MEMOIRS OF A REALLY GOOD BROWN GIRL

You are not good enough, not good enough, obviously not good enough.

The chorus is never loud or conspicuous,

just there.

Carefully dressed, hair combed like I am going to the doctor, I follow my older sister, we take the shortcut by the creek, through the poplar and cottonwood trees, along sidewalks, past the pool hall, hotel, variety store, the United Church, over the bridge, along streets until we reach the school pavement. It is at this point that I sense my sister’s uneasiness; no obvious signs, just her silence, she is holding my hand like she holds her breath, she has changed subtly since we left home. We enter a set of doors which resemble more a piece of machinery than a doorway, with metal handles, long glass windows and iron grates on the floor, the halls are long and white, our feet echo as we walk. I feel as though I’ve been wrapped in a box, a shoebox where the walls are long and manila gloss, it smells of paper and glue, there are shuffling noises I’ve never heard before and kids in the rooms we pass by. We enter a room from what seems like the back door, rows of small tables lined up like variety cereal boxes, other small faces look back vacant and scared next to the teacher’s swelling smile. (I have learned that when whites smile that fathomless smile it’s best to be wary). I am handed over to the teacher. Later I will reflect upon this exchange between my older sister and the teacher as the changing of the guard, from big sister to teacher, and before that, when I was even younger, from mother to big sister.

This is my first day of school and I stand alone; I look on. Most of the kids know what to do, like they’ve all been here before, like the teacher is a friend of the family. I am a foreigner, I stay in my seat, frozen, afraid to move, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to speak, they talk differently than I do, I don’t sound the way they do, but I don’t know how to sound any different, so I don’t talk, don’t volunteer answers to questions the teacher asks. I become invisible.

I don’t glisten with presence, confidence, glisten with the holiness of Ste. Anne whose statue I see every year at the pilgrimage, her skin translucent, as if the Holy Ghost is a light and it shines out through her fluorescent skin, as if a sinless life makes your skin a receptacle of light.

The other kids have porcelain skin like Ste. Anne too, but unlike her, they have little blond hairs growing out of small freckles on their arms, like the kind of freckles that are perfectly placed on the noses of the dolls I got each Christmas. In fact, the girls in my class look like my dolls: bumpy curls, geometric faces, crepe-paper dresses, white legs and patent shoes.

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My knees are scarred, have dirt ground in them from crawling under fences, climbing trees, riding skid horses and jumping from sawdust piles. I remember once, when I was a flower girl for my brother’s wedding, I was taken home to the city by my brother’s white fiancée and she “scrubbed the hell out of me.” All other events that took place on that visit are diminished by the bathtub staging, no other event was given as much time or attention by her. I was fed and watered like a lamb for slaughter. I was lathered, scrubbed, shampooed, exfoliated, medicated, pedicured, manicured, rubbed down and moisturized. When it was over, I felt that every part of my body had been hounded of dirt and sin and that now I, like Ste. Anne, had become a receptacle of light.

•

My skin always gave me away. In grade one, I had started to forget where I was when a group of us stood around the sink at the back of the class washing up after painting and a little white girl stared at the colour of my arms and exclaimed, “Are you ever brown!” I wanted to pull my short sleeves down to my wrists and pretend that I hadn’t heard her, but she persisted, “Are you Indian?” I wondered why she had chosen this ripe time to ask me and if this was the first she’d noticed.

How could I respond? If I said yes, she’d reject me: worse, she might tell the other kids my secret and then they’d laugh and shun me. If I said no, I’d be lying, and when they found out I was lying, they’d shun me.

I said “No,” and walked away.

•

I just watched and followed; I was good at that, good at watching and following. It was what I did best, I learned quickly by watching. (Some learning theories say that native kids learn best by watching, because they’re more visual. I always knew that I learned by watching to survive in two worlds and in a white classroom.) I only needed to be shown something once and I remembered it, I remembered it in my fibre.

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I lived a dual life; I had white friends and I had Indian friends and the two never mixed and that was normal. I lived on a street with white kids, so they were my friends after school. During school I played with the Indian kids. These were kids from the other Indian families who were close friends with my parents. At school my Indian friends and I would play quite comfortably in our own group, like the white kids did in theirs.

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I am looking at a school picture, grade five, I am smiling easily. My hair is shoulder length, curled, a pageboy, I am wearing a royal blue dress. I look poised, settled, like I belong. I won an award that year for most improved student. I learned to follow really well.

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I am in a university classroom, an English professor corrects my spoken English in front of the class. I say, “really good.” He says, “You mean, really well, don’t you?” I glare at him and say emphatically, “No, I mean really good.”