Invisible Scars
It was 39.1 degrees, June 22, 2019, the hottest day in the hottest month ever. Emme felt like a teabag, steamy and damp, as she lay on the grass looking at the Poinciana branches framing the sky. This will be the last weekend that she and her beloved Luca will read together as they loved to do, in Emancipation Park, before they start their bachelors’ degrees in universities abroad. Looking around, it appeared other people had the same idea to congregate in Emancipation Park-for family gathering, church choir practice and horny teenagers taking advantage of the privacy of the shrubbery. A park aptly named for a promise that escapes most Jamaicans.
As if to break the silence of this moment, her boyfriend casually mentions how his grandfather said “you couldn’t find a girlfriend with lighter skin?!” in reference to her graduation picture. Luca laughed as he relayed his grandfather’s dismay at the ‘shame’ of Emme’s dark complexion. In that moment Emme’s entire face felt like embers. She didn’t know whether to curse, scream or cry. Instead, she comforted herself by steadying her tongue in the roof of her mouth. Here she was, head laid, in the lap of the boy who was her rising sun, the peas to her rice. A tender moment spoiled by a bigoted anecdote. She stayed silent, lest she be dismissed as “too sensitive” or an “angry black woman”, statements she always thought dismissed the validity of real feelings. Luca, as sweet as he was, did not really understand colorism.
Hazel eyed, beautiful Luca belonged to an entire group of people in Jamaica who are preferred. Born to a light skinned black Jamaican woman and a German father, he was a brownin’. A group of people, who although historically conceived violently, by the rape of enslaved Africans by masters, became a buffer between the rich and the poor in Jamaica. The coveted population, the definition of beauty, as popular reggae artiste Buju Banton sings “mi love mi car, mi love mi bike, mi love mi money and ting but most of all mi love mi brownin!”
Both Emme and Luca lived uptown in a neighbourhood, where ivy grows on the walls of some houses, with electronic gates, maids who wear uniforms and gardeners tend hedges even in the dry period.
Emme was the youngest of six and the darkest one. Because she was an “accident” and her only sibling left in the house was six years her senior, she grew up as essentially an only child. She was what people in Jamaica would call ‘blue black’. The opposite of desirability, black skin is associated with harshness, ‘roughness’ or a rough life. In the media, the dark skinned woman is a buxom market vendor, the lady for which harsh industrial cleaning agents is most appropriate and the site of ‘rough sex’ for which tonic wines for sexual stamina are needed. Seldom are they featured as wives or heads of households. In spite of this, she was showered daily by her parents with positive affirmations of her beauty with words like “pretty princess” and “sweetness”. A revolutionary act in an oftentimes anti-black society. They were hyperbolically proud black people. The kind who wore African print and made yearly ‘meccas’ to Ghana. Emme idolized her empowering mother who always said to her “Find a man you love to talk to and wants to provide for you, but you MUST DO YOUR OWN TING mi chile’!
Although her parents were successful lawyers, and considered ‘upper class’ they could not protect her from discrimination. When she was 5, only her dark-skinned classmates, Kayla and Anne (out of the classroom of 25 students) came to her birthday party. She learned that in this society it is not enough to simply be wealthy, one’s complexion also has to reflect suitability. Jamaica like other former British colonies not only obsessed over cricket and tea, but complexion and how to get far, far away from ‘darkness’.
August 2019
‘Miss can I offer you a drink?’ Emme shyly accepted the glass of fruit punch, wet from condensation, from a waiter all too eager to serve. He was sweating profusely in a bow tie with a black vest, shiny from frequent ironing. ‘Where is he?” she thought to herself as she looked across her boyfriend’s vast backyard populated with only white tables, freshly pressed table cloths and floral arrangements. She had to be dropped off there early because her father had a meeting. Luca was going to Harvard in two weeks. This was his going away party. They already planned to see each other every weekend since she was attending school in a neighbouring state. In this moment, however, she regretted her early arrival. She was lonely and noticed that the only dark -skinned people around were the waiters.
On realizing she left her phone at home, bored, she started to watch two ants running like little black dots feverishly across the white table cloth, perhaps reflecting a larger metaphor for her futile efforts to be accepted in this family. Out of nowhere, she heard a familiar voice “Emme, Emme darling!”
Looking up as if in a dream, his mother appeared in a peach dress flowing as if the wind was her natural helper. “Hi Aunty Ellen, you look so lovely” Emme said. Ellen smiled “my son told me that you are going to NYU to study Creative Writing, how sweet” she added condescendingly. Emme was never really sure if Luca’s mother liked her, as she always smiled at her with clenched teeth.
Slowly people started coming in, Luca’s friends from his high school, who she never quite felt comfortable around, arm-in arm with their girlfriends newly bronzed from a day spent at Maiden Cay and his parents’ friends. They started mingling, cocktails started flowing. Her best and only friend Kayla was still vacationing with her family abroad and she felt mad at her, for leaving her in these social situations all by herself.
“Babbbayyy!” Luca shouted, a bunch of brown, black and white faces looked at Emme with a mixture of surprise and confusion. ‘Yes honey!” she answered as he approached her. They hugged and he kissed her firmly on the mouth. Grabbing her hand he said “come, there are some people I want you to meet”. As she made her way across the lawn, Michael (the overgrown idiot who repeated all of his CSEC subjects) shouted “Emme, WHAT IS THAT BIG RED TING ON YOUR DRESS? As if they weren’t a spectacle enough, Emme realized that she got her period. She wanted to disappear. The combination of summertime and lady’s legs always confused her because she was never quite sure if she was perspiring or menstruating. Letting go of Luca’s hand she ran to the bathroom inside the house, but on her way she stumbled into his bigoted grandfather who said “wow you darker than mi remember, yuh alrightt?” Emme burst into tears, she simply could not deal with everything, the embarrassment of her stain, the awful party and the bigoted grandpa, and so she ran home.
Running for what felt like an eternity, she fell into a pothole with a swiftness that bruised her face, elbows, and knees and further stained her white dress. Tears blurring her vision, she heard faintly in the distance a very breathy “baaabe, stop!” Looking behind her she saw that Luca was a little distance away with his hands on his knees gasping for breath. Nearing her house, she waited for him to catch up. When he got closer, he knelt beside her and hugged her and said “wow you’re fast, you’re the next Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce”. Both of them, now a human puddle in the middle of the road. They both chuckled and then Luca solemnly apologized for his grandfather’s words, saying “that old guy has dementia, but I will talk to him because what he said to you was unacceptable.” “Let’s get you home” he said “but what about your party?” Emme asked. He kissed her firmly on the lips and said “nothing is more important than my pretty princess”.