bewildered.
Actually I had no idea who the Lord was, I was just looking for anyone to back me up. “What’s more,” I added, “drugs are bad and the next thing you know you’ll be running around having orgies and talking about female organisms.”
“Hilarious!” laughed Pam. “Lighten up, girl. Jeeeesus. Where did you come from?”
“Well, actually …” I began to explain, before realizing that it was a rhetorical question because Pam rolled her eyes at my mother.
“Get a load of this,” she said, moving to do one of her bare-breast numbers which was usually sure to make me leave a room in disgust and give my mother and Pam a good chuckle. She whipped up her purple t-shirt to reveal two smiling faces with big brown areolae for noses. I stared in amazement and she screeched, “Isn’t it fucking hilarious!” and starting bouncing her breasts around so they looked like clowns bobbing up and down.
I covered my mouth with my hands, and my mother said, “Thelma? You look as if you’re going to be sick,” but when tears started running down my face it was Pam who said:
“Corinna, I can’t believe it. She’s actually laughing. Thank the fucking Lord, the girl’s got a sense of humour after all.”
My mother stared at me in amazement, saying, “Thelma , I am quite sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen you laugh.”
“Hallelujah for that,” added Rudy, passing the joint to my mother.
—
Another man was sitting at the table with them the following Sunday. When I came downstairs to ask them to turn down the music and Pam said, “Ugh, Thelma. I thought we’d been through this last week,” my mother turned to me all soulful and said:
“Honey, I’d like you to come and meet Suresh.”
I could tell by her eyes that this was serious, so I just said, “On the Lord’s day we take off our hats in the house,” and stomped out of the room because I knew that would upset her.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew from the turban on his head that Suresh was a Sikh, and that he couldn’t very well take his turban off, particularly at a request to indulge some Christian Lord who doesn’t even exist. But I didn’t like the serious look on my mother’s face. I didn’t like the change in her voice.
Of course, years later when my father would scream, “That bloody Paki!” or “That fucking swami!” it would be me, not my mother, who would defend, “Suresh was a Sikh.” But that was much later, and this was now, and I still had much too much of my father in me to believe anything other than, “We colonized the subcontinent.”
My father, after all, had been discharged from the army for calling a Visiting Official from Her Majesty’s Royal Indian Regiment something similar. His racism was not reserved for a particular constellation of physical features. Red hair, he decreed, was a sign of inbreeding (which dismissed legions of Irish and Scots from respectability in his eye). Freckles and curly hair (I possessed a slight amount of both) were evidence of being “tainted with the tar brush”, for which, in my case, he somehow blamed my blue-eyed, pencil-straight-haired, alabaster-skinned mother.
On the only occasion my brother ever brought a friend home to play, my father prevented him from entering the house by saying, “Where do you come from, boy?” To which the scared little soul replied:
“361 Balliol Street, Sir.”
And my dad shouted, “No, you idiot, I mean your genes!”
Scared out of his wits, Willy’s friend offered, “Maybe Eaton’s?”
After his mother had called my mother to find out what possessed my father to be so mean to such a little boy, my father said dismissively, “I just didn’t like the colour of his skin.”
“Pardon?” my mother said. “Douglas, the boy is white!”
“But it’s the kind of white I don’t like. Pasty. It makes my skin crawl.”
Needless to say, my brother never had any friends after that, and neither did my father, come to think of it,
Actually I had no idea who the Lord was, I was just looking for anyone to back me up. “What’s more,” I added, “drugs are bad and the next thing you know you’ll be running around having orgies and talking about female organisms.”
“Hilarious!” laughed Pam. “Lighten up, girl. Jeeeesus. Where did you come from?”
“Well, actually …” I began to explain, before realizing that it was a rhetorical question because Pam rolled her eyes at my mother.
“Get a load of this,” she said, moving to do one of her bare-breast numbers which was usually sure to make me leave a room in disgust and give my mother and Pam a good chuckle. She whipped up her purple t-shirt to reveal two smiling faces with big brown areolae for noses. I stared in amazement and she screeched, “Isn’t it fucking hilarious!” and starting bouncing her breasts around so they looked like clowns bobbing up and down.
I covered my mouth with my hands, and my mother said, “Thelma? You look as if you’re going to be sick,” but when tears started running down my face it was Pam who said:
“Corinna, I can’t believe it. She’s actually laughing. Thank the fucking Lord, the girl’s got a sense of humour after all.”
My mother stared at me in amazement, saying, “Thelma , I am quite sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen you laugh.”
“Hallelujah for that,” added Rudy, passing the joint to my mother.
—
Another man was sitting at the table with them the following Sunday. When I came downstairs to ask them to turn down the music and Pam said, “Ugh, Thelma. I thought we’d been through this last week,” my mother turned to me all soulful and said:
“Honey, I’d like you to come and meet Suresh.”
I could tell by her eyes that this was serious, so I just said, “On the Lord’s day we take off our hats in the house,” and stomped out of the room because I knew that would upset her.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew from the turban on his head that Suresh was a Sikh, and that he couldn’t very well take his turban off, particularly at a request to indulge some Christian Lord who doesn’t even exist. But I didn’t like the serious look on my mother’s face. I didn’t like the change in her voice.
Of course, years later when my father would scream, “That bloody Paki!” or “That fucking swami!” it would be me, not my mother, who would defend, “Suresh was a Sikh.” But that was much later, and this was now, and I still had much too much of my father in me to believe anything other than, “We colonized the subcontinent.”
My father, after all, had been discharged from the army for calling a Visiting Official from Her Majesty’s Royal Indian Regiment something similar. His racism was not reserved for a particular constellation of physical features. Red hair, he decreed, was a sign of inbreeding (which dismissed legions of Irish and Scots from respectability in his eye). Freckles and curly hair (I possessed a slight amount of both) were evidence of being “tainted with the tar brush”, for which, in my case, he somehow blamed my blue-eyed, pencil-straight-haired, alabaster-skinned mother.
On the only occasion my brother ever brought a friend home to play, my father prevented him from entering the house by saying, “Where do you come from, boy?” To which the scared little soul replied:
“361 Balliol Street, Sir.”
And my dad shouted, “No, you idiot, I mean your genes!”
Scared out of his wits, Willy’s friend offered, “Maybe Eaton’s?”
After his mother had called my mother to find out what possessed my father to be so mean to such a little boy, my father said dismissively, “I just didn’t like the colour of his skin.”
“Pardon?” my mother said. “Douglas, the boy is white!”
“But it’s the kind of white I don’t like. Pasty. It makes my skin crawl.”
Needless to say, my brother never had any friends after that, and neither did my father, come to think of it,
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