A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  The woman whom I was inside I cannot remember her name. I never see her, not that I would know where to look. Maybe there was love but ghosts haunt out of longing and I have no longing. Maybe it was not love or maybe I am not a ghost. Or maybe my longing isn’t for her. Who asks for ice in wine? Did she know that he was outside the door waiting on me? Someone called me a mangled spider with a cock on top. Not one of the hotel staff, they would have no knowledge of words like mangled. Maybe someone who was already happy to see me gone. I have no memory of his face.

  The first runner-up pushes him off and hisses Is a good thing I didn’t forget the foam. Don’t . . . you . . . know . . . he pants the rest of it out . . . that birth control is a plot to kill black people? . . . and laughs. He rolls over and plays with himself. I want to slip inside him, to pretend that I would feel what he feels, but even at the foot of this bed I smell over a hundred dead men. A glass shatters and they both jump. Her nightie had been pulled over her breast so she pulls it down. You and that fucking cat, he says and gets up. I watch his belly settle itself and his cheeks go sallow, not even this, not even sex ruffles his hair, packed tight like the tin man. He makes me miss living, swinging, sagging. The bedroom has furniture she picked out, with knobs and curves and carvings of grapevines. A mosquito net hangs from the ceiling. A television hides in the corner, the door to the bathroom open but the doorway dark. He always thought that men who had any sense of style or beauty were perverts. I remember him saying this about another party member as he drove away. I never shared his hate because I saw Noel Coward every summer and called him uncle. He and his traveling companion.

  The man who had me killed reaches for his gun, lying in wait on the bedside table, and leaves his pants on the floor. The first runner-up points to the pants and he makes a joke about never dressing up just to meet loose pussy as he goes through the door. I want to stay with her for a while, curious about how she regains a peace in herself, but I follow him.

  In the living room is a man I can’t remember if I know. The living room is a cemetery, rank with dead smell. Some of it coming from the man. He is black one second, a hint of chinaman the next or maybe he shifts with shadow. I can already smell how he dies. He is coughing in a glass, saying,

  —Me did think this was water.

  —You don’t know what white rum bottle look like, or you can’t spell rum?

  —Smell? I gulp before I smell. — Spell. S-p-e-l-l.

  —Oh. Hearing not too good. Too much pow pow pow, y’know?

  —How the r’asscloth you mistake that for water?

  —I don’t know, water that come in a special bottle sounds like rich people things. Rahtid brethren, is so you gallivant ’bout the place?

  —You expecting modesty in me own house? Or you seeing something you never see before?

  —Ah, this is how rich people chuck it.

  —Poor people wash them buddy by standpipe and you want to turn this into a class issue? How the bloodcloth you get in me house?

  —Walk through the front door.

  —How you—

  —Enough with how. How you ask how so much?

  —You rather why? Okay, make we talk ’bout why. Why the bloodcloth you in me house at . . . hold on . . . three in the morning? What we say ’bout you and me not to seen together in public?

  —Never know that you bedroom public. How the mistress? Sound like she was doing good just a while ago. Real good.

  —Man, what you want?

  —You know what day today is?

  —Hmmmm. Hmmmm. I going go with December third. That is the day that follow December second.

  —Oi! Enough with your no manners, you better know who you talking to.

  —No you better fucking remember who you talking to. Come into my house like some pussycloth house rat. You lucky Rawhide on leave tonight or you would be dead already, you hear me? Dead.

  —Good thing for me then.

  —I going back to bed. Leave the way you came.

  —I was doing some thinking.

  —Don’t hurt yourself.

  —What?

  —You were thinking.

  —I need some money.

  —You need some money.

  —After tomorrow.

  —Tomorrow’s already today.

  —After later.

  —I told you already that I don’t know what you talking about. I don’t know about it, I don’t endorse it, and I don’t even know you that well. Papa-Lo is the only man down there I know.

  —Down there? Down there? Is down there you call it now? Artie Jennings never talked like you.

  —You and Arthur talk good? ’Cause I have it on good authority that he not talking much these days.

  The first runner-up steps into the room wearing the bedsheet.

  —Peter, what is all the commotion? And oh my G—

  —Jesus Christ, bitch, stop you screaming and go back to bed. Not every naigger is thief.

  —Well, in this one case maybe your wife a little correct.

  —Peter?

  —Go to bed!

  —What a slam. Me think the house just shake. Pum-pum lock off for the rest of the night?

  —You learned about woman the same place you learned about gun? She slam the door so that we won’t think she still there listening. I said, SHE SLAM THE DOOR SO THAT WE WON’T THINK SHE STILL THERE LISTENING.

  Now she gone.

  —You’s a bad motherf—

  —Shut yo mouth.

  —This day done write down. Nothing you can change about it now, even if you did want—

  —I tell you already. I don’t know what you talking about. And I certainly don’t know what you talking about needing money when you same Josey Wales fly to Miami only two weeks ago. But you know how I know you don’t need no fucking money? You fly up for just the day. Come back, what, seven o’clock?

  —That was a little business.

  —Nothing little about you. Or your other little trip, to the Bahamas. Every man who about him business in this country have a fucking secret.

  —The Singer meeting with Papa-Lo and Shotta Sherrif same time.

  —Tell me something I don’t know.

  —Papa-Lo plan to meet up with Shotta Sherrif talk serious things where nobody can hear them. They both stop eating pork, by the way.

  —Oh. That I didn’t know. What the fuck them two up to? Seriously, what could they possibly have to talk about? And what you mean they both stop eat pork? They turning Rasta? Is this the Singer doing? Is him getting them to talk?

  —You really need help to answer that question?

  —You talk too much fucking step with me, naigger boy.

  —Boy in your fucking brief. The price gone up.

  —Take that shit to CIA.

  —Rasta don’t work for the CIA.

  —And Josey Wales, I don’t fucking work for you. Take my foolish advice and use the door. And don’t come here again.

  —Me taking the rum.

  —Take two glass while you at it and teach yourself some fucking class.

  —Haha. You is something else. Even the devil look ’pon you and go, You is something else.

  The man leaves, not closing a single door.

  There is another man I see around these dead lands who I don’t know. A dead man who died wrong, a fireman who would have gone in peace had he died in a fire. He is in the room as well, he came in with the man named Josey Wales. He walks around him, walks through him at times which Wales mistakes for a shiver. He tries to strike but goes right through him. I used to do that with the man who had me killed, tried to strike, punch, slap and cut and the most I ever did was make him shiver. The rage goes if not the memory. I would say you live with it but the irony is too bitter. I know his story too since he cries it every time. He’s crying it now, not seeing that I’m the only person in the room bearing witness. Running to the fire on Orange Street, him fireman number seven. A fire set in a two-story tenement, the flames a mad snake looping th
rough the windows, five children already dead, two shot before the fire. He grabs the hose, knowing the water will only sputter, and runs through the gate. His cheek burns on the right and his temple explodes on the left. The second bullet hits him in the chest. The third grazes the neck of the fireman behind. Now he follows the man who sent him to be with people like me. Josey Wales leaves through the window. The fireman follows. The day is young but is already dead.

  Nina Burgess

  You can’t really know how it feels, just knowing deep down that in a few minutes these men will rape you. God take you make fool, this Cassandra from Greek mythology in history class who nobody listens to, who can’t even hear herself. The men haven’t touched you yet but you’ve already blamed yourself, you stupid naïve little bitch this is how man in uniform rape a woman, when you still think they are there to take your cat out of a tree, like this is a Dick and Dora story. The first thing you realize is how fucked up this is, that word wait. And now that you’re waiting all you can think is how the hell did you trip and fall and land under some man? They haven’t raped you yet but you know they’re going to, the threat of it in the third time you catch one looking through the rearview mirror without smiling or laughing and his hand adjusting his crotch like he’s playing with, not fixing, himself.

  It’s the slowness that gets you, the feeling that there is still time to do something, to get out, to run, to close your eyes and think of Treasure Beach. You have all the time in the world. Because when this happens it’s your fault. Why didn’t you get out? Why didn’t you leave? The policeman hears my mind and stomps the gas, raising the stakes. Why don’t you get out? Why don’t you leave? If you open the door and jump out, just grab your knees and roll until you stop. Then just run to the right, into the bush, over somebody’s fence, yes you’ll probably have broken something but adrenaline can get you far, very far, I also learned that in class. I might bruise a shoulder, I might break a wrist. The policeman drives through his fourth stoplight. Is kill you want kill we, the other one says and laughs.

  I heard a story about a woman who went to the police to report a rape but they didn’t believe her so they raped her again. You are afraid and you can smell your sweat and you hope sweat doesn’t mean they think you were digging it. You cut your nails only two days ago because this glamour business is damn expensive and now, because you have no nails to scratch the sons of bitches, you hope that no scratch doesn’t mean you were digging it. But more than anything else, the one thing that makes you blame and judge yourself and acquit them even before this reaches a court of men who probably discipline their wives with a punch before leaving for court, is that you don’t have any panties on. Not only are you the slut your mother talked about but even she will look at you with that you-got-what-you-were-looking-for look. And I’m thinking oh really? Well who told you to be a woman when three gunman came calling? Your rape is your fault too. After a while you realize you’re shaking not from fear, but from fury. I take off my right heel, the one that’s still there, and grab the shoe tight. As soon as they open the door, one of those bastards will never see out of one eye again, I don’t care which. He can kick me, shoot me, rape me in the ass, he’s going to have to live with knowing that this pussy he had to pay for.

  I can’t imagine anything worse than waiting for a rape. If you had time to wait on it, you must have had time to stop it. If you’re not for sale, don’t advertise, my high school principal is saying at this very moment.

  You’re already thinking past the rape, to the longer dresses you will buy, the stocking that will reach just above the knee and make you look old, dresses with frilly collars like I’m in the opening credits for Little House on the fucking Prairie. I’ll stop processing my hair and shaving my legs and armpits. Stop wearing lipstick. Go back to shoes with no heels and marry a man from Swallowfield Church who is willing to be patient with me, a dark man who will balance everything against my giving him light-skinned children and still think he got himself a bargain. You want to scream stop the fucking car and take the fucking pussy and be done with it, because that sounds tough, like it’s almost tough enough to scare them a little, but you know words like that could never come from a mouth like yours. It’s not that you have the decency, not a r’ass, it’s that you don’t have the nerve. And that just makes you hate these goddamn police even more, the way they treat you like a bird to their cat. Maybe this is like a man digging his own grave, seeing the end already and just waiting on the middle, the it, the thing that supposed to happen.

  I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, but I’m definitely saying fuck way too much. Any more cussing and I might as well call myself Kim-Marie Burgess. She should be the one in this car right now, she and her freeloving ways. No. That is a wicked thing to think. Except me can’t stop thinking it. Nobody deserve this. But she deserve it more than me. They were supposed to turn left, heading to Havendale. Instead they turned right, heading to downtown claiming it’s a shortcut. Two of them, one of them saying he never see nothing like that yet, Prime Minister calling election in just two weeks. Sound like some samfie business, he says. But that shouldn’t mean nothing to you, you no longtime socialist, says the other one.

  —A who you ah call bloodcloth socialist? Better you did call me coolie, or Rasta.

  —And you, sweet sugar dumpling, you like socialist or Rasta?

  —Haha, says the other one.

  —Oi, you in the backseat like coolie duppy.

  I want to say sorry, I’m too busy thinking about how woman in 1976 either get herself fucked or fucked over by a man but instead I say,

  —Excuse me?

  —Rasta or socialist? We waiting on you answer.

  —How much longer is this shortcut?

  —Longer if you don’t cool youself and act right. And . . . what the bloodcloth? How much time me fi tell you me no like no bombocloth cigarette ash ’pon me uniform?

  —Then brush it off.

  —To r’asscloth.

  —Stop the car then. Engine need a break anyway.

  So they stop the car. I don’t bother to say I need to get home. I know what they are thinking. Any woman walking with one shoe on Hope Road after midnight couldn’t possibly need to get anywhere. Maybe this election was called a little too quick. Maybe communism isn’t so bad, I hear there is no such thing as a sick Cuban or a Cuban with bad teeth. And maybe it’s a sign that we getting sophisticated or something that every now and then the news is read in Spanish. I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that even I am getting bored waiting on these police to leave me in a ditch somewhere. I wish I was afraid. A part of me knows that I am supposed to be afraid and wishes it; after all, what does it say about the kind of woman I am if I’m not? They are both leaning on the car, blocking my door. I could get out on the other side right now and run, but I don’t. Maybe they are not going to rape me. Maybe they are going to do something and that thing, good or bad, maybe even good, sure beats the nothing that I have been doing all day and all night. This is morning though. This is his fault, his security guard’s fault, this whole goddamn peace concert’s fault. The country. God. Whatever beyond God, goddamn I wish they would get over with it already.

  —Starsky and Hutch wicked last night. That episode top the chart! So Starsky get inject with this secret poison, right? And the brother have only twenty-four hours to find who inject him before him kaput and—

  —Me never know who is Starsky and who is Hutch. And why them have to be so touchy-touchy so, like sodomite?

  —Man, everything for you is battyman this, sodomite that. Man even have one woman, you think is ’cause him is battyman. A big-time show that. But me still don’t know how that car can jump so high and so far.

  —You want we to try it out?

  —And kill the sweet thing in the back?

  Hearing them mention me I ask,

  —We going to Havendale or should I get out and continue walking?

  —Ha, you know where you deh?
>
  —Kingston is Kingston.

  —Eh-eh! Who tell you that you in Kingston? So sweet cheeks, which one of we cuter, me or me brethren? Eh? Which one of we going be you boyfriend?

  —If you going rape me, rape me already and leave me in whichever ditch you leave woman. Just stop bore me with your r’asscloth mouth.

  The cigarette falls out of the policeman’s mouth. They look at each other, but don’t say nothing for a long time. So long that I can’t even count it, more than minutes. More than five minutes. They’re not just quiet with me, but with each other, like what I said took away anything they would want to say to each other or to me. I don’t say sorry, after all what was a woman to think when two strange men drive her to some place she doesn’t know and didn’t ask to go? At midnight where all she can do is hope that when she scream the dark don’t suck it out.

  They take me home. The one who was smoking says, next time if is rape you looking for, tell we early so we can drive off and leave you where we find you. They drive off.