A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  Nina Burgess

  Seventeen buses. Ten minibuses, including one calling itself Revlon Flex that already passed twice. Twenty-one taxis. Three hundred and seventy-six cars, I think. And not once did the man step out of his house. Not even to get some air, not to make sure that the guards are doing their job. Not even to tell the sun, later me brethren, I man have some serious work to do. The man on the lime green scooter came back in the evening and they sent him away again, but not before he got off and spoke to the man at the gate for two minutes and seventeen seconds. I timed him. Danny’s watch still works, but it wasn’t until lunch one time at the Terranova when I ran into a former schoolmate, breast droop down like a tired goat, but still a stuck-up bitch, that I found out Timex is the same watch that my daddy gave Hortense last week for fifteen years of meritorious service to the household. Bitch was calling me cheap. I wanted to tell her how happy she must be as a married woman now that she no longer have to bother with looking attractive, but I smiled and said, I hope your little boy can swim because I just saw him running for the pool.

  I wish they would invent phones that you can take with you, or I would have called Kimmy and asked if she’s gone to see her poor mother and father yet and what are we going to do about leaving this country before something worse happens. Knowing Kimmy she probably finally showed up in her Ganja University t-shirt and jeans, the one cut off halfway down the backside, calling Mummy her sistren and saying that this is all the plan of Babylon shitstem, and it’s not the robber they should be mad at but the shitstem that robbed them first. That’s what they say at the Twelve Tribes meeting place in that rough-and-tumble neighbourhood called West Kings House, near the home of the Queen’s representative. I really need to get better at this sarcasm business. I might be a snob, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, still coasting around because I have nothing to do now that my life’s dream to fuck and breed for Che Guevara blew up in my face. Nor am I hanging out with rich people in West Kings House who now don’t wash their hair and calling themselves I-man to upset their parents, when everybody knows in two years they’re going right back to their father’s shipping company to take it over, and marry whichever Syrian bitch just win Miss Jamaica.

  Car three hundred and sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy. Seventy-one, seventy-two. I need to go home. But I’m outside here, waiting on him. You ever feel like home is the one place you can’t go back to? It’s like you promise yourself when you got out of bed and combed your hair that this evening, when I get back I’ll be a different woman in a new place. And now you can’t go back because the house expects something from you. A bus stops. I fan it off, trying to tell the driver that I don’t want to get on. But the bus is still squatting there, waiting on me. I step back and look down to the road, pretending that people aren’t in the bus cussing that they have home to get to and plenty pickney to feed so why that damn woman don’t get on the bus. I walk away, far enough for the bus to drive off, but walk right back to the bus stop before the dust settle.

  The bass creeps up on me from across the road. It sounds like he’s been playing the same song all day. It sounds like another song about me, but there’s probably two dozen women in Jamaica right now and another two thousand in the world who think the same thing anytime a song of his come on the radio. But “Midnight Ravers” is about me. One day I’m going to tell Kimmy then and she’ll know, won’t she, that just because she’s the prettiest doesn’t mean she get all of them. A white police car with blue stripe going all around parked itself by the gate. I didn’t even see it coming. Jamaican police tend to use their siren all the time, just to get people to clear the street so they can reach Kentucky Fried Chicken quicker. I never had any dealings with the police. That’s not true.

  There was that one time when I was on that No. 83 bus to Spanish Town for an interview because that’s 1976 for you, you take a job where you can find it and this was a Bauxite company, when three police cars sirened us down and forced the driver to stop right there on the highway. H’everybody h’evacuate the ve-HI-cle right at this present moment, the first policeman said. Right there on the highway. Nothing but a thin stretch of road with swamp on both sides and everybody had to file out. Most of the women started cussing about having to get to work on time, most of the men stood silent because the police only thought twice about shooting women. Dis h’is a spat searrrrch, the policeman said. We h’are gonna do the proceejah of getting all of unu name.

  —And you name what, sweet girl?

  —Pardon me?

  —You, the hot ting that ah carry the swing. What you name?

  —Burgess, Nina Burgess.

  —Bond, James Bond. Sound like you h’in movie picture. You carrying a conceal weapon h’under there? Mind me have to search you.

  —Mind me have to scream rape.

  —And who the r’asscloth going care, eh?

  He sent me back over to the other women while another policeman gun-butt one of the men who started to talk about equal rights and justice. Here’s a secret about police that no Jamaican will ever say out loud, that is any Jamaican who ever had to deal with one of these assholes. Whenever one get shot, and plenty do, there’s a part of me, the part before morning coffee, that smiles a little. I shake the thought out. I wonder if the guard over the gate is telling the police, right at this minute, that I’ve been at the bus stop all day watching the house. But instead somebody says something, and the fat policeman, there’s always one, laughs and it echoes all the way over this side. He leaves to get back in his car, but somebody from inside shouts at him. I know it’s you, it has to be you. A car is coming up on my side of the road, ninety feet? I can beat it before it slams into me and I know it’s you, I just know it, the car, now forty feet? Run, run right now, don’t blow your damn horn at me, son of a bitch, deaf like you damn mother I’m in the median too many damn cars driving down the other side of the road and me in the middle marooned like Ben Gunn and I just want you to see me, it’s you, it must be you, remember me, “Midnight Ravers” is about me even though it was after midnight and you might not know what I look like in the day, and I just want a favour, I just need a little help, they robbed my father and raped my mother. No they didn’t rape her, no I don’t know, but the story sounds more urgent when an old woman’s pum-pum get messed with and I know it’s you, and the policeman is waiting, good, good wonderful-good he’s going to come outside—it’s not you. Another guard runs outside to tell him something and the fucking fat policeman laughs again and deposits himself in the car. I’m stuck in the median, traffic blurring past me and lifting up my skirt.

  —Hello, I’m here to see—

  —No visitor. On-site tours start back next week.

  —No, you don’t understand. I’m not here for the tour, I’m here to see . . . He’s expecting me.

  —Ma’am, nobody coming through except immediate family and the band. You him wife?

  —What? Of course not. What kind of question—

  —You play no instrument?

  —I don’t see what that have to do with anything, just tell him Nina Burgess is here to see him and it’s urgent.

  —Lady, you could’a name Scooby Doo, nobody coming inna yah.

  —But, but . . . I . . .

  —Lady, step ’way from the gate.

  —Me pregnant. And is fi him. Him need fi mind him pickney.

  The guard look at me for the first time today. I thought he was going to recognize me until I realize that he really was seeing me for the first time. He looked me up and down too, maybe wanting to see what type of woman it takes to breed for a star like him.

  —You know how much woman come here since Monday saying the same damn thing you just say? Some of them even have belly to show me. Me say no visitors but family and the band. Come back next week, me sure the baby not running ’way to Miami by then. If there is a—

  —Eddie, shut you r’asscloth mouth and guard di gate.

  —Then after the woman don’t want mov
e.

  —Then move her.

  I step back quick. I don’t want none of these men touching me. They always grab on to ass or crotch first. Behind me a car pulls up and a white man comes out. For just a split second I nearly shout Danny, but this man is only white. His hair brown and long, and a little beard on his chin, the way I used to like it but Danny didn’t. A yellow plain t-shirt and tight, bell-bottom blue jeans. Maybe it’s the hot weather why you can tell that (1) he’s American and (2) American men hate underwear more than American women hate bras.

  —Bombocloth. Look here, Taffie, Jesus is risen.

  —What? But me no repent yet.

  The white man didn’t seem to get the joke. I stepped out of the way, maybe making too much of a show of it.

  —Hey buddy, Alex Pierce from Rolling Stone.

  —Wait deh now, tight jeans Jesus, Jehovah know say you lie? Two man from Rolling Stone come here already, one name Keith and one named Mick and none of them look like you.

  —But them all resemble still, Eddie.

  —True that. True that.

  —I’m from Rolling Stone magazine. We spoke on the phone.

  —You never talk to me on no phone.

  —I mean, someone from in the office. His secretary or something I don’t know. I’m from the magazine? From the U.S.? We cover everybody from Led Zeppelin to Elton John. I don’t understand, the secretary said come December 3 at six p.m. when he’s on rehearsal break and here I am.

  —Bossman, me don’t name sexetary.

  —But—

  —Look, we get strict orders. Nobody in or out except family and band.

  —Oh. Why does everybody have an automatic weapon? You guys police? You don’t look like the security guard from last time I was here.

  —None of your damn business, you want step off now.

  —Eddie, the man still bothering you at the gate?

  —Him say him magazine is ’bout Lesbian and Elton John.

  —No, Led Zeppelin and—

  —Tell him to move off.

  —How about me making it easy for you.

  The white man takes out his wallet—I only need ten minutes, he says. Damn Americans always thinking we’re like them and that everybody is up for sale. Just once I’m glad the guard is such an asshole. But he’s looking at the money, he’s looking at it long. You can’t help it with American money, getting ’round the fact that this piece of paper is more valuable than everything else in your purse. That if you whip out one you change the behaviour of a whole room. It just doesn’t seem right, a piece of paper with no colour but green. Lord knows pretty money isn’t the only pretty thing that’s worthless. The guard takes one last look at the piling bills and walks away, over to the entrance of the house.

  I chuckled. When you can’t fight temptation, you have to flee, I say. The white man looks at me, annoyed, and I just chuckle more. Doesn’t happen every day, a Jamaican who doesn’t turn into a yes massa I going do it for you now massa, whenever he sees a white man. Danny used to be appalled by it. Until he started to like it. Hell of a thing when white skin is the ultimate passport. I was a little surprised at how good it felt, me and the white man both being kept outside like beggars. On the same level in that regard at least. You’d think I’d never been around white people, or at least Syrians who think they’re white.

  —You fly all the way from America just to do a story on the Singer?

  —Well, yeah. He’s the biggest story right now. The number of stars coming out for this concert, you’d think it was Woodstock.

  —Oh.

  —Woodstock was a—

  —I know what Woodstock was.

  —Oh. Well, Jamaica is all over the news this year. And this concert. New York Times just did a story that the Jamaican opposition leader was shot at. From the Office of Prime Minister, no less.

  —Really? That would be news to the Prime Minister, since the opposition would have no reason to be at his office. Also that’s uptown. On this very road. Nobody firing no bullets here.

  —That’s not what the newspaper said.

  —Then it must be true then. Guess if you write shit, then you have to believe every shit you read.

  —Aw, come on, don’t bust my balls like that. It’s not like I’m some goddamn tourist. I know the real Jamaica.

  —Good for you. I’ve lived here all my life and haven’t found the real Jamaica yet.

  I walk off but the white man is following me. There’s only one bus stop, I guess. Maybe by now Kimmy has paid a visit to her goddamn parents, who have been robbed and her mother possibly raped. Yet as soon as I cross over to the other side I want to stay. I don’t know. I know I have nothing to go home to, but that’s no different from any other day. I only need to remember every headline about some family getting shot, bulletin about the curfew, news report about some woman who get raped or how crime moving like a wave uptown to scare myself stupid. Or my mother and father trying to act as if the gunmen didn’t take something that was always between him and her and them alone. The whole day I was with them they never touched each other once.

  The white man takes the first bus that comes. I don’t and I’m telling myself that it’s because I don’t want to be on the same bus with him. But I know I’ll miss the next one. And the one after that too.

  Demus

  Somebody need to listen to me and it might as well be you. Somewhere, somehow, somebody going judge the quick and the dead. Somebody goin’ write about the judgment of the good and wicked, because I am a sick man and a wicked man and nobody ever wickeder and sicker than me. Somebody, maybe forty years later when God come for all of we, leaving not one. Somebody going write about this, sit down at a table on a Sunday afternoon with wood floor creaking and fridge humming but no ghost around him like they around me all the time and he going write my story. And he won’t know what to write, or how to write it because he didn’t live it, or know what cordite smell like or how blood taste when it stay stubborn in your mouth no matter how much you spit. He never feel it in the one drop. No coolie duppy ever go to sleep on him and fool him with a wet dream while she suck out him life through him mouth even though me grinding my teeth shut and when me wake up my whole face cover in thick mouth juice like somebody just stick me in Jell-O and put me in the fridge. John the Baptist saw them coming. Now the wicked running.

  This is how it begin.

  One day, me was in Jungle, outside of me house by the standpipe just to catch an early morning bathe because a man can’t stink when him go out looking for work. Me out in the backyard, for only one back in the tenement yard and trying to wash meself with soap and water, when police burst in ’cause some woman, some church lady saying she was only going to offer the Lord’s name in prayer, officer, when some stinking ghetto boy from Jungle jump out at me and rape me, officer. You, you boy who a play with him cocky like pervert, come over here now! Me try to reason with the officer for Jah Rastafari say we must reason with the enemy and me say, Officer, you no see that is bathe me a bathe and he come right over and kiss me mouth hard with the rifle butt. Don’t come tell me no fuckery, nasty man, he say. A play with youself and love up yourself like some bloodcloth sodomite. Then he say is you rape the church lady on North Street? And me say what? No star, me no rape woman, why when me have plenty girl friend, but he slap me like me is woman and say go outside. Me say, Officer, let me wash off or at least put on me brief, no man, and me hear click. Move, pussyhole, him say, so me move and outside seven more man line up and people watching and some people see me and look away and some look and all me have to stay decent was soap sud. You catch him before him wash off the evidence, another police say.

  The police, six I count, say one of you is a nasty rapist who rape church women when they coming back from praising the Lord. And since you is all lying nasty ghetto boy me not even going ask the guilty perpetrator to step forward. We don’t know what to do, because if any one of we get called the rapist the police going shoot him before he reach the
jail. So the first policeman who talk all the time say, But we know how fi catch you. The whole of you drop to the ground now! We confused so we look around and me look at the soap bubbles popping one by one and exposing me business. The policeman fire two shot in the air and say drop-a-ground now! So we drop. He ask another policeman for a lighter and grab a newspaper rolling down the road. Now listen what me want you all fi do, he say. Me want all of you to fuck the ground good. One of we laugh loud because this just turn into TV comedy and the police kick him in the side two time. Me say fi fuck the dirt, the policeman say. So we hump the ground and keep humping when he say continue. The ground tough and have pebble and bottle and dirt and me hips slamming into it and me skin starting to rub and me stop. Who tell you fi stop, the policeman say, and light the newspaper. Fuck, fuck, fuck, me say fi fuck, the policeman shout, and shove the burning newspaper on me batty. Me scream and he call me a girl. Me say you fi fuck, him say. And then he burn another boy and another boy and all of we fucking the ground.

  Then the policeman move up the line saying, You can’t fuck, go home. You can’t fuck neither, remove youself. You look like you can fuck, stay. You go, you go. Hold on, hold on now, you move like is you the one who getting the fucking. Batty boy, remove youself, and you, you better stay. He mean me. They grab three of we and throw we in the back of the van and me still naked. I ask for a shirt and the policeman say yeah, man, we’ll find a panty for you. My woman come ’round with pants and shirt, a police tell me. But them look too good for ghetto clothes so we keep it, them say. Then one policeman slap her and say go find some ambition and stop fuck with ghetto man. We in jail a week before they let us out. They kick me in the face, beat me with the baton, whip me in me balls, beat me with a cat o’ nine like them name buckra massa, and break my brethren right hand. That was the first day when they still feel like treating us nice. The whole time me still naked and they take my nakedness and make joke.