Indignity

There are so many indignities that we suffer in life that in the end its the most subversive of these attacks that end up bringing us to our knees. This story really begins on a day I went grocery shopping but, context is required because our history foretells our destiny and path into the future; ignorance of the past changes nothing.

My parents immigrated to Canada from Britain in 1972 to escape the controversy surrounding their relationship; the relentless night time family meetings trying to talk some sense into my father and the cold rejection from my mothers' parents, all of these tactics were in hopes of breaking them apart. I firmly believe they succeeded in destroying my parents' relationship; it just took a long time for them to finally give up on each other. My fathers' family is from Mumbai, a member of an upper caste Brahmin family that owned a dozen dry cleaners around London, he was the only son of four children and my mother was the only child of Dutch expats who made their paltry living as writers. Mother used to say that even their names suggested she and father were destined to meet , his name being, Adi meaning the first in Hindu and Anke is my mothers name, meaning graceful, the Anglicized version of her name is Ana, so that is what everyone called her: Ana. They tumbled into each others' lives like a tired man hits a pillow, sinking deep, hard and stubborn.

My parents fell in love in a park surrounded by a dozen of their friends that were oblivious to the destiny being manifest before their young eyes; both students were sitting on the ground at Cambridge University with classmates fanned out around them when their eyes locked and they moved toward one another and stayed that way for over a decade. Both families were vehemently opposed to their interracial coupling and would never support the two of them marrying so Ana and Adi eloped and moved into a small, dank one room flat within walking distance of the University and spent their first year as husband and wife finishing up their degrees in English. After graduation my parents decided they needed to get as far away from their families as possible and applied for entrance in the English masters programs at several Canadian universities, finally settling on the University of Toronto. Unbeknownst to my parents on the flight from Heathrow to Toronto, I was already conceived and they would find out soon enough on a hot, muggy day in August just days before classes started. Instead of being immersed in intellectual pursuits they both became buried in diapers and bills and menial jobs and this is when they began to crumble. My father worked two jobs, waiting tables at night and then the midnight shift at a corner gas station, while my mother spent her days working at a bookstore around the corner from their apartment. Barely making ends meet and unable to be in the same room without emanating blame and contempt for the other, soon no love remained. When I was seven years old, after years of bitterness and rage, my father returned to England and two years after leaving us he married an Indian woman of his same caste and they went on to have five daughters that I never met. Mothers' relationship with her parents remained strained as they refused to accept a mixed child as their granddaughter and so it was just the two of us until I was nineteen when cancer killed her and then it was just me.

Her death left me unmoored, I was clearly unwanted and unwelcome by both the Indians and the Dutch so I would need to find my own way and it's not easy to do that as a girl, alone in this world. Of course I am broken now so I no longer have the pride that prevents me from admitting the truth of my vulnerabilities. I finished university with a useless degree in political science and went to work at the Ontario Motor Vehicles Department, processing drivers' permits applications; I had a few friends to spend my time with and it was these friends that would unwittingly take me to my breaking place and point. My life was empty and lonely and I had the pulled in look of people who live uncared for and thrown away, I've seen others like me wandering the streets of this city and I know we are kin but, there's no one to reach out to; lips pursed, head down, shoulders tense and pushing through life is how I lived.

A friend called to invite me to drive down to Chatham for an outdoor concert of a rising country singer; I set my grocery bags down, the same bags found at the beginning of my story. I dialed her number to arrange the details of our trip.

Sally, Cindy and Lisa picked me up early on a Saturday morning in June to drive the more than two hours to Chatham, each of them various shades of blond and tanned and gearing for a good time, my black hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and my dark skin was made darker by the sun. As we set off, we began to talk at the same time excitedly and bursting into giggles at unexpected moments and as we got close to the concert area the scene began to look like a college rodeo. Sally parked her car and we climbed out stretched, surveyed the scene and a couple of guys sauntered by, scoping out the blonds I came with; I didn't mind, I was used to being invisible to men who seem to hound after white girls with yellow hair as if their blondness holds salvation.

Growing up in a city like Toronto it was difficult to know what my ethnicity was, I blended, we were all from somewhere else and it didn't seem to matter so it was a complete shock to learn as an adult, it's the only thing that matters. Even when it doesn't seem to matter, it does.

In this place and time is when my final stance snapped like a glass swan; that is to say in half, cleanly and with serrated edges. A concert, of all places is where I shattered for good. Those of us who walk broken in this world will fall into the abyss from a shallow grave and a mild breeze even after a lifetime of carrying burdens and catastrophes; who can say why without revealing the mystery of the deep?

The blonde girls and I gathered our back packs filled with beer and satchels full of sandwiches and began our trek to the stage; it began to feel cold immediately. Confusion and fear set in but, I kept my head down and pushed through but every foot forward became heavy and burdensome. A quiet had settled on my side of the grounds, it was palpable, terrifying in its silence and spreading quickly. Lifting my head and looking around I noticed dozens of trucks ahead with American flags flapping on their antenna and so many white people with hate in their eyes and all of it was cutting a hole through me.

My breath caught in my chest and I smiled, thinking if I showed I was friendly and unthreatening their cold contempt would soften but, it did not, their glares hardened and intensified and began to smell of violence. My friends began to feel the different air as it became infested with rage and our walk down the plank slowed, they looked at the glares and then looked at me and then we heard a woman spit venom with her words.

"Fucking Arab Cunt" the disembodied voice hissed.

I'm not Arab, I thought to myself! They're talking about someone else. The relief allowed me to exhale the breath I was choking on and I turned to see who the Arab was but, there was no one; it was only me. I stared at my friends, who stared back at me, their faces red and their embarrassment so consuming it was thrumming with heat, coming off of them in waves; they said nothing. I swallowed and heard something snap, I put my head down and picked up my leaden legs and started moving towards the stage once more.

My heart beat in my throat for the entire concert as I sat on the grass and hoped the Americans wouldn't come looking for me. The sadness that I worked daily to keep at bay swallowed me whole while a blonde woman with big hair, cowboy boots and tassels twanged about good ole boys and love in a haystack. I felt the lights go out on my hope and quietly I disappeared, knowing I could never find that place to be safe and my grandparents had been right all along; I am the offspring of disaster.

After the concert it was dark and we went back to the car by scurrying in the other direction so as to avoid any confrontations with the Americans; we were scared and ashamed for unknown reasons.

We drove back to Toronto in miserable silence, they dropped me off at my apartment first and drove off without a backward glance; not even a flick of the eyes.
That is how the long road ended for me; finally, at a concert underneath the watching sky with false friends on one side and virulent, unknown enemies on my other.

How quietly my heart broke.

I turned into my locked door and went into my darkened apartment, unpacked my bag and laid out my clothes for the next morning, set up my coffee and had a bowl of cereal and with my shoulders bowed I went to bed.