by Kerry Young
‘Communications is down and the road system not looking so good under the strain. Plus the Gleaner say we facing huge agricultural loss and all sorta health hazards from dead livestock, and damage to water supplies and sanitation.’
Milton talking just like he quoting the newspaper to me.
‘So yu think we should call it off? Yu want me fix another time to go see Margy?’
Him stick his thumb in him belt that he always wear now ever since that thing with Clifton Brown, and say to me, ‘No, man. I just telling yu, that’s all. We still going drive over to Port Antonio tomorrow. No problem.’
Me, Finley, Hampton and Milton set off the next day, Milton driving. The water in the road so bad that when we coming down Mountain View Avenue a motorcycle stall in front of us and when the rider put down his foot the water come over his ankle.
Once we outta the city we come face to face with this rural mass that is still Jamaica. The donkey carts; the roadside higglers with them wooden carvings and conch shells; roasted sweetcorn for sale, or three wet fish on a string; multicoloured timber huts in blues and pinks and yellows with them rickety makeshift roof, or some piece of rusting corrugated-zinc sheet; fruit trees growing wild – mango, avocado, ackee, breadfruit, jackfruit, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, bananas; pineapples laying on top; yams and sweet potatoes in the ground; the banana plantations stretching out on both sides of the road, with them little blue plastic bags that they wrap ’round the bananas to protect them from disease.
Plus with the road not so good anyway and with all this rain, the thing turn treacherous. Potholes full of water and covered in a sorta white slime that wash off the grit and hardcore they scatter down in a effort to patch everything up.
And I think to myself how is progress and prosperity going catch up with a place like this? Especially when every time we take one step forward the rain or the hurricane come to drive us ten steps back.
When we get to Poor Man’s Corner the River Yallahs completely take over the road, gushing fast from left to right and plunging down a steep embankment in this muddy reddish-brown waterfall. Milton stop the car. When the big station wagon behind us overtake and slowly power its way through the water, the spray reach up above the top of the windows.
Milton decide to take a chance. He nudge the car forward trying to keep a steady speed so the engine don’t stall, but when we hit the deepest part halfway across, him slow down and it worry me. We make it alright though, and when we reach the other side Milton laugh and say, ‘Man, even I was sweating then.’
At Green Wall a dead cow lay in a bus stop, all brown and bloated, and frothing at the mouth.
At Morant Bay I ask Milton to drive up to the courthouse where Paul Bogle and his followers stage the demonstration in 1865, and where the volunteer militia fire on the crowd and spark the uprising. What amaze me wasn’t just that the building still standing there, with its red brick and whitewashed stone, but it still functioning as a courthouse. So as I climb up the semi-circular stairway to the upper balcony I begin to hear voices and realise that a trial is actually in motion. And even in this heat the barristers still dress up in them wigs and gowns just like they do it in England.
Above me the round white turret perch on the top of the roof. Below me the statue of Paul Bogle, machete in hand, and the commemoration plaque which read:
Here in the front of this courthouse on 11 October 1865, Paul Bogle of Stony Gut led his people in a protest at the injustices to the poor in the courts presided over by the planter-magistrates. It was the start of what became known as the Morant Bay Rebellion. Paul Bogle, George William Gordon and hundreds more were brutally slain. Behind this building is buried the remains of many of these patriots whose sacrifices paved the way to the independence of Jamaica. We honour them.
It was early afternoon by the time we reach Port Antonio, the blue sea on one side and the lush green hills on the other. The Blue Mountains in the distance and yet so close I could almost smell the coffee. We climb the hill to San San. When we get to Margy’s house, Milton ease the car down the steep driveway into the carport. Margy’s housekeeper come to the door to greet us.
We follow her through the dim, cool house and step out on to the rear terrace into the brilliant, dazzling sunshine. The deep blue of the Caribbean stretch out before us, the abundant green of the surrounding hillside, the white sand beach of San San Bay, with the twin harbours of Port Antonio and Navy Island in the distance. I could feel the sea breeze on my face and taste the slight salt in the air. And somewhere in my own head I hear Harry Belafonte singing ‘Island in the Sun’.
Margy come up from the lower garden, standing on the top step with her short thick wavy hair trembling on the breeze.
‘Let’s go straight to the factory, I want to show you something. It won’t take long and we can have lunch when we get back.’ She reverse out a big four-by-four and we all pile in.
Margy excited ’bout everything she showing us and how she change this and improve that, and reduce the waste and increase the product line. She talking fast and she pleased with herself. It don’t mean nothing to me except, when I look at the accounts, I know the business doing good.
When we get back to the house she say, ‘I hope you like marlin. Port Antonio is famed for deep-sea fishing, marlin, tuna and kingfish especially.’
The fish pan-fried and simmered in a light curried coconut sauce. It really delicious.
‘This here is a long way from a airport,’ I say to her, ‘what with your constant hopping between here and New York.’
‘There is a helicopter shuttle service between Ken Jones Aerodrome and Kingston. The road from Kingston is so bad now the whole town is just relying on the cruise ships for its livelihood. What’s going to happen when the wharf falls down I don’t know because it isn’t looking too good and they don’t have the money to rebuild it.’
After coffee, I ask Margy to come walk with me in the garden. We go down the stone steps and follow the path past a load of fruit trees, and a huge crepe myrtle with its lilac flowers and dark green leaves. Then we pass hedges of poinsettia, deep magenta and pink bougainvillaea, and red and yellow hibiscus. We come to a stop at her poolside pergola that covered in wild orchids in pinks and whites and purples.
‘You really have a beautiful place here, Margy. I can see why you running back from New York every chance you get.’
‘I love it. I don’t think I could live without it. You know Errol Flynn once said he had never met a woman as beautiful as Port Antonio. And that’s saying something, isn’t it, coming from him? I don’t know how any Jamaican can live without Jamaica or the promise of it.’
When we sit down on the little bench I turn and I say to her, ‘I want to talk to yu ’bout the business. It doing good, very good, and all that down to your hard work and how yu so smart with all this cosmetics thing. I have lunch with Merleen, maybe you already know?’
‘Yes, she told me on the phone.’
‘Merleen going have her own vacation company now. And I want to do the same thing with Yang Cosmetics. I want yu stop being a employee and become a full partner so if anything happen to me yu going be alright.’
Margy look at me like she half surprised and half relieved because she must have guessed it from what Merleen tell her.
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘But you not going get your name come first like Merleen. Chin Yang Vacations don’t sound too bad, even though I still think Yang Chin would have sound better. But Lopez Yang don’t work. I think it got to be Yang Lopez Cosmetics.’
‘But it isn’t just cosmetics we do now. We have a whole range of bathroom and kitchen products as well that we retail out of our own stores not just outlets in department stores like we used to. That is what I was telling you and showing you earlier this afternoon.’
‘So what yu want call it?’
‘Plain and simple, Yang Lopez.’ She hesitate, and then she say, ‘Do you mean a fifty-fifty partner like you did with Merleen?�
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And I say, ‘Yes. Fifty-fifty. The papers all drawn up, except for the name, and I going have the accountants sort it out and bring them over next week so you can sign them.’
‘So fast?’
‘No reason to wait.’
When we go back up to the house Margy go inside and come out with a parcel. It beautifully wrapped in a heavy stripe paper of green and brown and blue.
‘I got this for you in New York but I feel a little embarrassed giving it to you now after that conversation. Please believe that this was for you anyway.’ And then she hand the package to me and I take it from her and unwrap it.
She say to me, ‘The Flor de Farach was manufactured in 1958 and shipped to Tampa prior to the 1962 Cuban embargo. The shop’s proprietor bought the entire consignment and now he is selling them in this wonderful shop on the corner of Fifth and East 46th Street. When I bought them he said I wasn’t just buying a box of cigars, I was buying a piece of history.’
When I open the box it got layers of packets of little Farachitos. I lift out a packet of five and sorta look it over.
‘I know you get Cuban cigars here all the time but these were so tiny and cute I thought even Gloria might approve.’ Then Margy look at me all expectant and say, ‘Try one.’
So I take one out and unwrap it. When I smell it, it got a sweet nutty aroma. I light it and I take a puff. Margy look at me like as to say how is it?
Well, I think Margy good enough to go buy me a present so I not going say nothing ’bout the Americans and their Cuban embargo. I say, ‘It taste like the beginning of something new. Something sweet and adventurous. It taste like freedom.’ And she pleased with that.
When we leave Margy’s I just say to Milton, ‘Let’s go to Ken Jones Aerodrome and jump on a helicopter back to Kingston, and you can come pick up the car some other time.’
37
Contestable Ground
In 1980 Manley lose the election and Edward Seaga become prime minister when the Jamaica Labour Party take power. They say that seven hundred and fifty people get killed in the months running up to that election, and they reckon that whereas up to 1976 the gangs was using sidearms, mostly the.365 Magnum, by 1980 they was using rapid-fire M16 rifles.
By the next year we break off diplomatic relations with Cuba and we get back the US aid and foreign investments start flooding back again.
But even though the foreign investment good, it mean we not really in charge of our own destiny. Is the foreigners in charge of our destiny, because is them telling us what to do, and them deciding what going get cultivated or developed, and them deciding the time frame, and them deciding how much investment them putting in for how much profit them taking out.
Every day the street filling up with more advertisement for Pepsi and Sprite and Coca-Cola, and IBM and Citibank and Cable & Wireless, and Nestlé, and KFC and Burger King and Esso and Texaco. And all I can hear is Zhang in my head saying ‘you back in the grip of the foreigners’. And I think yes, but this situation completely different. Because in the old days everybody could see that it was the British that was responsible for the slavery, whereas now it seem like we are the ones responsible for this mess we in. Nowadays it hard to see how we being controlled by foreign powers because this new kind of imperialism come wrapped in a cloak that look like help.
The other thing that strike me ’bout the way Jamaica changing is how everybody start talking ’bout Africa. Is like we ‘Out of Many’, but the ‘One People’ seem to be just the Africans. Is Africa this and Africa that. Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. And ever since the world discover Bob Marley, everything turn to Rasta and reggae. It like they think the only true Jamaican is a African. Like they forget that the original Jamaican was the Arawak Indian and after the Spanish and British get through murdering all of them we was all imports. Every last one of us. But it no matter, all I see and hear every day now is how we got to get back to Africa.
You can hardly see a Chinese man on the street these days. Their feet don’t even hit the sidewalk between the Mercedes and the tennis court, or the golf course, or the airport tarmac on them way to their next vacation. And that’s the ones that still here, the ones that didn’t leave Chinatown to go jump on a plane and never come back. I reckon I must be the only Chinaman left in Chinatown, because even though the signs still here – Chin’s Bakery, Chen’s Groceries, Hoo’s Cleaners, Lee’s Hardware, the Golden Dragon, Panda House, Bamboo Garden – the Chinese have long gone. And now, when I step outta the yard at Matthews Lane, all I see is a mass of black faces looking at me and wondering what the hell I am still doing here.
Still, I reckon things good enough for Mui to come home if she still want to, so I write to her and tell her that. But it seem she too busy. She all excited with some big case that taking all her time and she want finish with it before she come. So I say alright. When yu ready then.
38
All-under-Heaven
‘I going move to Beverly Hills.’
‘California?’
‘No, over Long Mountain. Don’t fool with me, Gloria. Yu know what I mean.’
Gloria turn ’round where she standing at the stove and she look at me. And then she drop one shoulder and raise one eyebrow and stick a hand on her hip all in one smooth move.
‘You going move to Beverly Hills?’
‘I going buy a house and move outta Matthews Lane and move to Beverly Hills. I think it time.’
‘So what bring this on?’
‘The whole thing gone to hell, Gloria. Ever since we come here, ever since I was a boy, we reckon we was going to make a better Jamaica. A Jamaica where we was all brothers. We was going to drive out the foreign imperialists and we was going to shake off the yoke of colonialism and oppression. And now since Manley lose the election it all gone to hell.’
‘All that talk ’bout imperialists was Zhang. It was Zhang that was always talking ’bout the right of the ordinary woman and man to live a decent life while you was busy robbing the US navy and driving chickens all over town. And you still busy making money now even though it all gone to hell .’
I nuh like the way she mimic me like that.
‘That not fair, Gloria.’
She look at me a minute, and then she soften and she say to me, ‘Alright, OK. Tell me what you do to make a better Jamaica. What you actually do to help the people.’
‘I give Michael Kealey all that money all these years for his poor relief and such. And I support the government social reforms.’
‘And where you get all that money from?’
‘What it matter where I get it?’
‘No. Tell me where you get it.’
‘You know where I get it. And you also know that I never hurt nobody that didn’t have it coming, and I didn’t take no money off of nobody who didn’t enter into business with me of their own free will.’ Gloria making me vex now and I can hear my voice raising up.
‘So you spend your whole life making all this money outta people through their own free will and now you going come tell me that you all dejected because the revolution lost and you going go exile yourself in Beverly Hills?’
And then she sort of ease back, like she just rest all her weight on the back leg there, and get herself comfortable. And I know I was in for it.
‘You want talk ’bout revolution, but this was never your revolution. You never been poor, not so poor you hungry; you never had to find yourself a job or put a roof over your head. You never needed to get yourself an education. You were never made to feel degraded or ignorant or worthless because of the colour of your skin, and have to stand there like a damn fool while them shut every door in your face, and while you watch even the most stupid white people moving up instead of you. You didn’t have to feel the shame of what been done to your people, and witness how that shame sit on your mother and father and brother and sister, and neighbour and acquaintance. No, you live in Chinatown all this long time because you was comfortable, and now you not so comforta
ble you have the choice and the money to go move to a mansion in Beverly Hills.’
I can’t believe she just say all of that to me. I say to her, ‘So it alright for me to carry on my bad ways when I can come in handy to fix this and that?’
‘I never said nothing to you ’bout your ways. If you remember right, that is how you and me meet when I come to ask you to help me with the thing with Marcia. That was how you and me start. And I never had no feeling ’bout how you put that sailor boy in the hospital. I not talking ’bout what you do, because at least that have a kind of honesty to it. I’m talking about how you talk.’ She pause a bit and then she say, ‘There not going to be no revolution here, Pao. This is not China. It is Jamaica. And that is not how Jamaica is.’
I just say to her, ‘So I take it you not going come live with me in Beverly Hills then, which is what I come here to ask you.’ And she just look at me like she reckon she already say enough.
I go away and I think about it, and I can see Gloria got a point. It true I never had to go get no education or job or any of the things Gloria talking ’bout, but then I dunno what she expect from me. After all, what she expect one man to do? Isn’t it the masses that got to rise up? Isn’t it the masses that got to seize their ideal and take back their land? Isn’t it the masses that got to shake off the yoke of oppression?
And I supported that. I give Michael Kealey all that money and I support Manley. So fair enough, a lot of US dollars leave the country illegally, but that would have happen anyway, with or without me. And for my part I give back a good chunk of that money.
And if she think I should have done something more than pass over the money then it because she just choosing to forget. Like she don’t know how many PNP supporters was getting shot in their bed after somebody kick down their door in the middle of the night; and how they stab the Peruvian ambassador to death in his own house, and gun down national security minister Roy McGann, and the PNP candidate Ferdie Neita in broad daylight; and how they shoot Bob Marley in his own back yard because they think the Smile Jamaica concert was him supporting Michael Manley. And that was way before him get Manley and Seaga to join hands on stage at the National Stadium that night. And all the time we saying ‘Better must come’, every political rally end up in a shootout or confrontation like what happen at Old Harbour, or the night me and Hampton get pinned down by gunfire on the road coming through Spanish Town after we go listen to Michael Manley address a meeting. It because she choose to forget what happen to Kenneth Wong, and because she nuh seem to realise that the only involvement yu could have was to either run for government or pick up a gun. And I wasn’t about to do neither.