My Mother's Daughter Page 3
Catherine didn’t think of the couple much after they had left, even with a son named after theirs. The truth was, the Baxters were not the first foreigners she had formed a connection with. There were the Cloughs from Kitchener, Ontario, who she had met when she was fifteen. They had helped her open a bank account, even sending her twenty-five dollars every month for a long time. Mrs. Clough had sent Catherine her first training bra and a shipment of notebooks for school—because naturally Mrs. Clough assumed a young girl like Catherine attended school. There was the couple from Connecticut who had kept in touch with her sister Juliana and sent her a wedding dress, veil, and fancy shoes for her wedding day. There was another woman whose husband was a professor in Michigan and who mailed Catherine a Timex watch that a friend later stole and some clothes for her parents. Tourist bonds sometimes lasted for a year or more, but time always ensured they were washed away as easily as a wave meeting a sand castle. And as much as she liked the Baxters, to Catherine they were no different.
Chapter Three
In 1976 the Baxters wrote to Catherine to say they were returning to St. Lucia for another two-week vacation. On this trip they would bring two-year-old Lucas and their nine-month-old son Tommie, and they would like her help. The letter came as a surprise to Catherine because it had been a while since she had heard from them. Still, she was delighted that they were interested in hiring her again, so she wrote back to Laura, agreeing to take the job—but she had one special request: she asked Laura to bring her two all-white uniforms she could wear while babysitting. In the two years since she had met the Baxters she had babysat for tourists twice more: one family from Canada and another from Germany. She wanted to look official, and wearing a uniform was what looking official looked like to her.
This second visit was much like their first. Catherine spent her days helping with the two boys, while Eda took care of Vonette, who was three, and Lucas, eighteen months. The only difference this time around, was that the Baxters stopped by Catherine’s house a couple of times and spent a few hours with her family.
One morning Catherine was in their suite at the Holiday Inn, looking at a picture book with young Lucas while Tommie tried his best to climb all over her. The boys’ parents stood across the room in a huddle, speaking in hushed tones, which struck Catherine as strange because they had never done that before. Catherine began to worry. Had she done something wrong? Maybe they didn’t need her services any longer. Her stomach began to flutter as she braced herself for what they might say to her. She tried to pay attention to Lucas as she pointed to things in the picture book and Tommie used her as a jungle gym.
Eventually the Baxters broke their huddle. All the muscles in Catherine’s shoulders tightened.
Gerry took a few steps towards her. “Catherine, Laura and I would like to talk to you about something.”
She took Tommie down from her shoulder and sat him down on her lap.
“What is it, Mr. Baxter?” she asked nervously.
“Laura and I would like you to come to Canada to live with us and help us with the boys.”
Catherine froze. Tommie’s babbling faded from her ears, as did everything else.
“Catherine?” She heard Laura’s voice, and felt her hand on her shoulder. “We know it’s a big ask, but the boys just adore you.”
Finally she processed the information enough to speak. “Do you mean it?”
“We do.” Both of them had such hopeful looks on their faces.
“You’d want me to live with you in Canada?”
The couple smiled.
“When?”
“We were thinking this spring,” Laura said.
Catherine counted the months on her fingers. March, April, May. “You mean in three months?”
The more it sunk in the giddier she felt. “I will have to talk to my parents. If they support me I would be willing to go.” Catherine knew the opportunity would help not only her but also her family, and she had no doubt that her family would support her move. She instinctively knew bringing her son and daughter along was not an option, but she also recognized she would be able to help them out as they grew up.
Catherine’s mother, Eda Felicien, had immigrated to St. Lucia from Colombia with her parents when she was a child. Her father died when she was young. There had been a dispute with another man over the sale of a cow and he was poisoned. Eda’s mother was not the nurturing type and eventually sent her only child to live with distant family in St. Lucia. Eda would never see her mother again. Abraham was born on the island and had never left. For both of them their island home was all they knew. In fact, no one in Catherine’s family had ever lived abroad before. The only person who came close was her eldest brother, who was more than twenty years her senior, who had once travelled to Florida to cut sugar cane for a few months. Catherine’s parents knew a few people in town who had children living in foreign places like England and America. These neighbours would come around clutching letters from their children as if they were priceless artifacts. They’d carry them from house to house in a prideful display, boasting about their children’s good fortunes. Their voices were proud, blaring trumpets. Perhaps Eda and Abraham wanted to be a part of that symphony too.
* * *
—
It was during the rainy season that their neighbour, Mrs. Nelly, banged on their door with a police officer standing beside her. It had been more than a month since the Baxters had made their offer to Catherine, and now Mrs. Nelly, an old woman who sold homemade sweets from her home, had come to show the law man where the Feliciens lived. Someone had called the police station trying to reach Catherine, and the police had called Mrs. Nelly, hers was the only house in the area with a phone, and they thought she would know how to contact Catherine. And so Catherine followed the officer through the waterlogged streets to the station. When she picked up the phone, Laura’s voice greeted her on the other end. They had booked her a one-way first-class plane ticket to Toronto on April twenty-second—only five weeks away.
Right away Catherine’s parents began making preparations for her move. Abraham took her to Castries to get her passport and vaccinations, while Eda bought her a brown suitcase and an outfit to wear for the trip.
On the morning Catherine left, Eda paraded her from house to house in a brown and yellow pantsuit so she could say goodbye to the neighbours. It was also a chance for her parents to show their pride in what their daughter was doing.
Before she left for the airport Catherine hugged and kissed her children. They were too young to understand their mother was leaving them, but she squeezed them tightly, holding on for a while because she was already missing them. As Catherine waved goodbye to her family and the life she knew, no one shed any tears. Catherine didn’t know how long they would be apart, but it seemed they all knew the day she was leaving the island was not one to be sad.
* * *
—
On the BWIA flight she was seated next to a chatty older man. It was her first time on a plane, and the gentleman asked her questions, curious about the young woman who was constantly peering out the window and whose face brightened each time the flight attendants offered her something complimentary. It turned out he was a native St. Lucian who had immigrated to Canada many years before. He asked Catherine if she was afraid to leave behind all that she knew.
“No, I’m not afraid, sir,” she answered. “I believe there are many good things waiting for me.”
It was true she wouldn’t know anyone besides the Baxters, so if things went awry she had no friends or relatives to rely on. She had no idea how she’d react to the climate, or even how much the couple planned to pay her. Despite all this, she concentrated on the positive aspects of her decision to leave. She pressed her face to the window as the plane descended into Toronto after five hours above the clouds. Yellow lights bedazzled the inky night sky as if thousands of fireflies had stopped to rest
along an endless grid. Catherine could make out cars moving along straight roads, and signs and tall buildings erupted from the ground like trees in a forest.
The Baxters knew very little about hiring a foreign domestic worker, and had assumed it was sufficient to buy Catherine a one-way ticket and assume responsibility for her while she worked at their home. But there was trouble as soon as Catherine got to customs. She was led into a small room and made to wait a long time without knowing what was wrong. Meanwhile Laura, who had come to pick her up, paced back and forth in the arrivals hall, worried that Catherine had missed her flight. After some time an agent finally went out to find Laura and explained that Catherine was not allowed to enter the country to work or live because she did not have a work permit. Laura was shocked. Neither she nor her husband had realized they needed to secure one. After some back-and-forth the officer allowed Catherine to enter but on one condition: the Baxters had to get her proper documentation immediately. If they could not, she would have to return home.
Catherine thought the long drive to Whitby across flat terrain would never end. Her home boasted lush rainforests, waterfalls, and the Pitons, two majestic mountains that erupted from the sea. The main road that connected small communities and fishing villages was narrow, meandering, and dangerous in parts. This was another world.
When Laura neared her home she began to drive slower. The road was dark, still, and lined mostly by woods. Laura pulled into a long horseshoe-shaped gravel driveway with a vast lawn and a plum tree in its centre. To the right sat a small house where, Laura told her, their groundskeeper lived. It took them a few moments to pull up close enough to the house for Catherine to take in its massive silhouette. It looked like a medieval castle.
Catherine’s bedroom was one of five in the home, and more than double the size of the two-room wooden house she had shared with her parents and children. Its crown jewel was a king-sized canopy bed that she threw herself on in complete delight. She looked around and saw the door leading to her ensuite bathroom. There was no plumbing in her old home, and everyone had shared an outhouse. But now Catherine had a lavish bathroom all to herself, and from it a spiral staircase led down to the laundry room and connected to the grand kitchen. The sensation of being completely alone in a space so vast was foreign to her.
That first night she lay wide awake imagining all the things she planned to do in her new life: go back to school, learn to drive, save money, and eventually bring her two children over.
The next morning Mr. Baxter got right to work on Catherine’s documents. He contacted the immigration office and some lawyer friends to see how quickly he could get the matter sorted.
In the meantime Catherine explored the house. She admired the white wooden porch wrapped around its circumference, and the forest of pine trees that lined its backyard. She counted every room inside; she laughed when she realized there were seventeen in total. Being a caregiver in Canada was going to be a lot more work than she had imagined.
One evening a few days after her arrival, Catherine sat with the couple in the den to watch a movie, a treat because her family hadn’t owned a television and neither had many of her friends. On the screen, suddenly one man shot another and he dropped dead. Catherine shrieked in horror and buried her face in a blanket.
The Baxters shot her a worried look. “Catherine, are you all right?”
“No,” she said. “How can you watch men killing each other for fun?”
Laura and Gerry looked at each other. “What do you mean?”
“You are nice people. I don’t understand how you can watch that man die.”
“Oh good heavens,” Laura said. “This isn’t real, Catherine. Those people are just acting.”
Catherine squinted at the screen. “Are you serious?”
“It’s all make-believe,” Gerry assured her. “But how about we find something else to watch tonight.”
Catherine could see they were struggling to contain their laughter.
* * *
—
It was going to take months for the Baxters to secure a work permit for Catherine. The process was a complicated one, but if they let her begin working, they would all be breaking the law. So only a week after arriving, Catherine was on a plane back to St. Lucia. No one could tell her exactly how long the paperwork would take, so Catherine wasn’t sure she’d ever return. On the flight home there was no delightful chatter with the person next to her, or nervous excitement in the pit of her stomach. Instead there was a tightening in her chest because she would have to explain to her family why she was back so soon.
* * *
—
The month of September always brought stiffer winds to the island. Five months after Catherine’s return, those winds blew the grandiose hats off the heads of Christian women on their way to Sunday worship. It whipped fat raindrops thin and drove grazing goats to shelter under calabash trees. It carried the sweet smoky smell of Eda’s roasted breadfruits down Marie Therese Street and into the open windows of her neighbours. Like the wind, Catherine too had kept to her usual patterns: she continued selling on the beach, raising her children, and helping her parents.
The Baxters had written to her during the summer, reiterating their commitment to bringing her back to Canada. Even though Catherine wanted to return, there was an air of caution on her part. Having had her hopes dashed once, she didn’t want it to happen again. “Don’t hang your heart where you can’t reach it,” her mother would often say.
That is why when she received another letter from the Baxters that fall she held her breath while opening it—but it was the news she had been hoping for. The Canadian government had approved a work permit. Her plane was leaving on November ninth.
Chapter Four
As soon as three-year-old Lucas got used to Catherine being around, he’d crawl out of bed before six thirty and make his way to her room down the hall. Catherine would hear a faint thumping at her door and then the knob would rattle—her wake-up call.
“Catheem?” Lucas would call in a hushed voice. “Catheem up?”
It was usually just the two of them having breakfast at the kitchen table on those crisp December mornings. Laura and one-year-old Tommie were still asleep, and Gerry would have already left for the gym and work.
During the day Catherine stayed home with the boys while Laura ran errands. When they had swimming lessons or other activities, Laura would bring Catherine along to help. After a morning of playing and eating, Catherine would put the boys down for a nap and start to iron Gerry’s shirts. Laura was an excellent cook and prepared all the meals, and Catherine always sat at the table with them for dinner. Downtime for her came on weekends. On Saturdays she might take Lucas to a matinee or spend the day relaxing and writing letters to her family. On Sundays she attended church with a woman named Frieda and her family. Frieda was from Holland, and when she came to clean the Baxters’ house once a week and noticed Catherine didn’t have any social life, she invited her to church to make friends.
A few days after Catherine had come back, Laura asked her to take a seat at the long table in the formal dining room the family used mainly for special occasions. Catherine had never thought to talk about money.
“We’d like to pay you every two weeks,” Laura told her.
“That’s fine, Mrs. Baxter.” Whatever the Baxters offered or how often, she would accept because she was glad to have the job.
Laura took some papers out of an envelope and showed them to her. “The only thing we ask is that you pay back the cost of your airline tickets.”
“No problem at all,” Catherine said. Considering the Baxters had brought her to the country twice, something she could never afford herself, it seemed a reasonable request.
“We’ll give you cash and subtract a portion of the flight from every pay. Does that work for you?”
“Yes, that works for me,” she sai
d with her hands clasped together on top of the wooden table. “I appreciate you and Mr. Baxter bringing me here.”
Laura reached over and patted her on the hand. “We know you do, Catherine.”
And so, every two weeks Laura would head to her husband’s office on a Friday afternoon and return with a white envelope that she would give to Catherine. Inside it would be anywhere from sixty to seventy-five dollars. Catherine had no idea whether her pay was fair for the full-time work she was doing. Even if she did have questions, she wouldn’t know who to ask. To her it was good money. The lion’s share she sent home to her family, and the rest she used to buy the things she needed, like clothes and toiletries.
* * *
—
That January, when Catherine turned twenty-one, Laura threw her the first birthday party she’d ever had. In St. Lucia her family didn’t celebrate birthdays. There were no gifts, special dinners, or cards to commemorate the occasion. The only acknowledgement came by way of people simply saying “Happy birthday.” In Whitby, to mark the milestone Laura asked Catherine to invite friends over from her church. Ten arrived with gifts and cards, which made her feel so special she feared she would burst. Wearing a grey corduroy skort and a yellow-and-grey-striped blouse with a bow tie collar that Laura bought her for the party, Catherine sat with her guests in the formal dining room. Balloons Laura had blown up the night before were taped to the walls, and she had made chicken, salad, and baked potatoes for everyone to enjoy. The group chatted and gulped down cans of pop before Catherine was presented with the chocolate cake Laura had made. While everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” Laura told her to be sure to make a wish when she blew out her candles and to not tell a soul so that it would come true. That night Catherine went to bed thinking of her wish.