Chapter XXX. Wintertide.
XXX.
WINTERTIDE.
FLORIDA.
Winter in Florida is a bit of an oxymoron.
Like winter in LA, only warmer and more humid.
And, well, Florida. My parents had purchased a large faux-Mediterranean home in a gated community in north Broward County with manicured bike paths and picturesque waterways and the occasional gator sighting; for years it was all my kids knew of America, and it made them happy.
Disney World and Walmart and Costco and supersized everything.
The antithesis of our lives in Europe. I imagine they thought of the entire peninsula as one big flat amusement park with a beach.
But to them, it was Nana and Poppy’s home.
Sun and fun and frolicking with their cousins. And a heavy dose of Jamaican culture.
Three days before Christmas, the extended family convened.
Following a curry goat dinner, the adults lingered in the dining area downing Uncle Warren’s potent eggnog and Mummy’s black cake.
Conversation flowing on a range of subjects from politics to entertainment, the upcoming primaries, and the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Dialects sliding from the Queen’s English into full patois and back again.
Engelbert Humperdinck crooning in the background.
I grew up on a mix of Bob Marley and Engelbert Humperdinck’s greatest hits.
Those two, sprinkled with some Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, and occasional soca were the backbone of all Chen gatherings.
I wasn’t certain if it was my parents’ eclectic tastes, or all Jamaicans of a certain age and socioeconomic group, but there was very little American popular music played on their sound system.
No R&B. And certainly, certainly no hip-hop.
Because as much as my parents were happy to be in the US, pursuing the dream, there were many elements of the culture they eschewed.
Hip-hop was one of them. They didn’t like the swearing.
They didn’t like the braggadocio. They didn’t like the dress.
“Is wha’ kind of dungarees dat?” my father questions, when Julien enters the dining room, empty plate in hand, searching for seconds.
“These, Poppy? They’re just pants.”
My father takes a moment to scrutinize them, removing and then replacing his glasses. From across the table, Andrew, newly arrived from London with his partner, Colin, in tow, gives me a knowing look.
They were not “just pants.” They were dropped-crotch trousers, this season’s slightly more refined version of my generation’s Hammer pants. A look Donovan Chen did not approve of in their original iteration and is not likely to approve of now.
“Is that what you wear to school in Los Angeles?” His pronunciation of the city rhymes with dungarees.
“Sometimes.”
“Hmm. You kids should have uniforms. At KC, we wore uniforms, and we went to school looking crisp and tidy, with our hair combed and our pants fitting. I don’t know how students h’in America get away looking like that.”
“Like what, Daddy?” I intervene.
“Like…” He stops to choose his answer. “Like Kanye West.”
Fran elbows me under the table. Unbeknownst to Julien, there’s a pair of new Yeezys hidden in the back of our closet, waiting to be wrapped and placed beneath the tree for him.
“It’s just so undignified.”
“Daddy, he’s fourteen. He doesn’t need to be dignified.”
“I just think it’s important that he knows.
Julien, I don’t know how they do it in France, but in this country, if you want to ascend the ladder of success, you need to look the part.
You need a good haircut and nice-fitting clothes.
You can’t dress like a rapper. And that should go for school, as well. ”
“Oh boy.” Andrew snorts. Beside him Colin’s eyes go wide.
Seth and Jane exchange looks across the table.
My brother and I have heard this lecture numerous times.
I can’t imagine Colin—half Guyanese, half English, green eyes, dry wit, Paul Smith suits—was not subject to his own version of it.
The delicate balance between assuming enough of your adopted country’s culture to fit in, but not so much that you might bump up against what was acceptable back home.
A limbo, in multiple senses. Both in being stuck in a midway place and the feat of bending oneself backward to not upset the virtual bar above, yet not succumb to crashing to the ground below.
A space I’d inhabited for as long as I could remember.
My parents, I assume, were not subject to such contortion.
In Florida, as they had in their New York enclave, they found a community of Jamaicans and other West Indians.
Trinis and Bajans and Guyanese. All former British colonies.
And so they’d escaped the pressure to assimilate into both mainstream America and African American culture by sticking to their own.
At work, my father’s friends had been mostly Jewish.
A group he respected and with whom he felt aligned.
He perceived them as having strong familial ties and a focus on education, which spoke to both his Jamaican and Chinese sensibilities.
I never saw him or my mom doing the balancing act of trying to fit in the way Andrew and I had.
Their circles were constricted, but their identities were whole.
“Daddy, wearing proper trousers is not going to solve everything. He’s still going to be Black,” Andrew says. Proper trousers. Sixteen years in London had leaked into his dialect.
“It’s not a question of being Black, it’s about being presentable. He couldn’t get a good job with those pants. Like he couldn’t work at a bank in Kingston with dreads down his back.”
“Okay, Baba … okay,” Auntie Gem says. Baba was the nickname my father’s siblings had given him as a child. Every Jamaican has a nickname. Some have two. Mummy had a great-uncle named Watah Eye. We imagined he cried a lot. Or had allergies.
“You’re so bourgeoisie, Unc,” Sylvie adds, amused.
Julien has squeezed in between the two of us at the table. Our son is too intent on finishing his plate to be truly put out by my father’s words. Francois reaches out to comfort him anyway, ruffling his curls.
“He’s not applying for a job at a bank, Daddy,” I say. “He’s having dinner with his family.”
“I just want to make sure he knows that dressing a certain way says a lot about you. And when I see these young boys with their pants hanging low … it looks disrespectful.”
Brooklyn Seth excuses himself to play with the kids in the family room. I am reminded of the Schubert piece. Instruments dueting, dueling.
“Disrespectful to whom, Unc?” Sylvie says. “The man?”
“You know, Baba,” Auntie Lolo interjects. “I think maybe you are the man, now.”
“He sure as hell has been brainwashed by him,” Andrew says, not as quietly as he’d likely intended.
“Andrew!” Mummy’s eyes narrow in my brother’s direction. “Mind. Don’t think you’re too old that we can’t disown you.”
Andrew laughs at that. We younger Chens snicker. But the elders keep a straight face.
Several years prior when Andrew had brought home Colin for the first time, my parents, who had known of Andrew’s sexuality for years, welcomed his boyfriend with open arms. They didn’t flinch at their son introducing his same-sex partner, but they might just disown him at forty-three for swearing at the dinner table.
“Sorry, Mummy.”
“‘Im need two lick, to rahtid.” My father scowls. But with his round face, wide ears, and gentle demeanor, he is anything but threatening.
I watch my husband take it all in, our varied accents and opinions. The strict adherence to decorum and manners. The younger kids’ occasional shouts coming from the adjacent room where they were playing Jenga. The 1960s British balladeer. So different from his upbringing in Bordeaux.
In the early years of our relationship, I’d had to translate for him much of what my parents and their siblings said, so difficult was it to comprehend the accent. But by the time we’d had Julien he’d begun listening to reggae, and it had made things somewhat clearer. Or so he claimed.
He turns to me now, and cocks his head, an inquisitive expression on his face. “Lick?” he mouths, repeating my dad’s words.
“Spanking,” I say with a smile. There hadn’t been a spanking in our family since the early ’80s. “It’s not going to happen.”
Shortly after, I find myself in the kitchen helping Mummy clean up.
My mother does not like people in her kitchen when she’s cooking, but she’ll allow assistance with the aftermath.
I’m at the sink rinsing dishes and stacking the dishwasher while she twirls around me sorting the leftovers, humming along to the Humperdinck.
“Every day I wake up, then I start to break up, lonely is a man without love.”
The kids enter en masse to get bowls of gelato. Sylvie’s little one, Henry, pulling up the rear. Imogen and Lucie doling out scoops of strawberry and chocolate for all. They’re about to head back to the family room when my mother stops them.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh. Eat that at the kitchen table, please.”
They fuss but follow Nana’s orders. She, as Jamaicans would say, has them under heavy manners.
(Yes, Nana. Please, Nana. No, thank you, Nana.) My eyes follow her around the kitchen as she packs away the remainder of the goat, the rice, the cabbage.
Her apron cinched around her once-twenty-two-inch waist. An attribute she used to remind us of, often.
So much of my mother was defined by what she once was.
Beauty contestant. Schoolteacher. Vice principal of Hartsdale Elementary.
Minutes later, Lucie returns with her empty bowl in hand and fetches the gelato from the freezer.
“I don’t think you need any more ice cream, Miss Lu.”
From across the kitchen island, I throw my mother a look.
“Mummy. It’s Christmas.”
“Not for three more days. And we can always find excuses, can’t we? ‘It’s the first of the month.’ ‘It’s the weekend.’ ‘It’s Tuesday.’”