A Brief History of Seven Killings (37 page)

Shit. Damn it, ackee, how did you get under me for me to roll on you? I must be getting old or mad to walk in the house with a shopping bag full of ackees and not even remember it. Old and mad. Maybe mad and old. Chuck loves ackees. He keeps asking for
that thing, hon, that scrambled egg thing, you know what I mean, that grows on trees and is really sweet to boot
. Bought two dozen from this woman who was listening on her transistor radio to an American preacher with a cowboy accent who kept saying it’s the end times.
Do you know we’re in the last days?
the higgler said to me. No, but I do know it’s 1979, I said to her even though I was thinking about the Preacher, sweating like a red hog and rubbing his forehead with a handkerchief, shifting his toupee. Not the answer she was looking for, so she punished me by adding on fifty cents to the price. I think I said, You know what, babylove?
Have it. Take it, for in a few weeks the only thing Jamaica money would be good for would be to wipe me batty. I like that. It sounded Jamaican. I didn’t say any of that. I would never call anybody babylove.

Damn place too quiet but I just can’t handle the radio. I don’t want to hear any news. Ever since I stopped listening to news, reading newspapers and watching TV, my life just seems so much happier. Happy feels like something you can take out and sell. I just don’t want to know the news and I don’t want people to tell me anything. All my news comes from Chuck and I still don’t like it. But his news is different. His is the news of somebody leaving. He’s leaving. We’re leaving. Has he bought tickets? Will we need tickets? Is a helicopter coming like this is war and just airlift we out? It will just land outside and Chuck will say
babykins, there’s no time to grab anything just come now
and he’ll look really sad and not know that this is exactly what I want, to take nothing, not even a towel, nothing that will remind me of anything I’m leaving behind, because fuck all of it, really, fuck all of it, I want to get to America as blank a slate as slate can be with no memory of anything behind me. I want to teach myself to write something new on my skin and say howdy to people I don’t know. And the helicopter won’t land until we’re somewhere far, like Buffalo, New York, or Alaska, somewhere that I’ll never hear wha’appen ever again. Ever again.

Something good must be on the damn radio. FM: more music, less talk. Wish Chuck was here. He can dance much better than me, the disgrace to the black race. It’s something when a white man can dance. He took us to the club for our anniversary—six months already. He wanted to celebrate our six-month anniversary. And they say woman is the cornier sex. But still. Sixth was dancing. Fifth was earrings. Fourth he tried to cook chicken and failed. My mother would have said that means he’s not a homosexual, dear. I don’t know, but sometimes there’s just too much Chuck. I’m starting to like him more when he’s at work. No. That’s not true. Right now I’m loving his hair and tonight I will love how he sleeps.

Back at Mantana’s when I met him I was at the point where that inner voice said whatever it is, God, let it happen now please. I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was so ready to go. My boss put his hand on
my knee the same day, second time? No, third, and asked me how much I liked working here. And how he could tell that this job was a make-or-breaker, a last resort. Like selling cheap as shit jewellery from some overglorified coolie shop calling itself Taj Mahal was the best I could do. Except it was, Kim Clarke. All you needed to take the job was to know that they wouldn’t have wasted a second to look for somebody else. Montego Bay just had to work. It had to, there was no going back to Kingston.

I don’t think of Kingston. I want to think about Andy Gibb. Almost as cute as John from
Dukes of Hazzard
. Andy Gibb: hair, chest, hair, chains, hair, teeth, hair, hair. John the Duke smile, hair, jeans, hair like a girl,
I just want to be your everything
, Luke Duke’s big white duke down the left leg of his pants, Jesus Christ girl you must be the one woman in Montego Bay with such a dirty mind. But it’s not “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” on the radio.
Do it light, take me through the night, shadow dancin’
. I know what I want. One night where I don’t think of Luke Duke when Chuck inside me, on top of me. No I didn’t think that. Yes I did. I should go cook his ackee. He likes it for breakfast. He won’t mind it for dinner. I will think about how I love his hair.

Sooner or later he’s going to know. Kim Clarke, you think you’re so smart. That man bound to find out if he don’t know already. This morning I only took ten dollars. It was the most in one shot. Last Friday, five. Four days before that six, no five, no it was a five-dollar bill and two one-dollars. I never touch the U.S. Look, he just going to think it’s cute. Which wife doesn’t take from her husband’s wallet? I’m not his wife. I’m going to be his wife. No you’re living together. It’s what people do in the modern age, this is 1979. I really need to cook. I’m sure he doesn’t know. I mean, what kind of man counts how much money he has in his wallet?

An American man.

All of them come through Mantana’s. White men, that is. If the man is French he thinks that he gets away with saying cunt but saying you cohnnnt, because we bush bitches will never catch his drift. As soon as he sees you he will throw the keys at your feet saying you, park my car
maintenant
!
Dépêchetoi!
I take the keys and say yes massa, then go around to the women’s bath
room and flush it down the shittiest toilet. If he’s British, and under thirty, then his teeth are still hanging on and he’ll be charming enough to get you upstairs but too drunk to do anything. He won’t care and you won’t either, unless he vomits on you and leaves a few pounds on the dresser because that was such dreadful, dreadful business. If he’s British and over thirty, you spend the whole time watching the stereotypes pile up, from the letttttt meeeee sssssspeeeeeakkk toooo youuuuu slowwwwlyyyyy, dahhhhhhhling beccauuuuuse youuuuuuu’re jussssst a liiiiiiitle blaaaaack, speed of their speech to the horrible teeth, coming from that cup of cocoa right before bed. If he’s German he will be thin and he will know how to fuck, well in a car piston kind of way, but he will stop early because nobody can make German sound sexy. If he’s Italian, he’ll know how to fuck too, but he probably didn’t bathe before, thinks there’s such a thing as an affectionate face slap and will leave money even though you told him that you’re not a prostitute. If he’s Australian, he’ll just lie back and let you do all the work because even us blokes in Sydney heard about you Jamaican girls. If he’s Irish, he’ll make you laugh and he’ll make the dirtiest things sound sexy. But the longer you stay the longer he drinks, and the longer he drinks, well for each of those seven days you get seven different kinds of monster.

But Americans. Most of them spend a very long time, or an awful long time, trying to convince you just how like everybody else they are. I’m just an Okie from Muskogee. Even Chuck introduced himself by saying that he was
just a regular guy from Little Rock
. When I said why would anybody want to be just a regular guy, he didn’t know how to answer the question. There’s something though about a man saying upfront that what you see is what you get, nothing less but certainly nothing more. Maybe my standards are low. Maybe I just liked that there was one man who said it like it was. I don’t even think he found me that cute. Well of course he did, he came over and said
howdy
, and perfect timing too, right after the Frenchman was thrown out for shouting where are my car keys, you cohhnt, and the Italian went over to dance with some stupid American woman who flew here all alone because she saved up for twenty-six months and damn it, this big fat bitch is going to F.U.C.K. The Italian wasn’t the black, bulging, big-cocked
mandingo that she had read about in
Mistress of Falconhurst
, but his skin was a little dark so he’d do.

Of course I was there every night. I moved to Montego Bay in January, right into a one-bedroom side of a house with a shared kitchen that a retired couple used to rent to boarding school students. But I lived at Mantana’s. From the first day on the job I heard about the night club. Well, overheard at work since none of those coolie bitches at the jewellery store talked to any black employee, other than to remind us that they knew the police and should just one pendant go missing we will spend the entire weekend getting raped in jail. Anyway, I overheard that Mantana’s
was the place that was carrying the swing, and they only let you in if you had the right look, which thank the Lord wasn’t black
. Who knew then that black would turn out to be the right look? Two weeks after moving here, wearing nothing but a white t-shirt, Fiorucci jeans and high heels, they let me in. Walked right past one of the coolies, the hook-nosed, long-haired one who almost called at me before she saw me looking and knew that she would never be able to live with herself. I came this close to saying that sometimes they want chocolate, not curry.

But once inside with the music everything that I thought it would be, it wasn’t. The DJ kept playing “Fly Robin Fly” and the white people were dancing like white people. And the non-white people, almost all women, looked at each other with a scowl because only a scowl could hide that we all had the same damn look. The white man please come over here and save me because I have nowhere left to go look. I feel like I pushed myself to the very tip of the country and all that’s left was to tip over. Or fly away. Who am I going to be in America? Samantha on
Bewitched
? That bawling woman on
One Day at a Time
? I want to run right into the middle of a city and throw my hat up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore you’re gonna make it after all. Jesus Christ I’m so ready to go.

I am so ready to go.

I almost forgot it. I rubbed my hands on it three times in the sun, feeling each groove of the stamp. The stamp makes it real. The stamp made it smell good, yes I smelled it. Seeing it never made it real. Touching it made it real,
but the smell made it realer. My fingers smell like American paper, like chemicals waiting to evaporate. I almost forgot it. Kim, try to forget everything around it. And stop smiling like that, it makes your cheeks hurt. But if you don’t smile you cry.

You smell. Have to wash the stink out. Wash the ink off you damn finger. How could I have forgotten? He’ll be home in a few hours and I haven’t washed the stink out. Girl, go wash the . . . enough. This is what I will do. This is what will work. I will go bathe. I will cook the man his ackee. He will take me upstairs and he will fuck me. No, we will fuck each other. And we will wake up together, and he will—no, we will not leave for at least three weeks. I will pack. Go girl, wash the stink out.

Each day he takes home something from the office. Part of it seems like how these Americans grew up. They collect things. So Tony Curtis or Tony Orlando will show up at Mantana’s and they all ask him for this autograph business, which is him signing his name on a napkin. And they cling to it, and collect it like they’ll never see Tony Curtis again. Now Chuck is taking things home, collecting them like he had to make sure they were safe. I don’t know what he has to protect a coffee cup from. Or five boxes of rubber bands, a picture of Farrah Fawcett, a picture of President Carter or a box full of liquor as if they don’t have liquor in America. Or a sculpture of a Rastaman grabbing on to his erect penis, the head bigger than his actual head. The man must think he is Noah saving a statue of a Rasta with a huge cock for his ark. If he’s saving that fucking sculpture and don’t plan to save me I swear to God I will kill him.

I’ll go bathe and then I’ll go cook ackee and saltfish. No, ackee and corned pork, no saltfish. And tomatoes. Kim Clarke, go wash the stink out. Don’t think, just leave these in the kitchen and go wash. And brush your teeth. And swallow just a little Listerine. Maybe it’s just the same for men. It is? Maybe, I don’t know. Insert whatever I’m supposed to be feeling right here:________________ so I can feel it. I don’t feel anything. Maybe I should feel something about not feeling anything but I don’t feel that either. What kind of a woman are you, Kim Clarke? Every time you lick your lips, you smell and/or taste him. Wash him out of your mouth at least, nasty girl.

I can see him kicking me out. It will be like in a movie where everybody is talking Italian. He’s dragging me out of my house—his house—the house and me on the floor screaming and begging and crawling and bawling Chuck do, no kick me out, do, no kick me out, me beg you. Me will walk on all fours fi you. Me will cook you food and breed you pickney and suck you cocky even when you don’t wash it first, Do! Do! And he will look at me and ask what the fuck you mean by do? What kind of ignorant bushbaby bullshit is it when do means the same thing as please? A cock is a cock is a cock to you, he will say because it sounds savage, like he didn’t spend any time to think it up, so then he can be angry and still be smart while me on the floor whimpering do, do, do, and wonder if I can just be like in
Dallas
and say it’s not what it looks like, honey.

I should bathe, brush my teeth, wash it out with soap. But then won’t I be too clean? Then I’m so clean that it’s suspicious. We at the stage where I don’t have to comb my hair or wear lipstick and perfume, and don’t care if he catches me scratching my batty and stirring the pot with the same hand. He now bursts a fart whenever he wishes, which I really don’t like. American farts are stinker, they smell like they eat too much meat. Careful what you wish for when you finally make a man feel comfortable around you. You realize how much of this courting bullshit was just show. Not show, performance. How long would he have kept the act going, and if it was longer than he bargained for would he have just cut me loose and move on to the next local girl staring into her drink? Thank God that black skin don’t show. A black woman can hide the traces on her. Maybe that’s why man think it easier to beat a black woman. You can track the relationship between a man and a white woman on her skin. Stupid girl, then just make him not want you tonight. Give yourself a headache, say you on your menses, he especially hates when you call it menses, says it sounds like pussy measles.