Evelyn Juniper Cove
Evelyn
Juniper Cove
2011
“Lay low. That’s all I’m saying.”
Kareela stared at Evelyn. Disbelief. Disappointment. Disgust. All whirling in her eyes. “How do you suppose I do that? Paint my skin? Shave my head?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“ I’m being ridiculous?” Kareela paced the kitchen Evelyn’s mother once had. Evelyn never noticed before—the slant of her daughter’s shoulders, the curve of her forehead, the way she walked, on her forefoot rather than heel, how much it was like Helen. Here, in her mother’s space, her mother’s house, the similarities flew at Evelyn, hitting her with a gale force.
“No, I’m saying stay away from things that make you stand out. You can do a project on any topic, so don’t choose civil rights.”
“It’s what Antony would have done.”
Evelyn stiffened.
“Antony was out there changing things. Antony—”
“And it killed him!”
Kareela stepped back as Evelyn inhaled, fighting to lower the intensity that had just shot out of her voice. “I’m sorry, I…I know it’s not the same thing. That it’s just a school project. But that’s how it can start. And since we’ve been here, it’s like you’re trying not to fit in.”
Kareela crossed her arms as she slumped against the counter, her voice and look hesitant. “That’s not—”
“The music. The clothes. The”—Evelyn hesitated— “Ebonics.”
“Ebonics!”
“You didn’t use to talk like that.”
“So?” Disdain, with a touch of uncertainty, poured from Kareela’s voice.
“People can see you have Black in you. It’s not like—”
“Like what?”
“Like you have to rub it in their faces.”
“Rub it in their faces?” Kareela closed her eyes with a caustic laugh that shifted to border on a sob. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Maybe I’m just trying to keep hold of who I am.”
Evelyn kept her voice soft, hoping it came out inquisitive rather than accusatory. “Is this who you are?”
Kareela’s lower lip quivered. “I’m not them. That’s for sure. And this is what they expect, anyway. Isn’t that the thing to do—live up to people’s expectations?”
“So that’s why you’re suddenly morphing into this whole new person?”
“I don’t know!” Kareela spun. She let out a moan. “What if this is who I am? Who I’ve always been? Just because that happened to—” Kareela drew a breath, then released it. She pressed her hands against her face.
Evelyn swallowed, searching for the right thing to say, coming up with nothing.
“It’s just.” Kareela dropped her hands, her eyes moist. “They look at me like I’m an alien. Their jaws fall. Their heads literally turn to stare at me as I walk by.”
“Your classmates?”
“It’s happened.” Kareela looked away. “In the first few days. Now it’s mostly in stores. At community events. People touch my hair without asking. They giggle and laugh.”
“To your face?”
“No.” Kareela’s bottom lip stuck out. “But I’m sure they’re laughing about me.”
Evelyn stepped closer. “People did that to me, too. In Jamaica. They stared. They touched my hair, my skin. Some laughed. But it wasn’t meant to be hurtful. They’d just never seen someone who looked like me. They were curious. Interested.”
“I’m not an animal in a zoo.”
“I know. But it’s possible some people in this town have never seen a Black person in real life. I hadn’t until I moved to Jamaica.”
Kareela rolled her eyes. “Mom. It’s 2011, not 1950.”
“I did not move to Jamaica in 1950. I wasn’t even born in 1950.”
“Whatever.” Kareela stepped from the counter and stared out the window, arms still folded, as Helen so often had. “Maybe it’s not about that, anyway. Maybe it’s just about understanding who I am. Wanting to find somewhere to belong.”
“You’re Kareela Jackson. You’re my daughter.”
“I’m more than that. Not that anyone here even believes I’m yours. They don’t think it’s possible.”
Confusion filtered through Evelyn. “What do you mean?”
Kareela scoffed. “You know that girl you and Dad met last weekend. Stella? Who’s nice enough and whatever. Fine. But ignorant. She asked me this week what it was like being adopted.”
Evelyn stared at her, not understanding.
“And when I said I wasn’t, she goes, oh, so is that your stepmom? She, like, literally couldn’t comprehend that I could have come from you. That a Black man and a white woman would make a Brown child.”
“You’re right,” said Evelyn. “It’s ignorance. Not malice.”
“Too ignorant.” Kareela sighed. “And I don’t like the way they look at Dad. All suspicious. Even frightened. You said it was nice here. You said, small town, people will be friendly. Welcoming.”
Evelyn stiffened, caught in the half-truth she’d spewed out of hope. It hadn’t been her experience. Not really. People were kind, sure. Welcoming, in a way. If you were one of their own. Her mother hadn’t been, coming from somewhere in Central Canada, and so when Helen was on the outs with Evelyn’s father, she was on the outs with the town. Their allegiance with Joseph Godfrey, with the Godfrey name, they’d kept silent, turned their eyes from her suffering, her bruises.
Officers let off his drinking and driving with warning after warning. The few barkeeps in town occasionally took his keys but continued to serve him, even though half the town must have known what those drinks would mean. And when the babies came too early, her mother’s face and arms and belly bruised, the doctors had, presumably, written no reports, contacted no authorities.
The memory made her shiver, made her shrink to the girl she once was, peeking into her parents’ room, seeing her mother’s once near-ivory face purple and green against the pillowcase, her arm an inkblot of color upon the sheet. Later, she’d seen her mother’s belly, loose and floppy, like a limp balloon, discolored, too.
The doctors, the town, Evelyn’s aunt and grandparents, had done nothing.
In coming back, Evelyn told herself their turned-away eyes were the result of the time, not the people. That the world had shifted. Domestic violence was simply violence now, as criminal as any other kind. Alcoholism, drinking and driving, were no longer whispered about and dismissed. It was dealt with. And so she hoped only the goodness of the town would remain. Casseroles that turned up on your doorstep during hard times. Neighbors watching out for each other’s children. And not a hint of racism, beyond the occasional joke.
“If it bothers you so much that people look at your hair and want to touch it,” said Evelyn, not knowing what else to say, “straighten it.”
Kareela’s shoulders fell. The disappointment, disgust, and disbelief even stronger now.
And Evelyn could see why, but… “It’s what your father did. To get to where he is now. He didn’t stop being Black. That’s impossible. But he dressed like the people around him. He kept his hair short and tidy. He—”
“Mom. Argh!” Kareela paced again.
Evelyn winced at Kareela’s tone; she was doing this all wrong.
“It’s like you can’t even hear yourself. And to get to where Dad is now?”
“I mean where he was. Before.” She hesitated, wanting to get it right, say the thing that would help Kareela understand. “A position at a prestigious university. A good salary. A house in—”
“Mom!”
“All I’m saying is he tried to make himself fit in, to make himself more approachable. To help people feel comfortable, so they’re not…put off. Or nervous. Or—”
“Put off? Nervous?” Kareela shook her head. “You think being Black puts people off. So Black people should, what? Just do all they can to be as un-Black as possible?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Now Evelyn’s voice ratcheted, and she worked to bring it down, to calm not only her own flaring emotions, but Kareela’s. “And in your situation…I’m sure I used the wrong words. But you said how people stare at you, your hair. That’s because they’re not used to it. It’s different to them. So if you don’t want them to stare—”
“That’s not my job. It’s not my job to make white people comfortable.”
Evelyn’s chest tightened. Her throat, too. Nausea rolled through her. She was doing this all wrong, but she didn’t know how to do it right. She just wanted Kareela to be happy and safe. Or happier, at least. Rather than this sullen, quick to anger, obstinate person she was turning into. It scared Evelyn that, maybe, this was who her daughter had always been. It scared her how much Kareela reminded her of Antony. After spending so many years of her life trying to make things easier for those around her, the girl was suddenly sick of it.
“Just promise me you’ll choose a different project,” said Evelyn, suddenly desperate. Terrified Kareela would turn into Antony. End up like Antony. “Promise you’ll leave all that to other people. No marches. No standing in the street. I can’t—” Evelyn’s voice cracked, the tears threatening. She looked away, unable to bear how much of him stared out through Kareela’s eyes, how easily it could happen to her, too.
“I…” Kareela swallowed, her lips pinched, her body as stiff as Evelyn’s. “Okay, Mom.” She rested a hand on Evelyn’s shoulder. “I promise.”
Evelyn nodded. She inhaled, then blew the air out slowly, tension trickling through her body. “What about Beyoncé?”
“What?” Kareela dropped her hand and looked at Evelyn as if she had two heads.
“Her hair is straight.” Evelyn’s voice shook. She fought to regain her composure. “It doesn’t mean she’s trying not to be Black. No one would ever say that.”
Kareela stared, then offered an unconvincing smile. “That’s true, Mom. I’ll think about it.” She stood for a moment, then turned and walked out of the room.
Evelyn slumped in her chair, exhaustion like a cloak, Antony’s presence looming over her—with disappointment, chastisement. Three months. Three months they’d been in Juniper Cove, and each day seemed harder than the last, the ghosts of her past, more powerful than she’d realized, colliding with the ghosts of her present—with Antony, whose absence still haunted them all.
Kingsley’s drinking had lessened, at first—as he sent out resumés, interviewed at the closest university, then applied to the ones in and around Halifax, not even receiving a callback. He now worked at a medical supply manufacturing plant. On his feet all day, performing repetitive tasks, wasting that brilliant mind. He wouldn’t give her many details on the job, but he was bringing in a salary barely more than a third of what he’d made as a professor.
She’d told him he could wait. Keep looking for something better, that the money they’d made on the Toronto house would tide them over, especially with the income she’d be bringing in with her secretarial job at the local elementary school. But he’d insisted, shame in his eyes. “It has potential,” he said, his voice so much hollower than it’d been when they met, so less refined. “One of their product assessment specialists is near retirement. That role requires a master’s as a minimum, doctorate preferred. They promised they’ll consider me.”
And so he worked, mostly nights, then came home and drank to make it through the day. He cried, too. Though the walls here were so much thinner, so maybe he’d been crying all along.
Evelyn cried, too, in a way she’d rarely let herself in Toronto. But only when the house was empty, or in the privacy of her car. She was bone-tired. But determined. This would be the change they needed. Their fresh start. Their way to keep their one remaining child safe. Evelyn rubbed a hand across her face. She’d try again with Kareela, figure out the right way to say what she meant, to help her daughter through this.
She rose and stepped into the hall in search of Kareela, then Evelyn stopped. Listened.
“Yuh mama been through hard times. It make her scared. It make her t’ink the way to safety be blendin in. But dat de way to lose yuhself, and it not likely to make yuh any more safe. Yuh got to just be you. Look at me. Yuh t’ink me can’t speak like dem? I can speak. Me just don’t like dem words, de sound a dem coming out ah me mouth. Like me wearin someone else’s body, using someone else’s tongue. I can speak dem words, pickney, just as good as yuh. Yuh fatha could speak mine, once, but den yuh grandpappy, he stole dem out he mouth, stole de movements out he body, all to be like dem. To fit in with people who never even wanted he to fit.” Violet paused as Evelyn kept still and silent.
“De way me see it, we had we lives, we heritage stolen once. Why we gonna let it be stolen again, just to make dem more comfortable? Me can understand dem, and dem, if dey take de time to listen, sure can understand me. That what matter. All that should matter. Being who yuh is, not changin yuhself for no one else. Not walkin every day in fear. So wear yuh curls. Wear what clothes yuh wanna wear. Talk how yuh wanna talk, and don’t let no one, not even yuh mama, tell yuh different.”
Evelyn stepped away, back to the kitchen, shame and uncertainty passing through her in equal measure. She knew something was missing in Kingsley, something that had been trained out of him by his father, his private school teachers, that, decades later, was part of the reason he couldn’t stand straight anymore, was why he seemed to think what happened to Antony was largely his fault—that if he had given Antony what he was looking for, that connection to his past, he wouldn’t have looked so desperately for it elsewhere.
And maybe he was right.
Yet when it came down to it, if the blame for Antony’s death should fall on one of them, it was Evelyn. She hadn’t backed up Kingsley, hadn’t put her foot down against Antony’s political activities. She’d tried to support her son—going to the rally, leaving that voicemail. When she’d finally figured out how to make the phone work, how to access the messages, the one she’d left was saved, which meant he’d heard. And if he hadn’t, if she’d never gone to the rally, never called—her words bolstering him up—maybe he would have lain down with the others. Maybe he’d be here still.
Evelyn poured a glass of water and drank it whole. In that way and a million others, she’d failed Antony. She wouldn’t allow the same fate for daughter.
She closed her eyes, breathed, desperate to do better. She would have to guide Kareela through this crisis of self. She racked her brain, searching for some spark of connection, some activity or interest not about appearance or background, then remembered a conversation in the break room—a colleague with children in the high school. Children who thrived.
She made her way to the living room and breathed a sigh of relief to find Kareela sitting alone. “Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “Maybe the trick isn’t to make them more comfortable, but to show them who you are. Get involved.” She hesitated, then pressed on. “What about Model UN? It could be perfect for you. Show them you’re not just the Black girl. The new girl. Show them how smart you are. Make them excited to call you one of their own.”
Kareela raised her eyebrow, skepticism in her eyes, but curiosity, too.
“If not that,” said Evelyn, “drama. Or the school newspaper. Something to take their focus off your newness, to make them see you, for all you are.”
Evelyn waited for a response. Some flicker. Hoping this was the right suggestion and not simply what she’d said before, dressed up in different clothing.
“I’ll think about it.” Kareela’s voice was hesitant. “Model UN actually sounded pretty cool. But there’s a qualification process. I don’t know if I—”
Evelyn’s shoulders relaxed. She released the tensed hands she hadn’t realized she’d been clenching. “Kareela”—she held her smile firm—“you can.”