Jamaica Kincaid

controlled by the light of day. Suddenly my mother got up and blew out
the candles and our shadows vanished. I continued to sit on the bed,
trying to get a good look at myself.

***
My Mother
Immediately on wishing my mother dead and seeing the pain it caused.
her, I was sorry and cried so many tears that all the earth around me was
drenched. Standing before my mother, I begged her forgiveness, and I
begged so earnestly that she took pity on me, kissing my face and placing
my head on her bosom to rest. Placing her arms around me, she drew my
head closer and closer to her bosom, until finally I suffocated. I lay on
her bosom, breathless, for a time uncountable, until one day, for a
reason she has kept to herself, she shook me out and stood me under a
tree and I started to breathe again. I cast a sharp glance at her and said .
to myself, "So.". Instantly I grew my own bosoms, small mounds at first,
leaving a small, soft place between them, where, if ever necessary, I
could rest my own head. Between my mother and me now were the tears
I had cried, and I gathered up some stones and banked them in so that
they formed a small pond. The water in the pond was thick and black
and poisonous, so that only unnameable invertebrates could live in it. My
mother and I now watched each other carefully, always making sure to
shower the other with words and deeds of love and affection.

***
I was sitting on my mother's bed trying to get a good look at myself. It
was a large bed and it stood in the middle of a large, completely dark
room. The room was completely dark because all the windows had been
boarded up and all the crevices stuffed with bl~cl<: cloth. My mother lit
some candles and the room burst into a pink-like, yellow-like glow.
Looming over us, much larger than ourselves, were our shadows. We.sat
mesmerised because our .shadows had made a place between
themselves, as if they were making room for someone else. Nothing filled
up the space between them, and the shadow of my mother sighed. The
shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own
shadow sang, and then t~ey stopped. All along, our shadows had grown
thick and thin, long and short, had fallen at every angle, as if they were

204/.GONCERT OF VOICES

My mother removed her clothes and covered thoroughly her skin with a
thick gold-coloured oil, which had recently been rendered in a hot pan
from the livers of reptiles with pouched throats. She grew plates of
metal-coloured scales on her back, and light, when it collided with. this
surface, would shatter and collapse into tiny points. Her teeth now
arranged themselves into rows that reached all the way back to her long
white throat. She uncoiled her hair from her head and then removed her
hair altogether. Taking her head into her large palms, she flattened it so
that her eyes, which were by now ablaze, sat on top of her head and spun
like two revolving balls. Then, making two lines on the soles of each foot,
she divided her feet into crossroads. Silently, she had instructed me to
follow her example, and now I too travelled along on my white
underbelly, my tongue darting and flickering in the hot air. "Look," said
my mother.

***
My mother and I were standing on the seabed side by side, my arms
laced loosely around her waist, my head resting securely on her
shoulder, as if I needed the support. To make sure she believed in my
frailness, I sighed occasionally -long soft sighs, the kind of sigh she had
long ago taught me could evoke sympathy. In fact, how I really felt was
invincible. I was no longer a child but I was not yet a woman. My skin
had just blackened and cracked and fallen away and my new
impregnable carapace had taken full hold. My nose had flattened; my
hair curled in and stood out straight from my head simultaneously; my
many rows of teeth in their retractable trays were in place. My mother
and I wordlessly made an arrangement - I sent out my beautiful sighs,
she received them; I leaned ever more heavily on her for SUPP()rt, she
offered her shoulder, which shortly grew to the size of a thick plank. A
long time passed, at the end of which I had hoped to see my mother
permanently cemented to the seabed. My mother reached out to pass a
hand over my head, a pacifying gesture, but I laughed and, with great
agility, stepped aside. I let out a horrible roar, then a self-pitying whine. I
had grown big, but my mother was bigger, and that would always be so.
We walked to the Garden of Fruits and there ate to our hearts'
satisfaction. We departed through the southwesterly gate, leaving as

JAMAICA KINCAID I 205

always, in our trail, small colonies of worms.

***
With my mother, I crossed, unwillingly, the valley. We saw a lamb
grazing and ~hen it heard our footsteps it paused and looked up at us.
The lamb looked cross and miserable. I said to my-mother, "The lamb is
cross and miserable. So would I be, too, if I had to live in a climate not
suited to my nature." My mother and I now entered the cave. It was the
dark and cold cave. I felt something growing under my feet and I bent
down to eat it. I stayed that way for years, bent over eating whatever I
found growing under my feet. Eventually, I grew a special lens that
would allow me to see in the darkest of darkness; eventually, I grew a
special coat that kept me warm in the coldest of coldness. One day I saw
my mother sitting on a rock. She said, "What a strange expression you
have on your face. So cross, so miserable, as if you were living in a
climate not suited to your nature." Laughing, she vanished. I dug a deep,
deep hole. I built a beautiful house, a floorless !lOuse, over the deep,
deep hole .. I put in lattice windows, most favoured of windows by my
mother, so perfect for looking out at people passing by without her being
observed; I painted the house itself yellow, the windows green, colours I
knew would please her. Standing just outside the door, I asked her to
inspect the house. I said, "Take a look. Tell me if it's to your
satisfaction." Laughing out of the corner of a mouth I could not see, she
stepped inside. I stood just outside the door, listening carefully, hoping
to hear her land with a thud at the bottom of the deep, deep hole.
Instead, she walked up and down in every direction, even pounding her
heel on the air. Coming outside to greet me, she said,"It is an excellent
house. I would be honoured to live in it," and then vanished. I filled up
the hole and burnt the house to the ground.

***
My mother has grown to an enormous height. I have grown to an
enormoJIs height also, but my mother's height is three times mine.
Sometimes I cannot see from her breasts on up, so lost is s4e in the
atmosphere. One day, seeing her sitting on the seashore, her hand
reaching out in the deep to caress the belly of a striped fish as he swam
through a place where two seas met, Iglowed red with anger. For a
while then I lived alone on the island where there were eight full moons
and I adorned the face of each moon with expressions I had seen on my
mother's face. All the expressions favoured me. I soon grew tired of

2061 CONCERT OF VOICES

living in this way and returned to my mother's side. I remained, though

glowing red with anger, and my mother and I built houses on opposite
banks of the dead pond. The dead pond lay between us; in it; only small
invertebrates with poisonous lances lived. My mother behaved towards
them as if she had suddenly found herself in the same room with
relatives we had long since risen above .. 1 cherished their presence and
gave them names. Still I missed my mother's close company and cried
constantly for her, but at the end of each day when I saw her return to
her house, incredible and great deeds in her wake, each Qf them singing
loudly her praises, I glowed and glowed again, red with anger.
Eventually, I wore myself out and sank into a deep, deep sleep, the
dreamless sleep I have ever had.

***
One day my mother packed my things in a grip and, taking me by the
hand, walked me to the jetty, placed me on board a boat, in care of the
captain. My mother, while caressing my chin and cheeks, said some
words of comfort to me because we had never been apart before. She
kissed me on the forehead and turned and walked away. I cried so much
my chest heaved up and down, my whole body shook at the sight of her
back turned towards me, as if I had never seen her back turned towards.
me before. I started to make plans to get off the boat, but when I saw
that the boat was encased in a large green bottle, as if it were about to
decorate a mantelpiece, I fell asleep, until I reached my destination, the
new island. When the boat stopped, I got off and I saw a woman with
feet exactly like mine, especially around the arch of the instep. Even
though the face was completely different from what I was used to, I
recognised this woman as my mother. We greeted each other at first
with great caution and politeness, but as we walked along, our steps
became one, and as we talked, our voices became one voice, and we
were in complete union in every other way.. What peace came over me
then, for I could not see where she left off and I began, or where I left off
and she began.

***
My mother and I walk through the rooms of her house. Every crack in
the floor holds a significant event: here, anapparentIy healthy young
man suddenly dropped dead; here a young woman defied her father
and, while riding her bicycle to the forbidden lovers' meeting place, fell
down a precipice, remaining a cripple for the rest of a very long life. My

JAMAICA KINCAID 1207

mother and I find this a beautiful house. The rooms are large and empty,
opening on to each other, waiting for people and things to fill them up.
Our white muslin skirts billow up around our ankles, our hair hangs
straight down our backs as our arms hang straight at our sides. I fit
perfectly in the crook of my mother's arm, on the curve of her back, in
the hollow of her stomach. We eat from the same bowl, drink from the
same cup; when we sleep, our heads rest on the same pillow. As we walk
through the rooms, we merge and separate, merge and separate; soon
we shall enter the final stage of our evolution.

***
The fishermen are coming in from sea; their catch. is bountiful, my
mother has seen to that. As the waves plop, plop against each other, the
fishermen are happy that the sea is calm. My mother points out the
fishermen to me, their contentment is a source of my contentment. I am
sitting in my mother's enormous lap. Sometimes I sit on a mat she has
made for me from her hair. The lime trees are weighed down with
limes - I have already perfumed myself with their blossoms. A
hummingbird has nested on my stomach, a sign of my fertileness. My
mother and I live in a bower made from flowers whose petals are
imperishable. There is the silvery blue of the sea, crisscrossed with sharp
darts of light, there is the warm rain faIling on the clumps of castor bush,
there is the small lamb bounding across the pasture, there is the soft
ground welcoming the soles of my pink feet. It is in this way my mother
and I have lived for a long time now.

2081 CONCERT OF VOICES

On Seeing England for the First Time

When I saw England for the first time, I was a child in school sitting at a
desk. The England I was looking at was laid out on a map gently,
beautifully, delicately, a very special jewel; it lay on a bed of sky
blue- the background of the map - its yellow form mysterious, because
though it looked like a leg of mutton, it could not really look like
anything so familiar as a leg of mutton because it was England - with
shadings of pink and green, unlike any shadings of pink ~.nd green I had
seen before, squiggly veins of red running in every direction. England
was a special jewel all right, and only special people got to wear it. The
people who got to wear England were English people. They wore it well
and they Wore it everywhere: in jungles, in deserts, on plains, on top of
the highest mountains, on all the oceans, on all the. seas. When my
teacher had pinned this map up on the blackboard, she said, "This is
England" - and she said it with authority, seriousness, and adoration,
and we all sat up. It was as if she had said, "This is Jerusalem, the place
you will go to when you die but only if you have been good." We
understood then - we were meant to understand then - that England
was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our
sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was
meaningless - and much about our own lives and much about the very
idea of us headed that last list.
At the time I was a child sitting .at my desk seeing England for the
<first time, I was already very familiar with the greatness of it. Each
morning before I left for school, I ate a brea~fast of half a grapefruit, an
egg, bread and butter and a slice of cheese, and a cup of cocoa; or half
a grapefruit, a bowl of oat porridge, bread and butter and a slice of.
cheese, and a cup of cocoa. The can of cocoa was often left on the table
in front of me. It had written on it the name of the company, the year
the company was established, and the words "Made in England." Those
words, "Made in Engla~d," were written on the box the oats came in
too. They would also have been written on the box the shoes I was
wearing came in; the bolt of gray linen cloth lying on the shelf of a store
from which my mother had bought three yards to make the uniform

CONCERT OF VOICES 1209

that I was wearing had written along its edge those three words. The
shoes I wore were made in England; so were my socks and cotton
undergarments and the satin ribbons I wore tied at the end of two plaits
of my hair. My father, who might have sat next to me at breakfast, was a
carpenter and cabinetmaker. The shoes he wore to work would have
been made in England, as were his khaki shirt and trousers, his
underpants and undershirt, his socks and brown felt hat. Felt was not
the proper material from which a hat that was expected to provide
shade from the hot sun should have been made, but my father must
have seen and admired a picture of an Englishman wearing such a hat
in England, and this picture that he saw must have been so compelling
that it caused him to wear the wrong hat for a hot climate most of his
long life. And this hat - a brown felt hat - became so central to his
character that it was the first thing he put on in the morning as he
stepped out of bed and the last thing he took off before he stepped
back into bed at night. As we sat at breakfast, a car might go by. The
car, a Hillman or a Zephyr, was made in England. The very idea of the
meal itself, breakfast, and its substantial quality and quantity, was an
idea from England; we somehow knew that in England they began the
day with this meal called breakfast, and a proper breakfast was a big
breakfast. No one I knew liked eating so much food so early in the day;
it made us feel sleepy, tired. But this breakfast business was "Made in
England" ~ike almost everything else that surrounded us, the exceptions
being the sea, the sky, and the air we breathed.
At the time I saw this map - seeing England for the first time - I did -not
say to myself, "Ah, so that's what it looks like," because there was no
longing in me to put a shape to those three words that ran through every
part of my life no matter how small; for me to have had such a longing
would have meant that I lived in a certain atmosphere, an atmosphere in
whiCh those three words were felt as a burden. But I did not live in such
an atmosphere. When my teacher showed -us the map, she asked us to
study it carefully,-because no test we would ever take would be complete
without this statement: "Draw a map of England." I did not know then
that the statement "Draw a map of England" was something far worse .
than a declaration of war, for a flat-out declaration of war would have
put me on alert. In fact, there was no need for war'-: I had long ago been
conquered. I did not know then that this statement was part of a process
that would result in my erasure -not my physical erasure, but my
erasure all the same. I did not know then that this statement was meant
to make me feel awe and small whenever I heard the word "England":

210 ICONCERT OF VOICES

awe at the power of its existence, small because I was not from it.
After that there were many times of seeing England for the first
time. I saw England in history. I knew the names of all the kings of
England. I knew the names of their children, their wives, their
disappointments, their triumphs, the names of people who. betrayed
them. I knew the dates on which they were born and the dates they
died. I knew their conquests and was made to feel good if I figured in
them; I knew their defeats.
This view - the naming of the kings, their deeds, their disappointments
was the vivid view, the forceful view. There were other views, subtler
ones, softer, almost not there - but these softer views were the ones that
made the most lasting impression on me, the ones that made me really
feel like nothing. "When morning touched the sky" was one phrase, for
no morning touched the sky where I lived. The morning where I lived
came on abruptly, with a shock of heat and loud noises. "Evening
approaches" was another. But the evenings where I lived did not
approach; in fact, I had no evening-I had night and I had day, and
they came and went in a mechanical way: on, off, on, off. And. then
there were gentle mountains and low blue skies and moors over which
people took walks for nothirig but pleasure; when where I lived a walk
was an act of labor, a burden, something only death or the automobile
could relieve. And the weather there was so remarkable because the
rain fell gently always, and the wind blew in gusts that were sometimes
deep, and the air was various shades of gray, each an appealing shade
for a dress to be worn when a portrait was being painted; and when it
rained at twilight, wonderful! things happened: People bumped into
each other unexpectedly and that would lead to all sorts of turns of
events - a plot, the mere weather caused plots.
The reality of my life, the life I led at the time I was being shown
these views of England for the first time, for the second time, for the
one hundred millionth time, was this: The sun shone with what
sometimes seemed to be a deliberate cruelty; we must have done
something to deserve that. My dresses did not rustle in the evening air
as I strolled to the theater (I had no evening, 1 had no theater; my
dresses were made of a cheap cotton, the weave of wh~ch would give
way after not too many washings). I got up in the morning, I did my
chores (fetched water from the public pipe for my mother,swept the
yard), I washed myself, I went to a woman to have my hair combed
freshly every day (because before we were allowed into our classroom
. our teachers would inspect JlS, and children who had not bathed that
day, or had dirt under their fingernails, or whose hair had not. been

JAMAICA KINCAID 1211

combed anew that day might not be allowed to attend class). 1 ate that
breakfast. 1 walked to school. At school we gathered in an auditorium
and sang a hymn, "All Things Bright and Beautiful," and looking down
on us as we sang were portraits of the queen of England and her
husband; they wore jewels and medals and they smiled. 1 was a
Brownie. At each meeting we would form a little group around a
flagpole, and after raising the Union Jack, we would say, "I promise to
do my best, to do my duty to God and the queen, to help other people
every day and obey the scouts' law."
But who ~ere these people and why had 1 never seen them? 1 mean,
really seen them, in the place where they lived? I had never been to
England. England! I had seen England's representatives. I had seen the
governor-general at the public grounds at a ceremony celebrating the
queen's birthday. I had seen an old princess and I had seen a young
princess. They had both been extremely not beautiful, but who among
us would have told them that? I had never seen England, really seen it
1 had only met a representative, seen a picture, read books, memorized
its history. 1 had never set foot, my own foot, in it.
The space between the idea of something and its reality is always
wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart - idea of thing,
reality of thing - the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker
and darker the darkness. This space starts out empty, there is nothing
in it, but it rapidly becomes filled up with obsession or desire or hatred
or love - sometimes all of these things, sometimes some of these things.
That the idea of something and its reality are often two completely
different things is something no one ever remembers; and so when they
meet and find that they are not compatible, the weaker of the two, idea
or reality, dies.
And so finally, when 1 was a grown-up woman, the mother of two
children, the wife of someone, a person who resides in a powerful
country that takes up mQre than its fair share of a continent, the owner
of a house with many rooms in it and of two automobiles, with the
desire and will (which I very much act upon) to take from the world
more than I give back to it, more than ( deserve, more than ( need,
finally then, 1 saw England, the real England, not a picture, not a
painting, not through a story in a book, but England, for the first time.
In me, the space between the idea of it and its reality had become filled
with hatred, and so when at last I saw it ( wanted to take it into my
hands and tear it into little pieces and then crumble it up as if it were
clay, child's clay. That was impossible, and so (could only indulge in
not-favorable opinions.

2121 CONCERT OF VOICES

If I had told an English person what 1 thought, that I find England

ugly, that I hate England; the weather is like a jail sentence; the English
are a very ugly people; the food in England is like a jail. sentence; the
hair of English people is so straight, so dead-looking; the English have
an unbearable smell so different from the smell of people 1 know, real
people, of course, I would have been told that I was a person full of
prejudice. Apart from the fact that it is I -:- that is, the people who look
like me-who would make that English person aware of the
unpleasantness of such a thing, the idea of such a thing, prejudice,that
person would have been only partly right, sort of right: I may be
capable of prejudice, but my prejudices have no weight to them, my
prejUdices have no force behind them, my prejUdices remain opinions,
my prejUdices remain my personal opinion. And a great feeling of rage
and disappointment came over me as I looked at England, my head full
-of personal opinions that could not have public, my public, approval.
The people I come from are powerless to do evil on a grand scale.
The moment I wished every sentence, everything I knew, that began
with England would. end with "and then it all died, we don't know how,
it just all died" was when I saw the white cliffs of Dover. I had sung
hymns and recited poems that were about a longing to see the white
cliffs of Dover again. At the time I sang the hymns and recited the .
poems, 1 could really long to see them again because 1 had never seen
them at all, nor had anyone around me at the time. But there we were,
groups of people longing for something we had never seen. And so
there they were, the white cliffs; but they were not that pearly, majestic
thing I used to sing about, that thing that created such a feeling in these
people that when they died in the place where I lived they had
themselves buried facing a direction that would allow them to see the
white cliffs of Dover when they were resurrected, as surely they would
be. The white cliffs of Dover; when finally I saw them, were cliffs, but
they were not white; you could only call them that if the word "white"
meant something special to you; they were steep; they were so steep,
the correct height from which all my views of Enghlnd, starting with the
ma:p before me in my classroom and ending with the trip I had just
taken, should jump and die and disappear forever.

CONCER! OF VOICES /213

Thomas King
Coyote Goes to Toronto
Coyote went to Toronto
to become famous.
It's TRUE
that's what she said.
She walked up and down those
FAMOUS streets.
And she stood on those
FAMOUS corners.
Waiting.

So that RAIN came along.

So that WIND came along.
So that HAIL came along.
So that SNOW came along.
And that PAINT began to peel
and pretty soon the people
came along and says,
HEY, that's Coyote, by golly
she's not looking too good.
And the women brought her FOOD.
And the men brushed her COAT
until it was shiney.
And the children PLAYED with
their friend.
I been to Toronto Coyote tells
the people.
Yes, everybody says,
We can SEE that.

But nothing happened.

so.
Coyote got hungry and went

into a restaurant

to EAT.

But there was a long line

and.Coyote could see it was
because the restaurant was .
painted a BEAUTIFUL green.
so.
Coyote painted herself GREEN
and she went back to the rez
to show the people what an
UP-TO-DATE Coyote she was.
And she srOOD on the rez

and waited.

214/ CONCERT OF VOlqES'

THOMAS KING /215

Joy Kogawa

What Do I Remember of the Evacuation

What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my father telling Tim and me
About the mountains and the train
And the excitement of going on a trip.
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my mother wrapping
A blanket around me and my
Pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy
Though I was so excited I couldn't sleep
(I hear there were people herded
Into the Hastings Park like cattle.
Families were made to move in two hours
Abandoning everything, leaving pets
And possessions at gun point.
I hear families were broken up

Men were forced to work. I heard

It whispered late at night

That there was suffering) and

I missed my dolls.

What do I remember of the evacuation?

I remember Miss Foster and Miss Tucker

Whostilllive in Vancouver

And who did what they could

And loved the children and who gave me

A puzzle to piay with on the train.

And I remember the mountains and I was

Six years old and I swear I saw a giant

Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels scanning the horizon

And when I told my mother she believed it too
And I remember how careful my parents were
Not to bruise us with bitterness
And I remember the puzzle of Lorraine Life

2161 CONCERT OF VOICES

Who said "Don't insult me" when I

Proudly wrote my name 'in Japanese
And Tim flew the Union Jack
When the war was over but Lorraine
. And her friends spat on us anyway
.And I prayed to the God who loves
All the children in his sight
That I might be white.

When I Was a Little Girl

When I was a little girl
We used to walk together
Tim, my brother who wore glasses,
And I, holding hands
Tightly as we crossed the bridge
And he'd murmur, "You pray now"
-being a clergyman's sonUntil the big white boys
Had kicked on past.
Later we'd climb the bluffs
Overhanging the ghost town
And pick the smaJI white lilies
And fling them like bombers
Over Slocan.

JOY J<OGAWA/21.7

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

hollows of celestial lakes.

In his calloused flesh, her
weightless soles, Cool and slack,
clenched in his stranger's fever.

AhMah
Grandmother was smaller
than me at eight. Had she
been child forever?
Helpless, hopeless, chin sharp

as a knuckle, fan face

hardly half-opened, not a scrap

of fat anywhere: she tottered

in black silk, leaning on
handmaids, on two tortured
fins. At sixty, his sons all

married, grandfather bought her,

Soochow flower song girl.

Every bone in her feet

had been broken, bound tighter
than any neighbor's sweet
daughter's. Ten toes and instep
curled inwards, yellow petals
of chrysanthemum, wrapped

To LiPoh
I read you in a stranger's tongue,
Brother whose eyes were slanted also.
But you never left to live among
Foreign devils. Seeing the rice you ate grow
In your own backyard, you stayed on narrow
Village paths. Only your mind travened
Easily: east, north, south, and west
Compassed in observation of field
And family. All men were guests
To one who knew traditions, the best
Of race. Country man, you believed to be Chinese
No more than a condition of human history.
Yet I cannot speak your tongue with ease,
No longer from China. Your stories
Stir griefs of dispersion and find
Me in simplicity of kin~

in gold cloth. He bought the young

face, small knobby breasts

he swore he'd not dress in sarong

of maternity. Each night

he held her feet in his palms,
like lotus in the tight

2181 CONCERT OF VOICES

SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM /219