Mr. Potter

by Jamaica Kincaid

  And Elfrida Robinson walked into the sea, as if the sea was life and so was to be joyfully embraced, and the sea swallowed her and then twisted her dry like a piece of old clothing and then ground her into tiny bits and then the tiny bits dissolved and vanished from sight, but only from sight, for they are still there, only they cannot be seen. And the moment she surrendered her life was not the very moment the sea closed over her; that moment had come a long time before. The moment she surrendered her life, the moment that the space between her and the world became vast and unknowable, had occurred long before the very powerful reality of the sea’s water had overtaken her. Then there was a silence, but only for her; and then there was a blackness, but only for her; and the world retreated to beyond words and order and beauty and all its opposites, but only for her. And after a short while, no one spoke of her again, her courage (for it was that, courage) became cowardice and then strange, so strange that it must not be repeated, and after a short while no one thought of her again, not her only child, her son, Mr. Potter, not his father Nathaniel and not Nathaniel’s other children or his other wives or loves or acquaintances, not anyone, and only I now do so, think of her, and she was Mr. Potter’s mother, my father’s name was Mr. Potter.

  See the motherless Roderick Nathaniel Potter, but he did not know himself to be so, motherless. See him a small boy, vulnerable to all that is hard and without heart, to all that is hard and without love, to all that is hard and without mercy. See him a small boy! Eating his penny loaf with no butter on it, drinking his cup of cocoa with no milk in it, never drinking a cup of milk at all; eating his small amount of rice and fish that came from the bottom of the pot, the part that had burned. See his clothes, his khaki pants, his shirt of chambray, thinned in some parts, shredded in some parts, hang without shape on his poor frame, shrink away from his body as if in terror of touching that coarse, scaly covering that is his skin. See him walk across a yard, the soles of his feet bare, naked, as they meet the immediate, near surface of the earth, and sometimes this near surface is soft mud and sometimes this near surface is hard and dry and stony. See him walk down a narrow lane, carrying a letter in his hands, or a brief message on his lips; see him walk down a narrow lane with a large bundle of something important—food, for instance—balanced carefully (not beautifully, he was not a woman) on his head; see him walk down a narrow lane, with the concerns of Mr. Shepherd and his wife, Mistress Shepherd, on his small boy’s shoulders. See the small boy, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, asleep on a bed of old and dirty rags, not old and clean rags like the ones that made up the bed on which he was born. See the small boy, so tired, so hungry, before he falls asleep, just before he falls asleep, and hear the grinding sound from his belly, like an old unoiled saw, its blade put to green wood. See the small boy asleep, in a slumber so deep, and his dreams become so much a reality, so much a world of its own, and this world is sometimes the opposite of the one he knows when awake and sometimes it is just the same, and sometimes he does not miss them and sometimes he does not even remember them afterward. See the small boy asleep in a slumber so deep, seamlessly still, his body seems stilled, but not in death, not in the life of death, his body is stilled yet moving with stillness (for yes, that could be so, moving and stillness at one and the same time; it could be so and it was so), and he breathes in and he breathes out, and his chest moves up and down, gently. See the small boy, he would become Mr. Potter, his name then was Roderick Nathaniel on his birth certificate, his name then was Roderick Potter in his mother’s mind, his name then was Drickie to all who met him. See the small boy coming awake in the morning, from the deep slumber that had produced a not at all troubling landscape, a landscape with its up and downs, its good and bad; see the small boy awake in the world of his corner in the kitchen, and when he wipes his eyes, a thick liquid, almost like perspiration but it is not, has, while he was sleeping, oozed out of his eyes and thickened into a thin crust, and collected in the corners of his eyes, the corners of both eyes, and the thick coalesced liquid in the corners of his eyes causes him to see at first dimly and falsely and this makes him angry and he violently scrubs the film from his eyes and all that is before him is clear: he will step out of bed, he will put on his clothes (he has no shoes), he walks away from his sleeping life now, he walks into the world and he is in perfect harmony with himself, for perfect harmony is the province of a good God, or the province of the ordinarily degraded. Mr. Potter, my father, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, was of the ordinarily degraded. And see him now round a corner, not yet in possession of the knowledge of his own misery, never to be in possession of the knowledge that the world has rained down on him injustice upon injustice, cruelty upon cruelty, never to be in possession of the knowledge that though his very being was holy, his existence was a triumph of evil. See him round the corner of the alley, any alley, carrying an object in which he takes pleasure: a stone over which he tripped, and the stone has a funny shape for a stone, or a strange texture for a stone, or he picks up the stone for a reason he will never know; and when carrying the stone, as he rounds the corner of the alley, he is skipping, a sign of playfulness, he is tossing the stone in the air and successfully catching it, a sign of playfulness, and he is alone and the joy of himself skipping as he throws a stone into the empty air and catches it is his own, it is something he possesses; and in that moment he is in harmony with his joy and is himself, something he possesses. See Mr. Potter, a small boy, his spirit in harmony with his own actions, his actions in harmony with his spirit; see Mr. Potter, boundless and joyful, as he traverses a very small corner of the world, see him in this way when he was a child, for this is so rare in his life, a joyfulness that was without boundaries. See him as a small boy, for he was Drickie then, he was not Mr. Potter yet, he was not even Roderick, he was Drickie, a small boy, and his mother had walked into the sea, and his father had died after cursing the small share he received of the fruits of the sea, and he was living with people who could not love him, who could not love anything at all, and neither could he, Drickie, who was not yet Mr. Potter.

  And Mr. Potter’s mother had smelled of onions, that was all he could remember of her, that she smelled of onions and that the last time he saw her she placed him, this small boy, her only child, in the care of Mr. and Mistress Shepherd, and she walked away from him and for a long time after that (what exactly could that be to a small boy?) he thought she might come back and get him, and then he thought she might come back and say something, anything, to him, and then after that he thought, She will come back just to take a glimpse of me, I will see her as she takes a glimpse of me, and then all this was followed by a large blank space of darkness and light, sometimes separated, the darkness and the light, sometimes mingling, the darkness and the light, and this single blank space of only darkness and light—separated or commingled—was where Elfrida Robinson, his mother, stayed. And when he smelled onions, he remembered her, just the smell of onions being cooked or sometimes the smell enclosing the words as they emerged from someone’s mouth, or sometimes the smell of onions just in the air when there was no explanation for it at all, as if the smell in the air was a premonition, a sign of some kind. But onions were not food, onions only flavored food, onions were not a staff of life, onions only made a staff of life more palatable, more enjoyable. And his unfulfilled longing for his mother did not create a feeling of emptiness in him, as far as he knew then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and his mother abandoning him when he was so small and vulnerable to the whole history of evil directed at him and at all who looked like him, and so vulnerable to the many, many small indignities that rained down on him in particular, did not influence his view of the world as far as he knew it then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and after a long time, long after he had been a boy but quite close to the time in which he would die, he could not remember his mother’s name, he could not remember his mother’s face, the shape of it, the color of it, the feel of it, he could not remember her name, he co
uld only remember that his mother smelled of onions, a food not at all necessary to sustain life. His mother smelled of onions and onions and onions again.

  How each moment is brimming over with the possibility of change, how each moment is brimming over with the new; and yet how in each moment the world is seemingly fixed and steadfast and unchanging; how for some of us we are nothing if we are not like the cockle in its shell, the bird in its feathers, the mammal covered with hair and skin; how certain we are that the world will ensure our fixed state of happiness or misery or anything of the vast range in between; how in defeat we see eternity and how so too we see forever and ever and ever again and again in victory; how in some dim and distant way we feel we are nothing and how certain we are that we are everything, all that is to be is present in us and no thing or idea of any kind will replace us.

  And there was a man named Mr. Shepherd and he was married to Mrs. Shepherd and they were both descended from African slaves and also other people who were of no real account, to look at Mr. and Mistress Shepherd; they looked mostly as if they were descended from Africans who were slaves. And Mr. Shepherd said … but there was nothing for him to say, for everything was in his face, so tautly scrunched up as if mimicking in every way a hand made into a fist, and this fist, powerful for it was a ball of anger made physical, could not release itself and so Mr. Shepherd’s face looked like a face, it was a face, but it did not telegraph acceptance, kindness, love, curiosity, or the feeling that what was to come would be a welcome and divinely sanctioned adventure. Mr. Shepherd’s face was full of the vigor to be found in the hated. Mr. Shepherd was common, as are all human beings in a way; in a very particular way he was made up of his past, and all human beings, when they find themselves with other human beings, are made up of their past, their past is their true currency. And Mr. Shepherd said nothing even though he spoke many words, but his words could certainly not change the past, nothing could ever do that, the past was a certainty. And Mr. Shepherd paused, he stopped, he froze permanently, eventually, and the world as he came to know it was the taut fist waiting to meet a deserving something, and this was his face. His face was always a representation of these two things: the potential of triumph and the certainty of defeat. It was in such a world and in the care of such two people, Mr. Shepherd and Mistress Shepherd, that Mr. Potter, my father, for Mr. Potter was my father’s name, grew up; that is to say, he attached himself to the world, attached himself to the world we all know, the world that is round and has an above and a below and an across, and an over there, and a just right near here and a beyond there and a how could such a thing be: a mystery, something confounding, something that was beyond an explanation on which he could agree. Mr. Potter thickened. And injustice became so real to him it was like breathing, it was like oxygen, it was like standing up, it was like the blue that was the sky, it was like the water that made up the ocean, it was like anything that stood before him: always there, it had a right to be there, and its disappearance would mean a new order, and in that case where would Mr. Potter be? But Mr. Potter kept on, not through his own will, but he kept on growing, that little boy, and Mr. Shepherd hated him as Mr. Shepherd hated his own self and so too he hated all that was around him, but not Mistress Shepherd, he did not hate her, he did not love and he did not hate her, but why? And Mr. Potter grew up into a man, and that man became Mr. Potter, that man that grew up from Drickie, toiling through the perils of life, he was young, new, and foolish, and he survived all of this, the young and the new and the foolish, and then one day he was Mr. Potter and no one had made him that way, one day he knew himself to be Mr. Potter. And Mr. Shepherd taught Drickie how to drive and Drickie—whose name was Mr. Potter eventually, and I came to know him by that name, Mr. Potter, and the name by which I know him is the way he will forever be known, for I am the one who can write the narrative that is his life, the only one really—drove Mr. Shepherd to Shepherd’s School, a school for boys like Mr. Potter but those boys did not have a mother who had walked into the sea, and Mr. Shepherd hated the boys of the Shepherd School and he hated Mr. Potter more than that, and he hated himself even more, though he did not know it. And Mr. Shepherd loomed over Drickie in every way that could be imagined, for what else could he do; and the world in its entirety, and in every way imaginable, loomed over Drickie, for that is the way of the world no matter how it constitutes itself, it looms and looms, and Drickie became the opposite of glowing; he grew dull, like something useful made of a precious metal but forgotten on a shelf, he grew dull and ugly, in the way of the forgotten, and this is true: often a thing that is ugly is ugly in itself, and often a thing that is ugly is only a thing that is forgotten, kept from view and kept from memory, and often a thing that is ugly is not only a definition of beauty itself but also renders beauty as something beyond words or beyond any kind of description. And …

  And Mr. Shepherd acquired a car, a small car in which four people could sit, and he taught Mr. Potter to drive it, and this whole process of learning to drive a motorcar led to many words of abuse from Mr. Shepherd directed at the small boy Drickie, not Mr. Potter yet, but it led to Mr. Potter, for that boy became a chauffeur and he wore a cap and a nice shirt and well-pressed trousers and after he had left his life with Mr. and Mistress Shepherd, he came to call himself Mr. Potter to anyone who wanted to be chauffeured to some destination, and it was all because he had come to have command over that small motorcar. And Mr. Shepherd had acquired his small car from a Mr. Hall, a man whose very physical frame was deformed by the evil events of history, too, settling down on him and then tightening into an inescapable grip, and he knew himself so little that when he spoke his very words seemed an approximation of what he meant to say, and all he meant to say was often false, for Mr. Hall was descended from generations of the triumphant. And when the transaction concerning this car—something they could not make, had no idea how it got made, did not know that their brutal appearance in the new world and their degradation (for the triumphant are just as degraded as the defeated) made this thing, a car, possible—passed between them, how they each felt, though not in equal parts, swelled with importance and pride and how certain they were that most people they met in their everyday life did not receive an amount of divine blessing equal to theirs, for they had motorcars and most people they knew had none. And between them the blessings were not equal: for Mr. Hall then bought a car, brand new, just arrived from England, and it could seat five comfortably and Mr. Shepherd’s car was Mr. Hall’s old car and it could only seat four. And Mr. Shepherd was more pleased with his first little car, secondhand as it was, that could only seat four, the only car he would ever have, than was Mr. Hall with his brand-new car, his second brand-new car that could seat five.

  And that car’s secondhandness vanished from Mr. Shepherd’s mind, he treasured it so, and if it had been brand new he would not have loved it more, he would not have known how to love it more. Mr. Shepherd had not expected ever to own a motorcar, he had a bicycle, a very good one; even when it became rusty, its rustiness was a part of its very goodness. Mr. Shepherd loved his car so, and this was a new experience, this love, this feeling he had for his small used car that could seat four; for he did not love Mistress Shepherd, he did not love their four children, his four sons, who wanted to be nothing at all but whom Mr. Shepherd knew was meant to dominate a small group of people who were vulnerable in a way Mr. Shepherd had not yet settled on. Mr. Shepherd did not love Mistress Shepherd and he did not love his children, but he knew unwaveringly how important they were to him, like his eyes and his mouth and his heart and his feet, and if he lost any of those things, he would be broken, not heart-broken, just broken, and could not be put back together again in the way he had been before he lost them. And he did love his car and sometimes he would awake himself on purpose just to see how it looked nestled in the deep, deep sea blue that was the color of the night sky, right before midnight; and he loved to see it standing in the rain, its shiny gray permanent coating the color of a sk
in he could not have imagined, resisting the sudden ferocious downpour, a downpour that had been the object of longing for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years; he did love his car and wanted to sit in it and be driven in it, so that the labor of driving the car would not interfere with his love for his car. And Mr. Shepherd taught Mr. Potter to drive, and in teaching Mr. Potter to drive, Mr. Shepherd had to reach not too far within himself to find ugliness and cruelty. He called Mr. Potter stupid, he compared him to invertebrates of every order, he compared him to the indiscriminately growing members of the vegetable kingdom who were of no use (as far as Mr. Shepherd knew) and who had created much nuisance (as far as Mr. Shepherd knew), and he brought to life the sad specimen that Mr. Potter became (but it was Drickie really, for Mr. Potter had not been placed in his care). And Mr. Potter took it all in, cruelty and ugliness, with silence and indifference and as if it were breath itself. And Mr. Shepherd did not become happy, even as he had been granted the luxury of expressing his own ugliness without the slightest retribution; he only became certain of the futility in everything: a small and private obsession that might lead to revelation and joy; love itself; the unknowableness of who or what made him; the mystery that he was to himself; the emptiness of spaces and then their being filled up; the beautifully soft white Egyptian cotton handkerchief he carried in his pocket only on Sundays; Mistress Shepherd, his wife, who did not have to strive to be his wife, she was so simply his wife, and her general disapproval of her immediate world and the people who occupied it had a perfection, like a glass figurine from somewhere far away and completely unfamiliar, somewhere he had read of in a book, and the mere reading of it came to be a personal experience (that would be London). And when Mr. Potter took in Mr. Shepherd’s cruelty and ugliness with silence or indifference, all of it—cruelty, ugliness, silence, indifference—became a skin, not like a skin, but a skin; and when his mother Elfrida Robinson walked into the sea after leaving him with Mr. and Mistress Shepherd and he longed for her and then forgot that she had abandoned him to people he did not know and then walked into the sea, the sea which she did not know, all this too became a skin, not like a skin, but a skin itself, a protective covering, something not to be lived without. And Mr. Potter did not know about his father Nathaniel Potter and the voluminous joy he—Nathaniel—experienced from reaping the bounty of the sea, the voluminous joy he took in making so many children, and the lack of sadness or regret that should have come from not loving them really or even caring about their existence, their ups and downs, and all this too, Nathaniel Potter’s life and the absence in him of fatherly feelings toward his own children, all of them, became a skin for Mr. Potter, not like a skin, but a skin itself, a protective covering, something that could not be lived without.