by Kei Miller
Or else it happens like this—the car does not stop on its second approach. I imagine the driver sees the boy approaching and then suddenly puts his foot on the gas. The car speeds away. It will not come back a third time. It has gone back up into those hills, the driver suddenly afraid of his own desires.
You see, British, O’Neil says, about one of these disappearing cars, Kingston naah work like how it did work one time. One time gone you fuck a man and you get a little $5,000. But things mash up now. These days, man fraid say him a go get rob, or him a go get scam, or him a go get stab up. Is pure free fuck a run it now in Kingston. Things mash up.
In the beginning, I had not told them that I lived in Britain. I had hardly said anything about myself, though it seemed I never needed to. They were observant, picking up on clues I didn’t know I was dropping. They could see things—even the shape of a black bird against the harbour. I always wondered about their easy acceptance of me, an acceptance that would never ask for money or help of any kind. It was enough for me to arrive with a bottle of rum, ice, a bottle of Ting to chase the liquor. It was enough to just sit by the harbour and talk.
You know battyman in Jamaica? Saville once asked. And I said, Yes, of course. He then went through his list—trying to find our six degrees of separation—or just the one degree; Jamaica wasn’t so big after all. But for every name he called, I had to shake my head. No. No, I’m sorry. I don’t know that person. Jamaica wasn’t big, but there were so many different Jamaicas that it was possible to live in worlds that really had never intersected. He seemed disappointed. I thought about it for a while. Dexter, I finally offered. I knew Dexter.
Dexter who had once lived here—not outside on the harbour, but in the Ocean Towers above, a middle-class enclave that was still downtown. Dexter, who had taken me to my first gay party up in the hills. Dexter, one of Jamaica’s most talented fashion designers. Dexter, still so young and who had died just two months ago—apparently stabbed to death by a man he had only just bailed out of jail. Dexter, whose face had been in all the newspapers recently.
Yeah man! Of course me did know Dexter. And then he looked at me with a new understanding. Oooohhhh! You come from that side of Jamaica. It wasn’t an accusation, just an understanding. An acknowledgement.
One night it is a police car, its blue and red lights flashing, that slowly drives along the waterfront. I am sitting by my own car, talking to the boys. The police car stops. We are all suddenly afraid.
What oonoo doing out here at this time? the officer barks.
We’re just chatting, I answer.
Chatting time done. Time for you to move on, the officer says. He looks at me, and looks at the boys, and he shakes his head. He doesn’t try to hide his disapproval.
I go into the driver’s seat and a few of the boys pile in. We drive away.
Is because you is a car man why dem stop, O’Neil explains. Usually dem don’t trouble we. We is walk-foot bwoy. But you is a car man. Dem trying to protect you, British.
For a while we drive in no real direction, along Marcus Garvey Drive and towards the port. For all its reputation, Kingston is a city that definitely sleeps. It is almost surprising how empty the streets are, how desolate it can be—the streetlights and the moon, illuminating the dismal factories, the rust of it all. Soon we are on the causeway and its familiar smell of dead fish enters the car. If we continue we will have to pay the toll and drive into the maze of Portmore. We circle back, back to the harbour. This time I park my car in a less conspicuous place, but the police have set my mind wondering about the night and all the dangers inside it. Out here, on the harbour, we are only a stone’s throw away from some of Kingston’s most dangerous ghettos. I think of these ghettos in Conradian terms—as a dark and brooding place—a place where a restless evil stirs. A recent study tells me that the murder rate in this part of the city is even higher than the death rate in Iraq during the height of war. I wish I did not think of my own country in these terms—a heart of darkness. But I do.
Is it usually safe out here? I mean, safe for you?
They shrug. Safe enough.
The police don’t bother you?
Well, yeah. Maybe if dem see you walking pon de road at night and dem think that maybe you is a badman or something like that. But you see, and the boy is smiling, when dem hold you, you just tell dem de truth one time. Yes. That’s what you need to do. You look dem straight in the eye and say, OFFICER! Yu nuh see seh me a battyman? Me naah trouble nobody! Me not no murderer! Me a battyman! He performs all of this for me. Wriggling out of the hands of the officer, making this brave declaration. It is an extravagant performance. He laughs. And you see, when you say that now, well . . . dem will let you go. Dem don’t want to hold onto you after that. And you see, this is Jamaica. Nobody not going to claim say dem is a battyman if dem is not really a battyman.
I laugh with the boys, but I think about this identity that has left so many of them homeless on the streets, and yet protects them. This identity that they no longer run away from—that on some nights can become their sword and shield.
Well, what bout de badman? I ask, pointing with my lips towards the nearby ghettos.
No. Nuh really. Dem know seh we a battyman too. Everybody know. But dem don’t usually trouble we. You haffi be careful still, but . . .
He never finishes the sentence, and I know that there are dangers the boys will not tell me about. Not yet. I think of a line from Dionne Brand. If I am peaceful in this discomfort, is not peace, / is getting used to harm. I think of the ways that our bodies might grow used to harm. And maybe my question could not be answered after all because the answer could only be felt in the body. A friend once tried to describe this to me—the precarity that is Jamaican street life: Sometimes you and your crew out on the corner, just chilling, and then you just feel a thing. Like maybe a change in the wind or a kind of quiet. Everybody feel it the same time. Everybody know how to feel it. You and your crew don’t ask any question. You just move. Immediately. And sometimes is nothing at all, but plenty times is something—and if you don’t learn how to move just like that, just because you have a feeling, well . . . that’s when you dead.
This month I have found the boys at the harbour, but in another month they will leave just because of a feeling, or a change in the air. Then at a later time they will return. They are always moving. There are always turf wars. Always conflicts. And sometimes they do not move fast enough. Sometimes there are deaths. I have seen the boys empty their pockets. I have seen the glint of knives and pickaxes—these things they always carry for their protection but that don’t always work.
Remember dem days in New Kingston, Saville begins, when Judgement did always come down pon we. Long time now we don’t see Judgement.
And they are all smiling, as if this memory is sweet.
Judgement? I ask.
Yes. Is dat we did call it. Judgement. Sometimes a carload o” man would drive up. Man who come to beat we up. Dem come out wid stone and bat, and dem times now we have on we dress and we make-up and we high heels. We look like real woman. We working. But every now and then a carload o” man come to beat we up. To beat up all the battyman, and we haffi run fi cover. We running in we high heels. Everybody bawling out, JUDGEMENT!
And now they are laughing—laughing so hard that they are clutching their sides, this memory of themselves scampering away like gully rats.
It was Jermaine who did teach we how to stand up fi weself, one says, and everyone suddenly catches their breath; something solemn has entered.
God rest his soul. Jermaine.
I do not ask—at least not on that night—how it was that Jermaine died. In time I have learned this is not unusual—this roll call of friends who have died. Omar. Mark. Colin. Jermaine. Dexter.
What did Jermaine teach you?
One day him just say him wasn’t going to run any more. Probably him did
just tired of it. Him say why we should run when we more than them. Him say him not going to make one more straight man beat him up. And is so we start to stand up fi weself and fight.
I have a sense of this moment. This moment when the homeless boys of New Kingston suddenly entered Jamaica’s consciousness. And it was this that did it—their sudden refusal to be cowed or bullied. Their insistence on standing up proud in their high heels and their wigs and their tight dresses. It frightened the men who were really just cowards, who had come just to have a little bit of fun, just to rough up the sissy boys a little, as if to prove their own masculinity, and who came back instead with all the bruises, all the cuts on their own skins. Beaten up by battymen! This wasn’t the script they had come to know. They did not know beautiful gay boys could stand up for themselves. They did not know beautiful gay boys could fight back.
Suddenly, the boys were in the newspapers. They had been given a new name. The Gully Queens. The residents of New Kingston complained about them. These boys were squatters, prostitutes, thieves, murderers. They beat up innocent people. They were the worst of the worst. Why weren’t the police doing something?
Put your ear close to the waves of the Kingston Harbour on a night when the city is sleeping, and you might hear so many stories—the words soft and fluttering against the dark feathers of the water—stories about the cars that they have climbed into, the big men that they have met—business leaders, politicians, dancehall artistes who some nights put their mouths against the mouths of these boys, kiss them so deeply, but then use those same mouths to sing terrible songs about them. You will hear stories about the magnificent houses they sleep in just for a night, and stories about how, on another night, they will have to sleep under the stars. Put your ear close to the waves and you might learn, in case you ever need to know, how to stay clean and tidy even without an abundance of fresh water, how to wash the body with pods of ackee and deodorise your underarms with lime, how to press your clothes between pieces of cardboard so that when it is morning, you can walk throughout the city feeling proud, smelling good, your head held high.
Cleanliness—it is important to the boys. The money that they earn, they spend on their cleanness, and the need to be unblemished. When they argue amongst themselves, it is the easy insult that they draw for. Look how your skin spotty, spotty! And the insulted boy will lift his shirt at once, will step out into the street and walk as if on a catwalk. No, mi love! Look! Look! Mi skin clean and pretty! Clean like dunce pickney schoolbook! Not a spot, mi love!
Tonight, however, they tell me stories about families. Stories about how to lose a family, or how a family might lose you. And stories about how you might gain a new family, about “sisterhood”, which is what the boys say exists between them.
Mi madda never kick me out, says Dale. She never want me to go. She cry when me did leave. But the people in the community—dem did start harass we. Dem seh me did trouble a little boy. It wasn’t true. But dem woulda do something to mi family—to mi madda—so me leave.
Saville’s story is different. One day when mi madda and fada find out bout me, mi fada take a plate, and a cup, and a knife and a fork and him tell me this is your plate, and your cup, and your knife and your fork. And him mark dem and tell me dem is the only ones me should use, because him wasn’t going to eat out of the same plate or drink out of the same cup as any battyman. And we live like that for a few months until is like him couldn’t take it any more, and him tell me to leave. Me did have a job at first. Me get a room in St Thomas, but when me lose the work, me couldn’t pay the rent and dat’s how me did end up pon the road fi a year.
He doesn’t live on the road any more, and many of the boys here do not. Homelessness is a state they fall in and out of. But when it is night, they come back here to see each other, to see their family. They are sisters.
I usually drive Saville back to the room that he rents on my way home. On the drive he leans his head against my shoulder and his hand is on my knee. I like you, he says. You’re really funny. And you listen.
I concentrate on the road hoping that he doesn’t feel the sudden tension in my own body.
I don’t live here, I remind him. I’m going back soon.
He shrugs.
And you’re twenty-four, I say, trying another tactic. I’m thirty-nine.
And now he’s sitting back up. So what!? It is sharp, almost angry. Dat is no difference at all! My first boyfriend was your age and dem times I was only thirteen! I only like men older than me.
With the streets so empty, it doesn’t take very long for us to get to the community where he now lives, but he doesn’t get out of the car. I turn off the engine and he tells me about this man that he was once in love with.
It take me a whole year to get over dat one. I did love him.
But you were only thirteen! He could have been your father. That’s what I think, but I do not say it. My throat feels tight. I do not feel I have the right to tell him that he was abused, but a strange rage is building in me. Instead, I ask, How long did it last?
Three years, he tells me. Till I was sixteen. Well, almost sixteen.
And why did it end?
Saville shrugs. He looks out the window. Me did get too old for him. Him did want somebody younger.
And that was your first sexual relationship?
Oh no! Saville says, and he’s almost laughing. No man, not at all. The first one was horrible. I was . . . and then his voice dips . . . I was molested. From I was three to bout ten years old.
And the answer that I already know surprises even me.
Your father?
Yes, mi fada.
And I think about this father—this father who separated plates and cups and forks and knives—who told his son he wasn’t going to eat from the same plate as no battyman—this father who kicked him out into the streets is the same father who molested him for years. And the thing that was in my throat, the thing that was anger, has now dissolved into something else, into a bubble of things I think I cannot say. I reach across and hold his hand.
The boys enlist my help in carrying out a robbery, though I know nothing about it or the help that I offered until days after the fact. They have added me as friends on Facebook and so O’Neil knows that I am near Montego Bay. He calls me on WhatsApp. Mi see you deya country, British. Montego Bay is in fact Jamaica’s second city, but to the chagrin of Montegonians, people from Kingston still refer to it as “country”. There is “town” and there is “country”, and only Kingston is “town”. Yeah, I’m in Mobay, I confirm.
And when you a guh back?
Tomorrow.
Mi can get a ride? Me and mi bredrin. We down dis side too.
I agree to give them a ride back and say that I’Ll be in touch the next day.
I am not actually in the city of Montego Bay but in a village ten miles or so outside it. I do this pilgrimage on all my trips to Jamaica, spending time with a woman I love, the poet Jean Binta Breeze, chatting on her verandah and looking out to the sea on the other side of the road. The water here is different from Kingston Harbour’s—cleaner, and yet smelling even more strongly of salt and sea and fish. Poor health has made it difficult for Jean to travel. Sometimes, even going from her verandah across the road to put her feet in the sea takes a lot out of her. So I go to her, and there is no schedule in the time we spend together.
The next morning there are missed calls on my phone. O’Neil wants to know when I will be heading back to Kingston. It annoys me. I call back to say, I can’t give a time.
But what you doing?
I want to say, I am here to sit on a verandah. I am here to smell the sea and the salt and the fish and just to be with a friend. I’m not on your schedule. What I end up saying is, Look—I will call you when I’m ready.
Two hours later and the phone is ringing again. O’Neil says he and his friend have been up
since 4 a.m., when they were forced to leave the house they had been staying at. He says nothing else about this, only that they are tired and hungry. That they have no money. So please—when will I be heading back to Kingston?
I almost snap. Look, I said I will call you when I am ready!
In the early afternoon I drive back towards Montego Bay. The phone is ringing again but now I do not answer. I decide to call when I’m in the city. O’Neil resorts to texting—each text more anxious and frustrated.
At last I turn into KFC where we have agreed to meet. He and his friend walk sulkily towards the car. They put their belongings in the trunk before getting in. O’Neil mutters a greeting and then pushes the seat all the way back as if to go to sleep. His friend stretches across the back seat. I try to remind myself that these really are just boys. Sometimes they are immature. Sometimes they throw tantrums which can seem to make little sense.
And they are so small, I realise, that the cramped car seats are sufficient beds for their bodies. They sleep. I drive through the army checkpoint as Montego Bay is under a State of Emergency. The soldiers wave me on and I drive towards Kingston. Back in town, the boys are awake and in a seemingly better mood. I drop them off and they wave goodbye brightly, but I am probably the one more annoyed at this point.
Two days later I see a picture of O’Neil and his friend being circulated on Facebook. The word “WANTED” is in all caps above the picture. The post reads, “Does anyone know these two thieves? They stayed with my friend in Montego Bay and when he went to work at 4 a.m. they stole everything from his house, laptops and phones. The police have been contacted.”