by Kei Miller
This, again, is how you die –
You have bought Marlboro. There is a warning on the box. Smoking Kills. Smoking Leads To Reduced Lung Function. You are so used to these warnings that you have stopped reading them. You did not recognise the man behind the cash register. No. Not even a man. A boy. He had tilted his head back to look up at the full height of you, and then on the double-headed eagle tattooed in black ink across your chest, much of it visible because you are wearing a sleeveless muscle shirt. The boy has thought about getting his own tattoo—but not yet. His father would surely shout at him. His mother would surely cry, Allah, help us! We did not come to this country to have our boy become a common gangster. And a tattoo as large as yours would have taken up his entire torso. You have gotten the cigarettes and the change from the $20 note you handed to the boy.
As you walk out of the store you are tapping the box of cigarettes against your forearm. You are not sure why you do this. It is just a habit you picked up when you were just a teenage boy in Texas. The older men did it with a kind of nonchalance that seemed to you manly, almost sophisticated. Some smartass told you there is no need to do this again—that it had something to do with the way cigarettes were made back then, filterless, and loose tobacco could end up in your mouth which wasn’t at all pleasant. This tapping was in order to “pack” the cigarettes, but it is not necessary these days. You do it anyway, a sort of ritual.
Stop! Stop! You turn around. The boy is running towards you with a green bill in his hand. It is the $20 you handed to him. He stops before reaching you as if his courage is fluctuating. Is he more afraid of you or the boss? This money is no good! Give me back the cigarettes and the change and take this back. It is no good.
You have learned a long time ago to pick your battles, and this is not one worth fighting or even responding to. You almost smile at the boy. On another night, if it wasn’t for this damned virus bringing the world to its knees, you would still be working at the club and it is a boy like this who would have come to the door and handed you his counterfeit ID. He would have squared his shoulders back, tried to man up, tried to look you in the eyes in the way he imagined a man would, trying not to show how scared he was. You wouldn’t have had to look at the ID to know that it was fake—just the boy and all his tremulous youth showing and you’d have to decide one way or the other. If you let him in he will do so happily, but if you shake your head, hand him back his ID and gesture towards the streets, he would turn around immediately and leave without question. In no situation will this boy fight you, so you smile at his useless demand, turn back around and continue towards your car holding the pack of Marlboro with the label Smoking Kills. And, Smoking Leads To Reduced Lung Function.
You do not know how many minutes have passed. You haven’t gone anywhere. You are sitting behind the wheel of your car talking with your friends. You jump a little when there is a sudden tapping at your window. You jump even more when you turn around to see it is the police. Open the door! he yells, so you open the door, and you are tripping over your own words to be polite and to be respectful, to say Yes sir, and Yes, Mr Officer, but also—what the hell? What’s happening? What have I done? And so quickly, in the midst of all your flustered words and your fumbling, the police officer has reached for his gun and you are staring down its barrels and he says PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS ON THE WHEEL! You do it, and you start to cry because you have imagined this so many times—you have experienced this so many times—and you wonder if today will be that dreaded day. Will you die by a policeman’s bullet? Please don’t shoot me, you manage to say. But no, James. That isn’t how you die. Not by a policeman’s bullet. It hardly matters though, because this right here—this moment—this is how you die.
They have pulled you out of your own car. They are trying to shove you into the back seat of another. The air is suddenly tight around you—the world an unbreathable thing. You are afraid of the airlessness. No. You don’t want to go into the back seat of their car. You are trying to be polite, to say yes sir, and yes, Mr Officer, but you also want to know why? Why the fuck is this happening? But everything is fucking this and fucking that and do what you’re fucking told and put your fucking hands up or put your fucking hands down or put your fucking hands behind you. You are on the ground now. Your lips kiss the asphalt. Your hands are behind you and in handcuffs. You can’t go anywhere or do anything, but the policeman’s knee is on your neck. This is what you say: Please, I can’t breathe. They pay as much attention to that as they have to everything else you have said. Your words do not matter. How do we make our words matter? You say it again. It is ignored again. You say it twenty-two times. It sounds like this:
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
Please, I can’t breathe.
And then you say something else. Momma. Momma! But your mother is already dead. Two years now, almost to the day. You say Momma, like you are speaking to what is not there, or to what is there and cannot be seen. You say Momma like the spirit of her has come down to meet you at this crossroads, is kneeling before you as if to offer you water, but she only puts her hand under your chin like a pillow and says, It’s OK, Slim. This is what she has always called you. It’s gonna be OK. You coming with me. And this is how you die.
Dear James,
I have seen my death as well. This is how I die:
I in one ah them lil cars—a Nissan Tiida—the kind you does see on every road in Trinidad these days. I with two ah my pardners and we driving along Juman Drive in Morvant. The road not so busy like it could be. It have a terrible virus out there like it come to kill the whole ah we. Dr Rowley lock down Trinidad tight, tight. You can’t fly in; you can’t fly out; you can’t buy doubles on the side ah the road; you can’t even lime with the fellahs in a bar at night. And unless is bread you out there trying to get for yourself or your children, they say you shouldn’t be on the road at all.
Just so, we see these three big police jeeps—no flashing lights, no sirens wailing or nothing, but they coming down the road hard hard hard like is them alone and God on it. My pardner who driving wonder if he should pull the Nissan over into the ditch cause is like them police boys ready to knock we off the road and into eternity.
I say out loud, Look trouble now! cause dem fellahs only drive like this when they have evil on their minds. This right here is trouble heading towards a set ah people who before long going to find themselves on the wrong side ah these boys’ batons, or worse, their guns, and only if we lucky we might read about it in the papers tomorrow. Imagine, I barely get these three words out my mouth when the third jeep pull up hard in front ah we. The other two jeeps that already pass screech to a halt behind we and the police boys jump out with these guns big like maybe they think is the Taliban they fighting here in Trinidad. They shouting, Come out! Come out with your hands up. I could piss myself right then and there.
Look, when them fellahs give you instruction—it don’t matter how it unreasonable, it don’t matter how it unjust, it don’t matter that maybe is just a Saturday night and they having their fun trying to humiliate you, you do
es do it! You do whatever they ask so that afterwards you can walk home. Some ah these police boys, is like if they don’t pull a trigger they feel they don’t do a day’s work. You can’t give them the opportunity.
We so frighten and so chupid we trying to open the car doors with we hands already up in the air. We had to stop. Take a breath. We open the car doors. We push we hands out immediately, up, up in the air so they could see we not holding anything. We pull the rest ah we bodies out the car and stand up, under we arms wet with perspiration. I don’t know how it happen or why, but I standing there with my hands in the air, and my pardners standing there with their hands in the air, and just so, just so, I hear bang, and then bang, and then bang, and I feel something like a fire, like a bright white light ripping through my whole body. I look to see my two pardners going down to the floor. I wonder why they would make joke at a time like this. Why they would lay down on the ground at a time like this? Except I thinking I want to lie down there with them. And this is how I die.
This is also how I die.
I so vex it hard to talk or keep things straight in my head. News come that police kill three ah dem boys. Our boys. The police say they had guns. They say the boys had opened fire on dem and there was nothing they could do but to fire back and kill dem. It was a shoot-out, bullets flying everywhere, and they say is just luck and training that make it that none of the police fellahs was injured. Not a graze, not a nick, not a nothing. Well, that is what they want us to believe.
Evil does make you chupid and careless cause the police don’t notice that the shop by the side ah the road where they stop the Nissan Tiida had its own CCTV camera on the wall, and the camera film the whole thing. So we watch. We watch and we see how the first boy had come out ah the car with his hands up and the only thing he holding onto was his own fingers, his own life. So how all of a sudden gunshot start to fire? How all of a sudden the three boys end up on the floor dead?
So we say we goh lock down Port of Spain. We goh burn things! We goh mash up things! We goh march and shout. We goh demand justice. We goh demand answers! We goh carry on until the commissioner he own self come down and talk to we like we is people with we own eyes that can see things, and we own intelligence that can make sense ah things but can’t make no sense ah what happened on that road in Morvant.
I not only marching for myself but I marching for the boychild who ent born yet—who been growing inside me these past eight months. I don’t want him to born into a world where he could catch bullets in he stomach just so, even when he follow all the instructions; he could catch bullets just cause a police fellah feel he should catch bullets; just cause he black and he poor.
It have a set ah people in this country right here who from the other week when they kill that fellah George Floyd in America, been jumping out their whole selves to say Black Lives Matters and to say they standing in solidarity with their brothers overseas, who marching to the US Embassy here to tell the ambassador that we here in Trinidad tired ah the foolishness that does happen every day in America. But like black lives only matter if they live abroad, or if they have money, cause this same set of people now staying home and asking why we out in the streets causing bacchanal and why we should vex when is just a set ah criminals that the police did kill? Sometimes when you think through things like this, you wonder if it even possible to ever find the words to explain the foolishness ah this world.
So we marching. Me with my eight-months’ pregnant self marching too. The police all around us telling us to stop it. They telling us to disperse and go home. They telling us we in the middle of a pandemic and we putting lives at risk by congregating and it come to me clear clear right then that I live my whole life in the middle of a pandemic. Every day is a risk. Now the police like a set ah bullies with a set ah bullhorn shouting how the demonstration illegal. Shouting how they might have to lock up the whole ah we. Go home, they say. Allyuh is a set ah hooligans, they say, as if is only bad behaviour and not understanding or accepting your place in the world that could cause you to stand up and say, We is people too. Treat us better, nah?
But you know these police fellahs. Some of them feel if they don’t pull a trigger they don’t do a day’s work. One ah them decide if we ent goh listen to the sound ah he voice, we goh listen to the sound ah he gun. He fire a couple shots. Bang. And bang. People decide for true is time to leave this spot. They start to scatter. They start to run. I want to run too but is like I feel a sudden fire going through my whole body. I feel it for myself and I feel it for the boychild who ent born yet. And I say to the boychild inside me, in a lil while we will go home, but leh we just lay down for a moment on this road. And this is how we die.
And James,
Every day it is like this in America. And in Trinidad. And in Jamaica. And in this whole world. We write because there are always things we have withheld. We die because things have been withheld from us, which is to say, respect; which is to say, dignity; which is to say, love.
BIG UP
To the most extraordinary agents: Harriet, you are such a blessing to me; Alice, you keep on making magic possible.
To the kind of editors a writer only ever dreams of having—Ellah Wakatama at Canongate and Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove Atlantic—editors who both trusted me and pushed me. This book became something better because of you.
To Melanie and Rochelle and the Renaissance One crew, who have been so patient and have made my life as a writer possible these past couple of years.
To those vagabond writers and thinkers who are my tribe, and in whose company I grow: Marlon James (dude!!!), Leone Ross (keep on rocking it!), Garnette Cadogan (yu nuh fraid dem lock yu up?), Annie Paul (you little trailblazer, you!), Malika Booker (the carnival essays are for you), Ronald Cummings (look how far we coming!), Yvonne Weekes (thank you for adopting me), Jason Allen (J’ai hâte de lire tes poèmes) and Tanya Shirley (girl, you sooo wrong, and always so right!).
To Leila and Vahni and Alex and Phillipé, my Trini family.
To Jean Binta and Dona and Jonathan and Matthew, my UK family.
To the family that chose me—Shauna, Richard and Natalie and Jude and Zane. Mom, we continue to miss you. And Dad—the original Kei. You guys are my life and my fortress.
And of course, to Dionne Brand, who I haven’t yet met, but whose fierce and moral writing teaches me how to think.