The Miseducation of Suszanna Clarke

The sad thing is, it wasn’t even me or one of my friends that noticed this remarkable resemblance. It took one eagle eyed co-worker - with the help of the three pints of Guinness she had consumed - to point out this startling similarity. But perhaps I need to give you the background to this story.

“You have gorgeous hair,” my co-worker named Marie told me last Friday. It was after work at a pub called The Greencoat Boy. My first day on the job they had taken me there for a three hour lunch and the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol, which I declined to do. I had assumed that passing out in the drain on my first day on the job (in a skirt, on a windy day) would not have created the impression I was hoping for.

So Marie told me I had gorgeous hair and I said thanks. She then proceeded to tell me how much she loves curly hair. Really, really loves curly hair. No really. I just love Afros. Now, okay. I have a lot of hair. And it pretty much does what it feels like. But I wouldn’t exactly call it an Afro. But looking at Marie with her typical Irish prettiness, which consisted of hair so straight you could probably thread a needle and sew with it, I thought, okay, yeah, I could understand.

“So what’s the longest you’ve ever grown your hair?” Marie asked. I showed her a location just below shoulder blades, explaining to her that anything longer than that and it’s too much hair to deal with. “Oh yes!” she responded knowingly. “And it’s an Afro too so it must be really difficult.”

Something told me that the conversation was soon going to become very trying indeed.

“Do you know who you look like? Lauryn Hill! Yes! You do. You look JUST like her. You must get that all the time.” No Marie, actually I don’t. “You don’t?!” she was shocked, perhaps even appalled. “But people must stop you ALL the time and ask you if you’re Lauryn Hill. Are you married?” Confused by the abrupt twist in the conversation, I said no.

“Oh but you HAVE to come to Ireland then.” Marie was now so excited she put down her pint of Guinness to grab my arm to convince me. “You must. The Irish men will love you. We LOVE the Fugees in Ireland.” Now this conversation had been tedious long before the hip hop tendencies of the Emerald Isle had been mentioned. At this point it had become slightly offensive.

Now I personally think Ms Hill is amazingly pretty. And to be told I was her missing twin would have been a compliment if not for the annoying little fact that, well, I don’t look ANYTHING like her. I can’t even begin to imagine ways to stretch the very glaring truth to make this fact otherwise.

We don’t even have the same hairstyle.

The not so strange thing is I have a co-worker with hair exactly like mine - EXACTLY - who also spoke about how difficult it is for him to take care of his curly hair and he proudly boasted of washing it once a week and combing it about twice a month. Marie didn’t ask him about his Afro though. Could this have anything to do with the fact that he is white?

I’d often heard that for white people, all coloured people look the same. All Asians look the same, as do all Indians and blacks. I thought it took great stupidity and arrogance to not note the differences in people, especially when they seemed very obvious to me. I couldn’t understand it and never really even thought about it until last Friday when Marie insisted that when looking at me she saw a complexion, a body type, facial features and hair style that were completely incongruous with my reality. And I know what motivated it too - a desire to show me that she was “cool” about things like race. In falling over herself to show her comfort with my ethnicity she actually succeeded in making me feel uncomfortable.

And it wasn’t just Marie. An Ethiopian man I meet later on that evening spent half an hour trying to understand how it was possible for there to be a mix other than black and white (the vastly predominant mix up here). He could not understand the combining of different races over a period of several generations. When I told him that he looked like a Dougla and I explained what that word meant he laughed incredulously. “Indians don’t mix with other races,” he told me authoritatively.

So if we didn’t know it before we know it now. We have a pretty good thing, Trinidad. We have a society that recognises the existence of infinite possibilities.

Let’s remember how rare and important that is. Oh, in case you’re wondering, the evening ended with Marie grabbing a handful of my hair and then turning around and pretending she hadn’t. Apparently she’s planning a karaoke lime. She already has my song picked out. Killing me softly.

Comments? Please write

suszanna@hotmail.com