Who you are is not what country you are from, or what religion you are, it is what your parents’ jobs are. You can be a plumber’s kid or a lawyer’s kid. But it sure doesn’t work to only be a welfare case’s kid. Today we are a musician’s kids. In the dark alcove at the back of the shop, my brothers and I keep looking at one another and smiling, just like when we were all together in my mom’s great belly.
Are you who you are when you are a teeny fetus? There are some people who will say that you aren’t properly you yet. But of course you are.
You are you even long before that. You are you when your parents begin to get dressed in fancy clothes one Saturday night. You are you when your mother, who is barely twenty-one years old, puts on a pair of yellow lace underwear. When she plucks her eyebrows in the mirror and when she puts on a red dress that is cut really low and burgundy lipstick: that’s all about you, baby.
You are you when your father, who is also twenty-one years old, pops a pimple on his forehead. When he puts on his fancy shiny shirt that was made by children in a sweatshop in Indonesia. When he isn’t sure that he actually looks good — but he has been lucky twice before when wearing it.
They are both riding the subway in opposite directions to meet each other and you have already begun. That is your beginning. You have just as much right to be as anybody.
But my dad is in an even worse mood after we get all excited about him being able to play the trombone. It probably reminded him of being things that he doesn’t get to be anymore. He tells us to stop at the liquor store. We all beg him not to go in and Robin even gets on his knees in front of the wheelchair. But he shouts at us to push him inside. He gets a bottle of whiskey and they put it in a paper bag for him, even though our lives are now going to be hell!
We push him down the street as fast as we can and he keeps yelling at us to slow the fuck down. But he keeps taking deep gulps and we have to get him home before the liquor hits his heart. I hope that people don’t see us behind the wheelchair. Maybe they will think it is an electric wheelchair and that it is rolling by itself and we just happen to be walking behind it.
My dad points to a man that is passing by and he says, “Hey you, you fucking cowboy. I’m sick of your ugly face. I don’t even know you and I know that you won’t get married.”
We don’t even stop to see the poor man’s reaction, and we keep right on going. Unfortunately, we have to stop at a red light because it’s a busy street. There is a woman standing next to us, also waiting for the right time to cross.
“Hey skinny,” he says to her. “Do you think that men are attracted to chickens? No? Then why in the world do you have those skinny chicken legs exposed? No man wants to see that. I can assure you.”
As soon as the light changes, we take off. We are pushing him so fast that we almost run into a middle-aged man who tells us to be careful.
“You inconsiderate bastard,” my dad yells. “Can’t you see that I’m a cripple? Can’t you see that I’m being pushed around by a little girl? You know what you are? I’ll tell you. You’re a fucking pimp. That’s it. You don’t like me to say the word to you because it rings a bell. Well, my brother. Pimp. Pimp. Pimp.”
We push him as fast as we can into the building and lock the front door.
My mom is fixing my hair on Sunday morning so that I can look so good like all the pretty black girls do. While she braids my blond hair, my mom explains to me that men get more hurt than girls. And they get more upset about being out of work than girls do. In that way, she says, it’s easier to be a girl. I don’t think this is true, because of my projects, because of my garden! I like working a lot.
Whenever we are in court, my mom always speaks with a teeny-weeny high-pitched voice. It’s as if she inhaled helium, for some weird reason, and it makes her sound like a baby. She wants the judge to feel sorry for her. This is her defence mechanism. It’s a little bit like when bugs play dead so that the birds won’t muck with them. But I don’t think that is the way I want to act just because I’m a girl.
My mom only does cornrows on one side of my head. Then she says that she has to stop because it’s giving her arthritis and that having to concentrate like that is giving her a migraine. I beg her and beg her to do the other side, but she can’t. She has to lie down and take a nap.
The cornrows on the side of my head are too beautiful to undo, so I go out later with only half my head braided. I get made fun of by all the kids that I pass. None of the black girls at the park will have anything to do with me. They look at me like I’m crazy, like they always do.
On the way home, this man drives up alongside me in this shitty gold car. The back window is made of cardboard and duct tape. And he asks me if I want to sit on his face. I don’t know what that means but it makes my heart bang so loud that it’s like a basketball smashing up against a wall. I decide not to tell anyone in my family.
Sometimes my brothers and I drink lemonade out of a tiny tea set. None of them mind playing games that are supposed to only be for girls. We all liked to take baths together for the longest time. But then my mom said one morning that I was too old to take baths with everybody else.
I have to take them all by myself now. I feel so alone when I am in the bathtub tonight. I feel like I am ten thousand miles from my family. All the toys are covered in soap grime. They are all inside of the soap dish and in the gargling glass. They look like they escaped from the sinking Titanic and are now dealing with shock.
I am so skinny that I think I will slip down the drain and I will go down through the pipes like I am going through a monster’s intestines. I do not at all like the way that the drain sounds like it is swallowing and swallowing my bathwater. Like it cannot get enough of it. Like it has an unquenchable thirst. Like it just had a huge meal and is trying to get rid of the hiccups. Something has got caught in its throat.
I look down the drain to make sure there is no long tongue that will come out of it and lick me.
The towels don’t match. But it is easier for us to be reminded of which one belongs to who: mine has purple flowers on it; Robin has one with tiny red berries; Sparrow owns the one with little brown pansies all over it; Jay’s is a really old one with a tree with pink blossoms on it. They make up a whole natural world. We don’t really get to see all those sorts of flowers outside, since we live downtown.
Human beings have destroyed the whole island of Montreal. In class we go on a field trip to the Natural History Museum. In the back there’s this diorama that has all the taxidermied animals that used to exist in Quebec. You would not believe it. There were like wolves walking down the street. Can you imagine what it would be like to look out your window and see wolves walking down the street? It would be terrifying, but then at the same time you would like feel so freakin’ alive.
And the birds! Did you know that at one time there were so many passenger pigeons that when they flew over in a flock, the whole sky would grow dark and there would be a shadow cast over the whole island? And you only had to reach your hand up in the air to grab one. You could hold up a pot and some birds would fly in and you would seal the lid on it.
There is a tree outside our building that tried to fight back. The roots of the tree reached out from beneath the sidewalk like a giant squid underneath a boat and broke through. When I get home, I wrap my arms around the tree and tell it that I understand. That it had been really, really angry. And it had all these big ambitions and the city had got in its way.