidents of bad manners, all these expressions of a lower-class, peasant syndrome have only begun with your presence at Trinity College, and that Trinity is above that rawness of disposition. Had you an eye to history, to the realism and the logic that other black men before you had passed through the portals of Trinity College, you would not now be so smitten by your paltry experience.
You are, in spite of the black American Ralph Ellison, who would claim you are invisible, you are rather outstanding and conspicuous. An easy unprotectable target of whims and of deliberation. You are also a conscience. And if you know anything about consciences, then you should know that that part of our makeup, of our psyche, is hidden, is dark, is criminal, is Christian, is pure, is degenerate, and is beautiful as is Caliban.
There was a group of West Indian students at a place in Montreal, a second-rate place, called Sir George Williams College. Montreal, as you know, and in spite of what you may be hearing these days amongst the Anglophones at Trinity, is essentially a French conscience. Why did I say this, when I am really speaking about the West Indies, and a bigoted professor of biology, and not about the culture of a place? The West Indians protested. And the Administration at Sir George, which had become during these protests a most third-rate institution, ignored their pleas of protest. The West Indians held a demonstration. They held it in a room where there was a computer. I never could understand that computer. Why did they not demonstrate in the Department of Biology? Or at the professor’s home? In my estimation, it would have been better tactics, philosophically, to have done one or the other. However, the computer was damaged. Allegedly damaged by the West Indians, they said. The West Indians were arrested. All the newspapers said so. The West Indians were charged. The West Indians were later sentenced. To various prison terms. One of them is now a senator down here. Another is a senator up there. Does Trinity College have a computer? Do you wish to be a senator? Up there? Or down here?
These are not the sentiments I like to send to you, in a red, white, and blue airmail envelope, with a fifty-cent stamp on it, all the way from this island to you, up there in that City of Toronto, buried almost up to your two knees in snow, and in hostility.
I thank you for sending me the phonograph record by Lionel Richie, “Games People Play.” It was also the name of a book by a man named Toffler, lent to me by the lawyer-fellow. I could not understand why so much attention was given to Toffler’s book, which I have not read, and so little to the song. The Third Symphony of Beethoven’s arrived without a scratch or a warp. I wonder how many postmen or post office workers have put their paws on this masterpiece before it got to me? Pearls amongst postmen!
Unfortunately, there are no pearls in the music that the Government Radio in this place plays. The music is like the voices of the politicians: vulgar. “Games People Play,” which I remember dancing to with Kay, almost every Saturday night at a West Indian calypso club, The Tropics, fifteen-twenty years ago, is still fresh and contemporary; and very sensual.
If Hitler was a woman, Hitler and I would take a few steps. It is the kind of music that makes me want to dance with a dog! That never dies. Timeless. Incidentally, although I do not advocate that you become a Christian, I do insist that you find time to sit in a church, at least once a month. But preferably, in the Church of England. If you should stumble into a Catholic church, or if you are taken there, choose the best: the old cathedral at the corner of Shuter and Church. Sit inside a church. Listen to the music. Pay less attention to the sermon. The sermon is not meant for you, for our people. But the liturgy and the ritual are artistically rewarding. And so is the liturgical music. So far as Trinity College is concerned, and in case you are hungover, and desperate on Saturday nights, and cannot rise on Sunday mornings for breakfast before the dining hall closes, slip into the Chapel, take a seat near the rear, find the hymn—that shouldn’t be a problem, you were a choirboy in the Cathedral church here—and sing it loudly, but not as if you are the soloist. And before the worms in your unrepentant stomach growl you out of favour from amongst the “divines,” the theological students as they are called by the vicar and the lawyer-fellow, and out of favour with the sincere worshippers, the latter who are there because of the breakfast that is served after the collection plate, you may find yourself amongst the blessed, meaning the hungry poor. For the rich would not rise so early on a Sunday morning, and when they do rise, instead of oranges, bran flakes, soft honey that is grey in colour, bran bread and bran toast, warm milk, bacon done too hard, and soft-boiled eggs, the rich would rather eat eggs by Saint Benedict.
If you were here at Edgehill House, you would be partaking our Sunday breakfast: crab backs, stuffed with pork, and washed down with champagne. (I found a bottle dated 1943. Dom-Pee.) A pity it is, that I cannot put a crab back into this red, white, and blue airmail envelope, and send it to you!
“Games People Play”! It is a song that keeps coming back to my ears, whose emotion will not let me forget the sadness of love spent in Toronto. But I have to begin to move my finger as I read, along these lines of Exodus, and watch for the bones in Hitler’s supper, and scratch the fleas from his back, after supper.
Hoping that the reaches of these few lines will find you in a perfect state of good health, as they leave me feeling fairly settled in concordance,
I am,
Your loving father,
Anthony Barrington St. Omer Edgehill
IF THE
BOUGH BREAKS
Where they were, on the second floor of a building that squatted at the corner of Bay and Davenport, whose ground floor was taken up by a store that sold milk for five cents more than you could buy it in any supermarke
t in Toronto, and beside which was a store that sold everything, these five women were chatting while two others sat in the hairdresser’s chair. The hairdresser was a man. Christophe. A big strong man with a black complexion, from Barbados. He had never learned French at school; had never visited the islands in the West Indies where French is spoken; but he understood what French meant in his business in this city, so he changed his name from Granville Da Costa the moment he graduated near the bottom of the class from the Marvel School of Hairdressing; went by bus to Montreal and stayed there for a long weekend, Labour Day weekend; and when he returned, by train, he had the name Christophe and a new accent. He called every customer chérie, which came out as “cherry.” He had two women working for him. They themselves had graduated from the Marvel School of Hairdressing, three months ago, near the top of their class.
On the front of the building, on the second floor where these five women were now sitting, was emblazoned in lights, CHRISTOPHE’S SALO. The lights that formed the letter N in “salon” never worked. But Christophe was known throughout the city as the best hairdresser, the only man, or woman, who knew how to “fix” black women’s hair.
One woman had curlers and grease in her hair; another woman’s hair was lathered in shampoo, so thick and rich you could not tell her age, although she was the youngest in the salon. And the five women waiting together were all over forty and well-dressed; and two of them had foreign cars parked below; after one hour, they had given up running down the stairs to put loonies into the meters.
The girl in the chair cried out, as the shampoo ran into her eyes, stinging them, “Are you trying to blind me, Christophe? I’m too old to learn Braille, hear.” She was a fourth-year student at the university. She was studying psychology. She was very good-looking. She came from a rich Barbadian family who owned a very small sugar cane plantation that grew sugar cane no longer. “I have theories to read.”
“Cuddear, cherry!”
It was three o’clock, Thursday afternoon. They could hear the traffic below and the voices of people passing, for the windows facing the street were open for the breeze.
Christophe had forgotten to call the repairman to come and fix the two noisy air conditioners, taped around their perimeter with electrical tape which his friend Cox, a plumber, had left. So, the room was warm. And the five ladies were using the boxes of Kleenex, passing them from hand to hand, mopping their brows, their embroidered cotton hankies having been already saturated. And the prospect of the ironing comb, not really a comb made of iron by a blacksmith, as many of these very women used back in the West Indies, but its modern version, which performed the same function, making their hair “white,” making their temples hot, threatening burns on their scalps, certainly singeing hair in the wrong places, all this made their waiting more uncomfortable than the patience they knew they must have, each time they visited this salon, always too crowded, too slow, and too understaffed. They had been Christophe’s customers for years.
In, with a whiff of wind which cooled the salon, came voices of a quarrel below on the street. The room was quiet for a moment. Then, a siren screamed through the buzz of voices, and the humidity seemed to clutch the women’s bodies, and cause them to breathe more heavily. The noise increased and it seemed as if the ambulance or the police cruiser was going to climb right up the flight of stairs and join them. And in fact, it did stop in front of the entrance. The five women ran to the windows.
There was a hiss. The sirens stopped. And the hissing sound lasted a few more moments. The two assistants had dropped their instruments into some kind of liquid to make the hissing sound. They now joined the others at the windows. Christophe continued fixing the young woman’s hair.
There were three large windows. The lower half of each was pulled up. So the women could lean their bodies out, and see. And they could look at one another leaning out the three windows. It was not an ambulance. There were three police cars. Stopped in the middle of the road, blocking all traffic. The owner of the store that sold high-priced milk came out to meet the policemen. They had left their car doors open. The women could hear the three radios crackling. The six policemen had their guns drawn. In the distance, coming towards them, was another cruiser, flashing in red speed and urgency.
“I bet you,” one woman said, “it’s some black man in there.”
“And not eighteen yet,” another said.
The policemen and the store owner were now inside the store.
“These people!” one of the assistants said. “I was walking through the Eaton Centre one night, and just as I take up my parcel with the things I bought in it, and paid for, all of a sudden I feel this hand on my shoulder, and when I turn round . . .”
“Blasted people, eh?”
Two of the policemen came back out. Between them was a young white girl. No more than sixteen. They took her to a car, and put her to sit in the back seat, while the other four officers exchanged words which the women could not hear; and then they too got into their cruisers, and drove off. The few men and women who had stopped to look walked on. One man took a red box from his pocket, extracted a cigarette, and lit it. He walked at a faster pace. A bus was coming. The wind was blowing again. The store owner came back outside with a broom, sweeping the sidewalk; and they could see, because of the stains from chopping meat and pork and roasts on his white apron that covered his body from his neck to his thighs, that he sold other things than milk.
“What you think they got her for?”
“Shoplifting.”
“They begin young.”
“Well, it was a good thing,” the assistant continued, “that I had keep my receipt that Friday night. It was the Friday before the Caribana parade, and I was thinking of stopping at the kiosk-thing to buy a Lotto, ’cause I had had a dream the night before. But before I could walk more than two feet from the counter where I had bought the pantyhose, this blasted man’s hand on my shoulder. I look round. And staring me in my face is this blasted white man. Security guard. Accusing me. Of something. Say I shoplifting. Well, I not ashamed to tell you, I let-go some bad words in his arse, that caused all the people in the Eaton Centre to stare at me. These blasted people, eh?”
“How old you think that girl is?”
“I could only see her head.”
“I wonder if she have a mother?”
“From the back, which is all I could see, I would put her at sixteen.”
“So young? And to have a record?”
“She’s sixteen, as you say. She can breed.”
“Christ, waiting here on Chris, my mind all the way up in Pickering, wondering if my child went home straight from school. We moved up in Pickering to get away from the crime and violence down here, but child, I tell you, up there isn’t any better than down in Jane-Finch corridor, if you ask me.”
“In the weekend Star, did you read the thing about teenage pregnancies?”
“Wonder what time Chris intends to get to my hair? Four o’clock, and school must be out a long time.”
“What happened?”
“You mean the article?”
“No. The security guard and the pantyhose.”
“I looked him straight in his face. The whole store watching me now. I faced him and I said, in my best manner, ‘Let me tell you something, nigger-man.’”
“You called him that?”
“Was he black?”
“What was his complexion?”
“‘If you want to,’ I tell him, ‘you could put your hand in my bag. But let me tell you something. When you put your hand in my bag, I am going to take off my shoe, and drive it right into your two blasted testicles.’”
“No!”
“His complexion was what?”
“Not black.”
“And you called him a nigger-man?”
“He was a white man.”
“No!”
“And what happened?”
“He didn’t say another word to me.”
“No!
But the teenage pregnancies is what I want to know about.”
“I didn’t read the newspapers that weekend.”
“Anybody have that article? Joyce, you think you still have it? You clips things from the Star.”
“Was in the Globe.”
“I don’t take the Globe. The Star is my speed.”
“Mr. Chris, how much longer before you getting-round to fixing my hair? I have a child at home waiting on me.”
“And a husband.”
“Had!”
“You divorced, cherry? I didn’t know you and the old man had break-up, cherry.”
“In name only, Mr. Chris, a husband in name only.”
“That girl that we just see being arrested by the police, I am sure that they’re going to take her down in that station and make that girl’s life miserable, and they may even do—”
“Do what to her? Do what to her? What you mean by miserable?”
“Child, every other day in the newspapers there’s stories about the police and women they have in their custodies.”
“But that child, though . . .”
“She’s sixteen. She can breed.”
“You mean rape.”
“Who said anything about rape?”
“Sexual assault. Sexual assault is the name for it nowadays. Everything nowadays is sexual assault.”
“Growing up in the West Indies—”
“You’re a damn liar!”
“How can you accuse me before you hear what—”
“What you’re about to say? I already know it, before you even say it. You were about to say that growing up in the West Indies, we didn’t have anything such as what we witnessing nowadays in this place.”
“Well, how the hell could you know what I—”
“Because I know you. And I know the West Indies. And I—”
The Austin Clarke Library Page 79
