WE TALKED ABOUT HIM for two hours: Dad’s dad, my grandpa, the man we never knew. Why hadn’t Grandma told anyone about him? Was it because of the colour of his skin? That was terrible! But my dad said back when he was growing up, pretty much everyone in Erinville was white. A lot of people were “prejudiced,” as my father phrased it. They didn’t say “racist” in those days, but it amounted to the same thing.
“What about Great-Aunt Esther?” I asked. “Was she prejudiced?”
“You can ask her yourself,” my father said, looking at his watch. “It’s about that time.”
I looked at my father’s wrist, where he’d drawn back the cuff of his shirt to check the time. His skin was a little darker than mine, and certainly darker than my mother’s, at least in the winter. In the summer, my mom spent a
