Sheena Kamal - Fight Like a Girl

I know that people dont like going to funerals, but this is something else. Theres almost nobody here for Dads cremation service. Some distant relatives, a few of Mas colleagues and a handful of acquaintances. Whose acquaintances, I have no idea. Ive never seen these people before in my life.

Dads rum shop friends couldnt even peel themselves off their barstools long enough to show up in the afternoon?

What the what.

Somehow, in the middle of the service, Ma senses my mind wandering and sends me a glare that could cut a lesser person with its sharpness. But Im used to her stabby looks, so it just comes as a warning to sit there and behave, and fold my hands in my lap, and pretend that I like to wear a dress for some reason.

I tried to get away with my black jeans that show off the thick muscles in my legs, but I got a good old Caribbean slap upside the head for that. Ma wasnt having any of it today, of all days. When she was about to say goodbye to the love of her life (gag).

As the service drags on, I should one hundred percent be thinking about my dad and how he died, but I cant bring myself to do it. What I do instead is replay the disastrous events of my last fight. I guess I look dazed because Ma pinches my arm and mutters, Trisha, dont make me break something over your head, girl. Have some respect!

Now I have to pay attention because her nails are sharper than her looks and if she threatens to break something over my head, you know she will throw down in front of all these people without a care in the world.

Alright, fine.

I focus on the pundit singing religious songs that nobody understands. Finally, after he does the bare minimum to collect his fee, a few people get up to say nice things about Dad and, whoo boy, is it slim pickings up in here! Until Ma gets fed up and makes her way up to give a heartfelt speech about how they met blah blah, how much she loved him et cetera, how long until this is over?

I glance around the room and see diversity because this is Toronto, after all, and diversity is what its all about. I mean look at all the assorted Degrassi kids, and that was even before Drake came along. We have everybody in Toronto. But in this room, lets be honest, we mostly have Trinidadians and Pammy. And, except for one nice old man who looks like he got lost on the way to the grocery store, the majority are women.

The curse of my life. Trinidadian women. One in particular.

Ma is watching me again and I can tell shes thinking about a slap. I cant really blame her. Im very trying on her nerves and shes had it rough, my ma. Not that you would know by looking at her.

Rule number one of being a woman from Trinidad: be hella fierce.

Im not kidding, people. This is the rule. Not only will people expect you to be educated, have a job and provide, you must also have it in you to be an all-round queen. Look after whatever stray children happen to wander your way. Drop everything and whip up some roti on a whim. Plus, you will be fetishized like crazy and you need to be prepared for the sexual energy random assholes will want you to expend whenever a bass line pulses through your prodigious hips. Courtesy of the grand bacchanalia that is Trinidad Carnival, people will look at you and imagine you in barely-there sparkling costumes with your tits out and your ass exposed to the warm sunshine, shaking and backing back on whatever sweaty crotch just so happens to be around for a well-timed jook.

Well, what about the men? (Some people might ask this. Idiots, mostly.)

Well, what about them? The men, they dont matter. Not one bit. Looking around this sad excuse for a funeral, theyre not even here. Theyre good for a poke in the nighttwo sapodilla and a nine-inch banana, as the calypso goesbut not much more than that. Ive got hordes of useless uncles and semi-uncles (and people Im just supposed to call uncle even though were not related) to prove my point. What they do best is disappear. Even when theyre right in front of you, theyre somewhere else. Forever playing cards in the rum shops of their minds.

Its the women that stay.

Theyre with you even when theyre not around. They give you pieces of their souls, jagged pointy things, and you can never give them back, no matter how much you want to. No matter how much these pieces cut you and make you bleed for them, over and over.

I have to tell you something.

The women of my family are both warriors and witches. Creatures of the night, vampires that haunt the dreams of Caribbean children, soucouyants who will suck the life right out of you and burn you with our flames.

I first begin to suspect this about my family after Mr. Abdi gives me a book about a soucouyant living in my hood. Fiction, he says. Yeah, right. Like women who take everything you have and keep wanting more could ever be some made-up shit in the pages of a book.