Another night in this dreadful town. Sometimes I wonder why I came here in the first place. My name is James Bien-Aime. I was born and raised in the town of Newton, Massachusetts. In September 2010, I had the world on a string. I was a freshman at Boston College and life was good. I had everything in the palm of my hand. I was a second-string quarterback on the Boston College football team, and life couldn't be better. My father Louis Bien-Aime used to play football for Boston College, before he went to the Massachusetts State Police Academy. Pops is now a sergeant with the M.S.P.s and I couldn't be prouder of him. Unlike many sons out there, I was happy to follow in my pops footsteps. He raised me by himself, since my mom Alexandra Winston Bien-Aime died giving birth to me. There aren't too many African-Americans on the State Police force and I endeavored to be one of the few. Just like my old man before me. At least, that's what I wanted to do until everything started to go wrong.
After the Boston College football team's devastating loss to those punks of Duke University, I went home and found my sexy Jamaican-American girlfriend Sheila Johnson in bed with my Irish-American roommate Alexander O'Reilly. I cussed them out and chased them off. As I sat alone in my dorm, a whirlwind of anger and despair soared through me. And I did the one thing I shouldn't have done. I had a couple of beers, got in my red convertible ( a graduation gift from my father) and went to chill at my friend Jamal Lester's house in the west side of Brockton. At least, that was the plan. I only had two beers, and with my six-foot-three, 240-pound, rock-solid Black athlete's body, I thought I could handle it. And unfortunately, I couldn't. I got busted by the Massachusetts State Police. The officer who took me in was Troy Henderson, a stocky old Irish cop and my father's best friend. Instead of taking me to jail like he should have done, he brought to my pops. You see, cops in Boston have a code when dealing with each other's brats. They treat each other's brats as if they were their own. It's all part of the brotherly code of the fraternal order of police. My father was far less forgiving than officer Troy Henderson. Let's just say that I caught the beating of a lifetime, and I lost my driver's licence.
I thought I had walked away scot-free but my father wasn't done punishing me. He basically used his clout to strip me of everything I held dear. Gone was my football scholarship to Boston College, one of the most prestigious schools in the state of Massachusetts. Gone was my chance at earning my bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice while playing NCAA Division One football. At the beginning of the year I was debating whether to go straight to the police academy or at least try to get into the National Football League after graduating from Boston College. Now my options were far simpler. My father felt that the City of Boston was too tempting an environment for an impulsive young African-American male like myself. He banished me to the middle of nowhere, also known as Ottawa, Ontario. A fate worse than death. My father felt that I had it too easy in this life. And in many ways, he was right. I did have it easier than him, though I didn't consider my life to be easy. My father was born and raised in the City of Cap-Haitien, Republic of Haiti. He was a student at College Notre Dame Du Perpetuel Secours, an all-male Catholic high school, when his own parents were gunned down by the Tonton Macoute, the ruthless military men who enforced the will of the infamous Haitian dictator Duvalier. My father was a kid when he lost his father, mother and sister. That was the early 1980s. He became a United Nations refugee, and was eventually granted asylum in the United States of America. He attended Dorchester High School in Boston, Massachusetts, while staying with a host family. Then he won a scholarship to Boston College, where he played football. He graduated from Boston College's Law School eight years later, but opted for a career in law enforcement rather than becoming a lawyer. The Massachusetts State Police considers him one of their best men.
Now, my father wasn't alone when he left the island of Haiti in the early 1980s. His younger brother Marc-Henri Bien-Aime was also granted asylum and taken in by a U.S. family. My uncle Marc-Henri moved to Canada seven years after he arrived in America. He settled in the region of Ottawa, Ontario, met a lovely Haitian woman, got married and had a son and two daughters, my cousins Jacques, Vanessa and Evelyn. My uncle Marc-Henri is a Constable for the Ontario Provincial Police. It seems law enforcement runs in the family. Anyhow, my father sent me to live with my uncle Marc-Henri in Ontario. In one fell swoop I had not only lost my driver's licence and my scholarship to Boston College, I had also gotten myself thrown out of the United States of America, the country in which I was born. Can you imagine this shit? I can't believe it, and I was there!
Man, I did not like Canada when I first got there. I tried to get into the University of Ottawa, mainly because it had a football team but they didn't accept me. I had an incomplete for my classes at Boston College. The only other university in the City of Ottawa was Carleton University, derisively called Last Chance University by many folks in proper Canadian society. I guess beggars can't be choosers so I was smiling when I got the acceptance letter from Carleton University in the mail. Now, since I'm American and not Canadian, I had to apply as an international student. That means they charge me twenty one hundred dollars per class, instead of the eight hundred or so dollars they charge Canadian students. Man, I was mad as hell when I found that out. I wasn't eligible for any of the usual scholarships. I had to get a job if I wanted to go to school. Being an American in Canada isn't easy. I learned the hard way that Canadians aren't the nice, friendly people most of the world thinks they are. Canadians are mean as hell but they hide it. And they aren't in love with America. They seem to envy us and resent us, though I don't know. We've never done anything to them, as far as I know. Anyhow, I had to get myself a J.O.B. First I applied for a work permit, and found out the only job I could get was that of a security guard. And even for that lousy job, I had to file security clearance forms and a whole bunch of crap. All for a measly twelve bucks an hour. Nevertheless, a job was a job. I worked for various security companies in the summer of 2011, and saved every penny. When September 2011 came, I was ready to enrol at Carleton University. I had saved enough to pay for two classes. I almost killed myself with overtime shifts at work. Don't ask me how I did it but I got it done.
At Carleton University, I was in for a lot of culture shock. I think it's the most international of all Canadian schools. I mean, I sat in a Criminology class of about a hundred students and all around me there were guys and gals from Africa, Latin America, the Republic of India, the Caribbean, the Arab world and the Republic of China. I was stunned. There were a few American students there as well. They were mostly rich white guys and gals from places like Hartford, in the state of Connecticut and Fairbanks in Alaska. Not my kind of people but whatever. I walked up to them and said hi, and I tried not to roll my eyes as they talked about how much fun they were having in Canada as rich Americans. In my Criminal Psychology class, I met someone I would never forget. Jayanti Lakshmi Kalpana, born and raised in the City of Amravati, in the Maharashtra Province of the Republic of India. She'd been living in the Confederation of Canada since 2001. The first time I saw that gal, I was stunned.
Now, I saw beautiful women all the time. However, something about this six-foot-one, curvaceous young woman with dark brown skin, long Black hair and almond-shaped brown eyes simply took my breath away. Jayanti was simply lovely. When I first saw her, I thought she was Black. I mean, her skin was the same shade as mine. And I was born of a Haitian-American father and Jamaican mother. I'm not mixed with anything, though I consider myself as American as apple pie. With a smile on her lovely face, Jayanti corrected me. She told she was a Tamil from India, and many of her people were as dark-skinned as any person from sub-Saharan Africa. Wow. I was amazed at that. We don't get a lot of Indians in Boston and the ones I knew were usually bronze-skinned, not dark brown. Now that I looked at her, Jayanti's features were a bit different from the average Black person's. Later I noticed that the few Tamil students at Carleton University looked like white folks who were painted dark brown. African-like skin tones but Caucasian-style hair and facial features. What a fascinating people.
Jayanti and I became friends. She told me that she had family in the U.S. and visited them every Christmas, even though she was raised Muslim. Apparently there were lots of Muslims in the Republic of India. When I asked her why she didn't wear the hijab like most of the Muslim women I saw in the town of Ottawa, Jayanti told me that sometimes she wore it and sometimes she didn't. There was a sharpness in her tone as she told me this, so I wisely chose not to press the issue. Still, I did notice that for some reason, the hijab framed Jayanti's features beautifully when she wore it. My buddy Jacob Jackson, a red-haired, chubby white guy from the City of Trenton, New Jersey, congratulated me loudly when he saw me sitting next to Jayanti and chatting her up inside the Carleton University library. The boisterous bozo embarrassed me in front of Jayanti. I smiled weakly and pulled him aside before he could do more damage. Jackson told me he had a thing for Muslim chicks, especially Somali women and Indonesian women, though he was partial to Hindu women as well. Like a lot of white guys, he craves minority women but doesn't care to learn anything about their culture. I exchanged dap with him and wished him luck in his hunt for "Muslim booty" before returning to Jayanti. She laughed and asked me about my chubby buddy. I looked her in the eye and told her Jackson had a drinking problem, by way of explaining his behavior. That wasn't true but whatever.