Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 6, 1958
Felicity and Josiah were surrounded. There was no way to get around this many attackers. They would have to wait for the enemy to give up and go away or fight their way past them.
“Monkeys! Monkeys!” shouted Robert. He danced around, scratching his armpits and screeching.
“Go back to Africa!” added John. “You don’t belong here.”
“I am not from Africa,” Felicity said. “I am from Grenada.” The name made her smile as she remembered the sky flaring red.
“Grenada? Who even heard of such a stupid place?” said Robert.
Josiah’s hands curled into fists. Then he put his head down and tried to charge through the crowd. Felicity did the same, but Robert grabbed her. “Let’s see what a black butt looks like!” he said. “Does she have a tail?” He pulled up the skirt of the new dress Felicity’s mother had made her for the first day of school.
“Don’t touch me,” Felicity said. Her voice shook. Her mother had taken her shopping to pick out the pattern and the fabric and had pinned the cloth around her to make sure the dress fit perfectly. Robert had no right to put his hands on it.
“I’ll touch you if I want to, monkey,” said Robert. John and Greg laughed, droplets of their spit landing on Felicity’s face.
“Josiah!” she cried.
Josiah turned towards the boys, his lips curved into a snarl. “Leave her alone,” he said, as Robert’s hand went up under Felicity’s skirt.
Robert responded with more monkey noises.
“She’s ugly anyway,” said Sheila, sounding almost bored. “Ugly nigger hair, and they’re all sluts.”
Slut. There was that word again, the one Grandma had called Mom, before she died. It must be a really bad word. And nigger sounded just as terrible. “I’m not a slut,” Felicity said.
“You are,” said John. “You’re a whore.” Felicity didn’t know what a whore was either.
“You take that back!” Josiah swung his fist back and there was a pop as it hit John’s nose.
“You stupid nigger!” Robert swung a punch back at Josiah. Sheila and Diane grabbed Felicity, each holding one of her arms. “You’re a slut, your mother’s a slut,” sang Sheila. Felicity reared up, wrenching one arm free, and grabbed a handful of Sheila’s hair. Sheila had golden-blond hair, down to her waist, which she brushed until it shone. All the girls loved Sheila’s hair, and every day, Sheila chose the lucky girl who got to sit with her at lunch and braid it, and then play with her Revlon doll or her Lassie board game.
When Sheila sat in front of Felicity, Felicity ached to reach out and stroke the shimmering strands. Felicity’s own hair was frizzy and refused to lie flat. Sheila was right — it was ugly. Felicity was ugly. But that still didn’t give Sheila the right to stand in Felicity’s way when she was trying to walk home. Felicity yanked as hard as she could on Sheila’s hair and Sheila screamed. Felicity came away with a wispy blond handful that she examined with curiosity. Sheila’s hairs were so much less substantial than her own, so light they were almost invisible in the sunlight, and could blow away like nothing.
“My hair!” Sheila sobbed, putting a hand to her scalp. “You dirty, rotten nigger!”
Frank seized Felicity’s waist. “An eye for an eye,” he said. “Hair for hair.” But Felicity’s mother had, as usual, parted her curls with a perfect straight line and secured them in two thick braids tied with ribbons. Frank would have to undo the braids if he wanted to pull out her hair. He struggled with the knots on her ribbons, loosening the bows but unable to get further. Josiah darted around and aimed his knee at Frank’s crotch. Frank grunted and let Felicity go. As she stumbled to the ground, she felt her skirt tear. Her knee scraped across the sidewalk.
A blue car with giant tailfins and a gleaming chrome front honked its horn. It pulled over beside the group and a woman leaned across the leather passenger seat and rolled down the window. An enormous string of pearls stretched across her throat. “What are you kids doing?” she demanded. “Are you playing rough? Sheila McLean, I’m surprised at you, horsing around with the boys like this. Do I have to speak to your mother?”
The group scattered, leaving Felicity and Josiah standing alone. Felicity’s nose and eyes were running. “I should have known,” the woman said. “You people come to this country just to make trouble. I’m surprised they even let you in.” She drove off.
“Josiah,” Felicity wailed.
“It’s okay, Felicity,” Josiah said. “They’re gone.” He was breathing hard. His shirt was torn, and three buttons were missing.
Felicity looked down at herself. Her skirt was ripped from the hem to her waist. Her sash was dangling, one half of it separated from its loop of string. Her hair ribbons flapped in the breeze. Her knee was bleeding into her sock. “Mom’s going to be so mad,” she said. A clump of Sheila’s hair blew in a ball down the sidewalk.
Mom wasn’t just mad. She was furious. And, if it was possible, she became even more incensed when Felicity said, “They told me I had ugly nigger hair, and I’m a slut. And they said we don’t belong here. They told us to go back to Africa.”
Mom’s eyes widened, looking like they were bursting from her skull. “And you believe any nonsense someone tells you? We have every right to be in this country. And now that Mr. Diefenbaker is prime minister, he’s promised that discrimination on the basis of colour will be outlawed. You just wait, people like them will be sorry soon.”
Felicity didn’t see how the prime minister could tell a bunch of kids what to do. “The lady said she was surprised they let us in.”
Mom gave a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “I came here as a British citizen,” she said. “I worked in a munitions factory in London during the war, and then I heard that Canada was looking for people. They thought I was a white English lady. Imagine their surprise when they saw my Black face, and it was too late to do anything about it. And Rose is American. She fooled them too.”
As interested as Felicity was, there were more things she wanted to know. “What’s a slut?”
“Don’t you worry about that. Worry about your own behaviour. Fighting in the streets like common hooligans! Stooping to their level!” Mom gripped one hand with the other, the bones protruding, as if they were about to pop out of her skin.
“I want to be on their level. I wish I was like everyone else,” Felicity said.
Mom took a deep breath. “You are just as good as them,” she said. “Psalm 139. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Fearfully? Felicity thought. Why should I be fearful? I thought God loved me, so why should I fear Him? But Mom was right. She was as good as those kids. She remembered the estate workers chanting Fight! Fight! Fight! She and Josiah had fought. Then more doubts slid in alongside that memory.
Felicity said, “I’m not as good though, Mom. Sheila McLean’s so pretty, she has long blond hair, and she plays the piano, and —”
“Piano?” said Mom. “If you want to play the piano, you can play the piano.”
Every time they had music class and Sheila volunteered to perform, Felicity closed her eyes as the music rippled around her. Even when Sheila made a mistake, Felicity could hear how the piece was supposed to be played; a curving arc of notes flowing together, beads on a string. “But we can’t afford lessons,” Felicity said. “You’re still going to college, and you said we can’t have extras until you get a job as a teacher.”
“If you want lessons, Felicity, I will find a way for you to have lessons. Jean at work has a son who plays the piano. I’ll ask for his teacher’s name.”
“You will?” Hope blossomed in Felicity. Maybe her mother loved her after all.
Mrs. Hammond lived in a large, stately home on a street lined with elm trees. She came to the door dressed in a smart-looking green and navy plaid wool skirt, pale blue blouse, and pearl necklace and earrings, her grey hair carefully waved. “You must be Felicity,” she said. Mom nudged Felicity.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you are Dolores?” Mrs. Hammond said to Mom. She pronounced it Do-LOAR-es.
“It’s DOLLAR-eze.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Mrs. Hammond. “You did tell me that. Such an unusual way to pronounce it.”
“It’s the way we say it in Grenada,” said Mom. Felicity cringed at this exchange. It happened every time someone new saw Mom’s name. Why couldn’t she just say Do-LOAR-es, Felicity begged silently.
“Grenada?” Mrs. Hammond wrinkled her nose. “Where is that?”
“The British West Indies,” said Mom.
“Oh,” Mrs. Hammond nodded. “That’s why your English is so good.” People said that to Mom a lot. Mom smiled and thanked Mrs. Hammond as if she had never been told that before.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Let’s sit at the piano and see what you can do.”
“She’s never taken lessons,” Mom said.
“I know that. I am looking to test her musicality. How old are you again, dear?”
“Eleven, ma’am,” Felicity said, following another nudge from Mom.
Mrs. Hammond showed Felicity how to sit and how to hold her hands. She tapped a rhythm, and had Felicity play it while she provided the melody.
“That was very nicely done,” Mrs. Hammond said. “But you people do naturally have a good sense of rhythm. Let’s see what you can do with melody.” They switched places. “I will play a triad now,” said Mrs. Hammond, “and then I’ll play a melody two or three times, and you see if you can sing it.” She played. Felicity didn’t need to hear the melody more than once. It was already in her head, so she sang. Mrs. Hammond’s hands stilled on the keyboard. “Sing that again, dear,” she said. Felicity sang. “Can you sing it higher? Start on this note, but sing the same tune?” Felicity sang.
Mrs. Hammond looked over Felicity’s head to Mom. “Your daughter has the gift of song, like many of your people do. You should consider having her take singing lessons as well as getting a foundation in piano.”
“You need lessons to learn how to sing?” Mom asked.
Desire rushed into Felicity. More than she wanted piano lessons, she wanted — she needed — singing lessons.
“It is hard to tell with a girl so young,” Mrs. Hammond said, “but she has an unusually bright and pure voice, and it could be that this will be a voice of importance in twenty years. The only way to find out is to train it — gently, working on her ear, and her sense of line and phrasing, and how to breathe.” Felicity already knew how to breathe, didn’t she? Didn’t everyone?
“How much are lessons for both?” Mom asked, and Felicity felt herself slump on the piano bench. She had forgotten about money.
“Normally, I would recommend two half-hour lessons a week. But what I can do, because your daughter has such potential, is offer you the rate for one half-hour a week but give you forty-five minutes. Twenty-five for piano, and twenty for singing.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
“Good,” Mrs. Hammond said. “That’s settled. Now, Felicity, dear, let me show you how to play a major scale, and then we’ll sing one together.” She placed her hand on the piano next to Felicity’s.