My Mother's Daughter Read online

  Praise for My Mother’s Daughter

  “We are not defined by when we fall; rather, it’s the journey of where we come from that holds the deepest definition of self. Perdita Felicien is so much more than a champion athlete. This phenomenal, human story shows a Canada many people will never know, the power of a mother’s love for her daughter, and indefatigable resilience in the face of so much struggle. I could not put this book down.”

  —Clara Hughes, six-time Olympic medalist and author of Open Heart, Open Mind

  “Perdita Felicien takes on the ambitious feat of chronicling an intergenerational story of resilience and succeeds with unflinching clarity. Her controlled and poised prose details raw and often messy emotions with intelligence and compassion, while the fierce honesty with which she writes emphasizes the magnitude of maternal love and the bonds of family. A memoir with a commanding voice, My Mother’s Daughter is a love letter to mother-daughter relationships.”

  —Zalika Reid-Benta, Scotiabank Giller Prize-longlisted author of Frying Plantain

  “Perdita Felicien first stole our hearts as a world champion, and now she takes us behind the scenes to the heartache of her tumultuous childhood and to the grit she needed to triumph over adversity. Her story is for everyone who dreams big. This book made me laugh and cry and cheer out loud. It’s a winner—like Perdita herself.”

  —Sally Armstrong, journalist

  “A book about the most important team any of us plays on—our family—by one of the greatest athletes Canada has ever produced. Perdita Felicien reminds us that the accomplishments you see out on the track, field, or rink are the result not just of talent and practice, but of someone’s love.”

  —Cathal Kelly, author of Boy Wonders

  Copyright © 2020 Perdita Felicien

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  The names and other identifying details of some people have been changed to maintain their privacy.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Title: My mother’s daughter / Perdita Felicien.

  Names: Felicien, Perdita, 1980- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200158864 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200158937 | ISBN 9780385689960 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385689977 (EPUB)

  Subjects: LCSH: Felicien, Perdita, 1980- | LCSH: Track and field athletes—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Mothers and daughters—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Single mothers—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Mother and child. | LCGFT: Biographies.

  Classification: LCC GV1061.15.F45 A3 2020 | DDC 796.42/6092—dc23

  Cover design: Terri Nimmo

  Cover images: (illustration) incomible; (border) alubalish; (with flag) Jeff Haynes / Staff, all Getty Images; family photos courtesy of the author.

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v5.4

  a

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  For my mother, Cathy

  For my daughter, Nova

  One of the most valuable things a mother can give her daughter is her story as a woman.

  —IYANLA VANZANT

  Author’s Note

  When I was a little girl I was acutely aware that my mother’s life was hard. She never hid her tears from me, as she cried about Dad’s ill treatment of her or whatever predicament we found ourselves in. I also knew she never had much money. We walked everywhere, in any weather, or took the bus, while many of my friends’ parents had cars and could afford to pay for pizza days and school trips. I made it a point not to be added to her growing list of difficulties.

  At times when I was growing up my mother would say to me, “When I found out I was going to have you, you gave me hope. I would rub my tummy and talk to you through my tears.” She’d offer no further explanation, and I was too young to ask.

  Stepping away from ten years at the top of elite professional sport led me to reflect on my life. I knew all along there were missing pieces to my life’s puzzle. For the first time, I began to ask the questions that might make it all come together for me.

  After many conversations with people from my past, hearing the oral history of my family, and doing my own research, I find my answers. But more than anything, within these pages I find my mother’s courage, her humanity, and the scale of the love I stand on.

  Prologue

  Olympic Games, Athens, Greece

  August 2004

  I know I am supposed to be here, this is more than a race to me.

  I know she is watching the baby she chose not to throw away.

  Maybe this will finally make her see that everything that happened before tonight was worth it. That she is worth it, that I am worth it, and so are all the other mothers and children like us.

  The eight of us had only a few moments left to warm up over the hurdles before we would be introduced to the thousands in the Olympic Stadium. It was loud before the start of the 100 metres hurdles final. People were shouting, and flags from around the world were being waved in the air by hopeful fans. Everything happened in slow motion, as if I were in a trance. The officials putting down hurdles, then scurrying out of our way, teammates watching nearby from the stands with Canadian flags wrapped around their shoulders, the other runners grunting and slapping their thick quads into submission—or was it an act of intimidation? None of us finalists made eye contact. It was as though the others were just bodies floating about. But we could see the tension around the corners of our mouths; our faces mean, expressionless corks that prevented all our emotions from spilling out.

  I walked ba
ck to my lane marker after practising a start and knew there was nothing left to do. I was ready. Every cell in my body felt electric, as if I could shock the life out of anything I touched. I pulled in a deep breath, held it for five thumping heartbeats, then let it rush out of me with any microscopic remnants of doubt. I enjoyed this feeling and this moment despite the magnitude of it. I’d never felt anything so encompassing, so kinetic. I recognized it as that perfect edge. The one all of us athletes try to recreate hundreds of times in practice, in our dreams, in our journals—but never can. Because nothing can replicate the biggest day of our lives. No imagining can ever be real enough.

  The fuzzy haze I saw before big races blurred everything: the crowd, the outside lanes, Melissa the American to my left, and Irina the Russian to my right. Everything but my ten waist-high barriers, out in front, which were crisp and clear. The starter commanded us to take our marks, and the customary ritual began as we made our way into our blocks.

  Think of all the work you’ve done, Perdita. You can do this.

  We were two Americans, two Russians, one Jamaican, a Ukrainian, and two Canadians. The fastest and most fearless sprint hurdlers left standing in the world. I was the world champion and the youngest among us, unbeaten in a string of races leading up to the Olympics, including my heat and semifinal rounds in Athens. Even though I had welcomed the eyes of my entire country on me and understood I was the favourite, remarkably I had arrived at the start line carrying only the weight of my own expectations. “If you want it, you can’t be afraid to go for it” is a mantra a hurdler must adopt before even starting her climb to the top of the world.

  “Set!” the starter yelled. I raised my hips. The riotous crowd was suddenly silent, I was alone, and my Olympic dream was before me.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  My grandmother Eda Felicien gave birth to sixteen children, and my mother was her last. Twelve of my mother’s older siblings died as infants. In the early months of my mother’s life many thought she’d die like most of Eda and Abraham’s babies, because she also fell ill.

  My mother, Catherine, was born on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia a few days into the new year of 1956. That year was like many before it: for every one thousand infants born, 115 of them had to be put in the ground. In Canada, a country with an advanced healthcare system, that number hovered around thirty-two. Catherine had two older brothers and a sister named Juliana, who was her senior by sixteen years. It was Juliana who cared for her around the clock while she was a sickly baby. Catherine’s tiny body was racked by fevers and covered in sores from head to toe; her scalp was scabby and rough. But she made it to her first birthday. And every day after that it was clear to all around her that she was determined to live. Perhaps that is why her family’s oral historians describe my mother as strong willed and a fighter from the very beginning.

  Catherine’s father was a fisherman, and her mother held various jobs, such as selling charcoal from the front yard of their two-room house and digging up buckets of sand that she’d sell to construction companies for making bricks. Her other job was heading to the first resort in town and selling souvenirs to the sun-loving tourists on the beach.

  The family was poor and lived in Gros Islet, a quiet fishing town on the northern tip of the lush island the French and British had fought over fourteen times between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. They spoke St. Lucian Creole, or Kwéyòl, a mixture of French and African. Eda, though, had been born in Colombia and lived there until the age of nine, and whenever she got mad she mixed her Creole with Spanish words like caramba and pendejo.

  Tourism was how many islanders made a living, and by the time Catherine was ten her parents had come to rely on her to help them make ends meet. In the early mornings, when the sky turned from black to purple, Catherine’s father would head out to sea while Catherine and her mother would go down to the nearby beach a few days a week. They’d gather washed-up cockle and clam shells that they used to make seashell necklaces they’d sell to vacationers. Eda would rinse the round, flat pieces with fresh water, use a nail to punch a tiny hole into each one, then pass sewing thread through it. That was until a friend suggested she use her husband’s clear fishing line so her jewellery would be much stronger. From each necklace dangled a small conch-shell pendant.

  Some early mornings, Eda, a thin woman with long black hair, would rush home from the seashore to wake Catherine. “Enoe, get up,” she’d say, calling her youngest by her nickname. “You are not going to school today.” Moments earlier Eda had stood on the beachfront and squinted in the direction of the St. Lucia Beach Hotel resort a mile or so down the blond stretch of beach. It was dotted with more lounge chairs and parasols than usual. That meant only one thing to her.

  “Why do I have to miss class again? I don’t want to go and sell,” Catherine would complain from her mattress on the floor. Outside she could hear stray dogs bark and ducks under their raised house quack on their way to a murky puddle.

  “Enoe, if you don’t go sell to the tourists today, where will I get money for your school uniform, enh? Or to put food in your mouth?”

  Catherine sat up. Thin beams of light poured through tiny pinholes in their home’s wooden walls. She began to cry. “I have a test in dictation today. I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Pa fè sa. Don’t do that. You know you can go tomorrow.”

  “But I studied all week, and every time I miss a class, when I go back I don’t know anything.”

  “I know, my girl, but if you don’t go we’ll miss this chance to make a little money. Come now, get ready.” Eda clapped her hands.

  * * *

  —

  Catherine was taught by her parents to be obedient. To always say “please” and “thank you,” to greet adult neighbours with “Mister” or “Miss,” and to always use their last name. Catherine loved her parents, and they were good to her. Even though she never liked missing school, she didn’t resist beyond her early-morning tears and feeble complaints. This obligation fell only to her, because by that time Juliana was in her twenties and had a family of her own. And her two older brothers were not expected to miss school or help out, because they were male.

  Once dressed, Catherine would find her mother outside in the yard crouched in front of a small fire that made the brown earth glow auburn. The flames licked the bottom of a white teapot, and Catherine could smell the sweet aroma of cinnamon tea. They heated pieces of fish Abraham had roasted the day before along with some leftover sweet potato.

  “You have to eat quickly, my girl,” Eda said. Catherine sat down on a wooden stool, her eyelids low. “Wake up. Tell me some of the new words you can spell.”

  The suggestion of a spelling challenge made Catherine’s eyes spring open. “Okay! I can spell the word important.”

  “I’m listening,” Eda said and poured Catherine more tea.

  “I-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t,” Catherine recited confidently.

  “Good job.” Eda buttered her daughter’s bread with hands made leathery and reddened by the sun. “What else?”

  “Do you want to hear me use it in a sentence?”

  “Yes, asiwé.”

  My mother stood up and cleared her throat dramatically. “My name is Catherine and I am important,” and then she bowed and giggled.

  Eda laughed and clapped. “Oh yes, you are my little one. Now hurry up and eat your important breakfast.”

  Eda walked Catherine towards the beach; she would return to the house in case customers stopped by to purchase charcoal or sand.

  “Remember to sell the seashell necklaces for fifty cents, the coconut oil for one dollar, and the starfishes for two dollars. Ou tann?”

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  “And remember what I told you. Start high and drop the price if they keep talking or smiling.” Eda winked at her daughter, then pushed her gently in the direction of the
resort.

  * * *

  —

  As Catherine walked, the tropical breeze pulled the bloody smell of fish guts from inside the little fish market and mixed it with the bold salty smell of the sea. At the water’s edge narrow fishing boats had been dragged ashore, and barefoot fishermen were busy tugging their heavy nets of silver-skinned fish from inside. The sun struck their glistening bodies, making the boats flash brilliantly up and down the shore.

  “Important,” Catherine said out loud. She angled her neck and balanced the bag of goods on her head based on how deep her feet sunk into the hot sand. She recited the words of the test she would never take as she marched ahead. “I-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t. I am important.”

  * * *

  —

  Once Catherine got to the resort, she took the sack off her head and rested it underneath a coconut tree. That would serve as her base for at least the next six hours. That early in the morning, the property was usually quiet, except for the churning of waves rushing to shore and the intermittent clanking of glasses at the bar as a bartender prepared for the day ahead. Catherine was often the only child among the few adult peddlers who came by to sell local food and snacks.

  Catherine got to work arranging necklaces along the length of one arm. It wasn’t long until a keen vacationer made his way onto the beach. Like most early birds he dragged his chair closer to the water. Catherine watched as he sat down on his towel and began to rub oil over his body with great intent. She straightened the display on her arm and took brisk steps towards him. The jewellery swayed as she went.

  Catherine wasn’t a tall child but she hovered over the man. “Hi, my name is Catherine,” she announced. “Would you like to buy a seashell necklace or any of my other souvenirs?”

  The man looked up at her in slight surprise, then looked at the necklaces on her arm. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it.”