Annie John: A Gay Boy's Hero

In grade 9 English Literature we studied the book Annie John, by Jamaican Kincaid. There are aspects of the book that I have never forgotten, and this is because I believe Annie's story provided a framework for me to envision a different future, perhaps away from Jamaica.

After looking at a summary of one of the chapters, I remembered why Annie's story stayed with me.

Chapter 6: Somewhere, Beligium

In this chapter, Annie is fifteen years old, and she imagines that she is unhappier than anyone else could possible be. I was also fifteen. I feet alone, yet everyone seems oblivious to the pain I felt. Her unhappiness cannot be traced to a simple factor, but thrives inside like a heavy black ball that is covered with cobwebs This is one of the symbols that I always remembered. Annie believes that this blackness inside makes everything that she once enjoyed appear sour.

Annie starts to daydream. She decides that she wants to move to Belgium, where Jane Eyre, her favorite character, once traveled. In Belgium, Annie's mother could address letters to her as "Annie John, Somewhere Belgium," because Annie would not say in what city she was. I have had a mild obsession with Belgium to this day. It is worth noting that the character of Jane Eyre, herself, is an orphan who always felt cast out and separated from the world. Annie's tendency to identify with Jane, despite the fact that she has a family, demonstrates how alienated and isolated she feels from her mother. I too started to feel alienated from my mother after my parent's divorce. Especially when my mother started to date men. She loved me less, surely.

One day Annie walks into town after school. She finds herself in front of a clothing store and sees her reflection in the window. Annie sadly observes that she looks awkward and ugly, and she compares herself to a picture of young Lucifer. Puberty was an interesting time for me. First I was the chubby child, then the maaga adolescent. I never felt attractive, and even today still am very self-conscious about my body. Some boys standing nearby start teasing Annie gently. Her mother explains that she was in the clothing store and saw Annie looking in. She also saw Annie flirting and conducting herself improperly with those boys. After Annie's mother uses the slang word for "slut" numerous times, Annie says "like mother like daughter." I too quipped at my mother when I felt she was out of line. I was punished, but parents should not be allowed to exercise power absolutely, absolved of wrongdoing because supposedly they know best. Sometimes parents do not know best. My mother lived in a time very different from my own. How dare her apply her own mother's parenting tactics today.

Annie's feeling of dismay at her physical body and appearance prefigures her physical illness that follows in the next chapter. Already by obsessing over the black ball of sadness in her and by seeing her face with distortion, Annie appears to be on the cusp of a mental breakdown. I'm not sure what insanity feels like, but I feel sure that I have come close to it. You think so much that you get absorbed into an alternate reality, characterized only by your concerns, anxieties and fear. Your resolve to fight disappears, and you become hateful of everything and everyone that has induced your feeling so inadequate. One of my teachers in high school once pulled me aside and informed me that she noticed I was quite aloof, and needed to change my approach to people if I was ever to be a good leader. I never cared to lead inconsiderate people, so her words meant little to me then.

Annie thinks she is ready to have her own trunk to put her own objects and stories into. Annie's desire for a trunk of her own foreshadows her eventual desire to emerge as a separate person. I can't as easily identify when I decided to step back from my reality and construct an identity and a place of my own. I think it happened near the end of high school when I made friends with other misfits who also sought to get away from their own realities.

The book ends with the following line:

"I could hear the small waves lap lapping around the ship. They made an unexpected sound as if a vessel filled with liquid had been placed on its side and was now emptying out."

Annie John drifts slowly away from every reality she has ever known, but towards one that she has dreamed of for years. The novel ends with her emergence as an independent young woman who will discover the world on her own, and determine a more agreeable reality. Not surprisingly, my own life follows a similar trajectory. I'll never forget the feeling I had while sitting on that Air Jamaica flight to Miami. I couldn't contain my excitement. I couldn't stop smiling. I looked out the window as the Kingston cityscape grew less and less visible. The cobwebs slowly started to fall from the black ball within.

When Home is not Home

When I left Jamaica two years ago, I was sure I would never return to live. I giggled nervously as I sat in the plane in Montego Bay, excited about the new world that awaited me in Canada. Weirdly enough, my love for Jamaica grew while I was away, and instead of constantly trying to run from the labyrinthine complexity of Jamaica's social problems, I desired to work to find solutions to them.

For over a year, the horrid reports of social dysfunction, which graced the pages of the Gleaner, haunted my every thought. I threw tantrums; I cried; I complained; I wrote. One wonders why, when the very society I started to care deeply for made me an outcast in my youth- I hated myself growing up, and constantly wished myself dead. I have come to a point now when I must acknowledge my obligations to my family; but I cannot continue to live like this--- constantly aching for solutions that are not forthcoming. Even if they were, there is not much that I could do to actually implement them.

I always asked of others, "if we don't go home, who will?" But I now understand why people stay away. I must now allow my individual aspirations to be stymied by fantastical visions of what Jamaica is to be. Frankly, I am tired of waking up each morning with the weight of a nation on my conscience. This of course is a symptom of my own weaknesses. Javed, WAKE UP!!! I finally made up my mind, I will not live in Jamaica anytime in the near future. Hopefully now I can set my sights on other, more attainable ambitions.

I hasten to remind myself of the reasons I desired to leave my island home in the first place. They weren't petty then and certainly aren't today.

Mi Buut a Beg Bred

As children, we tried desperately, and often in futility, to fit in with our peers. Our desire for acceptance caused much heartache, as lack of money was a most formidable hindrance to being able to ‘fit in’. Today though, we are stronger individuals because of those experiences, unafraid of admitting to our lacking something now that we understand that we are not defined by our material possessions. Everyone’s reality is different, and so long as we remind ourselves of that fact, we need not be ashamed of our circumstances.

Memories...

Mommy can I please have my lunch money? FP, I can only give you enough for bus fare, but don't worry, I will come by and give you the money for lunch by noon.

The lunch bell rings, and I run out to the playing field. Staying in the class room was never an option, because the students would ask if you weren't hungry, and why you weren't buying anything. Lunch period ends, and still, mommy is nowhere in sight in sight. She finally arrives at 2 pm, and she asks the teacher to take me from class for a bit. We go to the back of our building, and she offers me a slice of delicious potato pudding, which she baked that morning. I then drink some water at the stand-pipe, and run hurriedly back to class, but not before she wets her fingers with her saliva, and straightens my hairline and eyebrow.

Other times, she made sandwiches for my lunch, but I was too embarrassed to eat them at school, so I waited till I got back home. By then however, the guava jam had soaked through the bread, which became unappealingly soggy and squished. I would toss it to the dogs, and instead make a sandwich with white break and seasoned tomatoes. Word cannot express the shame I now feel, for discarding the food my mother so thoughtfully prepared. If only I could turn back the hands of time.

I remember the days when the front of my shoe began to open up, over worn after two years. Mommy insisted I wear my sneakers to school, so she could take my brown school shoes to the "shuu meka." The teachers would quickly notice the white shoes on my feet, and demand an explanation. The other kids though it was cool, but if I could have gone invisible on those days, I would have.

I used to dread yearly trips to attractions across the country. After paying the fee to go on the trip, we never had the money for me to enter the attractions, or to buy fast food at the end of the trip. I remember once, I had enough money to buy a two piece combo from KFC, but in order to save it, I had to skip seeing the Green Grotto Caves, and had planned to forego touring the Greenwich Great House. I waited outside while everyone toured, insisting that I had gone before. We got to Greenwich, and I everyone started lining up to enter, but I shied away. The teacher, Miss Bennett, called me over and insisted that I spend the negligible (likl) 20 dollars to enter. I felt weak...KFC was now a distant dream. We got to Montego Bay and everyone started dashing (in typical konchri pikni style) for KFC, Burger King and McDonald's. I went off on my own, touring the nearby stores, until everyone came back. I was able to afford an ice-cream cone, and I comforted myself with the rummy sweetness.

Jeans day: pay 10 dollars if you wear casual clothing. Oh how I hated those days. If I managed to find something to wear, I would always be embarrassed once I saw everyone else. I decided to stop participating, for it would often mean going without a snack at "break time." After a while however, the teachers started charging half the fee, for those who decided not to wear causal wear, anyway. The poor man always loses.

Then there is that ugly pair of jeans I bought in grade eight, that I wore for the duration of three years, whenever I had to go out. Sometimes, I was fortunate enough to wear my brothers' clothing. They were 8, and 4 years ahead of me. They never fit well, but I was afforded some variety. A year ago I went home, and saw the pair of jeans. I looked at it carefully, then put it away in a "skyandal bag" and tossed it in a barrel in the garage. I never want to see it again.

There were the textbooks I needed, but never had. It wasn't until grade 10 that I bought textbooks. I hated having to share with people, who were clearly disgruntled that they had to shift their books a little to the left so I could see. I would always tell them to keep it directly below their eyes; that I would be able to see regardless. I would borrow their books after school, and sometimes take it home, on the few nights that they wouldn't be using them. Literature classes were particularly challenging, for people would never lend those overnight. I never read any of the assigned books between grades 7 and 9- if the characters, themes, and the like, were not mentioned in class, I would never write about them.

Going home to a house without electricity. It was cut this morning while I was in school, for we couldn't find the money to pay the bill. Homework would be done under intimate candlelight, which burned out more quickly than I would have liked it to. The old iron was heated on the stove the next morning, for my school uniform had to be ironed before going to school...be careful now though, don't "blak op" the uniform.

My my my. How far we have come. I look back today, with a smile on my face...disbelieving that I faced those challenges as a child. What I have realized though, is that I wasn't alone. All over the world, from Mexico, to Kenya, to Namibia, to Fiji, other children were having similar experiences. We were all ashamed of our poverty, and wished to live differently. Little did we realize then how greatly our situations could change over time. Tis only a decade later, but things have radically changed for the better.

If only we realized the possibilities then...