A Brief History of Seven Killings (22 page)

The whole ride over she couldn’t stop yapping, and once she was there she turn into a nun with a silence vow. Ras Trent was already there talking to a woman, excuse me, dawta, and smiling more than he was talking, stroking his beard and tilting his head left then right while the girl, white but with a Rasta cap, clasps her hands and look like she’s saying a heavy American version of I’m SO happy to be here. Me? I’m SO happy to watch Kimmy make sense of it all, to watch her fidget and lean on one leg, then the next, then the first as if she doesn’t know if she should walk over there, or leave, or wait for him to notice her. All the time she’s silent. All the women were silent except the white one talking to Trent. If it wasn’t for the red, green and gold and that the skirts are often denim, I’d think I was surrounded by Muslim women.

Far off in the corner three women are lit up by the bonfire they have going, cooking some ital food whatever. I’m stiff, a lighthouse with only my head moving, sweeping left to right and back. I couldn’t help it, I’m already looking for boys and especially girls from my high school, who found the true light of Rasta, but are really here just to give their uptown parents grief. There’s just so much sex you can have with a man who doesn’t use deodorant or a woman who doesn’t shave her armpits or legs. Maybe to be a real Rasta you have to be into man musk and woman fish. A lot of women but they are all moving. It takes me a while to see that they are all getting something to give to the men, food, a stool, water, matches for their weed, more food, juice from big Igloos. Livication and liberation my ass, if I wanted to live in a Victorian novel I at least want men who know how to get a decent haircut.

Kimmy was still beside me, still fidgeting, a different woman from the one who just spent an entire car ride talking like she’s better than me. Sorta like what she’s doing with this phone call, but I haven’t heard anything
she’s said for the past seven minutes. I know, I glanced at the clock above my door.

—Channeling emotional energies towards constructive racial interests. Mass sacrificial work. Through education in science and industry and character building, stress mass education, and, and, you listening to a word that I saying?

—Huh? What? Sorry, trying to swat a fly.

—A fly? What kind of nastiness swirling inside your bed?

—I’m not in bed, Kimmy. Should I even be calling you that? Thought Ras Trent would have given you something other than your slave name by now.

—Him, him call me Mariama. But this is just between him, me and whoever free.

—Oh.

—That don’t mean you until you choose to be free, sistren.

—So now that you’re free you going back to Africa?

—Typical. Same thing T said. Back to Africa is not even the chief aspect of the Garvey Philosophy.

Kimmy would never use words like chief aspect. Come to think of it, neither would Ras Trent, who probably spells daughter “dawta” in order to use fewer letters. Amazing that she brings such a bitch out of me, but it always reaches right above my skin or inside my mouth and never comes out. The more Kimmy dances around an issue, the more it must be truly bugging her.

—You call me for some reason other than the history, Kimmy?

—What you talking about? I tell you revolution have to start in the home first.

—Not the bed?

—Same thing.

I want to tell her that I’m sick of being the one person she feels she can talk down to. I really do. And then she says,

—You is a dutty little hypocrite.

Finally.

—Pardon?

—You, you fuck him?

—What are you talking about?

—You think nobody wasn’t going see you? Lay-lay ’round him house like some groupie?

—I still don’t know what you talking about.

—Shelly Moo-Young said she was sure she drive past a woman that look like you, hanging outside him gate yesterday afternoon when she went to pick up her kids.

—Brown girl in uptown. Of course, nobody else look like me.

—When she pass back with the children, she see you again.

—You spoke to your mother?

—Me know that you fuck him.

—Fuck who?

—Him.

—That is none of your—

—So is true. Now you laywaiting him like prostitute.

—Kimmy, you don’t have other things to do? Like tell your mother that is the shitstem that beat up her husband and rape her?

—Nobody rape Mummy.

—That what Rasta Trent tell you? Or him tell you that is Babylon rape her? Go on, tell me. Tell me what him tell you because you sure as shit don’t have an opinion for yourself.

—Wh-what? What? What? Nobody rape Mummy. Nobody rape . . .

—Considering that I’m sure Ras Trent just hold down and take way with you, how the fuck would you know?

—Him, him, him was only trying you out, you know.

—Trying me out.

—Trying you out because he still can’t forget me.

—Oh Kimmy, most people forget you within minutes of meeting you.

—Is a pity Mummy and Daddy don’t know you is such a fucking bitch.

—No, but them probably know that you don’t wash you pussy no more because you turning Rasta. I have to work.

—You don’t have no fucking job.

—But you do, and why you don’t get back to it? Ras Trent shit-up batty probably need to wipe.

—You is a wicked bitch. You is a wicked bitch.

Usually I let her berate me until she runs out of breath, but I went too far this time. I shut up because I know I want to go further. She doesn’t see me holding my lips shut.

—And, and, and the only reason him fuck you was to see if good loving run in the family.

—So him going after Mummy next?

—T tell me about you.

—T tell you about everything. You haven’t had a single thought for yourself in two years. You hear yourself? Calling me about bombocloth Marcus Garvey like you is a history teacher. Ras Trent sit you down like a fucking four-year-old and tell you little history then you think hmmm, who can I talk down to and make me feel bigger than somebody, and as usual you call me. Well, I don’t care about your history lesson, I don’t care about Garvey and I don’t care about your fucking Rasta boyfriend who probably sucking pussy when he go to New York. And another thing, if you think that red skin asshole ever going to help you get a visa so you can find out what he really does in New York, you’re even more stupid than that Ganja University t-shirt you always wear.

I want to go on. I have things to do, but I go on. I have two parents who are sitting ducks, just waiting to be attacked again, from the same bastards who’ll probably come back for what couldn’t fit on their bikes the last time. I’m so ready to go that I don’t care if I start burning bridges even before I cross them, even if it’s my fucking sister. I want to go back to Hope Road to just stand there by the gate and scream and scream and scream until he either opens the gate or calls the police. And if he calls the police I’ll just spend the night in jail and come back out and scream and scream again. He’s going to help me, damn it, because if I could help myself I wouldn’t
give a fuck about him and his “Midnight Ravers” song either. And he’s going to give me money, enough money so that I would shut the fuck up, enough money that I can go to the U.S. Embassy through the back door and leave with three visas because Kimmy won’t want one and fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her. There’s at least ten more years stuck in the back of my mouth that I’m finally letting out and fuck all who don’t care. I want to spit in her goddamn face and explode all over her bombopussy r’asscloth ears. But she hung up.

Josey Wales

I
have an appointment
with Doctor Love. The day was just starting when the phone in the living room ring. I was up already, moving about my house like a morning ghost. Before he say hello, I say, You really have a fuckup sense of timing, Doctor Love. He wanted to know how I know it was him. I said he was the only man who would risk getting a bullet in the head for bothering me before morning tea. He laugh, say see you by the usual place and hang up. Weeper still snoring on the couch even though the ringer was set to loud.

Peter Nasser introduce me to him on day he come also with the American, Louis Johnson, then both men make the mistake of thinking they could control all communication between me and this Cuban. But a church pastor say to me one time that man might not know man, but spirit know spirit. He was using it to explain how faggot find each other. I couldn’t care less about that shit, but what he say stick with me forever, I even use it as a judge. Yes, you can tell me all sorts of word, I already know the power of word, but will spirit know spirit? So when I first meet Doctor Love most of what we say to each other we didn’t use words.

Peter Nasser, in one of his rare trip to the ghetto in broad daylight, pull up in his Volvo one day in November 1975 saying he brought an early Christmas present. I look at him thinking what a fucking fool this stocky Syrian clump of dog shit is, and I look at the Cuban to dismiss him too but could read when he roll him eye that he was thinking something close. Peter Nasser never shut up, even when him fucking, so I notice when a man don’t talk.

At first I think that since he was from Cuba, he didn’t know enough English, until I realize that he only talk when he have to. Tall man, skinny
too, with a beard he scratch too much and curly black hair too long for a doctor. Instead he look like Che Guevara, who was a doctor too. Except Doctor Love try to kill Che at least four time.
That little
maricón,
that little
putito
es not even Cuban
, he say when I point out that the two of them was in medicine and they both leave it behind to pick up gun. Part of what draw me to the man is just to know a thing or two. How you go from saving life to taking life? Doctor Love say doctors take life too,
hombre
. Every fucking day. The day Peter Nasser bring him here, he say to me, This man going take you to a whole new level.

Here is the thing now. Louis Johnson did try to tell me foreign policy in that low draw-out way that white people talk when they think you’re too stupid to understand. Louis Johnson know Doctor Love because they both was in the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy’s little poppy show to try and kidnap Cuba that flop in everybody face. Doctor Love is to Bay of Pigs what 1966 is to me. I look at him and I know. While Peter Nasser and Louis Johnson walk off because Louis Johnson promise him that he would try cow cod soup since, according to Nasser, he fuck his wife like a sixteen-year-old boy after that, the Cuban stay behind. Luis, he said,

—Luis Hernán Rodrigo de las Casas, but everybody calls me Doctor Love.

—Why?

—Because counter-revolution is an act of love,
hermano
, not war. I’m here to teach you things.

—Already learn enough things from Johnson. And why the fuck you people always assume black people so stupid you need to teach them things?

—Whoa,
muchacho
, I didn’t mean to offend. But you offend me as well.

—Me? Offend you? I don’t even know you.

—And already you’re lumping me with the
americano
. I see it in your face.

—You man take two different bus come here?

—
Hermano
, it’s because of that man and men like him why things fucked-up to shit in Bay of Pigs, him and every dumb Yankee fucker who got involved. Don’t put me in him.

—With him.

—Ay.

—So what is your claim to fame then?

—You heard of this Carlos the Jackal, no?

—No.

—Funny, he’s heard about you. He’s been hiding out here for a good while, ever since shit went down in a major, how do you say . . . fiasco with OPEC. Even fucking a few of your women, I am sure of this. I taught him a few things because truth be told, he’s shitty excuse of a terrorist. Catholic school boys all wanting to be fucking revolutionaries, I tell you the whole thing makes me sick.

—You a real doctor?

—You sick,
hombre
?

—No. You don’t sound Cuban.

—I did my schooling in Oslo,
muchacho
.

—You see any boy here?

—Ha. My mistake.
Pero todo es un error en este país de mierda
.

—Not half a mistake as the stupid country you’re coming from.

—
¿Por Dios, hablas español?

I nod yes.

—CIA
hombre
, he knows you think?

I nod no.

—Want to hear something? Act as if you are deaf, you understand this, as if you are deaf.

—
¿Louis, por qué me has sacado de mi propio jodido país para hablar mierda con ese hijo de puta?

—
Luis, Luis, nada más enséñale al negrito de mierda alguna bobería como una carta bomba. O préstale el libro de cocina del anarquista, qué sé yo. Él y sus muchachos son unos comemierdas, pero son útiles. Por lo menos por ahora
. He’s saying he likes you, Josey.

—Me no know. He don’t sound too friendly.

Doctor Love laugh. He look at me and smile. Always good to know who your friends are, isn’t that so? he say. Anyway, I think you wanna know my
claim to fame, no? Meet me at Kingston Harbour tomorrow and I will show you, my friend.

—Me done learn enough tricks from the CIA.

—But CIA didn’t send me,
amigo
. I bring greetings from Medellín.

This was right before Christmas season, after a whole year of PNP boys chucking badness all over Kingston. The next day I meet him at Kingston Harbour, downtown out by the dock. The morning was lazy, not too much people out yet but car line the road right around the harbour. People working early, must be, I can’t imagine anybody leaving their car down here overnight—even though funny enough that would be the safest place in Kingston to leave it. And even more funny, some people still live down here and live good too. I didn’t see him for a while and think this was joke. Bad enough that I was downtown with no back-up in territory where Buntin-Banton gang still move. Down by the harbour almost all the building look like from a TV show set in New York. Bank of Jamaica, Bank of Nova Scotia, two hotels that must did think a different kind of Kingston was going to happen before Manley take over with his socialism-communism bullshit. Anyway, I didn’t see him since he was coming up behind me. He tap my shoulder then put his finger on his lip to tell me to stay quiet even though he was smiling the whole time.