CLOUDS

3/5/2026

Around the age of 5-7, I began to think of the world outside of myself and my place in it. I was also reading about everything that was happening in the world from newspapers and magazines my father brought home. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be Joan of Arc.  I wanted to be the Dalai Lama. I wanted to be with Mahatma Gandhi.

My father was a well-known sportsman and he won trophies at every match.  His name was in the newspapers and on the radio. The men he hung out with were champions. He wanted us to be like him.  Champions!

So, I rode my bike like a champion.  I jumped rope with a determination that held longer than the other girls. I was the fastest walker, runner.  I read everything, everything, all the big books children weren’t supposed to be able to read. I memorized all the poems of the British classical times. (Our country was still a British Colony)

I was tops at school because my mom helped me and pushed me to do so.

But I couldn’t get to the top of the ladder.  When pins for success were given out at school. I never got one. I got closer and closer to being the first in class, but never got there.  I couldn’t understand why because, when I looked at the other children’s work, mine was just as good and often better. I wanted to be a child or person who would be acknowledged. In my drawing class my Chinese teacher would praise the child next to me, but tell me my work was not good enough, while I am looking at it and I see it is the same as my classmate. Slowly I began to slack off. Without knowing it I absently began not to study so hard. I began to distance myself from the other girls. But there had always been a distance, only now I saw it as a wide gulf I could never cross.

I would go home after school and at night dream of winning at the bicycle races and getting the big prize.  I would dream I was delivering the great English saga poems which we had to memorize, and getting the applause of teachers and students.

I would be a star and walk thru the school with everyone calling my name to say hello and wave at me smiling.  But then there were times I would dream I was falling through the floors of a burning house. I would wake from the dream look around me - no one had heard the scream in my dream.  But, I would wake up the next morning my body tense, groggy from staying up the night before to keep my mom company while she did house work, usually ironing. I would drink my hot chocolate, that was our breakfast and sometimes we had a big cracker.  Today it was just chocolate.  I would dress myself in my white bouse, my jumper over that and I would sit on the stool while my mom combed and braided and bowed my plaits, putting ribbons at the end. I wished I didn’t have any hair. I hated having my hair combed.  I don’t know if it was just the curls or my mom hating to do it because it was so much and so long.

I was groggy, always feeling faint. I put on my white socks and Bata sneakers that my mom had whitened the night before. I would say goodbye to her and walk down the steep stairs to the yard, which sometimes had chickens, go around to the front of the house and exit through the woven wire gate. Turning left I would trek to school.  Later on, my sister would be with me and we would trek together. I was always in a daze then. I had given up.  I had conceded, I had lost my place among all the great characters I wanted to be and I was just a child going to school.

I was a mismatched child, a third Chinese, third African, a third European child. There was no place for me on the island. I could never be British. I could never be white. I could never be Portuguese. I could never be East Indian. I was a mixed-up clump of flesh and blood, walking in a daze, almost fainting, saying my rosary without the beads because my mother didn’t have the money to buy me one. I became numb. I was the walking dead.

My mother didn’t notice, she had enough to take care of the other children.  She continued to help me with my homework and check my writing and composition for errors. I am grateful to her for this otherwise I couldn’t write this now.  The days just blurred into each other. I lost my magazines that had the stories of the Dalai Lama, Joan of Arc, Mahatma Ghandi, and stopped going to the library as often. The universe did not mourn a lost child.

So, I sat staring at the clouds and sky, floating out there on them, with them, going where I didn’t know or care.  So much so that when it was time to come to America, I didn’t even care, wasn’t excited. It was just another day. I did love the new clothes and the Marlene Deitrich beret that matched my maroon pleated skirt. My life was about to change drastically and if I thought I had racial problems back there – where I was going would put those mental fears to a test that would shake me and scar me forever.

I didn’t realize that I missed my brothers and sisters until now looking back. I do remember the loneliness.  I had a room off my own for the first time in my life. I never knew these things existed, a room of one’s own.  It was strange.  My mother took me to the library and again pried me with books to try to end my boredom.  But I went into a daze from which I never returned.  I had grown up at the age of 11.