Killing Me Softly

L'auteur nous raconte sa conscientisation a l'althitedeson statut d'imigrante etde la violence systemique inhbente a la racialisation etses consequences. Elle a hS marquee comme intellectuellement inferieure dans un systeme d'education autoritaire. C'estaussi une histoire qui temoigne de la resistances desAfricaines face k une violence discourtoise. I sit on the floor beside the oversized windows with my legs crossed, scanning my trove of high school photographs. As I gaze out at the expanse of blue sky, the deceptive sunlight shines through the windows beckoning to me. I do not submit. Having lived here long enough I know better. Even as the sun's scattered beams caress my face and warm my shoulders, I know that it is freezing outside. I think back to the summer of 1998, the year I turned 15. It was the year I graduated from Wolmers' High School for Girls; the year my father received the news that my long awaited papers being filed by Mummy through Citizenship and Immigration Canada had been approved; the year I said goodbye to my Island home and boarded a plane for what was to become my new home, Toronto. Seated on the floor of the apartment I saw my first day at Weston Collegiate Institute. Mummy and I sat between two girls on a row of benches outside the guidance counsellors office. A man, in his late sixties perhaps, face blemished by age lines with thin hair stretched and pasted across his balding forehead, appeared in the hallway. His thin, cherry pink lips parted in a smile that inched wider and wider across his ghostly pale face. He scanned a piece of paper attached to a clipboard in his hand, and looked out into the hallway through brilliant blue eyes that glistened through his rounded spectacles before calling out in and unexpectedly harsh, raspy voice, Watson, you can come in now. As he walked down the hallway in front of us, his uneven gait drew my attention. He hobbled on one foot dragging the other closely behind him. He led us into his office, closed the door, shook my mother's hand, and introduced himself (Mr. Albanese was his name) before sitting in a big-armed, dark brown leather chair that swallowed his slender frame. Except for the mahogany stained desk intruding on the space between the guidance counselor and us, the office had very little furniture. Even still, the atmosphere inside the dimly lit room weighed heavy. Off to one side of the desk in a corner stood a vintage coat hanger embossed with ornate vines and flowers meticulously crafted onto a wrought-iron rod. The vines danced around the pole eventually spilling out into an open claw at the top where a felt hat sat comfortably. On the opposite side stood a filing cabinet that also doubled as a shelf. On the shelf sat a lamp whose depressing glow flickered into the small space, gradually dying as it landed onto the bare off-white walls. I gazed at the odd looking large yellow shade meticulously painted with pictures of horses running in an open field. He opened his mouth to speak. His words poured with such profusion they surged through the yawning gap that was his mouth, and spilled over his crooked yellow teeth before leaping and landing onto my mother and me. As he spoke, the flesh separating Mummy's freshly plucked eyebrows furled into ripples. They remained unyielding as he continued to speak. My mother, now overwhelmed by the volley of words--words she knew nothing about--offered up the only response she could, her still furrowed brow. I sat quietly, scribbling notes in my notepad. Leaning forward on the edge of my chair, I glanced at the pile of papers he stacked before Mummy. She looked away surreptitiously. Reaching down deep into her large patent leather handbag, I could hear her air-brushed acrylic nails claw through loose change, compact, wallet and a pair of scissors--my mother always carried a pair of scissors in her purse--before making their way to an opening in the side of the purse. …

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