When the three-storey stone-built hotel opened in 1931 it was palatial, with beautifully landscaped grounds, tennis courts, a rattan gazebo and stables. It was the first building in the West Indies to be constructed for earthquake resistance, with furniture and fittings the most lavish of the time. And next door, a superb golf course was laid out. But by 1936, the operation was in financial difficulty and in 1940 the government decided to put the Constant Spring Hotel up for sale. The governor at the time, Sir Arthur Richards, offered it to Mother Xavier, the Franciscan superior, and Sister Davidica, the principal of Immaculate, and in January 1941 the school was established at Constant Spring.
Immaculate Conception High School for girls was magnificent. All in pink and white with the arched windows and doors downstairs and the little balconies upstairs where the boarders slept. And on the top floor, the rooms for the Sisters. Gardens with flowers and steps and four columns at the front door. Tiled areas with armchairs for people to sit in, with vases of flowers on tables and reading lamps pointing down to the exact spot that a person would want if they were sitting there with their book. With the ferns and palms and banana trees and two tennis courts, and a swimming pool with waterfall. And in the chapel, behind the statue of Our Lord, a message on the wall that said ‘Peace I Give To You’. Peace. That is what the place was full of. Inside and out. A school of peace and splendour. It didn’t surprise me none that it had originally been built as a hotel.
Looking at it, I thought, yes. I understand. Because when I’d asked Papa about the swimming pool and tennis court at home he’d said, ‘This house built years back by white man more used to building hotel. Who sell it to his friend who, when he go back to America, sell to me because your mama, she wanted it. It what white people have.’ It made perfect sense.
And even though it was all the same girls and all the same nuns who had moved here together from the old school site, it still felt new. Like I was starting over again from the beginning. As a regular. Not like the first time I went to Old Hope Road. A stranger returning to the class after a self-imposed exile.
But the best thing about Immaculate. What made Immaculate so immaculate. Beverley Chung.
She was standing in the garden by the statue of Our Lady surrounded by a small group of girls all listening eagerly to her American drawl. I decided to walk on by. I didn’t think she needed any more attention. Certainly not mine. But she called out, ‘Hey, gal.’ And when I turned around I saw she was talking to me. She raised her left hand and with her index finger beckoned me over. I sauntered towards her.
‘You have a name?’
I thought her presumptuous, bordering on the brazen, but I answered her anyway. ‘Fay Wong.’
She scrutinised me. The other girls followed suit. Suddenly, the white school uniform made me feel like a pale ghost. Not that they looked any different, all light-skinned as they were.
‘You have anything to say for yourself, Fay Wong?’
Mama would have called her insolent. I called it arrogant, so I said, ‘You are the one who called me over here. What do you have to say for yourself?’
She laughed. Good-humoured with a tinge of embarrassment. I turned and walked away.
The next time I saw her she was strolling across the lawn. When I got abreast of her she said, ‘Come with me.’ I followed her to the swimming pool and then behind the changing block where she produced a packet from her pocket. ‘Want one?’ I shook my head. She tapped out a cigarette, put it in her mouth and stuck a lighted match to it. I watched the smoke furl up into the air.
‘Your father owns Hong Zi grocery stores?’
‘Have you been checking up on me?’
Beverley Chung was tall for a fifteen-year-old. She was slim. Elegant. Self-assured as she puffed on the Chesterfield. ‘You notice anything about us?’
‘Who?’
‘Us. You and me.’
I thought about it while looking her up and down. I too was tall for a fifteen-year-old. An attribute I’d inherited from Papa. Slim. Yes. But elegant? Probably not. And certainly not in possession of Beverley’s confidence. ‘No. What should I have noticed?’
She sighed. ‘We are the only ones.’
‘The only what?’
‘Fay Wong, are you really as stupid as you are making out?’ I started to walk away. ‘Half-Chinese,’ she shouted after me.
I turned to face her. ‘Everybody else,’ she said, ‘is black, Venezuelan or full Chinese.’ She paused. ‘Yu nuh notice dat?’
‘What happened to your American accent?’
It turned out that Beverley was Jamaican-born, taken to America by her parents when she was two years old because her father was an accountant and got a job with a company in New York. The year before the crash. So she said. But even though everybody was broke, her family was OK because people still needed somebody to count the money they didn’t have and help them invest what was left to make a better future. But she never liked it. She couldn’t settle with the crowds and the horns honking up Fifth Avenue, and people looking down their nose at her because they reckoned she was Chinese and poor, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
‘And as for my mother, being a black woman, if she went into a store they all started locking up their cabinets. No, really.’ She laughed. ‘And hiding their goods like they thought she was about to burgle the place. A woman with two children in tow. If she tried on a pair of shoes they wiped them out with a damp cloth before putting them back into the box. If she wanted a sweater they never had her size. I don’t know how she put up with it. Especially because everybody took her for the maid. The nanny with her two little Chinese charges. I felt angry all the time. Even in Mott Street where, if you didn’t talk to them in Chinese, you couldn’t get so much as a cup of tea.’
So when the money situation improved she talked her father into letting her come home. And his one condition was this: she had to be a boarder at Immaculate. The other thing – going to her grandmother’s every free weekend and holiday – was Beverley’s own idea. Not that her father objected to it. ‘He thinks Grandmother is keeping an eye on me, which just goes to show how little he knows his own mother.’ And then after a snort she said, ‘Despite the things he himself told me about her and her years in China.’
Grandmother Chung had a huge monster of a house off Hagley Park Road. Even after all the time I spent there I never figured out how many rooms that place actually had. It put me in mind of some princess’s forgotten palace, minus the decay and cobwebs, because that place was pristine and sparkling from top to bottom. That many maids she had running from here to there. And some dusting and polishing it would have taken too with everything made out of Chinese pottery and porcelain, filling every inch of every table and shelf in every room. Ornaments and jars in all colours, shapes and sizes adorned with flowers, fish, dragons and phoenixes. Chinese rugs on the floors, paintings and silkscreens, wall-mounted fans, lacquered cabinets, crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, delicate little glass shades over every table lamp. But the thing that really caught my eye was the vase in the entry hall. Like a gigantic brass tree with tubes of pink glass at the end of each branch holding the varying arrangements of white lilies she had nestling there. Filled so it was busting. And no matter what time of day or day of the week you went there it was always radiant and fresh like those flowers had been put there just the second before you stepped foot through the door.
The other thing that you couldn’t ignore was the shelf in the living room. A highly polished Huanghuali rosewood mantelpiece with a lattice back and arms, and a pale-honey golden sheen, that hung high on the wall. Not like in the picture books where a log fire would be burning beneath it to keep out the winter cold. No, not like that. There was no fire, just the wooden shelf, which had standing on it three magnificent and bedazzling Ming urns, a dragon on one, a fish on another, birds on blossom branches on the third, containing, so Beverley said, the ashes of Grandmother Chung’s three late husbands.
‘So which one of them is your grandfather?’
‘Far right. The last one. She gave up with husbands after that.’
Where Grandmother Chung got her money and decorating sense from I didn’t know. When I asked Beverley all she did was wink at me which meant she didn’t know either.
‘Parties. We had such wonderful parties.’ That was Grandmother Chung, dressed in peach satin and twirling around the room like a young woman with her beau dancing a quickstep. ‘Dancing and laughing until sunrise. Every weekend. With the whole of Kingston flowing in and out of that door because no one dare let a Saturday evening pass without calling in here.’ She smiled at us. ‘Can you imagine that?’ She sipped her champagne. We were enthralled. And she knew it.
Beverley said that her grandmother was related to Chiang Kai-shek but she never said how and I wasn’t sure I believed her anyway. Yet, true or false, Grandmother Chung (‘Call me GC’) had something. A devil-may-care attitude and instinctive decadence that even now, at a grand old age of I didn’t know what, was completely irresistible. Looking at Beverley I could see she had it too. That was what drew me to her in the garden and later behind the swimming pool. Her absolute refusal to conform. And the delight she took in it.
‘He died of food poisoning. Vomiting and the other thing from some bad meat or fish or something. That is why she started eating this.’ Beverley jutted out her chin.
We were standing on the back veranda looking out at the vegetable garden.
‘Your grandmother only eats vegetables?’
‘Vegetables and more vegetables, darling. Not from anywhere, though. Only the ones she cultivates herself.’ She glanced over at me. ‘Not herself personally, you understand.’
‘Of course.’ I surveyed the expanse of land stretching out in front of us. ‘But why so much? She could feed a small army on what she’s growing here.’
She laughed. ‘Haven’t you noticed, dear heart? There is a small army living in this house.’
‘What, all the maids have to eat the vegetables as well?’
Beverley turned to me wide-eyed. ‘My dear,’ a smile crept across her lips, ‘GC says she couldn’t bear it if one of them should fall prey to the malady that took my grandfather.’
And then she linked my arm and we strolled through the callaloo together.
But as much as life with Beverley was heaven, so was life with Mama hell, with her finding fault with me at each and every turn. Because even though she had stopped swishing her cane her tongue was still in motion.
‘You think you too old now for me to take a cane to you? Think you can come in here and treat the place like the Constant Spring Hotel the way you carry on at school? Well this is not and never was a hotel, let me tell you that.’
When the school report came with news that I was in the top ten per cent she waved it around at dinner.
‘You think you smart now? Too clever for your own good. That is what you are. But no matter what the Sisters have to say it not going make you white. You still have my thick black blood running through those veins and always will have. So don’t let none of this go to your head.’
And then she took the report and tore it in half. And again and again. Until it was shredded into ribbons, which she tossed on to the table in front of me.
‘You just remember your place.’ That is how she left the room. With Daphne watching on.
And after I had my hair cut. ‘Who tell you to go do a thing like that? You have my permission? No. I don’t recall that. The Sisters tell you to do it?’
‘No, Mama.’
She glared at me. One hand on her hip. ‘So this is your idea of a joke?’
‘My hair look like a joke to you?’
‘Don’t you sass me, young lady. You think that is what you can do now? With your papa paying all that money so you can get an education and all you do is backchat? You are fifteen years old, Fay Wong, and you would do well to remember it.’
Actually, the makeover was Beverley’s brainwave. We’d been sitting watching the hairdresser preen and beautify her grandmother when she suddenly said, ‘Let’s cut our hair.’ To which GC clapped her hands and immediately leapt from the chair for Beverley to sit down. But Beverley’s idea was more than that. What she wanted was for the two of us to have the exact identical style. Shoulder-length. Cut straight across the front in a square fringe. Ironed out and dyed the same shade of black. It took hours. And afterwards, Cleopatra had met Kingston Chinese. It was magnificent.
That is how it started. The twin-look. Same hair, same dresses, same shoes. But there wasn’t any ‘Reach me down’ for us, waiting while some woman with a long pole fetched a frock off a nail hammered in a wall. We didn’t even have to visit the dressmaker like I did with Mama. No. The dressmaker came to us armed with fabric samples and numerous catalogues of patterns from America, which we flicked through sitting in GC’s living room, sipping root beer. So one day it might be a shirt dress or a fitted blouse and flared skirt. Maybe even a peplum skirt if it took our fancy or one cut on the bias to look more elegant. Mostly in cotton, plain, floral or stripes. In colours tame and wild. Shoes? He came to us. With his boxes piled high. Kneeling down to ease the footwear gently on and off. Heels, flats or brogues. The bill? On GC’s account.
The gesticulating hands, throwing our heads back when we laughed, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, that was all there too. I even started to say ‘Darling’ and ‘Dear heart’ from time to time.
Mama hated it. And the more she hated it, the more I loved it.
‘Who tell you to dress like this? The white girls up your school? That what you doing now so you can run ’round town with them? Maybe you should wear your school uniform on Saturdays and Sundays as well.’
I stood up from the table. ‘Yu got no idea what yu talking about.’
She slammed down her knife and fork. ‘In this house we speak the King’s English. You understand me? Not this Back-O-Wall yu coming with now. Is that what they teaching you at Immaculate? I very much doubt it.’
And then, standing herself and walking away, she said, ‘There not nuh shortage of money. If yu want to spend, spend. Yu father have it. Just try to get yourself something decent. God forbid that people think this family so broke yu have to go ’round the place in rags.’
Rags! Is that what she thinks? But then I had to smile because Mama can never hear the Jamaican in her own voice.
When Papa came to my room it was to ask me to simmer down with my mother.
‘She have her ways, Fay. You know that. You can’t just abide it while you in the house?’
I thought about it and then I said, ‘Let me be a boarder.’
‘Boarder? The school only a tram ride away up Constant Spring Road.’
I raised myself up from the edge of the bed and started to rearrange clothes in my drawer.
‘Fay, it don’t do to be arguing like this with your mother every day. Believe me, I know.’
‘I am not arguing with her, she is arguing with me.’
‘Same thing.’
‘It is not the same thing, Papa. What she is doing is criticising and judging me. What I am doing is defending myself and trying to reason with her.’
‘No, Fay. I don’t think that is how it is. Maybe it used to be that way long time back. But now, since you grown, it more like the two of you just thinking every day how to be a thorn in each other’s side.’
‘Then let me board and I will only come back in the holidays and you can have some peace.’
But I didn’t come back. Not really. Once in a while maybe. Because boarding school was all-consuming. Not just with the lessons from eight am to two pm and the mountain of homework; and the after-school activities of the Sodality; and the games we played at night swapping pyjamas from a jumbled pile and, at the end of term, throwing our unwanted belongings down the corridor for anyone who wanted to grab them in the scramble; but every minute of every day practising our reverence for God, self and others; learning discipline and goodness so that we would become honest, competent, responsible and compassionate citizens. Because, according to Sister Ignatius, the purpose of a good school was to create an environment in which young people learn to be virtuous. Pure in thought, word and deed. And, she said, that was also the definition of a good family. It made me laugh inside.
And when we weren’t doing that, we were at GC’s twirling and dancing and eating vegetables.
Papa I visited downtown. Either at his grocery store or at the opium den turned mah-jongg hall cum cookhouse, where we shared rice and sausage or dried pork, and greens. And gallons of jasmine tea.
‘You know your sister growing and you don’t hardly see her.’
‘How old is she now?’
‘I don’t know. How old you?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘So that mek Daphne ten.’ I didn’t say anything. I just continued to drink the tea. ‘Why yu nuh go see her sometime?’
‘I see her, Papa. Only maybe last month I go over there.’
‘Fay, even I know that not true.’
So I went. The place looked exactly the same. Just like it did at Christmas three months earlier. Mama was sitting on the veranda with her crochet as I climbed the steps.
‘Decided to grace us with your presence, did you?’
‘I sent a message.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she said, nodding her head but not looking up. Concentrating her attention instead on her hands as they moved smoothly and deftly. ‘And I got your message. And now you are here.’
I sat down in the wicker armchair across from her and admired the shawl that was coming to life in her lap. ‘How are you, Mama?’
She raised her eyes to me. ‘You are asking me? Since when you take any interest in how I am?’
I crossed my legs. ‘I am asking you how you are, that is all.’
She turned back to her thread and hook. ‘I am tired. Exhausted by the time and effort it takes to run this house. Every day another thing. If it is not this, it is that.’
‘The maids not doing their work? Samson not fixing and mending and gardening like he should?’
‘I had to let him go, if you must know.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘We have a young boy doing for us now. Edmond.’
We sat there quietly while I took in the bright array of colours in the flower bed below.
‘Smells like rain in the air,’ I said, finally.
‘So they say. Later on.’
We fell silent again.
‘I’ve been meaning to come over for a while.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I miss being home.’
‘Home? Is that what you call it? Seem to me that wherever you spending your time must be more agreeable.’
I breathed in deep and slow. ‘You mean with all my white friends?’
She put in a slip stitch. ‘Swimming and playing tennis up at your fancy school so much so you can’t even spare five minutes to come see how your little sister doing.’
I looked away at the distant mango tree with the swing hanging below it and thought of Stanley, and his latest letter in which he wrote: The English need our help right now but their friendliness is only skin deep. Beneath every smile is resentment, and a fear of us and our alien ways. Thinking we have come to steal their women. And when this war is done, steal their jobs and homes as well.
And then I turned to Mama and said, ‘Yes, being with the white girls is all I want to do. Going to the beach, playing tennis, partying. They know how to have fun and enjoy themselves. Not like sitting around here being miserable with you.’
‘So you finally admit it. About time. Passing yourself off like you think you special, like maybe they too blind to see that whatever your airs and graces you still a half-caste. Not one thing nor the other. And no amount of money and expensive frocks is ever going to change that. Especially since neither half of you is white.’
In truth, Beverley and I had next to nothing to do with the white girls. We didn’t even think of them like that, because with the girls it wasn’t about colour. It was about money. Who had it and who didn’t. Although it was fair to say that the lighter your skin the more likely it was that you had a rich daddy. That is how it was. But were they white? They came from Cuba and Latin America. Venezuela we said. I don’t know why. The Canadians, they were white and we did sometimes force ourselves into their company just for the hell of it. But it wasn’t genuine. Our time with them. We all knew that.
The real division was between boarders and day-girls. The boarders were wealthier and lighter. Like me. But not like me because, as Mama so often and so eloquently pointed out, I was not white, but neither was I full Chinese. I was half and half. Not fully anything.
I got up and walked inside. Daphne was out back reading a book. When she saw me she threw it on the ground and ran into my arms. I grabbed her and swung her around letting her legs fly in the air.
‘Pearl told me you were coming.’
‘So what you want to do? There is a Tarzan movie with Johnny Weissmuller.’ She shrugged her shoulders but we went anyway.
Daphne was growing up hushed and terrified. She had no opinion about anything. If you asked her ‘How is school?’ she said ‘Fine’. The lessons? Fine. Homework? Fine. Friends? Fine. Things at home? Fine. If you asked her what she wanted to do, she shrugged her shoulders. Movie? Shrug. Beach? Shrug. Play a game? Shrug. Ice cream? Shrug. For Daphne, opinions were dangerous.
What Daphne did? She read. Constantly. Book after book, sometimes the same one over and again. Engrossed in another world. Withdrawn from this one. It was her protection. Camouflage for her disengagement.
Beverley and I graduated high school in traditional Immaculate style. Parading along with our classmates in the march of the zombies. White dresses, white shoes, white gown and white mortarboards, which at the end of the passing-out ceremony were flung into the air despite Sister Ignatius’s insistence that no such thing should occur.
Afterwards, I went over to Papa and hugged him. Mama had decided not to come and had kept Daphne away. Grandmother Chung was there, though, as were Beverley’s parents. That was the first time I met them because, according to Beverley, there was no need for me to suffer them when they made one of their infrequent visits back to the island.
‘You would be bored out of your mind.’ So she said.
And sure enough, they were quiet, Mr and Mrs Chung. Restrained. Uninspired. But certainly not the tiresome duo I had been led to expect. Tyrone, Beverley’s older brother, was a different matter entirely. He was handsome with short, slick-back hair, dark mysterious eyes and a smile that exuded confidence and mischief. When Beverley told me that he was not returning to America with his parents I knew that life was about to change.