(extract from novel “Atrium Fib”)
It wasn’t like in Florida in 76 when the tanned man in pumpkin plaid shirt and brown corduroys (how could I ever forget?) looked straight past Dad toward the door while Dad looked straight at him. His shoulder-length hair was neat and thinning. He had sharply etched red-to-white mutton chops. He smelled of aftershave like Roman Brio, the scent that conquered Rome, and motel-soap clean. Only his eyes were clouded, and his lips were sour. He kept repeating, word for toneless word, as if on rewind, that he never told Dad over the phone that he had any vacancies—and he was the only one at the desk. “All night. All morning, too.” He shook his head. As if sorry, a vestigial habit he would’ve checked if he had realized. To the left above him on the wall was a clock containing the images of a wildly grinning black Mickey Mouse in waistcoat and conductor’s cap (Mortimer Mouse, from Steamboat Willie, was black?), shining the shoes of a monocled, dapper, top-hatted pink Goofy. The exaggerated images and the manager’s unfriendliness scared me. I was eight. I held Dad’s hand tighter and drew close to his right hip. He gazed down at me, his jaw hard and eyes cruel—then the fire was gone, masked from me or swallowed. Dad looked up at the man again and told him, “You have a nice day, too.”
This time, we weren’t in the US. We were in Canada, at home. Dad couldn’t tell me, “Stay in the car,” at the next motel. It wasn’t like with his principal, either, a man with a few foreign degrees who dressed in G-man type suits and thin modish ties, who said to the board that he preferred Geoffrey to Dad. The emphasis was his. Dad was better liked, better qualified, better suited for the job of deputy principal at the high school than Geoffrey was. According to Mom, men like the principal felt entitled to their preferences then, still do today. But Dad couldn’t dismiss me from that scene, because I wasn’t there.
In that moment, in that store where it happened, I was there, and there was no time or reason for me to be somewhere else.
*
I’m always careful to make sure Ria has a clear view of where I stand and where her family come from. It’s easy to blow up a situation with what we say and, as it turns out, don’t say. My views on race find their footing in the multicultural streets of Canada. In neo-colonial “return” trips to Barbados as a boy who was never born here. In the homes of well-meaning white people, some of them my friends’. In the gathering of family and friends who behave, sound and think much like me. I don’t deny any of this.
Although I was called it several times in at least two languages growing up—by strangers, teachers, friends and wanna-be friends—I never heard Dad called nigger—by black or white—not directly. Mom and Dad told stories about when they were kids; about places in Barbados they either weren’t allowed to go (the Yacht Club), weren’t expected to be seen (Belleville, Strathclyde), or would only be admitted through backdoor service entrances for the hired help (Grand Barbados hotel). Some of the barriers may have fallen a generation or two after their departure, but not the mentality that built them. Not in Barbados, or the States or Canada.
“Always take the high road,” Dad warned us. Casual advice that was meant to serve as timely reminder whenever going into battle. But Dad didn’t so much hold others to higher standards of right thought and action, to notions of what was honourable. He held his own feet to the fire first.
Two instances of racism involving him I can’t shake. Or maybe I hold on to them. The one he told me about his former principal was as an illustration to a point: there were many ways for whitepeople to call a body nigger without using the word—and think that they were getting away with it.
The other instance I witnessed.
Dad and I were in Canadian Tire. At that time, it was located off Dollard, not far from the Dairy Queen and Parc Lefebvre—everything in LaSalle was closer to us back then. Dad was searching for a particular bit for our drill. We were standing side by side in the aisle. I was fifteen, which would’ve made him fifty-eight. I was short like Dad, and had his lean build, but we weren’t dressed alike, or in anything like store colours. He wore a T-shirt, straight-leg slacks and brown sandals. I was in jeans, a blue windbreaker and T-shirt, and white, blue-stripped Adidas running shoes, my favourites. But this heavy middle-aged French Quebecer, bald and pale, came barreling down the aisle toward us, crying, “Garçon, garçon! Travailles-tu?”
Dad at first seemed to not hear or understand the man. Right away, this was strange to me: Dad read and spoke French fluently. Then when the man came to enter our space—I was standing no more than a foot from Dad, braced for impact—Dad looked at him deliberately, slowly. As if the man did not really exist. As if, to Dad’s mind, the man was an oddity or a curiosity, a not entirely unexpected nuisance, like a mosquito or troublesome child. And the man stopped sudden, like he hit a Plexiglas wall. It was at Dad’s reaction, that was clear, maybe anticipating a next response. But Dad turned back to the shelves. He continued to look for what we wanted, ignoring the man, who stood there huffing, puffing, three, four feet away from us. He started to turn a splotchy pink around his forehead and red from the neck up. Dad let him stand there, waiting for an answer that I soon realized would not come. The man—or insect—or child—grew pinker and redder until I thought he would explode but instead, he buzzed off.
Dad and I never talked about what happened. Again, very strange for Dad, a true believer in the teachable moment. Not when we got into the car, not when we were back home, not years later. I know I would have talked about it with Ria, if something like that happened to us. Right afterward, during the car ride home, later that night with her mother. I couldn’t stop Ria from asking questions, either. At twelve, why people did the evil they did to each other was still this bizarre mystery to her.
So many options — there are always so many options, when it comes to dealing with these situations, with or without your child in the room, right beside you. The French guy was loud; Mom would’ve said he had hog-features. He was not addressing me. I was sure others in the store heard him call Dad “boy.” Twice. Dad was still clear back then, and sharp. And he didn’t cuff him. He didn’t cuss him. Instead, he cut the man, cut him down to nothing, then dismissed what was left. As if he were a school boy in short pants not worth the attention.
Dad and his “high road.” It was exhausting just to be by his side. All the tension in my bones seemed transferred or absorbed from his. Up close, I saw the damage done to the other guy. I still think of that encounter as the most violent I’d ever seen Dad. Up to that point. Thirty-odd years later. I wanted to kick the French guy for what he did…but it would’ve been for what he’d failed to do, and Dad always said you shouldn’t even kick a dog. (Mom always agreed, nodding.) Maybe not the only thing Dad could’ve done, there was a rightness to it I can’t explain. How did he know which tack to take, which would work, this time? And how should I react when my time comes with Ria? That’s not even a maybe. Dad simply shut the man down. Without raising a hand or fist. Without raising his voice. Without even speaking. It wasn’t at all like in Florida, a decade before, with those twisted Disney images looking down on us, and him covering me. This time, there was no outing of fires. It was more like watching Brer Rabbit stuff dynamite in Mickey’s ears—no!—Porky Pig’s—all without him noticing, then silently striking the match.
Not to blow him up. Dad wanted the spluttering idiot to implode.