What do you mean I am not white?

In the spring of 1978, my father accepted a job in another city thus requiring us to leave the city I knew and grew up in at the tender age of 7. When he announced this to the family, I was mortified. How could this be happening? To leave all my friends, the neighborhood and even Mrs. Sirunis?!

My Grade 2 teacher, Mrs. Wolfe, had become one of my closest allies. She just got me. She nurtured me and nursed my wounds when I proclaimed defeat in any battle that overwhelmed me. When I told her that I was moving, she made the entire class sign a goodbye card. Everyone wrote well wishes and even pasted some pictures of me in action at school or with my friends. Life would never be the same :(

My memory alludes me when comes to our family leaving and moving. I try to recall the events leading to ending up in the new city but I cannot grasp them. I do however, remember saying goodbye to my best friend Melissa, and her parents Godfrey and Rose.

I walked up to their house with my father to say goodbye. At age seven, it is hard to express one's sincerest emotions without getting embaressed by them. I remember shying standing BEHIND my father as he shook Godfrey's hand while Rose wiped hers with a dishtowel. She beckoned me to hug her, which I did but I could not do the same with Melissa. After weeks of hugging everyone under the sun and displaying my emotions to the world, I could not bring myself to even hug my best friend. I mimicked my father and shook Melissa's hand. She too looked embaressed and smiled back a toothless grin. She had just lost her front teeth. We had some small talk and then my father told us it was time to go. I walked down her driveway and paused to look back at her and smile. That was the last time I saw Melissa.

Melissa was replaced by Becky within a day. When we arrived to the new home, I was struck by how different the neighborhood was. First of all, we were the only 'brown' people on our street. Yes, it was a mainly Caucasian city. And I was about to switch from the majority to the minority...

Becky was playing in her front yard the next day after we arrived. She was playing catch with her older sister. Each time the ball went over the bushes into our side yard, my brother, sister and I would retrieve it, liked starved puppies and shoot it back over. It became a game that we all played for well over an hour. Becky finally came over and we became fast friends over the next ten years.

Becky never commented about my skin colour but she did ask about my background. She listened to my soliloquy of how my parents immigrated to Canada (this story was told a million times by my father who made it clear that I benefitted greatly due this one important decision he made over eight years ago). She shrugged her shoulders and asked what sport equipment we had. I pulled out a deflated soccer ball from our garage. That was the extent of my interrogation from her. Not one ounce of judgment or analysis. We were friends and that was all there was to it.

But when I started school mid year in Grade 2, I was quickly reminded about being the new girl. And a lot seemed to relate to what colour I was.

"What do you mean I am not white?" I retorted to the small, freckled boy who sat next to me on the first day of school.

"Well I am not sure why Mr. Waller put you next to me. You should sit somewhere else because the rest of us are white!" I looked at him confused as I slowly put my new notebook in the desk. He tried hard to sit away from me, in an angle, preventing his elbow from touching mine.

I was confused and perturbed as I walked home alone. My father had only showed me once how to get to school and clearly I was lost. I walked in a complete circle until one girl who lived on the same street noticed my confused state as I stood on the corner staring at the street sign.

"You are the new girl in Grade 2 right?" she asked. She was pretty and innocent looking, with long blond hair, rosy cheeks and a white starched dress. The antithesis of me. I looked down at my lime green pants, brown dress shirt with green leaves, and my hair in a matted mess, tucked behind my floppy ears.

"I am lost. I need to get home for lunch," I panted, already emotionally and physically tired from the morning I endured. She took my hand and walked through a short cut until I saw the trees that looked familiar near my home. We were on a main street that led directly into a forest at the top of the street where my house was one of the corner houses on an intersection. Before she left me, I turned to her to ask the million dollar question.

"Tara, am I not allowed to live here because I am not white?"

She looked at me oddly, tilting her head to one side.

"I did not notice your colour," she said and skipped to her home seven houses down.

Somehow, I was not convinced.