A Brief History of Seven Killings (21 page)

Early in December before he give we any work or any money or any goodwill package for Christmas, Peter Nasser give me a message. He say tell your people that come this season and afterwards to boil more banana, and roast more yam, fry more potato and dig up more dasheen, but forget dumpling or fritters or cake or anything that need flour. I don’t even notice what he say too good, don’t even remember passing on the message to the community or even how it spread, unless me did tell me woman.

December 30 was the first one. January 2 end with three more. Then on January 22, God leave St. Thomas. Thirteen people, family and friend, start have headache, fits, vomiting and a few go blind. They shit and shit and couldn’t stop shit, they faint and wake up and faint and shake like God striking each of them with lightning. And even after them dead, they couldn’t stop shit and shake. All of them dead the same day from the same lunch. Rumour burst open like polio in 1964 and many man and woman lock up themself ’cause they frighten. It in the flour, it in the flour, it in the flour, they say. The flour have death write in it and death make a mark on seventeen people heart. The next day the health minister say that the counter flour that come over to Jamaica on a German ship did poison with a plant killer they call Mother-in-Law poison. But Jamaica know the poison, we ban it from before
Ocean’s Eleven
.

Peter Nasser show himself in January. Again, he come hug me, but ask Josey Wales how the car working with the new battery, and me wonder how that become him business. But he talk to me in way he don’t talk to Josey Wales. Telling me ’bout how IMF should really stand for Is Manley Fault, he can’t save the country, can’t protect it, can’t even control it. Funny how he talk to Josey Wales ’bout car battery and girl and invite him to shoot clay pigeon on Tuesday, but he talk to me about politics. Me tell Josey Wales, and Chinaman, and Weeper and more, that some white businessman and politician was coming down to get convince that the Prime Minister can run the country. By the time we done, them shouldn’t even believe he can run Kingston.

Me never need convincing, PNP never do nothing for anybody but the PNP. Is JLP that come to the ghetto without we having to beg first, come in the fifties when me reach as far as me going with school and turn the nasty shit run place into building like them building on
Good Times
TV show. Then they build Copenhagen City and for the first time in my mother life she bathe in private. Them talk they talk, but is not PNP come to the ghetto, they only come after Copenhagen City build and set up some hurry come up piece of shit place that call the Eight Lanes. They pack them little lanes with nothing but PNP people to antagonize we, but any fool can shoot.

But who win West Kingston win Kingston and who win Kingston win Jamaica, and in 1974, the PNP unleash two beast from out of Jungle, a man called Buntin-Banton and another named Dishrag. PNP was never going win West Kingston, a fact then and a fact now, so they pull a jim-screachy, they create a whole new district and call it Central Kingston, and pile they people in it. Who they have run it? Buntin-Banton and Dishrag. Before them two, war in the ghetto was a war of knife. They gang did number thirty strong cutting through Kingston on red and black motorcycle, buzz buzz buzzing like an army of bees. When the Buntin-Banton Dishrag gang attack we at a funeral me know right there that the game done have new rule now. People think it way past the time when anybody can remember who start things first, but don’t get the history of the ghetto twist up, decent
people. Buntin-Banton and Dishrag start it first. And when PNP win the 1972 election all hell break loose.

First they drive we out of the jobs we get only four years before. Then them two boy start drive we out of town, like we is varmint and they is Wyatt Earp. They even attack their own, chopping up union man connected to they own party because he tell workers to go on strike. Then near this time last year, a white van pull up outside JLP headquarters on Retirement Road and just stop. The van block the view so they come out of nowhere, attack of the killer bees, Banton/Dishrag gang buzzing in on them bike. They mash up furniture, tear up documents, kick up man, beat up woman, rape two then leave. And here is the thing: during the whole time not one of them say a single word.

But the gang was nothing but coward. They never dare come to Copenhagen City, never touch the head, so they chop the fingers and toes and keep chopping up until I tell Peter Nasser that is time for this sleeping giant to wake up. When we done with them Lane Number Six burn down and every woman start bawl because they never have to scoop brain back into a dead son head before. When we done with Lane Number Seven the only thing left that could move was lizard.

But them two start to think they run the PNP. The party take them on trip to Cuba. Dishrag, who get the name because him was a Rastafarian and him dreadlocks look ragged, land in Cuba and gone to party with Fidel Castro himself. Nobody never tell the brethren that the national dish was pork. He lose him temper like he was Jesus in the temple that day the Jews turn it into market. He kick over even Castro table. Dishrag turn into a problem for him own party. That’s when a man call a man, who call Priest, the only man allow to walk in both JLP and PNP territory, and Priest call me. Me go after that pussyhole meself, tell Chinaman just go to Stanton Bar, quiet-like, and head wherever the girls them running from, cussing and clutching they batty, or titty or poom-poom. Chinaman skill enough to put away a boy with one shot, so when he walk up behind him and say yow pussyhole and fire in the back of him head, the woman them ’round him
table didn’t even scream until the third shot go in, this one through the same hole the first one make, and blood splatter all over them. After six shot Chinaman disappear like an afterthought.

Then in March 1975, Shotta Sherrif drop a message in a church lady Bible where Buntin-Banton was going be. Right out on Darling Street, on him way to check on him woman, just three more block from the sea, Josey and four man draw down right beside him car and shower the pussyhole until even the car engine dead. Buntin-Banton funeral was the biggest thing, word was that twenty thousand people go. I don’t know ’bout that number but I do know that the Prime Minister, the deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour all go.

But that was 1975, and this be December 1976 and one year might as well be one different century. Because every man who fight monster become a monster too, and there be at least one woman in Kingston who think me is the killer of all things name hope. People think me lose it because it bother me that me kill the school boy by mistake, but don’t realize that me losing it because it supposed to bother me but don’t. But now my woman calling me, saying, Bigger-boss, come eat you food.

Nina Burgess

H
ello?

—Well praise almighty Jah-Jah, it seem you finally wake up. Is the third time me a call the sistren.

My sister Kimmy. Two sentences in and she already playing ghetto. I wonder if the sun is up yet. I don’t know if I’m up for either it or her this morning.

—I was really tired.

—Too much party last night. You hear me? I said you had too much party last night. You not going ask me what you must take for it?

—I already know.

—You already know what you must take?

—No, I already know you’re about to tell me.

—Oh. What a way you facety this morning, sistren. Not used to you being so smart. Must be the morning air.

Kimmy makes a point out of never calling me, ever since she took up with Ras Trent who told her to keep her communication with people still trapped in the Babylon shitstem as little as possible. He escapes such communication by flying out to New York every six weeks or so. Kimmy’s still waiting on a visa to go with him. You’d think that Ras Trent, son of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, could arrange a visa for his queen woman. You’d think the same queen woman would read something into him not even offering to try. But everything in Jamaica is up for sale, even an American visa, and I have things to do today.

—How can I help you, Kimmy?

—I was thinking the other day. What you know about Garveyism?

—You call me at, at—

—Eight forty-five. Eight forty-five a.m., Nina. Is soon nine.

—Nine. Shit, I have to go to work.

—You don’t have no job.

—Still have to shower.

—What you know about Garveyism?

—Is this a radio quiz? Am I ’pon de air?

—Stop take things make joke.

—Then what else could this be, you calling me so early in the morning for no reason other than a civics lesson?

—My point exactly. That you wouldn’t see it as important. That’s why the white man just downpress you so, when me say Garvey you ears should’a prick up like dog.

—You talk to your mother today?

—She fine.

—That’s what she’d said?

—Mummy need livicate her life to the struggle. Only then she can truly escape our downpression as a people.

Kimmy learning from Ras Trent to take the words English people gave her as a tool of oppression and spit them back in their face. Rastaman don’t deal with negativity so oppression is now downpression even though there is no up in the word. Dedicate is livicate, I and I, well God knows what that means, but it sounds like somebody trying for their own holy trinity but forgetting the name of the third person. All a load of shit if you ask me. And too much work to remember. But nothing Kimmy likes more than been given too much work to do. Especially when Ras Trent looking for probably another woman, not a queen like her but a woman who will suck his cock and maybe eat out his ass, so that his no, no, no turns into oh, oh, oh, a bowcat that he doesn’t have to respect. Kimmy wants something specific, but she’ll never ask, preferring to fish it out. This morning who knows? Maybe she just wants to feel better than somebody and my number is one of the few eight digits she can remember.

—He’s a national hero, I say.

—At least you know that.

—He wanted black people to eventually go back to Africa.

—Well, in a way. But good, good.

—He was a thief, who buy a ship that couldn’t sail anywhere, but probably not the only national hero who was a thief.

—See it deh know, who tell you that him is thief? This is why black people can’t progress you know, they call they own people thief.

—I didn’t know Marcus Garvey real name is Burgess? Or is our real name Garvey?

—This is exactly what T say. This is exactly what him say people like you would say.

—People like me.

—Then no mus’ people like you. People in darkness. Come out of the dark and come into the light, sistren.

I could try to shut her up, but like Ras Trent, Kimmy’s not really talking to you. She only needs a witness, not an audience.

—And why call me, since I’m sure I’m not the only person you know who’s in darkness. Call one of your Immaculate High School friends or something.

—Sistren, if the revolution ever going to happen, it must, you hear me, it must begin in the home first.

—Trent’s home free already?

—Everything is not about T, Nina. I have my own life too.

—Of course. Everything is about Marcus Garvey.

—Where you think you life going? All you black people running around like headless chicken and don’t even know why you direction-less. You read
Soul On Ice
? How much I can bet that you never read
Soledad Brother
?
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
?

—You were always the bookish one.

—Well, book is for wisdom. Also for foolishness.

—The problem with a book is that you never know what it’s planning to do to you until you’re too far into it. I really need to take a shower.

—For why? You don’t have nowhere a go.

And why you don’t go fuck yourself, Miss, I couldn’t fuck and breed for Che Guevara so I going take whatever revolution I can ride with my vagina
? It reaches the very tip of my tongue and vanishes, like a little sugar pill. I tell myself that I tolerate Kimmy because she could never survive me even once talking to her the way she talks to me. I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you. Deep down she’s still the same girl who wants more than anything for people to like her, the only thing she wants more than that is to go back and be born poor and struggling so she can feel entitled to hate everybody who lives in Norbrook. But one day she is going to push me either too far or not far enough. I keep telling myself I don’t have time for her, but I went with her to one of those twelve tribes’ Rasta gatherings, can’t remember when, might be the same week we went to the party at the Singer’s house.

The whole trip on the way there she’s talking loud, shouting over the engine of a Volkswagen about what I’m supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do and how I better not embarrass her with any Babylon fuckery. She shouted about how when I reach I going get swallowed by the positive vibration and livicate myself to the struggle for black liberation, the struggle for Africa and the struggle for His Imperial Majesty. Or maybe me already too trapped in iniquity to get swallowed by anything positive, because Rastafari must first begin with a fire, a fire deep down inside you that you can’t quench with a glass of water, and you can’t wait till it seep out your pores like sweat, you have to tear your mind open and let it rage out.

—That might be heartburn, I say, the last joke of the night. She gave me that I-expected-just-a-little-more-from-you look that she either inherited or studied from Mummy.

—Is a good thing you dress like a righteous woman at least, she said at the most boring outfit I could find, a long purple skirt that brushed against my ankles when I walk and a white shirt that I tucked in. Slippers because I can’t imagine Rastafarians liking their women to be in high heels. I couldn’t even remember why I agreed to go, far as I know I didn’t, but Kimmy was acting as if she had a quota to fill, like those church cult boys on the University campus who act as if they’re going to get whipped if they
don’t get X number of converts a day. But people funny, boy. When we get to this gathering, on Hope Road in a house that looked like slaves used to get whipped right outside, two floors, all wood, French windows and a verandah, Kimmy is quiet.