The refusal to read had led to a refusal to study. This led to greater popularity with the boys in the neighborhood and greater power in the school. I spent more time in the street and less with my extended immigrant family, the cousins from the Caribbean and Africa who had begun to coalesce into a not-yet-quite-American community.
Where my teachers, principal, and vice principal explained my behavior via notions such as negative influences and the romance of street life, and where my aunts and uncles attributed it to the fact that we were no longer regular churchgoers, my mother immediately linked it to my turning away from what I’d always loved—books. She began a campaign, bringing home novels from the gift shops of the hospitals where she worked and making sure I spent time at the library. She promised me anything if I read: the latest tennis shoes, the right kind of polo shirts—Le Tigre since we couldn’t afford Ralph Lauren or Lacoste—or sharply creased corduroy trousers (she had no idea these were what gangbangers wore). Understanding my new leverage, I insisted on her buying a foldout record player and 45s from local department stores. I wanted to stop depending on the randomness of radio to hear Bowie and listen to him privately without the judgment of others.
Still, my schoolwork continued to suffer as my notoriety began to spread. Not reading became almost as natural as reading, and sitting in the back of class as comforting as the fear or anxiety I’d see in the eyes of each new teacher. I was physically maturing, growing taller, wider, and stronger. Very few could guess my age and assumed that I was much older than my friends. I began to sprout facial hair much earlier than any of my friends or cousins of the same age. My body was becoming less and less my own property and more the product of everyone’s assumptions. The meanings of this physicality were made clear every day by everyone and required time and effort to master. Reading got in the way of that field of inquiry. My aunts and uncles began to accuse my mother of failing as a parent. I was becoming that thing they feared most in their children—an American, or to be more accurate to their prejudices, a Black American. They insisted it was time for me to be sent back to Jamaica for at least a summer as a way to correct her errors and halt the cultural contagion. My aunts and uncles gathered a collection for the ticket. My mother took on more hours at work and yet another job. Big Auntie and Uncle Daddy were contacted and a date was selected.
Being called the Black American in the family was hardly an insult. I saw it as evidence that I was achieving the kind of manhood the boys in my neighborhood feared and envied. I became so focused on this manhood, its bodily characteristics and the relentless tests it required on the streets or in the playgrounds, that I don’t quite recall how it was that I ended up in remedial education. Most of the other boys I regularly fought with were in these classes. My Jamaican accent was still present, and I’d gotten used to the fact that some teachers heard it less as an accent and more as a sign of mental limitations. I’d also gotten used to being treated like a problem, which only made me act more like a problem, which only made me more popular. I began to feel that there was a place for me in this culture. My mother didn’t know any of this, working as hard and often as she was.
One day we were given a standardized test that focused on reading comprehension. I finished early and, as always, spent the rest of the time disturbing the other students. A few days later the teacher kept me after class. I assumed it was to complain about my behavior. Instead, she asked if I’d cheated on the test and I said no. She asked again and I said no again, aggressively, because for all the trouble I’d gotten into, no one had ever accused me of cheating. She apologized, and her tone became warm, perhaps a bit sad. She agreed. It wasn’t possible for me to have cheated—I sat so far in the back of the class that I wasn’t close enough to copy anyone’s answers. She asked me to have my mother contact her, which I agreed to do but didn’t. After weeks had passed during which I’d hoped the teacher had forgotten about the request, she set up a meeting with the vice principal and my mother.
On the day of the conference, I sat at my desk as my always-exhausted mother spoke with my teacher and the vice principal, a man who’d never paid much attention to me beyond breaking up my fights or marching me to the principal’s office. The teacher wasn’t angry but concerned, even emotional. Apparently, my test scores were the highest she had ever seen. The vice principal was startled, having expected that this meeting would need to result in severe disciplinary action, perhaps expulsion. My mother smiled proudly, saying that I’d always been in love with books and a strong reader, and had declared myself a writer before I’d even begun to learn how to write.
The teacher responded that this is why this was such a sad situation. This was exactly how African American boys slip through the cracks. It is racism, she proclaimed, that’s why I was in these classes and was likely to be held back a full grade. Racism, plain and simple.
What do you mean, held back? My mother was shocked. What do you mean by these classes? (I was, of course, thrilled to be called African American.) That’s when and how she found out that I’d been placed in remedial education. It was also when I realized that my being in remedial education wasn’t just because of my tough-guy behavior but due also to those questions about my mental capabilities.
My mother wasn’t one to cry in public. I’d seen her cry at my grandmother’s funeral in Jamaica just before I moved into Big Auntie and Uncle Daddy’s house in Montego Bay and when she greeted me at the airport in Washington, DC. She didn’t cry at this meeting, but I saw the way she was breathing and knew how much it took for her to maintain composure. I was too big to be physically punished, but the wilting of her body and the sudden distance between us was enough to rattle me.
Seeing her that day and for all the days following—more exhausted than ever, appearing late in the evenings from work only to disappear into rooms filled with papers and fabrics, and pictures and boxes, barrels and bottles, and letters and memories—was likely what caused me finally to forgive her for leaving me behind in Jamaica years ago even though I knew she would punish me by sending me there again.
* * *
I was silent on the walk to school after a weekend spent mostly indoors. It never occurred to any of the boys I walked with to imagine that the plan to shoot up our schoolyard the week before had been a rumor or hoax or empty threat. At school the day continued as it usually did. There was no sign that anyone had found or read my manuscript but that only intensified my paranoia. The silence could have been produced by a vast conspiracy that everybody was in on. When a message came to the playground either at lunch or recess that Coach wanted to see me, I thought nothing of it beyond the likelihood that something I’d done wrong had finally caught up with me.
I met her in her office near the gym. I sat slumped, resigned to hear how I was going to be punished for whatever I’d done. I didn’t notice my manuscript fanned out on the desk between us like a deck of cards.
“Is this yours?”
Her voice was as stern as usual, the voice of a woman who could dunk.
Shocked, I reluctantly said yes. Then she asked me again with more than a hint of disbelief. She leaned back in the chair and shook her head from side to side.
“You wrote that,” she said incredulously. “All of that yourself?”
Yes, I told her. It’s mine.
“But why did you write it?” Her voice became warmer.
It never occurred to me to ask myself why I wrote. Writing was simply an outgrowth of reading. I answered in a gesture typical of teenagers, a quasi-universal response to the ineffable—I shrugged.
I wondered if she’d keep my manuscript or throw it away. If she chose to do the latter, I hoped she’d be kind enough to make sure it wasn’t on campus.
“Okay,” she said. “You can take it. Go ahead.”
I gathered up the pages quickly. Before I closed the door behind me, she called my name and said the strangest thing, the whitest of things.
“Have a really good rest of your day.”
> I ran to my locker to make sure I hid the manuscript before bumping into anyone curious about what I held so closely to my chest or strong enough to take it from me.
For the rest of that year, Coach said more of those strange and warm and white things: “Hello,” “Have a nice day,” and “Have a good weekend.” She never said if she’d read or liked the manuscript or asked any specific questions about it. The fact that I’d written it seemed enough to earn her ongoing attentiveness.
One day she approached me in the middle of the playground. Angrily, loudly, she demanded I march off to her office. The fact that she continued to treat me like a thug in public was surprisingly generous. Her demeanor changed in the privacy of her office. Sitting me down, she presented me with a large box from the floor next to the desk. I opened it to find it packed with old and worn science fiction novels, including the shiny textured covers that in Jamaica were rare. It was hard to maintain my chosen persona when I saw that this collection had been curated by someone who knew and loved these books as I did. There were books I hadn’t read by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert E. Howard, Philip José Farmer, but others by Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, and Larry Niven were utterly new to me. There was even an almost-complete collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series. I thought Coach was merely showing the books to me, but she said the box was mine. I could collect it after all of the students had left school so no one would have to see.
I was crippled with a gratitude I did not know how to express—for the books but also for the secrecy. Coach’s acknowledgment of the difference between persona and self lifted a burden I’d carried alone. Her actions suggested that the space between the two would be a terrain of struggle for some time but that it was a battle that could be waged in secret and that could be won.
7
We Are the Dead
I woke again to the howling of the faceless person in the bed across from mine. Because the top of my head was wrapped like the Phantom’s mask and my eye sockets were filled with cotton balls, I couldn’t tell what time of day it was, but the sense of solitude expressed by the voice suggested night. I assumed it was a man, but even in the mornings, when the nurses allowed me to open my eyes, I could not discern. All I could see were bandages and exposed burned flesh. At night, I barely registered the soft light and jittery shadows of a candle. It was the nurses’ station. There was always at least one of them on duty. All the other patients were sleeping, apparently used to the noise.
He or she was tossing and turning and groaning. I knew my memory had been damaged and hoped I would soon forget hearing the screams. What it must be like to have your skin seared off and your eyelids gone. What it must be like to have every movement hurt like the very fire that caused it all. Thinking about it made my own wound tingle and a sharp pain flash across my skull. Whenever that happened, everything went blurry white and sometimes I lost consciousness. If I could have called out, the nurse would have come running, but I’d learned not to call out too often. There were patients in the ward listening for my voice. I was thankful that the pain triggered sudden, soft sleep. I don’t remember dreaming in that place, even with the medication.
* * *
I was still standing because I didn’t yet see the blood pooling around my feet. What I did see was Cousin Dale pointing in the direction of where the heavy tile, the kind used to lay footpaths through tourist gardens, had come from. The sharp angles probably made it more aerodynamic, sailing smoothly until it hit and turned the left side of my skull into a child’s puzzle with those big pieces that are meant to be easy but end up being difficult because each piece can be forced into any other. But I didn’t know this yet. I followed with a final act of concentration to where Cousin Dale’s forefinger was pointing: at Garth, who stood there stunned, his mouth opened at what I must have looked like. His guilty fingers quavered and curled.
I remember wondering if the girls were still standing at the gate listening for that fine American accent I had brought back to Montego Bay and where they had watched me lord over the neighborhood like a tourist. They didn’t know I’d been sent back to Jamaica as a punishment; nobody did except for Big Auntie and Uncle Daddy.
Garth bolted. The girls would have to see me try to go after him, that much I knew. But then I noticed I was standing on a red, dark, round carpet that grew wider and darker around my feet. It made sense to curl up on it and sleep.
* * *
There was a woman who was not my mother but looked like an auntie because she was watching me with concern and disapproval. I was strapped to a stretcher in the back of what was obviously a minibus and reggae oldies were on the radio. Somebody must have paid the driver a lot for my passage because there were only a few others in the minibus. The smell was familiar—working people, the kind who sat crammed together and shared bitter laughter and biting sarcasm for hours and miles and stopped for sugar cane and beer. I remember the vibration of the road and the bumps and curves around hills that put me back to sleep either due to the dizziness or sudden panic. I remember only nighttime until I awoke again on a gurney. I could make out what seemed like a market, women with packs on their heads and men with machetes and schoolchildren in uniforms. At some point, there was a quick burst of motion on my periphery. I saw matted hair, sweat, and dark skin shine, a Rastaman in rapid motion held by two men. They were trying to place him on a stretcher like mine. He resisted.
“Me nah go in deh . . . Me nah go in deh! A pure deaders in deh, and me is a living man, Selassie-I know.”
This was enough to make me fall asleep again.
I was inside now, admitted to hospital. Someone said it was Kingston. I couldn’t keep my head up for very long. One eye was bandaged so everything seemed filtered through gauze. I couldn’t remember what had happened to me, so I assumed I was as I had always been—one-eyed, weak, easily given to calentures.
The person speaking for me was a woman, not my mother—her I would have remembered or at least I hoped that I would. They asked her if I was Jamaican because my accent didn’t sound familiar. If I was to be treated as a priority, it was important to know where I was from. I wasn’t American either; they could tell this even though they knew I lived there. Where was my passport? Apparently, I lived in America but was neither Jamaican nor American. Which meant that I was a citizen of this place along with the shot and the maimed and the many whose illnesses were invisible to the eye and who roamed from ward to ward. I was home.
My skull had been fractured, rearranged. This required that I move very slowly and remain in silence. The latter was impossible since this was not just the capital of Jamaica but the capital of sound. With one eye bandaged and the other unreliably open, I navigated with my ears.
Perhaps the disarranged state of my skull for those months I remained hospitalized made the bass burrow deeper and the shrieks of children sprinkle sharper. Kingston Public, the hospital I was in, was a famously loud place, abutting neighborhoods that terrified staff and supplied patients. The murmurs and groans from hospital wards and the neighborhoods became indistinguishable. I could hear music from outside, the tinny rattle of zinc on wood on aluminum making it clear that the person playing the stereo didn’t earn enough money for a proper bottom end.
The nurse with light skin was the one I would trust. I was still Jamaican enough to believe that and weak enough to do so without guilt. The other nurses were just as kind, but I was no different than the other patients in being jealous of her attentions. If only I could speak properly, she would hear my American accent. Just the sound of it could promise her things. She looked like a cousin who’d lived with us in Montego Bay while finishing secondary school. That cousin had actually become a nurse like so many women on the Jamaican side of my family. Perhaps that’s why I’d gotten so comfortable in the hospital so quickly.
That cousin and her husband would visit me every few days there in Kingston and assure me that my mother was on her way but that she first had to get the money for a ticket, h
ad to make arrangements with her multiple jobs, but that she was moving heaven and earth. What mattered was that the other patients knew it. They had to know that my mother was in America and was coming from there and that eventually I would return to America, where I was from. Word of this did spread through the wards. It spread out to the front gate surrounded by the dense market through which I’d been carried. Nurses and patients brought word that certain people had asked of me. Some sent me gifts with the understanding that I would find time to visit them once I was able. Eventually, my bedside table was littered with promises and obligations.
The first time I wet the bed, I kept my eyes closed until after I was changed and the bed refitted. I didn’t know which nurse had cleaned me, but the second time it happened, it was the nurse with light skin. When she bathed me, I feared embarrassing myself with an erection. That was far too optimistic. My penis was as weak as my arms and legs. My mind suddenly went white again as if I had stared too steadily into a bright light, and I kept my eyes closed so tightly at times that they leaked tears. But the tears had no effect. She treated me as if she didn’t know where I was from.
* * *
Before Garth broke my head open, we’d had a fight no different than the ones we’d had when I lived in Jamaica. The wall the tile sailed across was one we’d sat on together most nights with my cousins and other boys from the neighborhood, talking about comic books and American television programs and music. We also talked about girls. Not the ones from our neighborhood, we feared those, but the ones at school who came from towns and neighborhood in the small hills outside Montego Bay. Their social distance from us made it easy to imagine them vulnerable to our charms.
Floating in a Most Peculiar Way Page 8
