One Day I Will Be Myself

In the name of my father.

My grandfather's name is Javan Douglas. He was born and raised in Grenada where he met and fell in love with my grandmother. They had my mother in 1951 but never married. Javan had three other kids for another woman and his mother, not wanting to further disturb village tradition, encouraged my grandfather to marry the woman he originally had children with.

When my mother was about nine years old, she and my grandmother moved to Trinidad. Years later, my grandmother married the only grandfather I met, a man I knew as Irie. He also had children for another woman named Muriel, but Irie’s mother preferred my grandmother and favour was important back then. They wed at a church in Woodbrook, Trinidad.

By the time I came into this world in 1983, my older brother was already three years old. I was the second child of my mother and father, but the third for my father, himself. My mom and dad never married and she would have one more child for him, my younger brother, before moving all three of us to Canada on her own.

I do have some memories of my father in Trinidad. Him slapping me in the face with the back of his palm. That was for waking him up for a phone call from one of his friends. At five years old, I should’ve known better.