I don’t think of Kingston. I want to think about Andy Gibb. Almost as cute as John from Dukes of Hazzard. Andy Gibb: hair, chest, hair, chains, hair, teeth, hair, hair. John the Duke smile, hair, jeans, hair like a girl, I just want to be your everything, Luke Duke’s big white duke down the left leg of his pants, Jesus Christ girl you must be the one woman in Montego Bay with such a dirty mind. But it’s not “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” on the radio. Do it light, take me through the night, shadow dancin’. I know what I want. One night where I don’t think of Luke Duke when Chuck inside me, on top of me. No I didn’t think that. Yes I did. I should go cook his ackee. He likes it for breakfast. He won’t mind it for dinner. I will think about how I love his hair.
Sooner or later he’s going to know. Kim Clarke, you think you’re so smart. That man bound to find out if he don’t know already. This morning I only took ten dollars. It was the most in one shot. Last Friday, five. Four days before that six, no five, no it was a five-dollar bill and two one-dollars. I never touch the U.S. Look, he just going to think it’s cute. Which wife doesn’t take from her husband’s wallet? I’m not his wife. I’m going to be his wife. No you’re living together. It’s what people do in the modern age, this is 1979. I really need to cook. I’m sure he doesn’t know. I mean, what kind of man counts how much money he has in his wallet?
An American man.
All of them come through Mantana’s. White men, that is. If the man is French he thinks that he gets away with saying cunt but saying you cohnnnt, because we bush bitches will never catch his drift. As soon as he sees you he will throw the keys at your feet saying you, park my car maintenant! Dépêchetoi! I take the keys and say yes massa, then go around to the women’s bathroom and flush it down the shittiest toilet. If he’s British, and under thirty, then his teeth are still hanging on and he’ll be charming enough to get you upstairs but too drunk to do anything. He won’t care and you won’t either, unless he vomits on you and leaves a few pounds on the dresser because that was such dreadful, dreadful business. If he’s British and over thirty, you spend the whole time watching the stereotypes pile up, from the letttttt meeeee sssssspeeeeeakkk toooo youuuuu slowwwwlyyyyy, dahhhhhhhling beccauuuuuse youuuuuuu’re jussssst a liiiiiiitle blaaaaack, speed of their speech to the horrible teeth, coming from that cup of cocoa right before bed. If he’s German he will be thin and he will know how to fuck, well in a car piston kind of way, but he will stop early because nobody can make German sound sexy. If he’s Italian, he’ll know how to fuck too, but he probably didn’t bathe before, thinks there’s such a thing as an affectionate face slap and will leave money even though you told him that you’re not a prostitute. If he’s Australian, he’ll just lie back and let you do all the work because even us blokes in Sydney heard about you Jamaican girls. If he’s Irish, he’ll make you laugh and he’ll make the dirtiest things sound sexy. But the longer you stay the longer he drinks, and the longer he drinks, well for each of those seven days you get seven different kinds of monster.
But Americans. Most of them spend a very long time, or an awful long time, trying to convince you just how like everybody else they are. I’m just an Okie from Muskogee. Even Chuck introduced himself by saying that he was just a regular guy from Little Rock. When I said why would anybody want to be just a regular guy, he didn’t know how to answer the question. There’s something though about a man saying upfront that what you see is what you get, nothing less but certainly nothing more. Maybe my standards are low. Maybe I just liked that there was one man who said it like it was. I don’t even think he found me that cute. Well of course he did, he came over and said howdy, and perfect timing too, right after the Frenchman was thrown out for shouting where are my car keys, you cohhnt, and the Italian went over to dance with some stupid American woman who flew here all alone because she saved up for twenty-six months and damn it, this big fat bitch is going to F.U.C.K. The Italian wasn’t the black, bulging, big-cocked mandingo that she had read about in Mistress of Falconhurst, but his skin was a little dark so he’d do.
Of course I was there every night. I moved to Montego Bay in January, right into a one-bedroom side of a house with a shared kitchen that a retired couple used to rent to boarding school students. But I lived at Mantana’s. From the first day on the job I heard about the night club. Well, overheard at work since none of those coolie bitches at the jewellery store talked to any black employee, other than to remind us that they knew the police and should just one pendant go missing we will spend the entire weekend getting raped in jail. Anyway, I overheard that Mantana’s was the place that was carrying the swing, and they only let you in if you had the right look, which thank the Lord wasn’t black. Who knew then that black would turn out to be the right look? Two weeks after moving here, wearing nothing but a white t-shirt, Fiorucci jeans and high heels, they let me in. Walked right past one of the coolies, the hook-nosed, long-haired one who almost called at me before she saw me looking and knew that she would never be able to live with herself. I came this close to saying that sometimes they want chocolate, not curry.
But once inside with the music everything that I thought it would be, it wasn’t. The DJ kept playing “Fly Robin Fly” and the white people were dancing like white people. And the non-white people, almost all women, looked at each other with a scowl because only a scowl could hide that we all had the same damn look. The white man please come over here and save me because I have nowhere left to go look. I feel like I pushed myself to the very tip of the country and all that’s left was to tip over. Or fly away. Who am I going to be in America? Samantha on Bewitched? That bawling woman on One Day at a Time? I want to run right into the middle of a city and throw my hat up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore you’re gonna make it after all. Jesus Christ I’m so ready to go.
I am so ready to go.
I almost forgot it. I rubbed my hands on it three times in the sun, feeling each groove of the stamp. The stamp makes it real. The stamp made it smell good, yes I smelled it. Seeing it never made it real. Touching it made it real, but the smell made it realer. My fingers smell like American paper, like chemicals waiting to evaporate. I almost forgot it. Kim, try to forget everything around it. And stop smiling like that, it makes your cheeks hurt. But if you don’t smile you cry.
You smell. Have to wash the stink out. Wash the ink off you damn finger. How could I have forgotten? He’ll be home in a few hours and I haven’t washed the stink out. Girl, go wash the . . . enough. This is what I will do. This is what will work. I will go bathe. I will cook the man his ackee. He will take me upstairs and he will fuck me. No, we will fuck each other. And we will wake up together, and he will—no, we will not leave for at least three weeks. I will pack. Go girl, wash the stink out.
Each day he takes home something from the office. Part of it seems like how these Americans grew up. They collect things. So Tony Curtis or Tony Orlando will show up at Mantana’s and they all ask him for this autograph business, which is him signing his name on a napkin. And they cling to it, and collect it like they’ll never see Tony Curtis again. Now Chuck is taking things home, collecting them like he had to make sure they were safe. I don’t know what he has to protect a coffee cup from. Or five boxes of rubber bands, a picture of Farrah Fawcett, a picture of President Carter or a box full of liquor as if they don’t have liquor in America. Or a sculpture of a Rastaman grabbing on to his erect penis, the head bigger than his actual head. The man must think he is Noah saving a statue of a Rasta with a huge cock for his ark. If he’s saving that fucking sculpture and don’t plan to save me I swear to God I will kill him.
I’ll go bathe and then I’ll go cook ackee and saltfish. No, ackee and corned pork, no saltfish. And tomatoes. Kim Clarke, go wash the stink out. Don’t think, just leave these in the kitchen and go wash. And brush your teeth. And swallow just a little Listerine. Maybe it’s just the same for men. It is? Maybe, I don’t know. Insert whatever I’m supposed to be feeling right here:________________ so I can feel
it. I don’t feel anything. Maybe I should feel something about not feeling anything but I don’t feel that either. What kind of a woman are you, Kim Clarke? Every time you lick your lips, you smell and/or taste him. Wash him out of your mouth at least, nasty girl.
I can see him kicking me out. It will be like in a movie where everybody is talking Italian. He’s dragging me out of my house—his house—the house and me on the floor screaming and begging and crawling and bawling Chuck do, no kick me out, do, no kick me out, me beg you. Me will walk on all fours fi you. Me will cook you food and breed you pickney and suck you cocky even when you don’t wash it first, Do! Do! And he will look at me and ask what the fuck you mean by do? What kind of ignorant bushbaby bullshit is it when do means the same thing as please? A cock is a cock is a cock to you, he will say because it sounds savage, like he didn’t spend any time to think it up, so then he can be angry and still be smart while me on the floor whimpering do, do, do, and wonder if I can just be like in Dallas and say it’s not what it looks like, honey.
I should bathe, brush my teeth, wash it out with soap. But then won’t I be too clean? Then I’m so clean that it’s suspicious. We at the stage where I don’t have to comb my hair or wear lipstick and perfume, and don’t care if he catches me scratching my batty and stirring the pot with the same hand. He now bursts a fart whenever he wishes, which I really don’t like. American farts are stinker, they smell like they eat too much meat. Careful what you wish for when you finally make a man feel comfortable around you. You realize how much of this courting bullshit was just show. Not show, performance. How long would he have kept the act going, and if it was longer than he bargained for would he have just cut me loose and move on to the next local girl staring into her drink? Thank God that black skin don’t show. A black woman can hide the traces on her. Maybe that’s why man think it easier to beat a black woman. You can track the relationship between a man and a white woman on her skin. Stupid girl, then just make him not want you tonight. Give yourself a headache, say you on your menses, he especially hates when you call it menses, says it sounds like pussy measles.
Do I have any passport photos left over?
Do they have hot water in America?
Dumb bitch, of course they have hot water. And they don’t have to turn on the heater and wait either. Maybe I should put a capful of Pine-Sol in the water. Jesus Christ, Kim Clarke, you have his sweat on you, not pus. Look, boss, that is all the money I have, you have my watch, you even have the chain he gave me last week. Now I’m going to have to say that it fell down the drain or something. Give me the damn passport. What you mean me have one more valuable thing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Oh.
I tell you, you could be from the South Pole or south St. Catherine you man is all the same Don’t back-talk to the man, Kim, just get it done. Here? In your office? People outside of course people outside. He wants everybody outside to hear and know. How do I know you going to hand it over afterwards? Don’t aggravate the man, silly cunt you been waiting two years, almost two years but still a long time, and he can tear everything up right in front of you—do I have any more passport photos—I really don’t like when people take pictures of me, do I have the negatives? Pictures all over the wall, naked white women, two black, squeezing their titties together. Oh don’t take off my dress? Jesus Christ wait nuh, I can pull down my own panty thank you. Kim stop looking at calendars and remember to act like it’s a big hataclaps when he pushes himself in you, he’ll Ooh, ooh, oh God you never tell me you was so big Big like a rotten banana, don’t you agree Miss December? You see him taking it out all the time to every woman who comes through that door that needing something they’re not supposed to have. Will I have time to buy ackees after this and still wash him out? Maybe I can go over to the hotel across the street and slip in their bathroom and wipe this son of a bitch off me. Hush, Kim Clarke, close your eyes and think of Arkansas. Uh huh uh huh uh huh. On his door is NOTARY PUBLIC and JUSTICE OF THE PEACE in reverse. When a man behind you can never tell what he have coming. Shit, didn’t even notice that me frigging finger was in the stamp pad. Great, purple ink on fingertips while this man keep working me from behind and all I can hear is skin flapping and slapping. Maybe I should steal these fake stamps just in case I need another passport. You soon come? One year, five months, seventeen days, eleven hours, thirty minutes and this is what you come to. This is what it takes to finally get it, the passport, the visa, the ticket out of bombor’asscloth Babylon—I hope to God this man comes soon. Just close your eyes and think of tumbleweed, Kim Clarke. Arkansas, no Arkansaw, I love it. We’re going to pull up in a wagon on top of a hill and Laura Ingalls and Mary Ingalls and the little one who keeps falling in the grass are going run towards us for by now we have three children all girls, okay maybe a boy, but only one. God, good thing I’m on the pill. Maybe this son of a bitch won’t give me gonorrhea. I hear people in his office stopping to listen. No finger has struck a typewriter key in seven minutes, I’ve been tapping the seconds and watching the clock on the wall. And Miss April, Miss May, Miss September and Miss August, not pressing her titties but spreading her—maybe if I get on like a blue movie girl this would finish quicker—Chuck, does he know that I know that he keeps all the Hustler magazines under the cash box in the hidden drawer at the back of his desk in the study? Screw behind the golf bag? Penthouse in the same box as his ties because he wants me to find that one so that I can get tips from The Happy Hooker? This always goes on longer than you think it will go. Funny how it’s the sex that brings me back to thinking in Jamaican, no, Kim Clarke, you will not now think about what that makes you. The son of a bitch was fucking me for seven more minutes. Nobody outside typed a single letter. He gives me the passport and I open it again to look at me looking at me with a visa stamped across my head. It’s B1B2. I was going to cuss that I had paid for a green card, but then thought maybe I should take what I get and let Chuck do the rest—who knows what this son of a bitch would want me to do for a green card.
Kim Clarke, you lie.
You’re lying now. A lot of that really happened. But you said nothing to the man, you didn’t even grunt. You just raised your skirt and pulled down your panties and prayed that the man didn’t have syphilis. And he was almost nervous, so much so that it was then that you realize that you were probably the first woman that fell for the threat and he couldn’t believe his luck. You weren’t tapping to seconds, you were tapping his back just so he could get a rhythm and maybe not think about his wife, and when he finally came you felt sorry for him, because he knew you had to walk through the door past his staff. And you haven’t looked at the passport since because if you do even the shitty photo will make you ask yourself if it was worth it. Was it worth it, Kim Clarke? Yes, yes, yes damn it, and don’t ask me again. Me would fuck him again and put him cocky in me mouth. Me will even lick him battyhole, this is 1978. Is nineteen seventy fucking eight and a woman must know that sometimes the only way forward is through. When I landed in Montego Bay I knew that whether on a plane or in a box, I was going to leave this place. You almost think you did get me don’t it, Jamaica? You almost think you did get me. Well kiss my bombocloth ass. Shit, purple thumbprints all over the fridge—how much washing this going take before it’s gone?
Waiting for the water again. Standing under the showerhead listening to the drain hack a cough. This fucking country. Every day water goes at the precise time you need to use it. I wish there was a river behind the house so I could go wash like a country woman. Just fucking fabulous, the one afternoon I need a shower. Get this man off me before my man comes home. Why can’t I feel more? Why don’t I feel more? My heart beats faster when I’m experimenting with a new dish. Maybe if I punch it hard enough or long enough blood will fill up where conscience supposed to be. Don’t you understand, I WANT to feel something. I want my heart to pump because guilt riding it hard and won’t jump off. Guilt would mean something. How many times should I wipe before it’s cl
ean? What I would give for water to come back right now. Please, right before he comes home. No? Then fuck you then. As soon as he comes in I’ll have dinner ready and then I’ll play with his hair like I’m not even thinking about it and he will love that. Maybe I will sing “Dancing Queen,” he knows how much I love that song, or maybe Andy Gibb. Maybe “Shadow Dancing” will come back on the radio and I will pull him from the chair and say dance with me, baby, and he will say Kim Clarke, no, babykins you sure you’re okay? And I will just show him the visa.
No. That’s a terrible idea. You already told him you had a visa, fool, and it’s not like he asked. Show him now and he will see that it was stamped only last week. And he still hasn’t said beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were going with him. But why would he have to say it? We can’t be living together for him to just up and go. Is he practicing to see which goodbye will cause the least tears? Which one won’t make me try to kill him? Is he doing it in front of a mirror? Kim Clarke, if you had sense you would have gotten yourself pregnant by now. If I stop taking the pill today will I be pregnant by the time he’s setting to leave? Today I will love his hair, and ask when I need to pack.
Kim Clarke, you make a wrong move. Kim Clarke, shut up and get out of this shower. I need to cream my hair. Should I do that here or in America? It’s coming down to that with everything. Should I do it here or when I go to America? Jesus Christ, the day when I get bored with thirteen channels, what will I do? The day I get bored with corn flakes, no not corn flakes, Frosted Flakes. The day I get bored with looking up and seeing buildings that clouds hit and run into. The day I get bored with throwing out bread because it’s been there four days and I want a new loaf. The day I get bored with Twinkies, Halston, Lip Smackers, L’eggs and anything by Revlon. The day I get bored with sleeping straight from night to morning and waking up to the smell of coffee and the sound of birds and have Chuck say, Did you have a good night’s sleep, babykins? And I’ll say yes I did, sweetheart—instead of watching the dark all night, and listening to the damn clock tick, because once I fall asleep things come after me. I thought we were going to stop this thinking business, Kim Clarke. Seriously, thought is one tricky bitch. Because all thoughts take you back to that one thought and you will never go back to that one thought, you hear me? Never go back. Only stupid women ever walk backwards.
A Brief History of Seven Killings Page 30
