Mr. Potter

by Jamaica Kincaid

  Temper it, temper it, I now say to myself as I sit here in the middle of the night, the dark blue and black of the night, blackest black of the night, the night so still, as if it had never known disruption, as if the most hideous and disturbing deeds had never occurred in the deep stillness of night: birth and death, being born and becoming dead, in the deep stillness that is the night, the blackest of black that is the night. And in my mind, I turn over Mr. Potter and Annie Victoria Richardson, and they are in my memory, though that does seem an impossibility, that I could have known them before I was born of the two of them, and yet it is so: I have in my mind a memory of them from before the time they became my mother and my father, and I can see them breathing at the time they were being born and struggling into living and being, and I can see them passing through their lives as children and then into being the two people who came together and made me, and through all of this I see them in substantial particularity and I see them as specters, possibilities of the real, possibilities of the real as it pertains to me. And my name when I was born then was Elaine Cynthia, and Annie Richardson was my mother, and that is my substantial particularity and Mr. Potter is my specter. Looking, looking, searching, searching, and I find that I am extraordinary and then I am not so at all, I find that I am the opposite of extraordinary, and then I find that I am spectacular and then I am not so at all, spectacular, that is; and the wind blows, and the sun shines, and the surface of the earth rises up and falls down in violent activity, and the inhabitants of the surface of the earth are often defeated by the shifting of the earth’s varying and constantly changing contours, and my mother Annie Victoria Richardson and my father Roderick Potter were, just then, at the time before I would be born, and even at the time I was born, were without interest in the world, were without interest in the world and the forces that cause it to spin from one end to the other. And I, halfway to being myself, lay between my mother Annie Victoria Richardson and Roderick Nathaniel Potter, who really was my father. And the weight that I was then, and the volume of sound that I could make then, and the amount of space that I occupied then, and the extent to which I was conscious then, and the sorrow I knew then, and the absence of permanent joy or spontaneous joy or frequent joy—all of this has remained unchanged from then to now, as I write this; the contents and the volume and the weight of my joy and sorrow were the same then as they are now. And I believe now that all aspiration is futile and I knew then that to violently demand and make a change was essential and I see now that all change is its same self and all different selves are the same, and my father, Mr. Potter, could not read or write, and my mother, Annie Victoria Richardson, could read and write but did not think that the one had anything to do with the other, and so I can say to myself and I can say to anyone that this is that and that is a series of things, all of them wrong and all of them never to be resolved satisfactorily, and all wrongs inspire justice and then again all wrongs will eventually succumb to defeat. “You can com’ go Mooma, you can com’ go Poopa,” Mr. Potter sang to himself as he drove Mr. Shoul’s car, as he walked to his job as a driver of a taxi that belonged to Mr. Shoul, as he walked from the house which was only one room with four windows and two doors and in this house lived one woman or another and they had borne him girl children. Or Mr. Potter sang, “Pennywheeler! Uhm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm Pennywheeler! Uhm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm Pennywheeler,” repeating the words to this tune over and over, as he tossed a farthing into the air and always caught it with the king’s profile facing up, or as he stood before a looking glass and with his hand tried to make his rigidly curled hair stay close to his scalp, or as he buckled his belt, or as he listened to the endless stream of memories that Mr. Shoul had of the Lebanon and going back and forth to Syria and parts of the world nearby. And “Why ya, why ya, why ya lef you big fat pomm-pomm outside, lef you pomm-pomm outside, lef you pomm-pomm outside, why ya lef you big fat pomm-pomm outside,” sang Mr. Potter, to himself and only to himself, as he went to see a woman who had not yet become the mother of one of his many girl children, or as he went to see the mother of one of his girl children but the child was somewhere else, as if she had not yet been born and if she was born, as if it had never been so. And all the songs that he sang to himself, and all the songs as they went through his head in silence, meant nothing, they were only something random that occupied his mind and then again all of them meant something, but what? Mr. Potter did not care to know an answer.

  And on all the days of Mr. Potter’s life the sun shone, even when it rained the sun shone, for the sun was a constant, if it went away for three hundred and sixty-five days, it would remain constant, for it was all that made up this landscape. And it was all Mr. Potter would ever know ever, it was all Mr. Potter would ever know, and the sun, a planetary body, indifferent to the significance or insignificance of individuals and Mr. Potter’s ups and downs, shone down in its usual way, with a heat so ferocious that it could bear up or tear down a person, and Mr. Potter walked through his days that were sunlight and his nights that were dark with waiting for the sun, and the gentleness that is sometimes part of life would embrace Mr. Potter but he did not know that; and the harsh brutality that was life reigned over Mr. Potter, reigned not like an earthly monarch who would come and go, but like something celestial.

  And Mr. Potter experienced the depths of feeling that made up life and the smooth surfaces of pleasant exchanges that made up life in the same way, “Eh, eh, me ah tell you mahn,” and he straightened his cap and ran one of his fingers across the collar of his shirt and smoothed down the front of his pants and took some saliva from his mouth and smeared it across his shoes and his cheeks and the world was so nice and how everything all went his way, for he, even he, had a way and my mother interrupted it. This way, this world, of Mr. Potter’s, with its smooth turns and steady revolving of the mothers of his girl children and their lives, mothers and girl children, all swathed up in a cocoon that would never burst open and metamorphose into anything other than what it already was, all this way of certainties is what my mother interrupted. And my mother, herself already a series of beautifully poisonous eruptions, a boiling cauldron of strange fluids, a whirlwind of sex and passion and female beauty and deception and pain and female humiliation and narcissism and vulnerability, met Mr. Potter as he stood in the vicinity of Mr. Shoul and Mr. Shoul’s cars and the street, which was named after a king of England or a saint from somewhere, George or Mary, and I, writing all this now, came into being just at that moment and I, who am writing all this now, came into being a very long time before that.

  And that morning, when the sun was in its usual place, somewhere between the east and west horizons, Drickie and Annie, my father and my mother, met, and they lived together at Points, in a house that was only one room, quarreled, and when my mother was seven months pregnant with me, she took all of Mr. Potter’s savings, money he had stored in a crocus bag under their bed, money he had been saving to one day buy his own car and become the driver of his own taxi, and she left with me growing at the normal rate of a baby in her stomach, and went to live all by herself in another house that was really one room and this house was in Grays Farm. And those last harsh words my mother and father, Annie and Drickie, said to each other, and her murderous action directed at him, taking the money he had saved, with which he meant to make of himself some semblance of a man, and her leaving him to perish again and again each new day in the world of Mr. Shoul, led to Mr. Potter’s never seeing my face when I was newly born or anytime soon after, and led to my having a line drawn through me, that space where Mr. Potter’s name ought to be is not full with my father and his name, it is not empty either, it only has a line drawn through it, and that line is drawn through me. And this inheritance I have passed on to no one, I have never claimed it, I have never done anything with it except to look and turn it over in my mind and make note of it, I have passed it on to no one. My name, Elaine Cynthia Potter, crossed out by the line that wa
s drawn through it, I first abandoned and then changed to something else altogether, so that the line drawn through me, now, cannot find me, and if it did, would not recognize me, and that line cannot see me, but I can see it, following me each day as I do some ordinary thing, breathing in and out, for instance, or gazing out a window watching a soft rain fall, for instance, or removing from the palm of my hand the almost fatal lance of an unusual insect, for instance. The line that is drawn through me, this line I have inherited, but I have not accepted my inheritance and so have not deeded it to anyone who shall follow me.

  And when I was born, in the very early morning of a Wednesday, five o’clock, the sun was not in the middle of the sky then, it was only just below the horizon, only just beginning its ordinary journey to the middle of the sky, to the middle of the day, so tiresome to an observer, so indifferent to being observed, and when I was born, newly out of my mother’s womb, I did not cry, and that was to be the signal that I was alive, but I did not cry and the woman assisting my mother in my being born slapped me, lightly to her and suiting her cruel understanding of the world, but hard to me, just newly born and with no experience or understanding of the world into which I had just entered, and I cried and cried, loud, louder, and more loudly than ever and that strong cry was later described to me as evidence of a strong character, likable when I was just born, but not at all so now. And my mother’s name then was Annie Victoria Richardson and my father’s name then was Roderick Potter, but only Annie claimed me and this woman, Annie Richardson, held me close to her breast and fed me milk and that was all she had to offer me then, the thin, clear, milky fluid that was called milk, flowing out from the enlarged pores of her breast. And she fed me and fed me her milk and I drank it and drank it and then one day her breasts ran dry, no milk came out of them, and this is just what she said to me when I was three years old and five years old and then seven years old, and then after a time she no longer told me that story, of how she fed me her milk until I sucked her dry, and I reminded her of this one day when I myself had children and had grown tired of feeding them milk from my breast, and my mother said that she did not remember telling me that I had drained her of milk and in any case, she said, such a thing never happened and could not have happened since she could not remember it happening so. And I can see myself in a photograph when I was seven years old, and from seeing my face, I look vacant, from looking at my face, I seem as if I am without content of any kind, but it is only the absence of Mr. Potter that is written on my face; I have a line drawn through me, and that overwhelms everything that I know about myself at this moment, that line overwhelms the milk I drank from my mother’s breast and my mother’s name was Annie Victoria Richardson and it was she and my father Roderick Potter who made me.

  And I can see my face, it is in my mind’s eye, and my cheeks are round and fat like Elfrida Robinson’s and my nose is fat and thick and spreads out toward and then rests on my cheeks and the plumpness of my cheeks is exactly like that of Elfrida Robinson’s and the exact plumpness of my nose occurs in identical form on the face of Nathaniel Potter and this nose also appears on the face of Mr. Potter and all the girl children he fathered. All the girl children Mr. Potter fathered had such a nose, a nose that resembled his own and through his nose he knew with certainly that he was their father. And Mr. Potter said “Eh, eh, eh, eh” when seeing these girls, and sometimes he said it with pleasure, because they had recently been born and he still favored their mothers, and sometimes he said it with annoyance, for he could remember their mothers’ annoying ways with their demands on him, and always he said it in anger when those girls who were born and would die with the shape of Mr. Potter’s nose dominating the smooth contour that was their face appeared standing in front of him and asked him for something essential, something essential other than the part he had played in their very coming into existence. Schoolbooks, for instance, not underthings or a hat, but schoolbooks. One day when I was about four years old, the age at which reality and apprehension of reality and bewilderment and uncertainty made up my world completely, I stood in the shadow of Mr. Shoul’s garage and waited for Mr. Potter, who was at that time busily ferrying passengers from one place to another in Mr. Shoul’s taxi, and one of those passengers was Dr. Weizenger all by himself then, he was not with his wife, and I waited and waited, and waiting seemed so natural to me then, as if it were the sky or the land or oxygen or rainwater, so seemed waiting to me; and I waited for Mr. Potter, and his friend George Martin said he would not come, but I waited all the same, and then Mr. Potter came, driving a car with the brand Hillman or Zephyr stamped on it, and when he saw me, he waved me away as if I were an abandoned dog blocking his path, as if I were nothing to him at all and had suddenly and insanely decided to pursue an intimate relationship with him. “Eh, eh,” said Mr. Potter. And my life began, absent Mr. Potter, in the dimly lit ward of the Holberton Hospital, with my mother’s resentment silently beaming at him, with my mother’s love for me and my mother’s resentment silently beaming at me, and then I was swathed in yards of white cotton and laid to rest in the pose of the newborn which is also the pose of the dead, my eyes closed, my arms folded firmly across my chest, my entire body stilled, but I was not dead, my chest moved up and down, ever so slightly for I was just newly born and my lungs were getting used to the process of first going in and then going out. And I lay beside my mother in the Holberton Hospital, nestled close to her breast, drinking my first nourishment, her milk, and she lay next to me, feeding me my first nourishment, the milk that had been stored in her breast, and how she loved me as she fed me, and how she hated the person who was part of the process of her feeding me, Mr. Potter, and he was my father. And from the Holberton Hospital, my mother, Annie Victoria Richardson, took me, whom by that time she had named Elaine, after a daughter of Mr. Shoul’s, and that name, Elaine, had no meaning to Mr. Shoul at all, but to my mother it was a name she had heard Mr. Shoul’s daughter being called, and my mother had loved Mr. Shoul’s chauffeur, that would have been Mr. Potter, and my mother now loved me, but after I was born she never saw Mr. Potter or Mr. Shoul or Mr. Shoul’s daughter, except in passing, and so for a long time in my life I bore the name of people my mother no longer liked or loved or even wished well and from the Holberton Hospital she took me to Grays Farm, into a house which was really only one room with some windows and two doors. And as I grew from only a newborn, going into the first full year of my life, the milk from my mother’s breast was augmented with porridge made of cornmeal or arrowroot. And I grew all the same, and could talk before I could walk and I was a marvel to see, a marvel to observe, but Mr. Potter never saw me then, not when I was a baby and in need of him, not when I was a little girl and in need of him, Mr. Potter never saw me at all, for he had caused a line to be drawn through me, and my mother, using her formidable will, anger, and imagination, had driven a sharp knife into the heart of Mr. Potter and that heart was the little bundle of money meant to be the beginning of a life Mr. Potter had in mind for himself, and in that way another line was born, this line was drawn between me and Mr. Potter and that line was firm and for our whole lives it remained unbreachable and love could not touch it, for hatred and indifference were its name.

  And I come back to Mr. Potter again and again, he with his chauffeur’s cap worn jauntily on his head, his shirt well ironed, the crease down the front of his trousers stiffly in place, his teeth gleaming in the harsh light of the sun, for he had scrubbed them with the tip of a damp cloth dipped in ashes, his black chauffeur’s shoes gleaming from the rough rubbing he had administered to them, his words emerging from his mouth consoling and soothing Mr. Shoul, who every day was entangled in some memory of olive groves and the road to Damascus and hurriedly leaving the Lebanon and trying to settle in Surinam and trying to settle in Trinidad and suitcases filled with pots and pans and yard upon yard of different kinds of coarse cloth and lace; and Mr. Potter’s words emerging from his mouth were consoling and soothing to the many passengers he fe
rried from one part of the island of Antigua to another, and these passengers denounced climates not known to Mr. Potter, climates in which they lived and so therefore hated, and they asked him about the things to be seen through the windows of the taxi: the fields of sugarcane, and just a quick glance revealed the hardship of labor involved in cultivating it, the fields of cotton plants in flower, and just a quick glance revealed the hardship of labor involved in cultivating and bringing it to harvest, the mud houses with straw roofs, the torn clothes drying on the clotheslines, the half-naked children with swollen stomachs, the indescribable and invisible lushness that they could feel enveloping them; and Mr. Potter would say, “Yes, Yes, Yes!” and the “Yes” would be so drawn out, would take so long to come to an end, that perhaps a journey could be made around the world in its entirety before these many “Yeses” were completed. And Mr. Potter’s voice was so consoling and soothing, as if he were an undertaker, embalming each memory of Mr. Shoul’s, each observation of his passengers’, and doing so without really taking them in, they were all nothing to him, they were only part of what life had visited upon him, and Mr. Shoul would one day go, and Dr. Weizenger would one day go and the passengers in the taxi would one day go, and Mr. Potter would remain forever after they had gone, for he had given meaning to this landscape, the sea, the sun shining so brightly in the middle of the noonday sky, the huge black-colored wind, blowing from the windward direction, devouring the sun that had been so perfectly placed within the noonday sky. He had given meaning to the abolition of forced servitude, he had given meaning to picnics on Whitsunday, something that was revolting to Dr. Weizenger—Whitsunday—but a holiday that gave Mr. Shoul an excuse to eat more than usual.