Insurrections (28 page)

We get up and my father say, John, Kelvin, and Neville, please step to the front. Instead of the ten minutes we was supposed to have on lessons we spend the whole hour going over maths, listening to everyone outside, watching people come by the window and point. Daddy, boy.

Now later, when I get older and I'm in line for a scholarship to go London, I make the score, but they give it to some whiteboy in my class. Teacher say, Neville got the brains but he too fast by he mouth. He not England material. Well, Kin, I feel defeated. Deflated. You hear certain things, like one of the Irish priests who teach in my high school always telling us that negroes in America too out of place and thing, but that's the first time I was make to feel . . . look, I wasn't no shrinking violet. I was kinda like Laina, oui. I ain't hold my tongue. Teachers and them don't like that. After that happen, I just stop doing the work. I do it, but I do it in ten minutes before I go play football or cricket, and it show when my marks come.

Daddy call me to his office in the back of our house and say, You comfortable with that?

I say, No. I mean, Kin, what you think I go say?

Then he pause and he look away and he sigh. He say, You shouldn't be comfortable with those marks. But you going to be a big man soon. I can't tell you what you should be comfortable with. You have to decide what sort of man you going to be. Someone who comfortable with these sort of marks or someone who want to show the world what kind of light he got.

He ain't say no more, but I tell you I never brought home marks like that again. He ain't have to rant and yell like . . . well, like I used to when you was being hardheaded. I guess I could take a lesson or two from Daddy, but you was something else, Kin.

It's not long after that—it's not along after that that Daddy—

When he pass, we was all together. Except Raoul. He was off in
Canada already. It was strange for us to all be in the house at the same time. Except Alton, we was all grown or nearly grown. So much running around to do. It was the Christmas holiday or thereabouts, and Daddy come home saying he not feeling too well. I remember he and Mom have a community meeting to attend that night. Mom go without him and let him rest, and it happen just after she get home. I hear she call out, Come, something happening with your father!

We rush in, all of us, and—

Well, boy, that is why you never get a chance to meet your grandfather. I happy as hell I get to wrestle with Djassi and all the rest of the grandchildren. I know your grandfather would have loved y'all like nothing else.

All that going and going and going. Never holding still from after Daddy's funeral to the time I left the island. All that stop me from dealing with how sudden, how unfair it was. Becoming a father ain't even offer me space to deal with it. I ain't even realize that I never reconcile it until you make me talk about Daddy right now. Even after I leave the island, there was school and football and shutting down the campus in protest and getting adjusted to America and then they kill the King.

For that somebody must pay. So the riot happening all around me. It feel like J'ouvert morning. A swarm of us walking down the street and don't no one know where we supposed to end up. I feel protected from the chaos, but a part of it too. Any moment the police go come break us up, I feel. Or someone in the crowd go start something. I don't know these people, but quick, quick, quick, it come like all for one.

Our swarm, it move like a flock of birds. All these beautiful black people in motion. Moving and shifting with a kind of intelligence. When we reach the destination, we just know it. That shining palace on the hill overlooking Rhode Island Avenue. Ha! The Safeway.

We get to the place and all of we stand there watching it. And the manager, a short, little, bald, pink, fat white man in an apron standing out front. I recognize him and his tiny, condescending eyes. A black person ask him questions, and he real curt. That man wouldn't let me return some bad chicken I bought there earlier in the day one time. You think they could act like that out Bethesda? Safeway had a lot to answer for, Kin. I hated going to that place.

Please don't do this, the manager say.

I'm thinking, Why put your life on the line for a bunch of groceries? He must think Mr. Safeway go cry big tears at he funeral. Some guys surround him and they start shoving him back and forth and all around, passing him from man to man like a basketball.

The manager pull away and run into the riot. Bad move. One of the fellas catch he and hit he one—whap!—to the back of he head.

I ain't feel bad about what happen to the Safeway. You go in there, you never see one of us working in front. The meat bad sometimes, and you point that out, you get one cussing from the manager or someone under him. Prices always a dollar, two, three, five higher than some other places like the Giant up Georgia Avenue, but it not easy for me to get to the Giant most times. I never realize it before, but I resent Safeway like hell from the moment I start shopping there until the moment we standing in front of it. No one talking, but as a group we decide the store's fate.

A teenager grab a big rockstone and crash the thing through the store window. I want to say, Hey! We not done deciding, but I guess we finish.

Something in me, maybe is something by my heart, it tell me turn around. Go home. But then I see it clear as clear, the man King standing there on the cover of his book with his arms folded. Title say,
Why We Can't Wait
.

I had it out on my desk in class one day back in teacher's college. I pick it out at the library. You know, you hear bits and pieces about what the negroes in America is doing, striking and sitting down and thing, but I needed to know more.

The teacher come by and she tap my book. This why you didn't do so well on the last test, Neville?

But I get an 80.

Oh, excuse me. I took it from your earlier work that you're not the type of student who is fine with an 80. My mistake. Careful with this stuff you reading, Neville. Careful.

I take it back to the library that day and I ain't read it till I get to America and realize everybody reading these books. Teachers assigning it in class. People talking about
The Communist Manifesto
and thing. Howard was real. That afternoon when I take it back to the library, I supposed to go play cricket, but when I get to the library, I see the book. The Book. The fires burning on the cover. Like an animated thing, you know. Like the whole table on fire, and when I sit down the flames start to speak
the pages.
Three Insurrections
. I have a cricket match, you know, but who could remember cricket staring at all that beauty? I miss the damn game to read the book. All the insurrections sewn together like a beautiful garment on each page. The Haitians have a insurrection. The Riverbabies—the Cross Riverians—they have an insurrection. And there is one to come and it's mentioned with the ones that happen like it's a piece of threaded gold passing through the garment. I don't see my name, but I see me. I see you and you don't even exist. You just a vague daydream in the back of the mind of two people who was on the same island, but ain't meet till they travel thousands of miles to go Howard. You was just a sperm that's fifteen-plus years from being manufactured and an egg resting inside your mother.

Something make me left that book in the library, though. Maybe it was too much to take, the way it make my mind spin and spin. I wish to hell I had grab it and run. From then on, Cross River is burn in my brain. I never thought too much about what's to happen with me next. I knew I ain't want to stay teaching forever. Some people expect me to come headmaster like Daddy, take over where he left off, but that's not who I am, I knew that. Whenever I think about the future after that day in the library, I hear Cross River whispering behind my thoughts. Maybe it's always been there. I don't know. I wouldn't doubt it.

But what kind of people is this? I think. These Cross River folks bloody they masters and live free like they not afraid. The book talk about the Haitians too, but I hear about them plenty. The Cross River negroes is new to me. I see my island in a footnote. Some Cross Riverians set off through the Americas, trying to export insurrection. Some even settle in Trinidad, the beauty just hold them, even though they have slaves all over to free. I don't know much about our history before Daddy. Maybe we come from Cross River? How I know our people ain't take part in the Great Insurrection? And that is what draw me and your mother to our homeland, Cross River. Maybe. Who knows, is all I'm saying, Kin.

Something about this book, Kin, you don't read it. You read it, but it make you live it, like a dream. I come a Haitian that day, and then I come a Cross Riverian. And just like a dream I live that third insurrection too, but when I close the book, when I leave the library, I forget what it's like in the third insurrection, and then I must spend the rest of my life chasing it down.

After I read it, I say to Alton, This happen somewhere in America.

I sit there and retell the Cross River part of the book as if I make it up right there. I wasn't sure I didn't.

They burn down the plantation and kill they masters dead, I say. Boy, they ain't teach us none of that up St. Mary's, oui. And I suspect they not going to teach it to you neither.

Alton nod, from politeness more so than interest. When all this happen? he ask me, but I can tell he not that concerned with my answer.

Back in the 1800s, I say. Early part. I go go back to the library tomorrow and get that book for you. They call it the Great Insurrection. Got a town standing to this day in America. They ain't never shut it down. I have to get you that book, boy.

Alton make he lips so and turn from me like he can't be seen with a liar.

The librarian shrug when I go back. It not on the shelf. No record of it ever being in the library, she say.

You sure? I ask.

Perhaps it was a patron's, she tell me. But I don't think it was. I look for it in bookshops off Eastern Main Road. Every time I see a bookshop, I look for it. When I get to Howard, I dig through the library stacks in search of it. I still look for it to this day. Now we got the Internet, and I look for it there too, but no dice, Kin.

The smoke from behind that Safeway, I think it like what I experience when I read the book. You look at me crazy, Kin. When you ever know me to not be rational? I studied chemistry when I was at Howard. I'm a man of science, but you can't tell a feeling nothing about science.

Them people in the crowd start to pelt one set of bricks and rocks and thing at the Safeway, and then when they finish they swarm like a crowd of ants. I ain't hear no sirens in the distance. It occur to me I ain't see not one cop. Later they send the National Guard to lock down the streets, but D.C. belong to us right then.

I think about turning around, leaving the place to the people and they anger. Come back to the Safeway only when I need bread and milk. But the book. The book is the thing.

Someone pull me. A woman. A young woman. Come on, she say. Come on. Don't stand there. Come on.

I don't think of my father. I don't hesitate. I do as she say, as the crowd
say. I come right on. You should have seen these people throwing things off the shelves. People with arms full of cheese, socks, heads of lettuce. Anything they can take with two hands.

A man run past me; he bump me with he shoulder. One set of bread go flying all over the place. I apologize and we both on the floor collecting the bread. His ill-gotten bread. He tell me, he say, It's nothing, brother. It's nothing. Don't worry about it. Hurry up and get you something before the pigs come. Don't worry about me. Go on, man. Go on.

So I go on.

I see they got turkeys, but people and them tell me that's what you eat here in November. I ain't know if it's strange to be eating turkey in April. I get to the dairy part. But I don't need no milk, no cheese, no eggs. I turn and see the bread. Got enough bread at home. I just come to this place a few days before white people decide to blow up the world. Not much I need, yes. I had to stop and laugh. I never shop so carefully. Neville, I say, what the devil you doing in here anyhow?

I ain't imagine riots this way. All the upheavals I read about, heard about, and now I was in the middle of one, like the rebellious slaves in the book. Like me when I experience the book. That's what the devil I was up to.

I wander around. Floating. Dislocated. Remembering that I lived through the Haitian Revolution and the Great Insurrection, both. The book make it so. Don't look at me crazy, Kin. I know how it sound.

I stumble to the tobacco aisle. Still empty-handed, but here is the pipe lying on the floor. Finally, the pipe. Someone knock it from the shelf. The wood on the thing look smooth and shiny. Plastic tip on the end. I take it out the bag and rest it at the corner of my mouth.

Lottie, I mumble to myself. Lottie! Lottie! I take on the voice of my blind, senile old grandfather. Living all alone on all that land on Eastern Main Road, and when your grandmother come to visit, me and one or a couple of your uncles or aunts in tow, he always know it she. The old man ain't know much of anything else, not anything about his grandchildren or anything it have going on in the world.

Your grandmother warn over and over before we go inside, Don't get too close. Your grandfather don't have all he wits.

Once on a good day, I could touch my grandfather, but that was early
on in my life. By the time I was seven or so, only Mom could touch him or they say he was bound to fly into fits. That was something I ain't want to test. Mom always bring tobacco and dinner mints to calm him, and when she walk in she call, Poopa! Though that magic sense he have already tell him it she. Later when Grandpa get older and more agitated and excitable, he hold a cutlass tight in he hand when we walk through the door and he only relax he grip when he sure it your grandmother and not bandits come to raid the house.