Island Girl

She always seems to be cold.

Bundled up in the house in mid-May, shivering around in flannel pajamas all winter, thick socks to bed every night, turning up the heat in the car…

Always cold.

And the reason always given (with brown hands in the air for emphasis): “I’m an island girl.”

You see cars around Seattle with bumper stickers that read “Island Girl.” But it’s clear from the Hawaiian looking graphics that those are girls from other islands. Fiona is from the Caribbean.

Okay, so Guyana is not really an island. But it’s close to some islands. And anyway, I get the impression that being an “Island Girl” is more a state of mind than a technicality of whether someone is from an actual island or not.

It’s also a state of being. That is, being cold any time it’s less than 85o F.

So I thought that we’d be okay temperature-wise when we moved to a tropical country in mainland Southeast Asia for work. ‘Cause it was hot there.

A really cold winter might see temperatures in the low 60os F. And along with all the local people, she would be bundled up in parkas and scarves. But for seven months of the year it was hot. And humid. During the hot months, if we were lucky, it would get down to 85o F. in the evenings. During daylight we’d be taking the shadiest route possible between air-conditioned indoor places.

I thought she’d be fine. Thought she’d love it, actually.

But she didn’t. Said it was too… hot.

Huh? The “Island Girl” can’t take the tropics?

Didn’t add up for me.

* * *

Then we moved to Seattle.

And as people do, she managed to find a few of “her people” – people from the Caribbean. Barbados, to be exact. An older, well-educated, well-travel couple.

In conversation with the wife, she brought up the subject of unbearable heat in mainland Southeast Asia. Why, she wondered, didn’t her white husband understand the difference? Not all 85o F days are same.

The Bajan lady nodded. “It’s not the same”, she lilted. “In the Caribbean we have the trade-winds…”

Ah, the trade-winds.

So now, on the occasional day when the Pacific Northwest weather is too warm for her liking, and I reminder her that she’s an “Island Girl” (and not the kind from Hawaii), and that she should be quite at home with the heat…

These day her response is, “but in the Caribbean we have the trade-winds…”

Oye! Mamacita!

There’s this classic line in the movie Crash, where the black guy is in bed with the Latin-American woman, and he calls her “Mexican.” She gets all wide-eyed and uptight ‘cause she’s Honduran, not Mexican, and, you know, there’s a lot of difference, and only the most culturally out-of-the-loop and insensitive person could ever mistake one for the other. And his response is something like how, regardless of all that cultural diversity in Latin America, isn’t it interesting that they all still park their cars on the front lawn???.

* * *

In case there’s anyone reading who doesn’t know this already, Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the continent of South America. Further, if I could be indulged to lump a bit, culturally Guyana seems quite distinct. It’s clearly Caribbean. It might share borders with Venezuela and Brazil, but has more in common culturally with little Trinidad, just off the seawall.

Now, if you know any Guyanese person, it’s important that you don’t think of them as “Latino.” ‘Cause they’re not.

But what kills me is that my wife actually kind of looks Latina.

And that’s not just me talking – it has actually been repeatedly confirmed by others.

When we lived for a few years in a northern suburb of Washington D.C., we’d sometimes rendezvous for lunch at a little southern Indian restaurant that was smack in the middle of a Nicaraguan neighborhood (or was it Guatemalan???). As she’d walk the length of the strip mall from the parking lot to the door of “Udupi Palace”, nearly every (Latino) male within earshot would have to say something:

“ehhhh babeeeeeee!”

“(suck teeth loudly…) ehhh mamita!”

“que pasa muchacha?”

Or maybe they’d just whistle.

She’d be miffed as she sat down to her dhal and biryani… Not miffed that she’d been hollered and whistled at, though. Miffed because they’d just assumed she was Latina, and – hellooooo – she was from Guyana, and, like, there’s a difference!

And for the last eleven years, the “hey, aren’t you Latina?” theme has been one of our in-jokes as a couple:

On a business trip to Bolivia I showed a picture of my wife to a group of local colleagues who asked where she was from. I answered that she was from Guyana (you know, between Suriname and Venezuela…). They nodded approvingly. “Ah, good for you! You married a Latina…”


The guys selling purses in Istanbul’s “Grand Bazaar”: “Como esta, muchacha..?”

The aging German man at the security screening line in Frankfurt Main: “Hola…”

My favorite, though, was when the two Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door and she answered. Our son then a baby and still relatively white was balanced on her hip. Their first question: “Oh, is the lady of the house home?” (Let's just say, the Jehovah's Witnesses didn't win any converts in our home that day.)

* * *

By now I think I’ve made all of the classic white-man blunders regarding Guyanese culture. I know that it’s “peas and rice”, not “rice and peas.” I know the Demerara is the only real rum on the plant. I can recognize “guinepps” in the market. And I have learned to never refer to Guyanese as “Latinos.”

But still, some times I just can’t help it. I need to see the eyes flash and hear the voice rise. And I just borrow from the lyrics of "Los Lonely Boys":

“Oye! Mamacita!”

Shit Dress

Auntie Norma always seemed like the quiet one.

Oh yes, Clementine could always be depended on to unleash stridently worded, politically incorrect or just plain out-there opinions during the lull in any conversation. Auntie Sabrina may have had a sweet voice, but we all knew that she rarely demurred from sharing her opinion on occasion, even forcefully at time.

On the other side of the family there was the legendary mostly-Portuguese (Puttageez) Auntie Philo (Lawd res’ her soul). If I’ve been told once I’ve been told a hundred times that Auntie Philo could simultaneously suck her teeth and cuss up a storm and break it down better than almost anyone (“RASS gorl, I see ya eyes passin’ me!!!”). We always spoke of Auntie Philo with reverence and referred to her talent for cussin’ with awe.

Sure enough, in this family of mostly strong women who ran the show without or perhaps in spite of “help” from the men in their lives, it should surprise no one if voices occasionally raise or the table receives an occasional pounding. With those strong personalities, it didn’t shock any of the cousins when, for example, Clementine and Sabrina could go for more than a year without speaking (they live just across the state line from each other) over some little-old-Guyanese-lady spat. (According to Clem, “Las’ time we spoke she ‘buse me up good…”)

But sweet little Auntie Norma had always managed to pass herself off as the quiet one.

Norma set aside a career in nursing to raise seven or so kids, all of whom now had families and careers of their own (most in the field of medicine in way or another). Fully retired now, she divided her time between a little flat in Toronto (full of frilly, flowery nick-knacks), and the homes of her grown kids scattered across the USA: Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, Puerto Rico…

Still, at family gatherings – say, American Thanksgiving – the other siblings and cousins would hold forth with gusto: long-standing arguments would be revived, dusted off and re-had; hands would wave; kids would run wild; miscellaneous neighbors and other interlopers – not part of the family – might wander in and out and randomly join arguments at will; both the TV and the boom box would be blaring and everyone would have to shout over the din.

But sweet little Auntie Norma would sit and chat quietly with whomever was nearby. She might occasionally wander into the kitchen to stir a kettle of bubbling pepper-pot, or show one of the grandkids how to turn roti. But she always seemed to stay calm and proper. We never saw her with her eyes wide or her hands in the air or heard her voice raised.

But that all changed at the wedding.

Her granddaughter was getting married. To an Indian guy.

The entire family descended on a suburb of Houston, Texas for a weekend of Guyanese drama. At least 50 or so relatives on Norma’s side, and more than that on the groom’s side. The Indians from India and the Indians from Guyana en force, each determined to not be outdone by the other in any way. My only regret is that I could not witness the spectacle in person, but instead stayed home with the kids while Fiona participated on-site. Her descriptions via daily calls home had me in stitches.

Apparently Norma came out of her quiet shell, working herself into every possible moment of pre-wedding drama as mother-of-the-father-of-the-bride.

The climax of it all came on the morning of the wedding, though, when Norma put on the dress that she’d bought especially for that occasion. Maybe the department store seamstress hadn’t understood Norma’s English clearly… or maybe Norma hadn’t completely understood something herself (her hearing was going), but didn’t want to let on and so nodded at the wrong moments. Or maybe what looked great in a three-way mirror under fluorescent light, didn’t look quite so good a few weeks later, on the actual day. But either way, moments before she was to leave for the church, Norma decided that that dress just showed too much cleavage.

Some fast-talking, conniving salesperson had sold her a shit dress. A shit dress, I tell you. This is a shit dress. It didn’t help that the eight-year-old flower girl (one of Norma’s granddaughters) was standing right there, as Norma groused and fiddled and tried to safety-pin the neck line a little higher. Nor did it help that Clementine was also in the room, reminding (with a characteristically raised voice) Norma she had bought the shit dress all on her own. If anyone was to blame for it being a shit dress, it would be Norma.

In the end Fiona and Celina (the daughters) intervened, one by escorting the flower girl from the room (it was too late: she was already asking what a “shit dress” was…), the other separating Clem and Norma, helping Norma adjust the (shit dress) to the point that she felt properly modest and then getting everyone to the waiting car.

* * *

The wedding was beautiful. The granddaughter looked radiant. The swarthy young groom looked handsome and dashing.

In the obligatory photograph of all of the bride’s relatives, you can see a sea of Indo-Guyanese faces, everyone happy to be together again. If you know where to look you can see a couple of grinning little old ladies, dressed to the nines. One of them is Norma. Unless you know to look for a neck line pinned just a little high, you’d never know that the event had ever been anything other than joy and harmony.

* * *

We’d always wondered what Auntie Norma would be like if she ever got riled up.

Now we know.

In da beginnin' was da WORD

So, it was back in, like, 1988, in a conservative, backwoods, 110% white-bread town in northern Michigan that I first met Fiona. At summer camp. We both worked at a summer camp. Kind of like (heh-heh) band camp.

She looked kind of, you know, black. But not all the way black. Kind of like a mix. More… errrrrrr… brown.

With the cool panache of someone who’d grown up in a midwestern town famous for it’s large prison, I put two and two together. She was obviously not “African-American.” She must be…………

Jamaican.

It was my first introduction to Caribbean drama. I got a total and well-deserved talkin’ to, replete with eyes wide, high voice, and brown hands in the air at rakish angles. I had never before heard of Guyana. But I’ve never forgotten it since then.

* * *

I married Fiona in 1997, a full 10 years after she set me straight on the differences between “Jamaica” and “Guyana.” We’d each had a few things to do first: the world to see (she took off to Africa, I to Asia), graduate school to finish, CDs to record…

* * *

This blog is the story of the journey since 1997.