Playing Dominoes

By Michelle Berry (page 3 of 5)

We weren't running from persecution, we weren't leaving because we had to, we weren't coming to Canada for good. We would return to the States, we reasoned, in a couple of years. We spoke the same language as Canadians. We had come from a democracy to a democracy. My father had a guaranteed job. He was an academic. I was blonde and blue-eyed. I was Betsy Ross, for God's sake. I'd memorized all the states and their capitals. I knew the U.S. presidents. We'd fit right in.

There's a photo of me on the ferry, my arms open wide. I'm wearing flowered pants, a long jacket. My brother is smiling. But where's my face? My hair is in my face. Long hair blowing around my head, covering my eyes, my mouth. You have to look twice to see which direction I'm facing. You have to notice the little knee bumps and the way my hands turn. You have to look closely at the bit of forehead peeking out of the wind-whipped hair. I'm sailing forward but looking back. Caught in a moment between two countries. Not knowing the differences that lie ahead but obviously enjoying that in-between stage that I seem to have stayed in my entire life.

The ferry docked July 1st, 1975. My mother had clam chowder at a local pub in Sidney, while the customs officers went over our moving van. She remembers that. What she ate. I don't know what I ate. I was probably tired. Two weeks on the road, no matter how many bags of toys you get or swimming pools you dive into, has to take its toll on a seven year old. There must have been a need for home, for stability, for somewhere to put down those bags of toys, for some shelf to place my squirrel.

The first house we rented had a balcony attached to my second floor room. I would stand on the balcony and look down at my brother as he and his new friends would ride in circles on their bikes, trying to make me dizzy. And the second house we rented had a lofty room in what probably once was the attic, a large room separated by stairs, a room that my brother and I shared, tapping out morse-code on the walls that separated our beds. Three short, three long, three short: S.O.S. My parents bought the third house from my best friend's parents. I moved into Sarah's old room. I knew all the hiding places in the house (the upstairs linen closet, the rocky basement), I knew the ins and outs, the creaks in the stairs. I knew the spot in the driveway where her cat had its head cut off in the door of the car. I knew the rust-coloured spot on the carpet in my bedroom where the same cat had been born.

The summer we arrived, my brother and I on our bikes with a gang of kids from the neighbourhood, we weren't different. Everything around me said that things wouldn't be different in Canada. I had skinned knees like the kid down the street. I had long hair I wore in pig-tails just like every other girl I saw. I went from riding bikes with banana seats and streamers in Virginia, to riding bikes with banana seats and streamers in Victoria. Both places started with a V. But then came Mrs. Harrington's grade two class. Oaklands Elementary School. I listened to the class sing Oh Canada! and say the Lord's Prayer every morning. I kept waiting for the National Anthem. When did we "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America?" The flag I had so trickily sewn in that school play - red, white, blue. I would look around every morning, waiting. What was going on?

And then it dawned on me that everyone around me knew things I didn't know. The provinces. They knew what provinces were. They even knew the capital cities of the provinces and the lakes and the other big bodies of water. I was suddenly not the same as everyone else and suddenly very far behind. And kids notice that kind of thing. They notice when you pronounce words differently. I remember sitting with a little East Indian girl in the library at school on one of the first days and I remember everyone laughing at me because I said "orange" differently. I said "R-ange." I said "toilit paper" and "meelk." The little East Indian girl was so nervous that day that she threw up all over the library books spread out in front of us. I remember the smell. But no one noticed because I was the novelty of the day.