Meredith Connelly is just the wrong name for an Asian chick, for real. Living in Canada, I've been told time and again that I'm not what most people expect when they hear my name. I was born and raised in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. My father, Marcel Connelly is white and my mother, Jennifer Hyungwang is originally from the City of Gimje, South Korea. They met as students at Carleton University in the 1980s, fell in love, got married and had little old me. Dad's a civil engineer and mom works at the National Bank of Canada downtown.
My parents split in 2009, the same year I graduated from Saint Matthew High School. A lot of people my age lament their folks divorce and see it as the day their oh so wonderful families got broken up. Me? I'm far more cynical than that. After the affairs, the shouting matches and the lies, on both sides, I honestly wondered what was keeping my folks together. Let them be happier without each other. Not everything broken can or should be fixed. Easy come and easy go, I say.
After the divorce, my parents sold the house in Orleans. Mom moved into an apartment in Barrhaven and my dad moved to a bachelor pad in Vanier. I moved into the dorms at Carleton University and began my criminology studies in September 2009. I graduated from Carleton University with a bachelor's degree in criminology in the summer of 2013. Like so many young people with recently acquired college and university degrees, I was enthusiastically looking for work. Someone forgot to tell me that in a town like Ottawa, it's not what you know it's who you know.
My mom tried to get me a job at the bank but it didn't work. Even as a mid-level manager, there's only so much she could do in such a lousy economy. Another thing working against me is the fact that I'm half white and half Asian. I have a white-sounding last name and I speak English and French fluently but I am still a minority. When I show up for job interviews, human resources people who've spoken to me on the phone tend to do a double take.
You'd think they'd seen a ghost, or something. Their eyes go wide, their lips tremble and they look at the papers in their hands before smiling frostily and inviting me to come into their offices. I already know I won't get the damn job. It would almost be comical if it weren't so sad and preposterously racist on their part, seriously. This is Ottawa, after all. The town that fun forgot. Ontario is considered a liberal province but Ottawa isn't too friendly to us immigrant types. That's why people gawk at me.
Instead of the white chick they were expecting, they're dealing with me. I'm five-foot-ten, curvy and firm-bodied, with light bronze skin, long black hair and lime-green eyes. That's my natural eye color, by the way. Green eyes run in my father's side of the family, as does height and athleticism. My pops once played rugby during his university days. I played soccer both in high school and while in university. It's my favorite sport. I was a B student at Carleton University. Not all Asians are academic superstars. Gosh I wish stereotypes would magically go away but who am I kidding? That'll never happen because people need a means to demean those different from themselves.
As you can see, my job search, fruitless as it were, left me more than a bit cynical and somewhat bitter. I talked to my dad about it and he tried to sound supportive, but he was also busy with his new girlfriend, Deirdre Baxter, a redhead from Calgary, Alberta. The first time I met Deirdre, she couldn't believe that my father and I were related. You look totally Chinese, she said to me, smiling. I gritted my teeth, eyed her coolly and told her I was half Irish and half Korean. If dad noticed my malaise while talking to Deirdre, he kept mum about it.
It never ceases to amaze me, how easily my father, Marcel Connelly, slid back into white society after decades spent married to an Asian woman and raising a mixed-race daughter with her. It's almost as if my mother and I never existed. He's got plans to marry Deirdre and starting a family with her. Once that happens, it will be as though my mother and I never existed. I know what you're thinking. I shouldn't think like that. Daddy will always love me, blah and more blah. Sorry, but I don't think so. My father's marriage to my mother didn't work, and I think he's distanced himself from us, especially her, because we're constant reminders of his failures. He's starting over with a younger woman from his own race, and that's that. My father is moving on with his life, and my mother and I have to do the same.
While searching for work, I pondered what my next move should be. I moved to Overbrook because it's a cheaper part of Ottawa. I took a job with Loblaw's, yes, the Canadian grocery store chain. I began working there for eleven bucks an hour, working eight-hour shifts at night because I needed to continue with my job search during the day. How the mighty has fallen. I graduated with good academic standing from Carleton University's criminology program and now I'm stocking shelves inside a grocery store, dealing with the drunken louts who come in at night. I hated the job with a fiery passion and longed for the day when I'd find something more suitable to me.
It's often been said that everything happens for a reason, and I thought it was just a platitude, until it happened to me. One night, while stocking the shelves at Loblaw's, I got attacked by a bum. Not the harmless kind, the crazy kind. As I tried to stop the creep from grabbing my throat, my rescue came from a most unlikely source. A tall young black man in a G4S security uniform. He grabbed the creep, and tossed him aside as if he weighed nothing. Then he looked at me, smiled and held out his hand. Are you alright ma'am? he said, concern in his deep voice.
