As a little girl in 1993 in a predominantly white suburb in New Jersey, I began to dress for school one day. I asked my sister to put my hair in a “molly” and she refused. She said to me, I will only do it if you use the correct word. “Molly” pronounced “mah-lee” was the only one I knew for the style that I wanted–a circular twist of hair tied at the top of my head. I knew I had learned the correct word - but had to scour the back of my five-year-old brain for it. What do they call it? A “plait” is a “braid.” What is a “molly” called in America? The correct word would have been “bun.”
I don’t remember the outcome of that interaction with my sister, who to be truthful was terrible at doing hair anyway, so perhaps I was spared. All I can remember is the utter antagonization of not knowing the American word I needed in that moment. Somehow, I knew her demand was not a method of sibling torture, but was instead a lesson she was teaching me with the same urgency and criticism she would use later when teaching me how to drive. I had to learn my new vocabulary because passing or failing my new life would depend on it.
Maybe my sister knew something I didn’t. She had already lived in America for a whole year now, so she was the expert between us, not Mom and Dad who had never been to American elementary or “primary” school. “Elementary” is “primary”; “grades” are “forms”; it was exhausting for a child who barely had the first vocabulary memorized to try and keep both mentally stored. So, I did what came to me naturally, which is I forgot the first words my grandmother taught me.
If that seems unnatural I was only following the pattern of what had begun the moment my flight landed at JFK airport and I met my mother and father for the first time since I was eight months old. The very first morning I spent in America, I spent at the mall. Laugh if you want, because although it is hilarious, the truth is it was as if I was going through a speed transformation to make sure I could make it here in New Jersey.
Immediately, I was taken to the Gap. Not the regular Gap, but the factory outlet Gap where my airy patterned linen clothing was traded for primary color cotton ensembles–solid red crewneck sweaters, solid yellow leggings. I wistfully wished I could wear the yellow and black flower printed short skirt and blouse set I wore on the plane which I had picked out in Georgetown with my grandma, but instinctively knew it would not be permitted for wear here.
Next stop–the dentist! Where I could get my teeth whiter! With whiter words and whiter teeth, surely I would be a success at whatever game this was I was playing in kindergarten? The dentist asked what I ate that day. To my sister’s horror, I proudly proclaimed “Dhal and rice and bhagee!” To this day, I have no idea if two of those words are spelled correctly–but essentially it means lentils, rice, and spinach. The dentist seemed confused but smiled nonetheless.
Attendance. OH. GOD. It was a two person four left foot dance of “Am-reese-uh?” or “Am-riss-uh” or “Ah-mar-iss-uh.” I don’t know at the time if I knew what was the right way to say my own name, but I went with “Am-riss-uh” because it didn’t sound like “Ahm-reese-uh”–the way my name was said in Guyana, and wished my name was “Katie” instead. This semi-state of paralysis induced by the pronunciation of my name by a stranger followed me until my last graduation from NYU in 2012. I was 23 years old. By then it was not about the fear of the conversation to correct my name, it was the fear that despite my clear outlines of phonetic spelling to assist the speaker in enunciating my full name, it would be John Travolta-ed (or butchered, if you do not understand that reference) nonetheless.
I had no idea that at five-years-old I was starting to try to escape my own identity in order to build a new one. I regretted it the day I realized that I was listening to my own paternal grandmother’s words and could not quite make them out. In a heavy, hearty, Guyanese accent she just talks, and talks–like many grandmas might. We went back and forth, “Agee (meaning, paternal grandmother, also likely misspelled), I got a job!” “Yuh find wan wuk?” “Yes! I…I edit these…it’s a pharma…It’s a writing job!” She is not sure what I mean, I am not sure how to explain it. “Dats good–yuh mus always get kwal-ee-fye.” And then, we are not sure what to say to one another, so an awkward I-love-you-I-love-you-too ensues.
Every now and then a person says to me, “You were born there (Guyana)? You have no accent! I would not have known!” And a part of me feels sick. Not because they discovered I was an immigrant–I wear that badge with pride. Sick, because there was a time that I felt those words were a compliment, that I had won my kindergarten game, accomplished my New Jersey goal, left my accent behind. I tend to hastily lie and say it would come out around other Caribbean people, but the truth is even when it does, the accent is the act, not the authentic regression I would like to pretend it was.
I think about the words I let myself forget and wonder, if I was able to abandon my first accent so certainly, why would I not be able to regain it fully? I wonder, trying hard to be honest with myself, if I would want my Guyanese accent back, if it were so simple. And the answer is no. My accent is a post-colonial cultural novelty that I have more right to wear and utilize than a non-Caribbean person (think of when Miley Cyrus said “we run tings, tings don’t run we” in “We Can’t Stop” or when Beyonce sang in a pseudo-Caribbean accent on her single “Baby Boy”). My only advantage in my accent is when it is accepted by mainstream America as a novelty accessory. But like all novelties, it is still only enjoyable, only acceptable, and most importantly only beneficial when it is treated as festive costume-wear to be put on for cultural events and put aside otherwise–abandoned until next time.
