Chapter V. Plus Ça Change. #3
I was taking them in, their individual features.
Diverse, striking. Jane, with her dark bronze skin and silky hair.
Sylvie, with her golden hue and curls. My aunts’ sharp cheekbones.
My Uncle Keith’s green eyes, my Uncle Warren’s freckles.
Their complexions ranged from sienna to straw.
And with that, their various experiences both at home and in our adopted country.
I was the darkest of the lot, a characteristic I did not make my peace with until well into adulthood.
And as the darkest, I was made painfully aware of how differently the world could treat you depending on your exterior package.
In America, we were regularly asked where we were from.
Regardless of whether we had noticeable accents.
But in Jamaica, wearing a mix of races and ethnicities on one’s face was par for the course.
My mum’s side was Black and British and Indian, my dad’s was Chinese and Black.
The most racially ambiguous on the island we referred to as “mix-up/mix-up.” And although Jamaicans were often guilty of using racially tinged monikers—I could not count the times I’d been referred to as “Coolie Gal” on the street, or heard a cousin called “Chiney Pickney” or “Miss Chin”—they still recognized all the above as Jamaican.
My first solo show at Khalil’s gallery, Out of Many, One, was a take on our national motto.
A series of portraits featuring mixes of West and Central African and English and Scottish and Irish and German and Chinese and Indian and Syrian and Lebanese and Taino and Arawak.
Representative of our complex history. The descendants of enslaved persons, and their masters, and overseers, and the indentured servants who replaced them, and the laborers who had arrived later looking for opportunity, and those from whom the land was originally stolen, all melded into one tangled heritage.
And viewing us all gathered around Auntie Lolo’s dining table, imagining how we would look to an outsider—I felt it intensely. This veritable mélange. Jamaica was the real melting pot. Los Angeles—all of America, really—with its de facto and de jure segregation was a poke bowl. At best.
“What are you working on these days, CeCe?” Seth, Jane’s husband, asks from his seat opposite mine. We were winding down the meal, the adults lingering over mostly empty plates.
“Beauty,” I say. “Exploring the many ways in which we consume it.”
“Like in media?”
“Media. Film. Music. Art.”
He nods, slowly. Seth is quintessential Brooklyn. Half Black, half Jewish, aggressive curls; an influential culture critic who wrote eloquently about being both. Together with my little cousin, the artistic director of the Brooklyn City Ballet, they made an impressive pair.
“Is it different in France?” Sylvie asks.
“Everything is different in France. There’s a national appreciation for art and architecture. A way of incorporating beauty into every aspect of life. An approach to design that’s never purely function. There’s always an aesthetic that factors in. An elegance, a pride. An allure.”
It’s quiet for a second. I anticipate a rebuttal, someone extolling the virtues of Jamaicans, but no. My mother begins to scrape the remnants of my dad’s plate onto her own.
“And there’s the women.” Seth smiles then, winking at Jane. He has one dimple, and it’s rather endearing. “I mean, not that you could compare them to Jamaican women, of course.”
“Yes, the women,” I say, and for a moment Anouk comes to mind. The outline of a memory. The surf, the sand, her neck, shards of glass, blood on my hands … It jolts me, the blood. My brain strains to assemble the pieces, and then just as quickly they’re gone.
“Hey, don’t say anything bad about my island, CeCe.”
“Oh, Mummy, you chose to leave your island. So what does that say?” Jane quips.
“Jamaica is its own special place, Auntie Gem. No one is denying its beauty.”
“So are you finding beauty in LA?” Uncle Warren asks.
“I am, but it’s … different. There’s certainly a natural beauty. But a lot of the other stuff feels … manipulated. Competitive. The people, the architecture, even the terrain feels forced. An oasis in the desert.”
My mother reaches for my plate then.
“Although there is something to be said for seventy degrees and sunny, year-round. It’s great for biking on the beach.”
“Do you hike?” Sylvie asks. “The hiking there is great.”
“I haven’t yet, no.”
“You used to love hiking with Lorry,” my mother says.
I flinch. The room falls quiet.
“Who?” Seth asks, innocent.
From the corner of my eye, I see Jane shaking her head at him, a silent reprimand.
“CeCe’s old boyfriend,” Sylvie says. “From Connecticut. It was a long time ago.”
Clearly not long enough. The very mention of Lorry and I am once again twenty-six, in my parents’ garage, sitting in the Nissan Sentra with the engine running and the windows rolled down, waiting for the misery to end. Waiting. Waiting.
“I used to love a lot of things,” I say pointedly at my mother. “People change.”
Her eyes narrow. Her lips purse. I prepare for a cutting remark, but for the moment she manages to hold her tongue.
“Lorry.” My Aunt Gem smiles. “Oh, he was handsome.”
“Mummy!” Jane admonishes.
“What? Nah tru?”
“That’s not the point. Inappropriate.”
“Who wants dessert?” Auntie Lolo stands, gathering a couple of the serving dishes. My dad rises to help her. My mother continues to scrape plates. She knows she’s thrown a bomb into the middle of the dining table. She knows what the mention of that relationship does to me. She simply does not care.
Jane’s quote comes to mind: Jamaicans gonna Jamaican. Indeed.