Iron Balloons

by Channer, Colin

  “Courtneigh!”

  My mother kept calling me but I didn’t answer her. What would have been the point? I knew why she was calling me. She knew why she was calling me. She wanted to run off her mouth ’pon me about the music, as if it wasn’t coming from somebody else’s house.

  I knew where it was coming from. She knew where it was coming from. The house behind us, which was owned by a rasta bredrin named Jah Mick. We grew up with Jah Mick. He used to be my older brother’s closest friend, and they’d both gotten soccer scholarships to the States. Jah Mick had gone up as Michael, what society people like my mother used to call “a decent boy.” But he’d come back six months ago with a new name and a new flex, a beard, and long dreads—a “boogooyagga.” You don’t need no translation. So it mean is so it sound. Say it, “Boo-goo-yagga. Boo-goo-yagga.” It sound bad, eeh?

  Now, I knew why Jah Mick had turned up the music like that. He’d started a magazine named Rootsman Kulcha—yes, it was just as you’ve conceived it—and whenever he was short of inspiration, he’d turn up the heat on his old tube amp and the air would be thick and sweet with dub sounds. In the meantime, my mother’s temper began its slow burn.

  “Courtneigh Clifford Robinson! Come here right now!”

  I went into the living room expecting to find a parade of the usual suspects on the big green sofa. But there in all his splendor was my Uncle Tyrone.

  My first thought was, He’s saved? My second was, Aunt Shirley knows about the go-go at the Stable who produced a little filly on the side.

  “Courts,” my mother said, as she flattened the pleats on her stiff blue dress, the one she starched and ironed every Thursday night, “I want you to be a good boy and go over to your friend’s house and tell him to turn down that godforsaken music.”

  “How you know is over there it coming from?”

  “Who else plays that kind of music round here?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Look. Don’t form fool with me. I have ears. I can hear. Is only Michael alone who plays that kinda boogooyagga music none at all, and is spite him trying spite me why him playing it so high on a Friday night.”

  “Ma …”

  She turned to her sister. “Is Satan you know. Is Satan.”

  “Ma, you can listen to me for a minute? Not that I trying to cause any problems or anything but—”

  “Who you shouting at?”

  “Ah not shouting, Ma. But I have fo’ talk up because you say the music loud.”

  “So the music doh loud to you?”

  “That’s beside the point—”

  “Doh pass your place with me, y’hear, ’bout point and beside.”

  Uncle Tyrone chimed in: “Boy reach fourth form and ready fo’ turn man.”

  “So why you blaming me, Ma?” I said quietly.

  “I just can’t take it. This is the kinda thing that cause a place to get run down. Next thing, you start to see people from Stand Pipe start to come round here because they think somebody keeping dance. And when that start to happen, every piece o’ clothes you have disappear off the line.”

  “So, Ma, if the music is such a botheration, why you don’t tell him one day when you see him? You know him from him small. Him not goi’ bite you.”

  “No. I can’t talk to all him again. Him gone to the dogs Head boy at St. George’s College. Gone to the dogs.”

  “That’s how he is when he’s working on a project,” I said, as I turned to go back to my room.

  “The only project he’s working on,” she said, “is blaspheming! Talking ’bout Haile Selassie is God! He is a blasphemer! From now on, I’m going to ban you from associating with blasphemers! Don’t you ever set foot over there. If you ever set foot over there again, you cannot come back in this house. Boogooyagga music come mash up my Bible study like how ganja mash up that boy’s mind. Stop.” She held her arms out to the side and cocked her head. “You hear that? Boom-chicki-boom. Boom-chicki-boom. You think I can take this whole night? Boom-chicki-boom. Boom-chickiboom. And he used to be such a nice, good boy. His mother used to sing at Kingston Parish Church. She was an alto in the choir, until …”

  I could have said the words for her, the divorce. Jah Mick’s father had divorced his mother just as Jah Mick was about to go to the States, and this, according to my mother, was the reason for the change—a blast from the past—a broken home.

  My mother was thinking about divorcing my father and she was afraid that something dreadful would happen to me, so she spent a lot of time praying for me when she should have been praying for my father to come home.

  My father was an accountant, a good one at that. And because of this, he was often called away to audit hotels and sugar estates. Short trips would last three days. It wasn’t strange for him to be away for weeks. In that time he’d rarely call. But women would from time to time. My mother took her own accounting. Boops! Another outside child.

  “Ma,” I said, “I have a headache. And my stomach not feeling so well. I can go and lie down?”

  “After you go over to the house and tell him to turn down the music.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to go over there. You confusing me now.”

  “Hurry up and go and come back. I will make some Andrews.”

  “I don’t have a headache, Ma. Nutten not bothering me.”

  “So is lie you was telling?”

  “No, Ma. I just can’t take this anymore. Everything ah say is a fight. Everything him do is a fight. The man just playing some music. Is not a crime.”

  She glanced at Aunt Shirley and Uncle Tyrone, then crossed her arms. Looking at me squarely now, she said, “If you don’t go over there and tell him to turn it down, I going to call the police and tell them that he has ganja in the house.”

  “Ma!!”

  “Ma what?”

  “You’d really do that?”

  “No, but that is not the point.” She glanced at Aunt Shirley and Uncle Tyrone again. “God forgive me. Tell him that I am very distressed about the music and that I cannot have my Bible study, and that I’m going to call the police and tell them that he has ganja over there if he doesn’t do it.”

  “But you said you wouldn’t do it, Ma. So what’s the point?”

  “I don’t care who or what is involved, you have to listen to me.”

  “I thought I wasn’t suppose to tell no lie.”

  “Nobody not asking you to tell a lie. I’m asking you to tell a lie? I’m giving you a message to give somebody. Who’s to tell if I might change my mind. I might call Superintendent Samuels, yes, if him go on like him bad and have hard ears. Sammo wi’ know what to do with him. This is a residential area, after all. Nice, cool Friday evening and all you can hear is boom-chicki-boom. The place gone to the dogs, man. Gone to the dogs.”

  It was time to clutch at straws.

  “Aunt Shirley …”

  “You didn’t hear what your mother said?”

  “Uncle T—”

  “Yuh hair need a trim.”

  I could have walked through the gate but I jumped over the fence. Talk about flirting with danger. The fence was lined with a prickly hedge. But it wasn’t just this. My mother called anyone who jumped a fence a boogooyagga. That’s how they come to grab the washing off the line, you know. Over the fence. Had I ever seen my father jump a fence? No. Any member of his family? No. Any member of hers? No. But yes. Uncle Tyrone one time when him used to screw a woman up the road and her husband came home. Those was the days before the Fosbury Flop. Uncle T. took a Western roll over the top of a big rose bush and a prickle hook him in him pants crotches. In the rush him did forget fo’ put on him underpants, and when the pants tear, two guinep and a Chiney banana drop out and a next door neighbor helper bawl, “And him love talk ’bout plantain.”

  We lived in the middle of a very long block. So I had to walk a quarter-mile or so to the corner before I had to turn, go up, and walk a quarter-mile again. This gave me lots of time to think.


  How was I going to tell Jah Mick he had to turn down his music or my mother was going to call the beasts? It was about the threat as much as the lie. The man wasn’t doing anything, really, yet she thought it was okay to terrorize him with the name of the police like she was casting out a demon in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, come out!!!!

  We accept the rastaman today. We see him and his fashion victims all around—the colors, the music, the hair, the food. But in those days in Jamaica, decent people like my mother thought of them as cells of infection that had to be cut out. They were spreading Africa throughout the body politic. Decent girls were being seduced. Decent boys were dreading up their good, good hair and swearing their allegiance to Selassie, taking oaths. The disease was spreading via body fluids. And music was both sperm and blood. They felt they had to stop the flow at any cost.

  Trim hair. Comb beard. Crack skull. Kick down. Jump ’pon. Beat up. Lie. These words began to come to me as I listened to the instrumental music coming from my bredrin’s house. At first it was stuttered. Then, as I kept saying it, it found its space between the drum beats in the riddim and became a kind of chant.

  Trim hair.

  Comb beard.

  Crack skull.

  Kick down.

  Jump ’pon.

  Beat up … llllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee.

  How de policeman Deal wid de rasta.

  Trim hair.

  Comb beard.

  Crack skull.

  Kick down.

  Jump ’pon.

  Beat up … llllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee.

  When I got to the gate of the man who was teaching me everything about the Jamaica being worked at and wished for by my classmates and friends, I turned around and took two fast steps down the block. Houses that I’d passed in a trance only minutes before became concrete to me. You know what I mean—not concrete like concrete, but real, alive, alive with real meaning. Junior’s house. David’s house. Paul’s house. Gail’s house. Jennifer’s house. Maxine’s. All friends from short pants and marble days till now. None of them were home. They were in the park, either playing football or watching it, before they went to the movies when the sun went down.

  I was in a panic now. What if my mother was right? What if all my friends and I were going to die because we didn’t believe in her God. All of my friends. Their friends and their friend’s friends. People I didn’t even know they were friends with. All of them condemned before the final judgment … unless, of course, they changed.

  If I got home in time, I thought I could avoid it. I could ask them to pray for me. And all I had to do was repent of my ways and I would be saved. All I had to do was play my cards right and I could join my mother, Aunt Shirley, and Uncle Tyrone in the coming paradise on earth.

  Marley’s “Natty Dread” was playing now. The intro. Those heraldic Eastern-sounding horns.

  I would never be a rasta, I told myself. Never. Never. Never. I pumped my arms harder. Never. Never. Never.

  At this point I heard his voice: “Yuh warming up?”

  It was only then that I fully understood that I was still in front of his house, but off to one side. I’d turned and taken two steps—for sure. But after that it was strictly knee lifts on the spot.

  His front door was open but I couldn’t see him. I would never be a rasta, I told myself as I opened the gate … so …

  God forgive me till ah reach back home.

  Jah Mick had been watching me from the living room. I could tell he was feeling irie because he’d taken off his black tracksuit and was sitting cross-legged in front of a speaker. Vibe-sing out. When I stepped inside off the veranda, he tucked his dreads into his tricolor tam and smiled from deep inside the bush of his beard and moustache. The green carpet felt fat beneath my feet. The room was as it had been when his parents lived there—heavy brown drapes that never opened, Morris chairs, a mahogany breakfront with shelves and shelves of figurines, and framed paintings of sunsets and tropical birds on the walls.

  “So little lion,” said Jah Mick, “what you defending today?”

  I didn’t answer. My tongue was in my throat. Eventually I said, “Nutten.”

  He laughed and said, “You can’t defend nutten, little lion. You mus’ always defend somep’n. If you don’t stand for somep’n, you wi’ fall fo’ anything.”

  “So how the magazine coming?” I asked.

  He shook his head and said, “Not so good. That’s why you see me here trying to hold a vibes. The music kinda loud. Come talk to me in the room.”

  The room was where he slept and worked, and it had a velvet poster of Haile Selassie on the door. There were lots of soccer posters on the wall—Pelé, Beckenbauer, Eusébio, and Cruyff—and furniture that looked like mine.

  The prefab walls had dulled the music to a blobby throb, but the layout on the drafting table buzzed. He kept his books in the other bedrooms. Books that I’d borrowed and read in secret … Garvey, Kenyatta, Fanon …

  “I want to talk to you,” I mumbled, as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You cool?”

  “No … no. That’s why ah need to talk to you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after I’d started and stopped many times, he said strongly, “Talk up, man. Talk up. You mother never teach you fo’ talk up?”

  “My mother,” I began, “my mother …”

  “Yes?”

  “My mother …”

  “Say it.”

  “My mother say you mus’ …”

  “Mus’?”

  He stood now and went over to the drafting table. He stood in a way that put his back to me. All of a sudden I could talk.

  “My mother say you mus’ turn down the music.”

  Without looking, he asked, “And if I don’t?”

  “She goi’ …”

  “Goi’ wha’?”

  “Well, she say …”

  “Say wha’?”

  “She say she goi’ call Sammo and tell him you have ganja over here.”

  He turned to face me now and I turned my back to him.

  “I have ganja over here?” he blurted. He sounded like a young head boy who’d been accused of cheating on a test. “I have ganja over here? Your mother say she goi’ tell Sammo I have ganja over here?” His voice deepened into anger now. “So wha’? You support that?”

  I turned around to face him. “Wha’ you t’ink?”

  He stepped right up to me and put his hand on my shoulder, which made me jerk and wince. I woulda understand if him did lick me.

  “No ganja not here. I doh smoke and I doh allow nobody fo’ smoke over here. And you know that. So how you coulda come to me with a message like that?”

  “Doh act like you don’t know how she stay,” I replied with irritation. “You make it seem like is my fault that you turn dread and she turn to the Lord. The two o’ oonoo come in like crosses to rass. Just turn down the music, nuh. Just make live easy, nuh. She is an old lady. She can’t change. Certain kinda music goi’ burn her. And when it burn her, is me she take it out ’pon. Is not you. You is a big man. You live by yourself. Me still live with my mother and she taking your fat and fry me.”

  “So wha’?” he said pointedly. “Is my fault that your mother is a pagan heart? Miss B. used to be a nice lady, then she make this church thing fly inna her head, and now is like ah living in a prison. Every Friday evening is this singing and praying and talking in me head. Eleven o’clock o’ night sometimes and them still going on. Is wha’ so, El Paso? Them doh have any consideration? Them only business ’bout themselves?”

  Before I could answer, he pressed on.

  “And is not me alone complaining ’bout it. Is nuff people in the area start to complain that people knocking on their gate and when they go out there is somebody want to give them a pamphlet or invite them to a meeting. Bredrin, none o’ this was going on before your mother found the Lord, so everybody know is because o’ she. Most people round here grow up Anglican and Catho
lic. They doh too like this Jehovah Witness t’ing.” He dropped his voice into a whisper now. “Not that I’m passing judgment … but … you know, people have it as a cult.”

  “So what you want me to do?” I asked, then puttered around at the drafting table as if the conversation was done. The layout was in trouble. If he needed music to inspire him, he needed to turn it up some more.

  “You know, if the police come here they goi’ bring ganja to find …” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Yes.”

  “So what you goi’ do?”

  “I already do it. I tell you what she asked me to tell you, and now is up to you.”

  “Yes, you do it, but you more than do it. You done it too.”

  He took a deep breath, and then blew it slowly through his mouth. Our friendship was over and he wanted me to think that it was all my fault.

  “Turn off the set when you leaving,” he said, and sat down on the bed again.

  “You not fair, Jah Mick. You not fair.”

  “Just turn it off,” he said slowly. “Just turn it off. I have to go back to work. And I need peace and quiet for that.”

  “So is my time to leave?”

  “Not saying that. Just saying is my time to work.”

  Before I closed the door to his bedroom, I said, “So you have me up now, Jah Mick?”

  “Shame o’ you, man. Shame o’ you. Jah love everybody. You know that a’ready. Tonight before I and I go to sleep, I and I goi’ pray for you … ask Jah fo’ protect you in the midst of the heathen. Fret not thyself, little lion. When revolution come, all pagan heart goi’ get what is theirs.” He smiled now and pointed to the hair beneath his tam. “But by dem time deh, you wi’ truly know yourself and grow your covenant. So when the judgment come, Jah Jah wi’ watch over the I. You let me down still, but I and I overstand. You living under pagan influence daily, so some o’ it must rub off. Stand firm till such time though. Stand firm. Vengeance is mine. So Jah say. Vengeance is mine.”

  I could have said a lot of things before I left. But what would have been the point? After that I didn’t pray for a very long time.