< Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >
Locket #14
"Guyana is in your DNA," my Mom said to me. Ridiculous. You don't know
what you're talking about, I said "Well, you might be connected in other
ways. You were born there." So! I was just a tiny girl when we moved
away.
We visited my Grandpa in Georgetown the summer before I started college.
I wanted to tell him the good news. I was accepted because of him. Well,
not exactly. My grades were good too. But I think it was my college essay
that got me in.
My guidance counselor had given us guidelines. "Choose something that
matters to you, or someone you care about." I told my Mom I couldn't think
of anything. She mentioned how when she was in high school in Guyana,
they were told to write an essay on someone they considered a hero. She
chose grandpa.
Why did she choose him? I asked. Not for anything he did, she said. He was
a dreamer. What did he dream about. Buildings. Designing buildings. He
worked as a manager in his father's department store, but his real wish was
to become an architect.
She told me his story and straightaway I knew what my college essay would
be. "Let the experience flow through the writing," they advise you. Well,
the writing flowed, but the real experience came after I got my acceptance
letter.
I told my Mom I wanted to visit grandpa. I felt bad writing about him and
about Georgetown, but barely knowing them.
When we got there, it rained a lot the first two days. Mom told him he ought
to spend time on designs for expanded roadways and functioning canals. He
laughed but I think she touched a nerve.
Builders today had no sense of beauty, he complained. When he was growing
up Georgetown was known as the Garden City. They had these cool, airy
wooden buildings and well kept public gardens.
Now the houses of the new well-to-do, anxious and weak in spirit, were
like fortresses, with paved driveways and shiny metal gates. Exteriors on
display.
Mom made fun of him one evening, shouting from the kitchen, in her only
daughter who-loves-her-dad way: "That's all he likes to talk about. His designs.
Not about the problems with vegetation. What's the point building a fabulous
homes; bush all around, odorous habits, water rising when it rains."
Grandpa smiled. His buildings, he said, would fire the imagination with
pride. People would want to take care of the surroundings so the beauty of
their homes would shine.
** **
But that wasn't what my essay was about. I wrote about a girl who played
piano. And the Russian official he played chess with on Saturday afternoons.
Mom said you had a high school sweetheart who changed your life? I asked
him. "She wasn't my girlfriend." Far from it. And he gave his version of what
Mom told me.
The family lived on the other side of the street where he grew up. Two doors
away. The Stevenson family. The father was a police officer. The mother
more or less stayed home.
The girl came straight home from school and began piano lessons; supervised,
apparently, by her mother, who must have seen a piano future in her.
First, practicing her scales, building her confidence. Then she practiced a
short piece by (it turned out) Mozart. Over and over.
At home from school one day he heard her playing and he was riveted. His
temperament, his outlook on the world was altered. He was no longer
himself.
No, he wasn't now a fan of classical music. He didn't know what became of
the girl.
"You have to imagine Georgetown, at three o'clock in the afternoon. The city
getting ready to shut commercial and office doors. Right at that point, in
that interval, this girl is at work on the piano."
He rushed home from school just to listen to her play the Mozart piano piece.
He felt as if a mysterious tranquility had descended on the world. And in that
world a boyhood heaven.
The experience lodged like a presence inside him. Up to this day he stops
what he's doing at three in the afternoon, only in Georgetown, to listen to
Mozart. Sounds kind of weird, I know. I believed him.
** **
The Russian chess player was actually a Consulate official who came to his
high school with a gift of six chess sets. He stayed long enough to give a
dazzling display, taking on six opponents at the same time. Grandpa was the
only student who won ̶ the Russian made a bad move at a crucial moment,
or so it seemed ̶ and he was invited to drop by the embassy on weekends
for games.
Grandpa took up his offer. Every Saturday afternoon he'd ring the residence
bell, and play chess with the consul. Two, three hours of chess.
He remembered how quiet, almost noise-proof the room was; the polished
floors, the sparse furnishings. The Russian smoked and studied the board from
some unknown, faraway place. So absolutely himself. Grandpa played and
wanted to find a path to that place.
When he emerged from the building his mind was still firing. He saw the
city's straight lines and open spaces; he pictured new structures, new
shapes, new windows for light and the ocean breeze. He was filled with
designing excitement.
The thought came to him: he'd go abroad, study architecture. If there was
someone of that profession here he was probably the only representative.
His father refused to entertain the thought. How far do you think you'll get
with that? Tossing away with those words a boy's feeling of his destiny.
Mom with her big mouth told him about my college plans, how I hoped to
study architecture. That opened up the flood gates. Grandpa asked me if I
liked drawing, and what I enjoyed doing best with my hands. I told him I
took Art and Music classes in high school.
He wanted to show me the city's Main Street where the Russian consulate
used to be, next to an old Catholic cathedral that had burnt down. The
years and the buildings didn't exist anymore. Commerce in painted stone
and glass, passive models from other countries, had taken over and was
sucking up all the air, he said.
While we were packing to go home he showed me two sketch books filled
with drafts. His designs for entire communities. For the Amerindians in
the forest, the savannah residents, and for villages off the public roads
with coconut trees as backdrop. He had it all worked out. Habitats of
Beauty for a Confident Nation, I noticed he'd titled it.
He wanted me to take the sketch books, look them over. I told him I couldn't
do that. I won't know what to do with them. I wasn't even sure architecture
was really what I wanted to study. He turned away and tried to sound not
too disappointed.
I was happy we met. He never came across as a grumpy old man with aches
and unchanged opinions and reveries; wanting to be loved and remembered
by his youngest of kin (who has her grandpa's eyes).
Maybe some day out of the blue I will encounter someone like Grandpa's
piano player, or his chess partner. Someone who quiets the world, whose
devotion to dreams transfers in me "the searcher's self-belief" (my English
teacher's words). Suddenly there I am, alone and away. My first big life
experience!
Who knows, one day I might look up at a building, feel its power, as grandpa
says, and think: I could put one up like that.
Anyway, that's what my college essay was about. Not exactly all of the
above. We'll see what comes next.
Tatiana Gonsalves
Georgetown, Guyana
Texas, USA
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 