Dedicated to my daughter Lucia Lui, whose heart broke too young.
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She was beautiful. Born to a Caribbean father and a mixed Canadian Native, French and Spanish mother. She had beautiful soft brown curls and her hair would take shape like a wild afro. When her mother braided her hair like the other Native women, it was a skinny short braid that curled back onto itself. She had big brown clear eyes. Her skin was delicate and light brown. She was tiny for her age because she had been sick since she was just six months. Mother called her Little Loo since she was just shy of two years old.
She woke covered in mucus everyday. Despite this, she was happy. Happier than any other person her mother met. She would laugh at everything, and smile at everyone, and dance to every sound. Little Loo was named after the Latin word for “Light,” Lucia, but she was called all sorts of names by her family. Her siblings called her “Loo She” and others called her “Lulu.” She did not mind it and responded to all of the names with love and affection by blowing kissing and offering to share her food with others.
Today, was a special day, as she was dressed in a pair of pretty star covered shoes and a pink fringe covered dress. She was going with her mother to celebrate the earth, and she knew these were her dancing shoes, so she squealed with delight. She rode a disability bus with her mother to the big school with the teepee structure. It was the end of April and there was still snow on the ground. Her mother would tell her that this is Canada and apologize to her for not bringing her to the Caribbean Sea. Little Loo understood her mother’s coversation yet she mostly stopped talking after her Daddy left. She only said a few random words now and sometimes said her Daddy’s name. After she would say his name, she would look to her mother to see if she would respond. Her mother would hear her but would not make eye contact. Her mother would just stare at the ground and pretend that she did not hear the word. She knew what the Caribbean was since her mother had homeschooled her older siblings and sat her in baby chairs right in the middle of the kitchen and living room classes. Her mother showed her pictures of her father’s home everyday and when her mother and Daddy were still in love, she would also get to see a picture of her Daddy.
She knew who her Daddy was since he was the first to hold her when she was born. Her mother went through two days of labour with no pain medication. Mother’s water had been broken for too long and her mother had an infection, so she had to come by a C-section. Her Daddy held her every day when he was home. When he went away to prison, she would say his name all day and visit him twice a week in the jail. She was so young, she did not seem to understand where she was. She just knew she was in her Daddy’s arms again, so she would look up at him and smile while he held her.
Her Daddy was gone away to jail again and this time there would be no visits. He was waiting on a trial for an attempted murder against her mother. Her Daddy was not Canadian so it was looking like he would spend a long time in jail and then be deported back to his home. She had no idea she may never see him again and she had no idea why her mother stopped showing his picture to her. Her mother had packed all the pictures of her Daddy off the walls one day and put them away in a box. Her mother stopped talking about her Daddy. She would go to the window and pull back the curtains to look for him sometimes because he used to stand outside by the road waiting to visit her. She saw what her Daddy did to her mother and when the scars started to heal, she would touch them by pressing her pointed tiny little index finger on them and say “owie.” It would hurt her mother when she touched them, but her mother would not get upset, she would just acknowledge the pain and let Little Loo press on the scars.
Her mother tried not to show her sadness so she did the same. This was their second day in a row going dancing to live music. She walked into the teepee shaped building and saw paintings of eagles on the walls and stuffed animals in glass on display cases. Her eyes lit up with everything there was to see. She could hear the guitar and singing and she started dancing right away. She would spin around and then bounce up and down to watch the pink fringes on her dress bob up and down. She was laughing and all the adults and children around her were happy too.
Then it happened. She was dancing and she saw a Caribbean man come in. She only saw him from the back. He had shoulder length dreds like her Daddy and dark skin like him too. He was built like him but he was wearing black sunglasses. He walked right passed her while she danced and he climbed some steps to the top. Then he sat down to watch the festivities. Her mother saw her stare at him, she saw how her eyes would not leave him, and her mother saw her break away from the dance floor. Her mother followed her as she climbed the side stairs. She did not head straight for him. Instead, she climbed to the platform just behind him and would walk slowly back and forth behind him to be sure it was her Daddy. It looked just like him from behind. She grabbed a tiny pink spoon that she had found near by on the ground and she threw it beside him. He did not notice it but her mother noticed what she was doing. She was young but she was smart. She climbed back down the side stairs that she had come up, then walked across the floor to the middle stairs where he sat at the top. She looked at the pink spoon and pointed at it and then she looked at her mom for approval to climb the stairs. Her mother nodded her head and she climbed right towards the Caribbean man. When she got to the top, she grabbed her pink spoon and then turned to rest her hand on the sitting man’s knee. She heard her mother apologize to the man for her touching him. She heard her mother tell him that he looked a bit like her father and heard her explain how his dreds were similar to her father’s dreds. She stopped smiling when she heard her mother speak and when she could see that this was not actually her Daddy.
The man replied, “Mistaken by dreds.”
Then Little Loo did not stay long enough for her mother to reply and she turned to her mother with her arms stretched out to be carried down the stairs. Her mother picked her up. She could feel her tight hug around her neck and feel her cheeks pressed into her shoulder. Little Loo was sad and her mother could feel it. She brought her to the floor to dance again but when she placed her feet down on the ground, her feet did not move with happiness anymore. Instead, she stood there for a moment and then walked over to a table and chairs. She pulled herself up on the chair and sat down and looked toward the Caribbean man to stare at him. It was not her Daddy and she knew that now. Her mother saw this a lot. At the Airport, she walked right up to an African man and placed her hands on his knees to see his face. Her mother saw a sadness each time she looked on the wrong man’s face. Her mother would not dare to take the pictures out of the box. Her mother was too scared to let her live the same life she had lived.
Her mother’s father, who passed away before Little Loo was born was also around all the time when her mother was a little girl. Then he kept going away to jail too, like her Daddy. Her mother remembers spending a whole childhood looking upon the faces of men searching for her Daddy too. Her mother once smiled and laughed all the time but every mistaken face she looked upon would make her sadness grow bigger until it was a lump of sickness in her body. Her mother knew she was sick. Her mother got sick when her Daddy first left for jail, just like Little Loo, but the sickness grew until it made her unwell. Her mother’s father, the grandfather she never met, was her mother’s whole wide world. Even when he passed away her mother still found herself looking for her father’s face in the men that she gazed upon. Like Little Loo, it was always an identity that was “mistaken by dreds,” only for her mother it was not dreds. It was soft brown curls, like the ones that Little Loo had now. If Little Loo had lost her mother on the day her Daddy was taken away from her, she would search for her mother’s face too. If mother died that day, Little Loo, would stop dancing and smiling. So as sad as it was for her to lose her Daddy, the memory of a living Daddy is far better than the memory of a dead mother.
