Toycie Qualo
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Toycie Qualo is a secondary character in the novel Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell. She is the best friend of main character Beka Lamb and girlfriend of Emilio Villanueva.
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[edit] Family
Toycie was born to an unnamed, presumably unwed, mother, who left B.H. for Brooklyn, New York, when she was two. She was put into the care of her Aunt Eila, who remained her legal guardian throughout her lifetime. Her father was said to have worked in Panama, but she never met him. Toycie considers Aunt Eila her real mother; she says one day to Beka, "My own mother scarcely writes to me anymore. I'd feel better if she were dead".
[edit] Education
At the start of the novel, Toycie is seventeen and a senior at St. Cecilia's Academy, the school Beka also attends. She is an exemplary student and has aspirations to raise herself and her aunt out of the run-down house they live in. She is seeing Hispanic student Emilio Villanueva and appears to have everything going for her.
When Toycie becomes pregnant for Emilio and he refuses to sanctify their relationship, Toycie's mind and life go haywire. She loses interest in school, leading to expulsion by the strict Sister Virgil, St. Cecilia's principal; she withdraws from all her former associates and settles into a depressed state which eventually leads to an accident causing a miscarriage, a stay in the local mental asylum, and ultimately her death during a storm in the Stann Creek Valley (a mango tree fell, crushing her skull, while she was out wandering about during the storm).
[edit] Role in the novel
As Beka remembers, Toycie was her best friend and confidant, mainly because she understood Beka's travails. But the two friends slowly drift apart due to the attentions of Emilio Villanueva and Beka's new drive to succeed academically (a pursuit Toycie had encouraged her in).
To some reviewers, Toycie's plight as a victim of teenage pregnancy has implications for both the social and ethnic development of the nation of Belize. Professor Ervin Beck of Goshen College, Indiana, claims that the novel presents and confirms the Mestizos' increasing dominance of education and economic affairs in the colony, explained by the girls' feeling that "panias" have it better than they do. With regards to Toycie herself, Beck claims her desire to "raise her colour" inevitably brings her into conflict with Emilio and with accepted social standards in the colony, not to mention at her school. Beck also notes that the interplay between Toycie and Emilio foreshadows the dominance of Mestizos in Belizean culture, even dismissing the People's United Party's Central American leanings as indicative of a culture moving away from English influence to Spanish, despite Britain's legal hold on the colony. Ultimately, though, Toycie's main influence is on Beka, who rededicates her life to education after losing her friend and obeys the call presented by her principal below:
- We women must learn to control our emotions, Mr. Lamb. There are times we must stand up and say "enough" whatever our feelings. . . . The women will have to decide for a change in their lives, otherwise they will remain vulnerable. (120)
Anthony Sylvestre, an attorney writing for the Belize Times in 2007, coined the phrase "The Toycie Syndrome" to refer to the crime of infanticide, or concealing the death of a child. Of course, Toycie had actually lost the child to a miscarriage by the time of her death, but Sylvestre uses the emotions that befall Toycie as a metaphor in describing the emotion behind child concealment.
