“Don’t worry. I going fix you up.” It’s the chess master with the mop again, speaking into the floor, and then moving swiftly, crab-like, disappearing around a corner.
Grace sit. Steph offer her the bottle of warm Coke she been sipping all day. Suddenly, another dark man is with them. He is the spitting image of the first, except he is younger, taller, green clad, stethoscope around his neck, clipboard in hand. He say to them, “Please follow me.”
He is Manny, son of Aloysius-the-Mop-Man’s cousin, and a nurse practitioner.
“I’m sorry Caroline was rude,” he say. “Her son was murdered last year, by one of ours. Yesterday was the first anniversary of his death.”
Grace shrug. She think of all the black people in the world with murdered children putting on their best face in a million service jobs. If every grief had a rude mouth, is only rude mouth that the world would be hearing.
During half an hour’s consultation with Manny, she discover that she has had migraine headaches since she was a child. Relief is at hand, though, for there are pills, and she can also learn to relax her way out of them.
On her way out, pills in her pocket, Grace look for Aloysius to thank him.
“Got to look after a countrywoman,” he say with a twinkle, rocking on the mop.
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“Tell you what,” Aloysius say, sweet mischief in his eye, “come visit my church some time. Just down the road on Baldwin.” He push his hand in his pocket and pull out a couple of tracts, which he give her. “Bring your pretty friend too.”
Next day, Grace still can’t see straight. She stay in the dorm at Steph’s insistence, castigating herself the whole time for not complaining about the nurse. Then she recall Gramps advice. “Gracie, don’t be too hard on yourself, and don’t expect too much of the folks you meet.” So far, people are not so bad. Some are disdainful, but many are kind. She admire Aloysius and Manny, subverting the deferential dance at the hospital, helping to cure not only sickness of the body, but sickness of the way the world conceive of and construct itself.
Maybe she shouldn’t study teaching. Maybe medicine would be better. But she don’t think she is doctor material, unless it is Gramps kind of doctoring, a basic set of ministrations that include pulling teeth, snapping palates to cure tinnitus, and brewing home remedies from banned substances.
15
Grace Finds a Church
Rufus, the student advisor, is a handsome Bajan who like to grab passersby at the waist, spin them around, and guide them down the corridor in one-two-three steps of a crazy dance. When Grace decide to abandon teaching and do economics instead, she consider switching universities, so she ask Rufus advice. He ask her if she have any cute brothers. She is learning the ways of this pagan place, so she hold up her right hand, and raise four fingers, one at a time. Rufus smile broader at each raised digit.
“And I have two sisters, Rufus, but a question can’t answer a question.”
“Girl, is much of a muchness where a first degree is concerned. What you put in is what you get out, though it might look different after.” He giggles. His Bajan accent does strange things with vowels and the letter “r.”
Grace don’t bother take on the slackness, for it’s nothing new. Wentley Park is not backward in that. Having got the advice she is looking for, she decide to stick with the evil she know. She will stay at U of T, but change her major.
It leave her as the one black person in every course.
“You write so well, Grace.”
“Thank you, Professor Letchman.”
“Where did you learn such excellent English?”
“At my mother’s knee, sir.”
And she tired of people being surprised at how she come to be so bright. Sometimes she want to say she is surprised at how they come to be so dumb.
One afternoon at mid-term, when she reach the dorm nearly dead after three tests, back to back, she find a letter from Ma.
6 October 1976
Dear Gracie,
Is Ma here saying sorry it take me so long to write. I know Gramps write and send you news not to say that is a xcuse but you know how things go. We are all okay thank God Pa go to doctor for he wasn’t seeming so right and doctor say he have pressure and give him pills. Stewie and Edgar and Conrad growin so fast it hard to keep them in clothes and shoes but your Grampa always find xtra dollars say it come from his agrcultural money. I give God thanks for him everyday he holding up but like the years starting to take their toll. The little ones doing fine Pansy and Mortimer going along good so far praise God. She managing with the children I can’t believe is two already and they come so close the baby is two weeks now and look like Mortimer cant done. Him and she growing some things round the back he put a bigger bell in the shop front so they sure to hear customers. I not paying no mind to the politics is in God hands but I do fear with the voilence not thinkin it will harm me or mine but God don’t like those things. Only the Maker have any right to take life and he is a Jealous God. Everybody send greetings and prayers. God bless.
Ma
Grace know is a effort for Ma to put those words down, the same mother at whose knee she claim to have learned English. Gramps is the one with the tutoring knee, of course, but what difference that make? The question about her language competence is a comment, not a question. But how is she going to make these people understand that their one-note English is nothing like the keyboard of language that every St. Chris child in primary school can play? The school part is important. You are lucky if you get a cane in your hand-middle and not on your backside if anything but her Majesty’s English come out of your mouth inside the school! Once through the gate, though, Chrissie Creole can reclaim its place. That time the language rock-and-roll can begin, crissing and crossing from English English, to Creole Creole, and hitting all notes in between.
The blue air letter in her hands wrinkle in a tickle of breeze. The finger is sharp, a coolness that say “colder to come.” She ignore it. All she pondering is the difference between here and there, how disinclined she is to bother with educating herself away from sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that she inhale with every lungful of air since she born. Some days she feel like it is, in Gramps terms, a battle she join since she step off the plane. Yes, it “ought” to be “stepped,” she know it is “stepped,” but she choosing to say “step.” Too bad!
She miss home so much, she put down a shameless bawling. When it decline into sniffs and damp intakes of breath, she consider the Wentley solution to problems: praying or reading the Word. Here they say religion is a panacea for the lazy and stupid. She don’t care. She only want it to work. Trouble is, in five years of going to the Church of England at St. Chad’s, God become distant, cold and, well, Anglican. Even if he exhale fire, God is lively in Wentley. She hunt up Aloysius’s tracts and decide to visit his church to check out whether God down there is jumping, or if he have a stiff upper lip.
“The Beloved” church on the tracts is, in fact, “The Evangel Church of the Father, Beloved Lord Jesus, and High Holy Spirit.” That sweet her no end. There and here can be the same, after all. It sweet her too that Reverend Douglas, the pastor, is a woman. And plenty people from the Caribbean come there, so the congregation resemble the one in Wentley. So “Beloved” is the place Grace start going to worship. She give them her address and phone number, and they tell her of their many ministries: music ministry; temple ministry; ministries to children, the poor, sick, prisoners, students, the disabled, and the emotionally ill. They ask her if she would care to join a ministry, but she say, like how she just come, she will wait and see.
She attend a couple Sunday services. One or two Bible studies and social events. But she soon miss one Sunday service, then another, then three. The third time she miss service, somebody phone to ask how she is, whether she need anything. They are so kind, Grace feel guilty when she find herself staying away, but like spite, life get busier, work increase, and every week she promi
se herself to go, and then she break the promise. But, she tell herself, toiling at the books is her duty, for Gramps charge her with making a contribution. Now Sunday worship is at the Church of Robarts Library with evening prayers at the Chapel of the Laundry.
Next thing you know, autumn come and gone. Any time now is cold and snow. True, Gramps arm her with counsel about how to survive winter, but she never experience nothing like this. Thank God her one, two friends come to her rescue: Maisie, in a coat purple as a ripe otaheite apple, taking her for treks in the snow, crunching alongside in flashy boots, cowing down winter with her classy clothes; Steph, cheeks red with cold, dragging her out to make snow angels, buy roast chestnuts, search the sky for northern lights; Lindsay, arriving one weekend with grater cake and gizzada, insisting that they go to a documentary on St. Chris.
The clamour of Christmas in the last days before it arrive is the loud noise of how much she ache for home. Maisie and family are visiting her parents in Miami. Lindsay is in Ottawa being a waiter, trolling decent tips in the season of goodwill. Steph ask her from early on to spend the holidays with her family in Warsaw, a village near Peterborough, but she don’t want to impose. Besides, don’t mind it was long ago, she still bearing the scar from the last place she stay that wasn’t home.
Christmas Eve, trying to study in the library, she can’t stop thinking about the smell of pudding boiling in kerosene pans, Jonkonnu jumping down dirt tracks with their drum and penny-whistle music, the Devil and his long fork still sending a shiver through her. She can hear clear-clear the sounds of carol service, first the one at school, and then the watch-night service at church, for which people are at that very hour bathing and shaving, putting on their best. Tears hop-skip-jump down her face. She wipe them away quick, gather up her bangarang, scurry like a squirrel back to the dorm, throw her books down on the ground, fling herself onto the bed, and let out a bellow that wake up a gently snoring Steph, who she never even notice on the bed next door. Her roommate stir, open her eyes and say, “Pick up your toothbrush and come. My mother says we’re not eating Christmas dinner without you.”
That night find her at midnight Mass in Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Peterborough, the one black lamb. When she look out and see snow to the nth power, she wonder again why she choose to be a alien in this forbidding place.
Come January, cold white matter issue from above, dropping non-stop and blotting out every shape and contour. Grace run to the mailbox so many times a day that Steph ask her if they are serving food there. Grace tell her yes, for in truth letters from Gramps, Ma, and Pa are good, filling starch, as satisfying as yam, rice-and-peas, dumpling, or roast breadfruit. Also solid protein — cascadura, curry goat, oxtail, and tripe and beans. As for the boys, from she was boarding with Miss Carmen, letters from them provide her with rainbow-coloured vittles — vegetables in light and dark green, orange, and beet red, and fruits in all the colours under the sun.
She worry a little about the news from home. Stewie write now and then from Pursea’s, but his few lines are hard to take. “Book and me don’t agree, Gracie,” he write. “My brain and my hand have the best connection a man can want but the book learning confuse me bad.” Grace know that industrial arts require some studying. She say a prayer for Stewie.
Edgar’s first letter for the New Year give her a terrible pain in her belly-bottom. Edris nearly die from a botch-up abortion. They disfellowship her at her grandaunt’s church, whereupon that lady pack her off to a cousin in Queenstown. Then news come to say that Edris run away, nobody know where. When Grace first reach Toronto, she make sure to send Edris a postcard, then a letter, then another postcard, but she hear not a word back. Grace answer Edgar quick sticks, begging for information about Edris — reliable, hearsay, anything.
At least Conrad’s letters are still cheerful. He write about poems they are learning the tunes for at school: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind” and “The north wind doth blow/and we shall have snow/and what shall poor Robin do then?” He is all of eleven, but it’s still his small-boy voice that she hear asking: “You see poor Robin yet, Gracie?”
Near the end of January there is a tease of warmth, a titillating melt, and plenty slush and dirty water. Grace don’t let her defenses down, though. She gird up for February and March, for they warn her not to be hoodwinked by this vamping. And she faithfully patronize the letterbox. Edgar’s missives keep arriving once a week, long as ever, well into the New Year. She can tell something is up with this brother who love language, though. He was always into a book while Stewie and his friends were fooling with a ball. Now his words drop, clunk-clunk, heavy, like he perpetually losing his footing as he struggle up out of a deep, dark hole. In March he write to say he going to town to stay with Miss Carmen and try to get a job at Kris-eye, a rag surviving on girlie pics and gossip, for he anxious to get a foot, any foot, in the journalism door.
The letters from home are not merely food but also the company of those closest to her all her life long. But where are Gramps offerings? Nowadays he not writing so often. She miss his advice, a staple ever since she know herself.
As for Lindsay, he don’t phone since Christmas, and she know she not seeing him before summer. She keep close watch for his letters, short, but always with extras, a clipping from The Clarion, a report from a Canadian paper about some Caribbean personality, and sometimes a poem by Edgar who he hear from occasionally. It strike Grace as funny, this other, roundabout connection, via Lindsay, to her brother and her island. She is proud of Edgar for keeping in touch with Lindsay, maintaining a contact abroad in the journalism field.
One of Edgar’s poems is titled “Anancy Me.” She paste it on her wall.
Anancy Me
Once Brer Anancy was divine.
In the great kingdom of Akan Ashanti
Spider Man was the Creator God.
Unwitting he crossed the wide divide
the long Atlantic water stowed away
in some dark swaying limbo
harnessed and bought like all of us
and brought across to raise sweet cane.
Now tricky webber he spins story
threads playing the fool — wise fool —
his former Majesty crawling about
on eight fine legs the only bug with eight
no decent kind of ant or bee
but Some Thing Else — arachnid,
two legs more and one less body part.
Distorted. Strange. Like me.
She don’t entirely get it, but Steph will help her figure it out, or maybe Lindsay, for he write to say he will be in Toronto during the last week in May and the first two in June. Lindsay is bright, down to earth, funny. It don’t seem to matter that his father is a lawyer and his mother a teacher. She like him, but she try not to look forward too much to his arrival all the same.
So she and Steph press on, through March and April, Grace abusing the weather, Steph thumping the books. For Grace, the books are plenty work, but not a major challenge. She keep at them, reading and reading, doing assignments and extras, remembering Pa who was briefly a fisherman when times was so bad he couldn’t get a job: “Check the currents; study the stars; set course. Then steady as she goes.” Her roomie always wavering, can’t hold to a straight path.
On the first of June, Grace write home.
Annesley Hall,
95 Queen’s Park Crescent,
Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, M5S 2C7
1 June 1976
Dear Gramps and Ma and Pa,
I promise a better letter soon, but I am writing on this last Sunday of the semester to give an accounting to you and all the Wentley folks. I’ve not only passed all my courses, I’ve done as well as I could have in all of them. The fact that I survived the weather and the strangeness of the place and still managed to do my lessons properly is as much a credit to you and my few friends here as it is to me. So this comes to say big thanks for all the support, encouragement, and prayers. I count
myself very lucky.
God bless.
Grace
Summer. Poor Grace, looking forward to a movie, a trip to the Toronto Islands, a walk on Queens Quay with Lindsay. When he come, it is for three days during which they talk, briefly, on the phone. He is full of news and excitement. On the last day of the semester he hear he is selected to go on an exchange to the School of Journalism at the University of Queensland in Australia, an attachment that is to begin in the summer term. He is therefore rushing to arrange paperwork, store his stuff, be in touch with powers-that-be in Ottawa and Brisbane, and make six months’ worth of arrangements in two weeks.
Grace can’t understand his eagerness to go. Everybody know Australians don’t like black people. They treat their aboriginal people bad, so they not likely to be won over by his dusky charm, though, she assure him, he have, and to spare. He just keep chattering on about “U of Q’s top-class journalism program,” about how it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and how lucky he is to be selected. So she undertake to keep him au fait with things in Toronto’s up above, in return for news of down under. But she crank down the level of her investment in Lindsay Bell. She can always put more money in, if the prospects improve.
Steph, who is in the city taking a couple summer courses, is concerned that the whole summer long, all Grace is doing is working in the library and studying, so come the beginning of August, she propose that they go to some Caribana events, or at least go to watch the festival parade. For sure it must be a good place to meet some other Caribbean people, maybe even a couple interesting guys. Grace don’t know anything much about Caribana, although she hear people talking about it. When she do some research in the library, she confess to some alarm. The costumes are not like anything she ever see before. Ma would say the women’s outfits are brazen. Pa would say vulgar. Grace can’t say she approve of them. Plus dangerous things seem to happen. People fight and get hurt, even killed. And some students at U of T still agree with the opinion of the Black Students Union that boycott the festival in 1971. According to them, is time black people learn that they must struggle, not dance, if they going to survive. Grace know about the struggling part, for sure. She tell Steph, maybe next year.
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