“Leave him!” Brother Omar voice drop like thunder. The fellas dump Jason and he dump the whip. When he look behind him, Brother Omar stand up in the doorway of the small building nearby. “Come,” he say, and Jason run to him.
Jason grab on to Brother Omar and cry. Loud, loud. Not like how a twelve-year-old suppose to cry, but like how Kevin does cry when he loss a race. Like he going and dead.
Brother Omar hold on, too. He kinda drag Jason inside and close the door. “Shhhh. W’happen, son?” he keep saying. When Jason calm down li’l bit, Brother Omar put him on a bench and take the one opposite—it didn’t have no desk, no nothing between them. He hand Jason a kerchief and Jason sniffle through the story ’bout the phone call.
Then he sit down there, back bend and head low, twisting the kerchief till it resemble rope.
Brother Omar shake Jason knee and say, “Don’t blame him. I did want to tell you that long time. Try understand the man situation: he in America. He in a vice-grip plenty stronger than him. You know what the Bible say ’bout America? Watch me.”
He lift Jason chin, real gentle. That’s when Jason notice the blackboard on the far wall. He could see, over Brother Omar shoulder, a drawing on the board—a real good one—of a handgun, with a setta arrow naming the parts-and-thing. So Shaka wasn’t joking, then?
“Pay attention. This important,” Brother Omar say. “The Bible say America is ‘The Great Whore.’ You ain’t no baby; you know what a whore is. It say she’s the ‘Mother of Prostitutes’, and that we, black men, the true kings of the earth, is doomed to fornicate with she and she stink daughters, till we don’t know we-self again. That’s the trap your father fall in, m’boy.”
Jason eye did keep darting from Brother Omar face to the blackboard, squinting at them labels, until the moment Brother Omar did say “we, black men.”
“But you not black,” Jason say. Is something he did really want to ask the man long time.
“My mother black. But your question bring up my next point. I used to blame my father: How he could just leave? I used to study if something wrong with me, if is my fault the man run. But Islam teach me something: my father is a white-man—a predator—he born so. And look: your father gone and empty his-self inside a white-woman. No wonder he ain’t the father you remember. You ever meet a white-person in real, son?”
Jason shake his head. “Only them Syrian-and-them,” he say, remembering what Shaka did say in the shoe store ’bout light skin people.
“Them come like a branch of white,” Brother Omar say with a nod.
Jason think ’bout Aunty Gail problems, and his father situation too. For the first time, he see the link plain, plain: white-people. “But I don’t understand,” he say. “Why them so different?”
“Listen some facts you never learn in school,” Brother Omar say, his eyes lighting up. “In the beginning, it only had black people and Islam on earth. A man name Yaqub thought he was smarter than Allah, so he start experimenting to make a new setta people. He start messing with DNA, killing off dark skin babies, until he create a brown race. And he keep trying and trying, until after six hundred years he build a white race. That’s plenty years: lying and thiefing and murdering babies … all that evil get seep down inside them new bleach-out people. They born bad.”
Jason change position on the bench and hug-up his knee. The whole thing sound like a sci-fi movie, but if Brother Omar half-white and he saying these things, then it had to be truth. That American white-woman: is she who fuck-up Luther, and is she who cause Judith to need Selwyn, so is she who thief everything from he and Kevin.
Brother Omar follow Jason and raise one foot on the bench. “Boy, that bad blood in me—in your half-sister too—it come like a curse. Like a holy war—a jihad—going on inside. You ever feel like that? But I thank Allah because it lead me to Islam. Sometimes, war does bring peace.”
Jason watch the blackboard again and nod real slow. For five years, that’s exactly how he did feel: like he warring inside. But right now, all his feelings was flat, and this flatness had him seeing straight and clean over his whole life. It wasn’t scary and foggy no more. He was seeing a new road with black-and-white answers now. And that’s all he did ever really want: answers, and to understand why things did happen to him the way they happen. Now, he feel free. He didn’t have to be vex no more with his mother and father—it come like a weight he could finally put down. Now he had other people, the real culprit-and-them, to hate.
Brother Omar point to the blackboard. “Easiest thing to find in Pleasantview is a gun—check your aunt, she know that—so is best them boys learn ’bout it early. Tomorrow, I taking them in the bush, down Rio Claro, to practice. If they learn to handle that kinda power, they could do plenty good in this world. Plenty.”
Jason pass back the handkerchief, but he couldn’t see himself getting up and going home. For Judith to keep saying he wrong, he wrong? Nah, it feel better to remain here, with Brother Omar, on the side of rightness.
“I could come with allyuh, tomorrow?” he ask, feeling like he had flambeau eyes now.
“Of course,” Brother Omar say, “As-Salaam-Alaikum … Brother Jason.”
With that, he grab Jason neck and plant a kiss on his forehead.
Acknowledgments
THE STORIES IN THIS COLLECTION FIRST appeared in the following publications: “Six Months” in The New England Review; “White Envelope” in Scarlet Leaf Review; “Endangered Species” in Kweli Journal; “Loosed” in Harpur Palate; “Kings of the Earth” in Epiphany; “Santimanitay” in LitMag; and “The Dragon’s Mouth (Bocas del Dragón) in The Beloit Fiction Journal.
I thank PEN America and Fernanda Dau Fisher and I acknowledge the following people for their unflagging support and encouragement: Hester Kaplan, Michael Lowenthal, Rachel Manley, Roslyn Carrington, and the Lesley University writers’ community. Thank you to all who read and commented, thank you to Linda and Roger for their many sacrifices, and thank you to Sarai Ayesha for teaching me.
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Celeste Mohammed graduated from Lesley University with an MFA in Creative Writing. Celeste’s goal is to dispel all myths about island-life and island-people, and to highlight the points of intersection between Caribbean and North American interests.
Her work has appeared in The New England Review, Litmag, Epiphany, The Rumpus, among other places. She is the recipient of a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She was also awarded the 2019 Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the 2017 John D Gardner Memorial Prize. for Fiction.
She currently resides in Trinidad with her family.
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