"Antonia Antoine, please hand me your ticket and follow me to the boarding area." Said the airport attendant.
As I grabbed the small grey suitcase that sat on the terrazzo tiled floor of the Trinidad and Tobago International Airport and hugged my little sisters good bye. I turned towards my mom, stared her dead in the eyes, and without saying a word or making any gestures to her I made an about face and walked off.
"Antonia, Antonia," My mom called out but I kept walking.
In this opening scene it sets the the tone and frame for the story. I longed to leave my aurthritarian strutured up bringing and venture out on my on. After have a pretty tumultuous relationship with my mom for years, I got the opportunity to leave and as I walked away from my mom in defiance, I could feel the chains of oppression loosen. Freedom !
Telling
" Ah really goin tuh get out of dis house and go far away from de family dat ah was planning tuh secretly leave behind de minute ah got de chance."
This opportunity came in the form of a plane ticket, a plane ticket that held my future, a future away from my caged and monitored existence. I would not have to hand over my pay check to Sandra Antoine any more, I would not have to worry about the fact that I was a twenty year old working woman and still getting beatings from my mom. All I wanted was to get out of there with no plans of returning.
This telling scene informs you a bit about the social system that I was raised in, where even at the age of twenty your not considered an adult. You can be subjected to beating and having your pay check seized by an authoritarian parent. This type of oppressive existence, led to me devising many plans to free myself from the mental and physical trauma, that had interwoven it's self in the fiber of my everyday being.