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Jazz - Nature's Improvisation
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Chapter One
There is a shadow of a girl floating around me. Gossamer. Guileless. I pretend I do not see her. She embarrasses me. Though I have tried, I cannot unlearn or forget what her life in me has given. And taken. Mostly taken.
There is a shadow of a boy walking within me. Ferocious. Fine. Though his heart breaks and mends, and breaks and mends, and breaks again, he will not be shackled. His spirit is lightning fire.
At birth, I was labeled a girl. I was named Jaswinder.
My chosen name is Jazz. Like the music. I am nature’s improvisation
TRANSFORM: (French from Latin), to change the form of
I told my mother I was a boy when I was four years old. She was standing at the counter, grinding the spices for the evening meal. Curry. Cumin. Garamasala. She stopped. Sighed. Turned and smiled at me, her mouth tense. “Don’t be foolish, Jaswinder. Now, run along and wash your hands before dinner.”
I told her again when I was twelve. We were in her sewing room. Bolts of brilliantly hued fabric were stacked neatly against one wall. Straight pins and needles stood gaily on a green satin pincushion. Thimbles, scissors, pinking sheers. All neatly in their place. A chest full of tiny drawers, each containing threads of different colour, stood beside the picture window that overlooked our backyard. I could see the branches of the willow tree. Waving at me. As they danced in the wind.
“Close the door, Jaswinder.” She began slowly. Her voice soft. Choosing her words carefully. Wanting to say just the right thing. To convince me of the sacred wonder of it all. Of womanhood. I didn’t want to interrupt her at first, to take this moment away from her. After all, I was her only daughter. Clearly she had put a lot of effort into this speech, considered deeply how much or how little to tell me about the changes my body was going through. But in the midst of her detailed explanation, I stopped her.
“Mother, I would rather die than to grow up to be a woman.” Her back stiffened. “What foolishness is this? As if you have any choice in the matter.”
I told her again today. At my seventeenth birthday party. In front of my whole family – the aunties and uncles, the cousins, my friend, Jennie from high school, and my big brother, Sugith. After they brought out the presents and sang Happy Birthday. Just as my mother was about to cut the homemade carrot cake with cream cheese icing. My favourite.
The smile falls from her face. She drops the knife on the floor. Nobody moves. My brother looks away. Disgusted.
“I always knew you were a freak.”
“Enough, Sugith.” My father struggles to keep his voice under control. “Jaswinder. Look how you have upset your mother. This is not something we joke about”
“It’s not a joke.”
Freeze frame. No one knows where to look. At my brother’s twisted face? At my mother, her eyes wide in an attempt to stop the tears that threatened? Or at my father, standing still and hard as granite?
On some unspoken cue, my aunties begin to fuss around my mother. A gaggle of hens, scratching and clucking. Picking up the knife from the floor. Cleaning the icing off the carpet. Straightening up the already tidy table.
“Come with me.” Auntie Nazneen hisses in my ear. “NOW!” She pulls me from the room. Through the French doors. Onto the deck. “Go to your mother. Apologize at once!”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
We wait until everyone leaves. Which doesn’t take long. Amazing how fast you can clear a room with a simple announcement.
There is a shadow of a boy walking within me. Ferocious. Fine. Though his heart breaks and mends, and breaks and mends, and breaks again, he will not be shackled. His spirit is lightning fire.
At birth, I was labeled a girl. I was named Jaswinder.
My chosen name is Jazz. Like the music. I am nature’s improvisation
TRANSFORM: (French from Latin), to change the form of
I told my mother I was a boy when I was four years old. She was standing at the counter, grinding the spices for the evening meal. Curry. Cumin. Garamasala. She stopped. Sighed. Turned and smiled at me, her mouth tense. “Don’t be foolish, Jaswinder. Now, run along and wash your hands before dinner.”
I told her again when I was twelve. We were in her sewing room. Bolts of brilliantly hued fabric were stacked neatly against one wall. Straight pins and needles stood gaily on a green satin pincushion. Thimbles, scissors, pinking sheers. All neatly in their place. A chest full of tiny drawers, each containing threads of different colour, stood beside the picture window that overlooked our backyard. I could see the branches of the willow tree. Waving at me. As they danced in the wind.
“Close the door, Jaswinder.” She began slowly. Her voice soft. Choosing her words carefully. Wanting to say just the right thing. To convince me of the sacred wonder of it all. Of womanhood. I didn’t want to interrupt her at first, to take this moment away from her. After all, I was her only daughter. Clearly she had put a lot of effort into this speech, considered deeply how much or how little to tell me about the changes my body was going through. But in the midst of her detailed explanation, I stopped her.
“Mother, I would rather die than to grow up to be a woman.” Her back stiffened. “What foolishness is this? As if you have any choice in the matter.”
I told her again today. At my seventeenth birthday party. In front of my whole family – the aunties and uncles, the cousins, my friend, Jennie from high school, and my big brother, Sugith. After they brought out the presents and sang Happy Birthday. Just as my mother was about to cut the homemade carrot cake with cream cheese icing. My favourite.
The smile falls from her face. She drops the knife on the floor. Nobody moves. My brother looks away. Disgusted.
“I always knew you were a freak.”
“Enough, Sugith.” My father struggles to keep his voice under control. “Jaswinder. Look how you have upset your mother. This is not something we joke about”
“It’s not a joke.”
Freeze frame. No one knows where to look. At my brother’s twisted face? At my mother, her eyes wide in an attempt to stop the tears that threatened? Or at my father, standing still and hard as granite?
On some unspoken cue, my aunties begin to fuss around my mother. A gaggle of hens, scratching and clucking. Picking up the knife from the floor. Cleaning the icing off the carpet. Straightening up the already tidy table.
“Come with me.” Auntie Nazneen hisses in my ear. “NOW!” She pulls me from the room. Through the French doors. Onto the deck. “Go to your mother. Apologize at once!”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
We wait until everyone leaves. Which doesn’t take long. Amazing how fast you can clear a room with a simple announcement.