By Xarnah Stewart
Edited by Jessica Liu and Alloe Mak
A mock-epic about Derry Girls.
Love, to me, was the fear of death for a really long time.
I knew I loved someone the moment vivid images of untimely death struck my consciousness. I knew I loved someone because I would lay awake at night wondering what I would do if they died. I knew I loved someone because if they were to pass away before I did, a piece of my soul and body would be ripped from me.
My cohesive understanding of love outside of my family came when I had my first set of real friends in early adulthood. When you’re a kid, you have people you are surrounded by and they are your whole world. Not because you want them to be, but because they just so happen to be the extent of your worldly knowledge outside of your household. I used to think all white people were Italian because all the white people at my school were Italian. I used to think my best friend was the best person at being a friend in the whole world because she was the only one I had. But, then, you grow up and you’re exposed to the rest of the world, one bit at a time, and you realize that all white people are not Italian and your best friend isn’t a very good friend.
“I can’t cross my legs properly.”
“Huh?”
“Like, when I cross my legs, they don’t fold down all the way.” I demonstrated. My leg jutted out when I crossed one over the other. “Does that make me fat?”
My best friend at the time thought for a moment. She looked at my legs. She shrugged and said, “Yes.” After another pause, she added, “Why does it matter?”
“Because fat people are ugly. They sag.”
I remember being twelve at the time.
Joanna rolled her eyes and stood up.
“You do not sag.”
“But I am fat?”
“Yes,” she said again. She left.
I wonder, now, if she was a true friend.
You’re alone in a world that you’re not very used to being alone in. When I started high school, I used to cry to my mum about my lack of friends. I asked her why I had to be so introverted compared to my siblings and why my social anxiety was through the roof compared to the rest of the people in my family. Even my dog was a better socializer than me. I used to creep into school with a sinking realization in my stomach: everyone else had friends except for me. I had been excited to start high school because it meant a new, fresh start—it meant that I could shed myself from who I had been in elementary school and become the girl I had envisioned for myself ever since I was a child. Instead, I continued to be the big-nosed, broad-shouldered, awkward Black girl that everyone only sort of liked. I wasn’t smart, I wasn’t very likable, and I wasn’t even that pretty. I was just some girl. And being average, at the time, had been something I was constantly dodging. The fact that I was average and had always been average lingered around me until I allowed it to sink into my skin and the very fabric of my being.
But then, all of a sudden, I made friends and I didn’t know what to do with the love I had for them. This is before they taught me how to say I love you and this is before they showed me that a slight touch or the reassurance of a “be safe” meant love. Before I had the means to channel all my Love, I could only do the one thing that I definitely knew how to do: cry.
I cried to myself in my bed and thanked whatever had happened in the catastrophic scope of the universe for people to suddenly want to be my friend. To this day, I don’t understand why I have the amazing friends that I have and what I did to deserve the love that we have for each other. I used to cry and cry and cry and think about the times my “friends” in elementary school had not invited me to hang out even though everyone else was invited. I cried because my friends always invited me now—they always looked in my direction when they wanted to make plans. They don’t use me because my parents always offer rides. They don’t mumble insults under their breaths. They don’t think I’m stupid or ditzy. They see potential in me that no one else has ever seen. The friendships I harbor with my now longtime best friends, Maya and Luxsmy, have created the very fundamentals of who I am now. They are the reason I have the other friends I have now, the reason that I know and adore the person that I am sleeping next to right now.
I used to cry, but now I say, “I love you, you know. I worry about you, you know.”
–
It is only recently that I have realized that Love is different for other people. For my dad, Love is nostalgia and pride. It is about missing the people he loves. It is seeing the people he misses from his youth in the people that he has now. Thus, Love is Trinidad and being Trini.
What follows is a short transcription of a conversation between my Dad and I on a warm drive through the city. And, as it usually goes, the windows were down and the music was blasting something like Earth, Wind and Fire or maybe Sade and Bill Withers. Nonetheless, the music was playing, the sun was setting, my dad’s foot lay on the gas and he wanted to go fast. I also realize when my dad is at the wheel, he feels younger than he is. I think he remembers all the driving he did around the Savannah in Trinidad. I think he remembers driving me to soccer practice, telling me that I was better than I thought I was at ball control. Maybe he remembers four drives to the hospital—one through a snowstorm—to give my mother a chance to give a healthy birth to his kids. But maybe, in the end, he remembers how he learnt to drive with my Papi patiently grinding instructions through his teeth until they became frustrated snaps. Maybe he remembers driving to swimming practice and playing rugby with his friends. But, anyway, here is Love in my Dad’s words.
DAVID: Your Papi started teaching these kids how to play lawn tennis—it is not something that middle-class people had an opportunity to do. It was for the upper class. Everybody was just critique and football. It was all these things that Papi used to do. He started teaching French in Trinidad
XARNAH: Was he good at it?
DAVID: He did French in high school and was around his parents when they spoke patois
XARNAH: Papi is that Trini? His parents were Trini and his parents before them were Trini…?
DAVID: Yes, this is how we got the estate. We got it right after slavery. They were offering it to ex-slaves
XARNAH: Reparations, I guess.
DAVID: Exactly, you could basically say they are the last descendants of slaves to own land over there
XARNAH: Really?
DAVID: Yeah, everyone else has sold their lands over time
XARNAH: [something sour in her mouth] Wow…
DAVID: In owning, in generation aspect – [he cuts himself off]. This is the problem that Papi has with giving it up when he and Uncle Lance dies. Give it away, everyone’s going to create more problems in the end. So my whole thing is, I didn’t realize, among growing up with all our friends, we were more fortunate. Since both my parents were teachers, they were both middle class—middle income, since I don’t like using the word class. It was the opportunities that were given to us.
XARNAH: This lane ends, Dad
DAVID: Yeah, down the road. I still have time
XARNAH: I mean, like, right after the light.
DAVID: I still have time, Xarn.
XARNAH: [rolling her eyes] Okay, Dad.
DAVID: [merging into the next lane, seamlessly, and smirking at his daughter who hates to be wrong but, as though cursed, always is] So anyway, I have always been in a position to share what I have with my friends. If you are my friend, I shouldn’t have to be looking for something in return. Look at Uncle Curtis and Aunty Cathy, when they first started to go around, when Curtus first went to visit Cathy at home, he asked me to go with him. He used to live in an appliance store and Cathy was working as a receptionist after school. But in the earlies, when we used to go and hang out, Aunty Cathy had gone and left home surviving on her own since she was about 20 years old. So we used to go up Toco most weekends and Uncle Dingo and I would plan out the menu and tell everyone $30 dollars ahead. I don’t know if I ever told you–
XARNAH: Yeah. Uncle Curtis and Aunty Cathy would only give one $30 for the both of them and “share.” You gave the other $30 to Uncle Dingo without ever telling Aunty Cathy and Uncle Curtis.
DAVID: Right, you know what I mean? Let me just put the money! Not to say I was richer, you understand. So a lot of times and a lot of things I was more considered the bog – the collective. Everybody brings something to the table. You know, that’s why I remember, one of the first times that we went back when y’all were young, Garnet’s wife said “You know, since you leave, everyone went a separate way.”
XARNAH: Yeah.
DAVID: But I will always make sure, you know, let me pick up this one let me pick up that one. No problem! Eh, we’re going out, okay, we don’t have enough money let me buy this and let me buy that and make sure the drunk ones get home. So…
XARNAH: Cause how old were you when you left again?
DAVID: 32. I just wanted to keep the unity and everybody together, yah understand. We all enjoyed each other. You know when I tell yah.. When Uncle TC died, Uncle Andy came and told me, “Boy, David.. Thanks, eh. You and Shelley [my mother] must be the only people in foreign who used to uh check for TC, yah know.” [He clears his throat] TC, man…
And I know that he misses strongly, that he always has. That loss, too, haunts him. His first friend who hung himself. His old friend dying of addiction. His mother of cancer. His oldest friend of heart disease. Untimely deaths. He drove to funerals, too. I forget that he grieves. His Love might be strong, I think.
XARNAH: How come you migrated to Canada without even sensing the vibes – I know, by then, more than half the family had been to Canada except for you.
DAVID: Because Papi came up here and studied and my mum was here for him–
XARNAH: Papi was getting his masters?
DAVID: No, his first degree.
XARNAH: Did Grandma Vera ever go back to school?
DAVID: No, because what she did– she did high school, went straight into teacher’s college–
XARNAH: Did Papi ever go to teacher’s college?
DAVID: Yeah, he taught straight out of high school and then went to Western for his teaching degree. You know, my mum’s SIN number is as old as since the 60s.
XARNAH: So where were they living?
DAVID: He went to Western so they were living somewhere on campus in Windsor.
XARNAH: Wow!
DAVID: Cause that’s where the scholarship was for.
XARNAH: I know, I completely forgot that. Now that I know where Western is, that’s crazy to me. Being Black in Windsor in the early 70s. When I was younger, that meant nothing–
DAVID: Now you can put things in perspective.
XARNAH: Yeah, I mean, that seems horrible
DAVID: No, I mean, it was an opportunity. You came, you do it. There were a lot of other West Indies and Trini’s there too.
XARNAH: I didn’t know that.
DAVID: A couple of them used to come to Papi and them because a lot of them would have come out of straight out of high school—Papi and Mum came as an old married couple so, you know, they were a mother figure and a father figure to some of them, you know. Aright? Who feeling homesick come by the Stewarts and chill out and as he says sometimes, keep them in track. Finish this thing. So when he graduated, a lot of them stayed up here but he said, “here what I have three children in Trinidad plus I am grateful for the Tinidad government for giving a scholarship so I will give back.”
XARNAH: Wow…
DAVID: So glad, you know, all you can say whether or not you were happy or not happy. And… I was happy…
And these days, my dad has been more nostalgic than usual and I think this scares me, because it evokes my sense of Love that is filled with the fear of loss. Love is omnipresent and in it, there is a gap, and that gap is death and loss and pieces of you slowly flaking off in the form of friendships that can no longer sustain themselves and, worse so, holes that are dug six feet in the ground.
–
Today I thrifted the wine-red purse of my dreams—it was plastered all over my Pinterest for ages now and I’ve been endlessly searching the thrift to find something that had even a slight resemblance to what I wanted. I have been on the hunt for years now. A wine-red purse with comically large buckles. I have gotten other bags to fill the void, following in the footsteps of Ms. Carrie Bradshaw herself, but nothing has ever satisfied me. Nothing has ever filled my consumerist heart; nothing has ever been worth the credit debt; nothing has been the real colour of red. Until today.
Rosy, another one of my friends, and I stepped into Value Village Richmond Hill and were immediately discouraged. I said, “It’s so dead in here” with a begrudging frown on my face.
And Rosy said, “It’s, like, a Monday afternoon.” She paused to tie her shoe. “And it’s raining.”
Only a few old women were pushing their carts around the store, shopping for dresses in the same section where I was shopping for dresses. It made me think of my mother. I tried not to think about it. Every time that I have stepped foot in a place where I plan to buy clothes, I have been met with women twice my age, with smiles plastered on their faces and compliments on the tips of their tongues. I always hear “That’ll look amazing on you” when I pull a skirt off the rack. I turn my head and am met with a short, stout old woman with her nails painted the wine red that marks the winter season and slight blue eyeshadow on her eyelids. And I think to myself: isn’t it wonderful to be pretty? Because these women are pretty. I hope they know that. I try not to think about my mom.
My mom doesn’t think that she is pretty and I wonder if she has always thought that about herself or if having four kids plays a role in it. She always comments on her weight and her hair and her eye bags. She says to me, mornings before events, “Can you do my eyeliner for me?” or I see her in the bathroom, dabbing makeup on her freckled face, and running her hands through her curled hair and I can see that look in her eyes. I can see the grimace that stares back at her through the mirror. I also see how she avoids them to begin with. And I am running out of ways to tell her that she is pretty in a way that she will listen to. I am scared of what will happen when I don’t have any other ways to say it.
Maybe I should just tell her. Mum, you’re pretty. You always have been. Instead of telling her that her hair is not thinned out, that she does not need to worry about how that shirt looks on her, or how she looks good in the jeans she just got. Mum, you’re pretty. If you are not pretty, what can I be?
And then I feel selfish for thinking of myself.
I try not to think about my mom.
Rosy and I strolled through the store with both of our wish lists that we put together over a home-cooked meal a few hours before. Once we warmed up from our walk from her place to Value Village and I was finally back in high spirits, I resorted to my natural ways and said, “Let’s look at the bags and the shoes, but mostly the bags and the boots”.
As Carrie Bradshaw has said, “I’m thinking balls are to men, what purses are to women. It’s just a little bag but we’d feel naked in public without it.”
Rosy held up a red purse and said, “This could be nice if it wasn’t for these giant buckles.” I spun my head around at this modest description to lay my eyes on something that had been almost directly out of my Pinterest board. I was immediately filled with a love that I had not felt for anyone or anything before or since. The only issue with the bag was that there was a clanging sound every time I moved it around. I didn’t think it was enough of an issue to put it back, so I paid for it and brought it home.
I sat down on the floor of my room and stuck my hand into the depths of the bag. I found a hole in one of the pockets and retrieved the culprit of the noise: old lipstick, a small container for Advil, and a string of house keys. I had to sit back and stare. The lipstick was the exact shade and brand that I used. The Advil is the same kind I buy at Shoppers. The house keys had the same tacky pattern. I had to think for a moment – was this an old bag that I had given away? It wasn’t.
And all of a sudden, I’m 16 again and I’m listening to Sonic Youth’s Teenage Riot on vinyl with Just Kids by Patti Smith on my bedside shelf. 16 doesn’t feel so long ago anymore. 16 was cool but 20 is not. 20 is just pretending to be 16 again but with 10k of debt 2 years into university, and sex isn’t what you thought it would be, and your love for the world has turned to resentment. Your carpet isn’t so new anymore so all you can think about as you lie there, in the cold of a February that isn’t as cold as it should be, is that your carpet isn’t so new anymore, and years of dust have embedded itself into the weaving, no matter how much you shove your vacuum through it. And things age, including you, and soon you will be undesirable and you wonder, slightly, if that’s so bad. I smear the lipstick on my lips and I forget if it is mine or the person who owned the bag before me. Suddenly, I am 12 again, wearing my mother’s lipstick, parading around in her clothes, and staring at her bags on the top shelf of her closet wishing that she would pull down one just for me to look at a little closer.
And I think about my mum and I’s need to wear accessories in order to consider ourselves pretty.
But I try not to think about my mum.
–
I was planning on writing about my Love for my friends but of course, here I am again, writing about my mother and my father and the Love that I have for them. So, maybe, at the end of it all, Love is none of these things. Maybe Love is simple. Maybe it is reading at bus stops and doing my makeup in public bathrooms. Always on the go. Enjoying life, I think. The sun is out again. And my friend Nora wrote about bathrooms. And Maya wants a rose. and Luxsmy is doing okay again. And I painted my nails red. Reading at a bus stop and making school notes on the TTC. I like to pretend I am a nomad or a cowboy, a girl whose home moves with her. I’ll always miss my old house though, and as Patti Smith put it, “Home is a desk. The amalgamation of a dream. Home is the cats, my books, and my work never done.”
When I look at how the rest of the people in my life Love, like my dad, I know that Love can not only be the fear of death. But I’ll try and stop worrying about all that and, as Kubrick put it, love the bomb. So, instead of begging my friends not to leave me or considering a life without them, I tell them to watch Derry Girls so that they get it. So that they get the love that I have for them and how it is expansive and vast and full. How it is thick and heavy but not like a weight—it is thick and heavy and solid because I carry it around in a big box next to my heart and, I argue, it is more important than my heart. So I tell them to watch Derry Girls because I know they will laugh and that is all I want for them. They, too, are just high school girls wishing for bigger things and causing trouble. And, god, I’m so happy they’re doing it with me.