Chapter V. Plus Ça Change. #2
“We’re not a loud people. Well, maybe at football matches…”
“We?? Well, excuuuse me.” My father laughs. “Did you hear that, Olive? She said we. And football.”
“Mm-hmm.” My mother takes my coat and tsks.
Nearly twenty years after the fact, she still has not made her peace with me leaving.
She still hopes that one day her daughter will return to America for good.
“Never say never” is my automatic response on the occasions that she asks.
Because I don’t need her judgment. And I can’t bear to break her heart. Although she regularly breaks mine.
From Auntie Lolo’s foyer I can smell coconut milk and thyme wafting in from the kitchen, hear boisterous laughter emanating from the family room and Bob Marley on the sound system: “I wanna love you and treat you right.” There is something about a Jamaican household—no matter whose and no matter where—that just feels like home.
“Look what we found on the doorstep!”
The women in my family are congregated in the kitchen, creating a wonderful tableau of sorts.
My cousins Jane and Sylvie seated at the kitchen table: Jane tossing a green salad, Sylvie tossing back a glass of wine.
My Aunt Gem stepping out of the pantry, a crystal pitcher in each hand.
Jane’s young daughters, darting to and fro from the dining room with napkins and utensils.
And my Auntie Lolo at the helm: all six feet of her, overseeing multiple pots on the stove.
Three generations of Chen—a myriad of complexions and accents and features, and yet somehow distinctively of the same tribe. Graceful, regal, refined.
“Hellooo!!!”
It takes them all a moment, and then, collective squeals and hugs.
Jane, the dancer, and the youngest of my generation at forty-two, reaches me first. Springing up from her position to wrap me in her sinewy arms. Her two Mini-Me’s following suit.
Their ponytails swinging down their backs like mismatched metronomes.
“CeCe!!!! What are you doing here?” Jane beams. “I thought you weren’t coming because of the accident.”
“I rallied.”
“How’s your head? How are you feeling?”
“Better. Good. Thank you.”
“Nice scarf, cuz. Hermès?” Sylvie rises languidly from her chair, still clutching her sauvignon blanc. With her free hand she reaches out to finger the cashmere-and-silk shawl I have draped around my neck. Rose with pops of coral and vermilion. A Christmas gift from Francois and the kids.
When we were children, Sylvie often managed to make me feel horrible about myself. Of all the cousins she was closest to me in age, and she set up that rivalry early and effectively.
“Congrats,” she continues. “I heard Francois’s little movie won two awards. I mean, not the really big ones, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.”
Her passive aggression comes so quickly, I have little time to recover before: “How long are you in town?”
“Until Sunday evening. And then continuing on to Paris for a shoot.”
“I want to go to Paris” from Jane’s older daughter, Imogen, fair, freckled, and a few months shy of ten. “Lucie is so lucky.”
“You know we’re living in LA now, Im? You guys can come and visit us there. I’m sure Lucie and Julien would love to show you Disneyland—”
“Gem, did you bring your rum punch?” my mother speaks over me. This is a Chen trait. Technically my mother is not a Chen, but she’s been part of this tribe long enough to have picked up all our bad habits.
“Yes, mi dear.”
“Mommy, can we go can we go?”
“Umm, we’ll discuss it later. Thanks, Cee.” Jane cuts me a look.
“You’re only here for a few days, CeCe? That’s not enough.” Aunt Lolo is long and lean, and my head just reaches her neck when she hugs me. It used to reach her clavicle. She is shrinking in her older age. We all are.
“I know, Auntie. I’m just in town to stop off at the Armory Show.”
“Is that a new play?” Auntie Gem—almost as tall as Aunt Lolo, equally thin—is funneling a tub of red liquid into one of the pitchers.
The smell of Wray & Nephew white overproof rum cuts the air.
This drink is her specialty. One sour, two sweet, three strong, four weak.
Lime, flavored syrup, rum, water—in those proportions, respectively.
“No, Auntie. It’s an art show.”
“Oh?” She cocks her head, seemingly confused.
Auntie Gem is the whimsical, flighty one. The indulgence of being the youngest of four. She and my mum had met in grade school in Kingston and remained close. So it was rather convenient, albeit initially awkward, when her best friend ended up marrying her big brother.
“So you’re still doing the art thing, CeCe? Even with Francois making big movies?”
“Umm … yes.”
“Huh,” Sylvie utters. I resist engaging.
Sylvie had once fancied herself a writer, but time and rejection had stolen her confidence, and inevitably she relinquished her dream and turned to law school and a career representing screenwriters at a boutique agency in the city.
In typical Sylvie fashion it did not come without a fair share of insults.
“The artist’s way is a nice fantasy, but I needed something far more responsible, more mature,” she’d said to me once at a family reunion in Jamaica, when both Julien and Lucie were still in diapers and I hadn’t had an exhibit, solo or otherwise, in three and a half years.
“I mean, didn’t Aunt Olive and Uncle Don pay for your tickets here? ”
Neither Fran nor I were surprised when she was the first family member to call congratulating him on Azimuth Rising.
“Of course she’s still doing it, Mummy,” Jane says with a snort. “It’s her chosen profession. Gosh, this family is harsh. Come, Cee. Let’s go rally the men for dinner.
“Sorry about Mummy, she’s the worst,” she says once we have stepped into the hallway. “I mean, Sylvie’s beyond, but you knew that. I expect more from the elders.…”
“Have you met my mother?”
“Well, at least she hasn’t called you fat yet. Mummy taps Imogen’s bum every time she sees her and calls her ‘healthy.’”
“Before I even stepped through the door,” I say.
Jane stops and stares at me for a second, jaw open. And then she laughs. “What is wrong with these women? Jamaicans gonna Jamaican, I guess.”
Despite my family’s fixation with appearance, food was the center of most Chen gatherings.
Dinner that night was no exception. The lot of us bowed over heaping plates of stew peas, a Jamaican delicacy.
There was laughter and warmth and everyone talking over each other—my uncles’ voices, deep and smooth and familiar, Jane’s daughters’ squeaks, Sylvie’s five-year-old’s peals of laughter.
This was home. Or a version of it. I’d missed it immensely.