Iron Balloons (19 page)

Why? Well come on, the judgment was at hand.

If I had an easy life, it wouldn’t be so bad. Let’s say if Bible study came after an afternoon of kicking back with a copy of
MAD
magazine or listening to a group of rastas talking about the imminent destruction of the capitalist system and the establishment of a u—no,
i
topia—in which weed would be legal, you could hear reggae on the radio at all hours of the day, pork would be outlawed, having books by Walter Rodney and Malcolm X wouldn’t brand you as a troublemaker or a reprobate, and a man would somehow, without real effort or excitement, find himself blessed with several queens who would all get along—you know, African stylee.

Bible study came after I’d washed the dishes, cleaned my room, and cooked dinner, and it followed a routine. Aunt Shirley or my mother would call me out of my room to meet their guest. I would take my time to come out, wave and mumble a polite enough hello, then shift my weight from leg to leg as my aunt and mother explained that I wasn’t yet living in the truth, which would make the guest—every single guest—invite me to bow my head and pray with them. I would then refuse and they would come back with their second offer—to allow them to pray for me. The second they closed their eyes, I’d ease out of the room and lay in bed and listen to bootleg tapes from Jah Love, my favorite sound system, as I twirled my afro into something dread, and handwrote music reviews for
Yout’ Talk
, my school newspaper, while they prayed for my soul through the night.

If you have any sense at all, you must be wondering,
Well, why didn’t he just go out with his friends while the old folks prayed?

But hear me nuh: Before you rush to judgment, just thank God or whoever you pray to that you never get one o’ my mother lick dem yet. Pass
what
gate? When
who
praying?

Leave room is one thing. Leave house is somep’n else. But leave yard? Baba, is a next t’ing that.

So one Friday now, what a policeman would call “the day in question,” things went as I’ve described them. I was in my room—if you can imagine a prefabricated Jamaican house: louver windows, gauzy yellow curtains, tile floors, dark wood bed with an iron spring, a trunk full o’ old clothes, walls festooned with posters of soul singers and Third World revolutionaries, and a dresser with doilies and bottles of Big Wheel, Brut, and Old Spice colognes—when a piece o’ bloodclaat bass began to roll through the house like a fog.

“Courtneigh!”

My mother kept calling me but I didn’t answer her. What would have been the point? I knew why she was calling me. She knew why she was calling me. She wanted to run off her mouth ’pon me about the music, as if it wasn’t coming from somebody else’s house.

I knew where it was coming from. She knew where it was coming from. The house behind us, which was owned by a rasta bredrin named Jah Mick. We grew up with Jah Mick. He used to be my older brother’s closest friend, and they’d both gotten soccer scholarships to the States. Jah Mick had gone up as Michael, what society people like my mother used to call “a decent boy.” But he’d come back six months ago with a new name and a new flex, a beard, and long dreads—a “boogooyagga.” You don’t need no translation. So it mean is so it sound. Say it, “Boo-goo-yagga. Boo-goo-yagga.” It sound bad, eeh?

Now, I knew why Jah Mick had turned up the music like that. He’d started a magazine named
Rootsman Kulcha
—yes, it was just as you’ve conceived it—and whenever he was short of inspiration, he’d turn up the heat on his old tube amp and the air would be thick and sweet with dub sounds. In the meantime, my mother’s temper began its slow burn.

“Courtneigh Clifford Robinson! Come here right now!”

I went into the living room expecting to find a parade of the usual suspects on the big green sofa. But there in all his splendor was my Uncle Tyrone.

My first thought was,
He’s saved?
My second was,
Aunt Shirley knows about the go-go at the Stable who produced a little filly on the side.

“Courts,” my mother said, as she flattened the pleats on her stiff blue dress, the one she starched and ironed every Thursday night, “I want you to be a good boy and go over to your
friend’s
house and tell him to turn down that godforsaken music.”

“How you know is over there it coming from?”

“Who else plays that kind of music round here?”

“I don’t know …”

“Look. Don’t form fool with me. I have ears. I can hear. Is only Michael alone who plays that kinda boogooyagga music none at all, and is spite him trying spite me why him playing it so high on a Friday night.”

“Ma …”

She turned to her sister. “Is Satan you know. Is Satan.”

“Ma, you can listen to me for a minute? Not that I trying to cause any problems or anything but—”

“Who you shouting at?”

“Ah not shouting, Ma. But I have fo’ talk up because you say the music loud.”

“So the music doh loud to you?”

“That’s beside the point—”

“Doh pass your place with me, y’hear, ’bout
point
and
beside
.”

Uncle Tyrone chimed in: “Boy reach fourth form and ready fo’ turn man.”

“So why you blaming me, Ma?” I said quietly.

“I just can’t take it. This is the kinda thing that cause a place to get run down. Next thing, you start to see people from Stand Pipe start to come round here because they think somebody keeping dance. And when that start to happen, every piece o’ clothes you have disappear off the line.”

“So, Ma, if the music is such a botheration, why you don’t tell him one day when you see him? You know him from him small. Him not goi’ bite you.”

“No. I can’t talk to all him again. Him gone to the dogs Head boy at St. George’s College. Gone to the dogs.”

“That’s how he is when he’s working on a project,” I said, as I turned to go back to my room.

“The only project he’s working on,” she said, “is blaspheming! Talking ’bout Haile Selassie is God! He is a blasphemer! From now on, I’m going to ban you from associating with blasphemers! Don’t you ever set foot over there. If you ever set foot over there again, you cannot come back in this house. Boogooyagga music come mash up my Bible study like how ganja mash up that boy’s mind.
Stop
.” She held her arms out to the side and cocked her head. “You hear that? Boom-chicki-boom. Boom-chicki-boom. You think I can take this whole night? Boom-chicki-boom. Boom-chickiboom. And he used to be such a nice, good boy. His mother used to sing at Kingston Parish Church. She was an alto in the choir, until …”

I could have said the words for her,
the divorce
. Jah Mick’s father had divorced his mother just as Jah Mick was about to go to the States, and this, according to my mother, was the reason for the change—a blast from the past—
a broken home
.

My mother was thinking about divorcing my father and she was afraid that something dreadful would happen to me, so she spent a lot of time praying for me when she should have been praying for my father to come home.

My father was an accountant, a good one at that. And because of this, he was often called away to audit hotels and sugar estates. Short trips would last three days. It wasn’t strange for him to be away for weeks. In that time he’d rarely call. But women would from time to time. My mother took her own accounting.
Boops!
Another outside child.

“Ma,” I said, “I have a headache. And my stomach not feeling so well. I can go and lie down?”

“After you go over to the house and tell him to turn down the music.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to go over there. You confusing me now.”

“Hurry up and go and come back. I will make some Andrews.”

“I don’t have a headache, Ma. Nutten not bothering me.”

“So is lie you was telling?”

“No, Ma. I just can’t take this anymore. Everything ah say is a fight. Everything him do is a fight. The man just playing some music. Is not a crime.”

She glanced at Aunt Shirley and Uncle Tyrone, then crossed her arms. Looking at me squarely now, she said, “If you don’t go over there and tell him to turn it down, I going to call the police and tell them that he has ganja in the house.”

“Ma!!”

“Ma
what
?”

“You’d really do that?”

“No, but that is not the point.” She glanced at Aunt Shirley and Uncle Tyrone again. “God forgive me. Tell him that I am very distressed about the music and that I cannot have my Bible study, and that I’m going to call the police and tell them that he has ganja over there if he doesn’t do it.”

“But you said you wouldn’t do it, Ma. So what’s the point?”

“I don’t care who or what is involved, you have to listen to me.”

“I thought I wasn’t suppose to tell no lie.”

“Nobody not asking you to tell a lie. I’m asking you to tell a lie? I’m giving you a message to give somebody. Who’s to tell if I might change my mind. I might call Superintendent Samuels, yes, if him go on like him bad and have hard ears. Sammo wi’ know what to do with him. This is a residential area, after all. Nice, cool Friday evening and all you can hear is boom-chicki-boom. The place gone to the dogs, man. Gone to the dogs.”

It was time to clutch at straws.

“Aunt Shirley …”

“You didn’t hear what your mother said?”

“Uncle T—”

“Yuh hair need a trim.”

I could have walked through the gate but I jumped over the fence. Talk about flirting with danger. The fence was lined with a prickly hedge. But it wasn’t just this. My mother called anyone who jumped a fence a boogooyagga. That’s how they come to grab the washing off the line, you know. Over the fence. Had I ever seen my father jump a fence? No. Any member of his family? No. Any member of hers? No. But yes. Uncle Tyrone one time when him used to screw a woman up the road and her husband came home. Those was the days before the Fosbury Flop. Uncle T. took a Western roll over the top of a big rose bush and a prickle hook him in him pants crotches. In the rush him did forget fo’ put on him underpants, and when the pants tear, two guinep and a Chiney banana drop out and a next door neighbor helper bawl, “And him love talk ’bout plantain.”

We lived in the middle of a very long block. So I had to walk a quarter-mile or so to the corner before I had to turn, go up, and walk a quarter-mile again. This gave me lots of time to think.

How was I going to tell Jah Mick he had to turn down his music or my mother was going to call the beasts? It was about the threat as much as the lie. The man wasn’t doing anything, really, yet she thought it was okay to terrorize him with the name of the police like she was casting out a demon in the name of Jesus.
In the name of Jesus, come out!!!!

We accept the rastaman today. We see him and his fashion victims all around—the colors, the music, the hair, the food. But in those days in Jamaica, decent people like my mother thought of them as cells of infection that had to be cut out. They were spreading Africa throughout the body politic. Decent girls were being seduced. Decent boys were dreading up their good, good hair and swearing their allegiance to Selassie, taking oaths. The disease was spreading via body fluids. And music was both sperm and blood. They felt they had to stop the flow at any cost.

Trim hair. Comb beard. Crack skull. Kick down. Jump ’pon. Beat up. Lie. These words began to come to me as I listened to the instrumental music coming from my bredrin’s house. At first it was stuttered. Then, as I kept saying it, it found its space between the drum beats in the riddim and became a kind of chant.

Trim hair.

Comb beard.

Crack skull.

Kick down.

Jump ’pon.

Beat up … llllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee.

How de policeman Deal wid de rasta.

Trim hair.

Comb beard.

Crack skull.

Kick down.

Jump ’pon.

Beat up … llllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee.

When I got to the gate of the man who was teaching me everything about the Jamaica being worked at and wished for by my classmates and friends, I turned around and took two fast steps down the block. Houses that I’d passed in a trance only minutes before became concrete to me. You know what I mean—not concrete like concrete, but real, alive, alive with real meaning. Junior’s house. David’s house. Paul’s house. Gail’s house. Jennifer’s house. Maxine’s. All friends from short pants and marble days till now. None of them were home. They were in the park, either playing football or watching it, before they went to the movies when the sun went down.

I was in a panic now. What if my mother was right? What if all my friends and I were going to die because we didn’t believe in her God. All of my friends. Their friends and their friend’s friends. People I didn’t even know they were friends with. All of them condemned before the final judgment … unless, of course, they changed.

If I got home in time, I thought I could avoid it. I could ask them to pray for me. And all I had to do was repent of my ways and I would be saved. All I had to do was play my cards right and I could join my mother, Aunt Shirley, and Uncle Tyrone in the coming paradise on earth.

Marley’s “Natty Dread” was playing now. The intro. Those heraldic Eastern-sounding horns.

I would never be a rasta, I told myself. Never. Never. Never. I pumped my arms harder. Never. Never. Never.

At this point I heard his voice: “Yuh warming up?”

It was only then that I fully understood that I was still in front of his house, but off to one side. I’d turned and taken two steps—for sure. But after that it was strictly knee lifts on the spot.

His front door was open but I couldn’t see him. I would never be a rasta, I told myself as I opened the gate … so …

God forgive me till ah reach back home.

Jah Mick had been watching me from the living room. I could tell he was feeling
irie
because he’d taken off his black tracksuit and was sitting cross-legged in front of a speaker. Vibe-sing out. When I stepped inside off the veranda, he tucked his dreads into his tricolor tam and smiled from deep inside the bush of his beard and moustache. The green carpet felt fat beneath my feet. The room was as it had been when his parents lived there—heavy brown drapes that never opened, Morris chairs, a mahogany breakfront with shelves and shelves of figurines, and framed paintings of sunsets and tropical birds on the walls.