Winter’s white and bloodless hands crept arthritically across the city of Edmonton. The young boys and girls of the catholic school Josef attended were gathering their coats. School was out for the day. Behind the heavy steeple doors of this gothic house, doors which resembled hands clasped in prayer, Josef’s mother was zipping up his parka and adjusting his scarf and hood. In a noisy trickle kids and parents began to gather in front of the doors. The mothers hurriedly called out to their children, their voices overlapping and intersecting in semi-orderly confusion, trying to locate the pair of ears that would instinctively respond to their call. The eager mothers had to see to it that their children were okay, that they were dressed properly for the arctic air that frequently swept through the towering doors with a gush, whenever anyone came in or out. A blonde little girl about Josef’s age, five years old, was standing next to him—her mother pulling on her gloves.

Josef’s mother was finished with him and he stood waiting for her as she reassembled her own winter attire. Snug in his winter coat, mittens and hood, in the safe clement glow of his mother’s aura, a sensual chill of warmth tingled in his young loins. It coasted outward, warming his thighs and covering his chest, reaching his fingertips. It ended with a flush feeling in his face, reddening his round cheeks against the sharp frigid air. Somehow the feeling seemed connected with a sense of familiarity. For Josef it was connected to every room in the school, every hiding place and every corner in every room. It was connected with the face of his best friend, even with the face of Dr. Strickland, his teacher. The contrast of this intimate bodily sensation with the chilly air and clatter of children around him pleasantly mesmerized his senses. He stood amid the children and noise, the cold air, as if he were completely alone, starring straight ahead. It seemed that a year had gone by in what might have been a few minutes when a flash of cold wind shot across his face as some one left, snapping him from his daydream. It awakened in him a giddy excited feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was ready to push through the doors and meet the icy wind and snow flurries.

Feeling stiff, scarcely able to move beneath his layers of winter clothes, his arms stuck out beside him like the wings of a penguin. He twisted his little body around and noticed that the little blonde girl was starring at him with a puzzled look. She looked as if she was in the process of making a discovery, unsure how to interpret this new information. “What are you?” she popped out. The sudden and direct nature of the query caught Josef off guard. He was not sure what she meant…”What am I!?” he thought to himself. After a moment’s struggle, searching his mind as if he was patting down his pockets, looking desperately for something he was supposed to have, he came up empty.  He hadn’t been asked that question before that he could recall and was slow in answering. 

He looked up at his mother for help. She was looking back at him also caught off guard, unsure what to do, if indeed there was anything to do. She was curious about how he would reply. Josef looked back at the little girl and shot back, “I’m English.” He had thought that if he spoke English he must be English. Nobody had ever told him what he was. In his own mind he was simply Josef. ‘Obviously there is more to it than that!’ he realized with the native intuition of a five year old.

With a look of disappointment at the unsatisfactory answer he had given her, the little girl shrugged her shoulders and said, “Oh”, with a puzzled look on her face. Her mother smiled at his with an embarrassed look that seemed to apologize for her daughter’s question and gave an apologetic good-bye. The little girl, whose curiosity was not satisfied, turned to Josef and with a frustrated expression animating her features said “Bye”.

Josef’s full lips and lightly tanned skin was one of many things her inquisitive mind had found to play with. It would find a dozen more between now and supper. Josef and his mother pushed out into the cold and headed for the car. His mother sheltered herself from the wind as though it were an assailant. After two years of living in Canada her Puerto Rican blood was still unaccustomed to it. She longed to move back to California. Josef leaned into the wind, enjoying the battle, boy against nature. He was indeed braving the odds of what was to be his own growing, looming, curiosity and his ability to deal with the disquieting discoveries his future held for him. He leaned his shoulder more sharply into the wind, the snow squeaking beneath his boots as he trudged for the car. Once in the car, his mother backed out of the parking stall and headed home.

“Am I English?” he asked, as his wide buoyant eyes studying his mother’s face. “I mean, if you speak English doesn’t that make you English?”

“Just because you speak English, it doesn’t make you an English person,” She replied thoughtfully, amused by the girls question and her son’s response.

Josef starred out into the snow watching the snowflakes effortlessly freckle the windshield and die. His mother’s arm whispered forward turning on the windshield wipers, quickly wiping the snow away. The repetitive motion of the blades reminded Josef of Dr. Strickland explaining a math problem on the blackboard, scribbling something with chalk, then wiping it away.

“What am I?” he questioned, turning abruptly to his mother. Unsure of what to say, she replied:

“You were born in the United States and that makes you an American.”

“How come Americans speak English and not American?” he came back.

A smile came across his mother’s face that he did not understand. She was enjoying her son’s curiosity. As she began to talk her voice seemed to walk a tightrope, seeking a means of fielding the slate of questions that began to pour out of her son and what, in their clumsy way, the questions ultimately sought to answer.

“Many Americans came from England and they brought their language with them.” she replied, trying to impart an accurate picture of things that she knew would be lost on him.

“Doesn’t that mean that Americans are part English?” he replied shrewdly, still wanting to defend his answer to the little girl and, in part, trying to get a bearing on the world.

He waited for a reply and turned to look out the window. He noticed that the snow had spread a thin blanket of white covering the lattice of city streets they passed. There in the intimate space the car provided, beside his mother, the surrounding whiteness of the snow reaching out in every direction made him feel as if he were riding on a cloud. And he was. He was out of reach of Old Man Winter’s swollen, wracked knuckles that lay somewhere in the snow just outside the car door.

“Yes, but your ancestors are not English.” his mothers thoughtful, reflective voice brought him back. “Different people speak different languages. English is only one out of many. The French people in Canada speak French. When I was a little girl in Puerto Rico,we spoke Spanish.”

“You can speak Spanish mom?” he looked up in surprise.

“Sure.” she said easily.

“Say something.” Joseph insisted. 

“Adios.”

“That’s Spanish?” he replied in amazement.

“Sure.” his mother said, smiling.

“We say it all the time. I didn’t know that was Spanish!”

“And you father is African-American.”

“What’s that!?”

“Well…it means his ancestors originally came from Africa.  Grandma Jesse and everyone on your father’s side is African-American.” 

Josef was beginning to get confused and irritated. He wanted a straight answer. He wanted something he could hold on to, an unambiguous statement or pronouncement.

“English is the right language isn’t it?” he said half telling, half asking.

“There is no right language, different people in different countries speak different languages. There is no such thing as a right language. They are all right.”

A feeling of melancholy crept into his mother’s mood, causing her to straighten her posture and clear her throat. “They are all right sweetie.” she smiled, careful to impart the right message. The light turned green and once again she fixed her attention to the road.

They were almost home. Josef was feeling mildly vexed, like the little girl had looked when she had left. He stared vacantly out the window. For Josef the day had almost imperceptibly changed. Everything he saw seemed bound in mystery now. Commonplace things, things he had seen everyday, seemed different. The maple tree’s leafless branches seemed to claw at the sky. Children crossing the street under the supervision of the crossing guard were remote, like ants forming a trail to some unknown place. 

He turned his head and looked out the side window. He noticed that the blanket of snow that had once covered the ground, his cloud, had melted. Beneath it he saw the hard grey concrete of the city streets as if for the first time in his life. The sense of shock made his small body reflexively jerk back against the car seat. Feeling his scalp tingle, an inarticulate feeling of panic and anger caused the muscles in his shoulders to tighten in around his neck. He had made his first discovery. Unlike the little girl, however, he knew that he did not like it.