A Brief History of Seven Killings (17 page)

—You learned about woman the same place you learned about gun? She slam the door so that we won’t think she still there listening. I said, SHE SLAM THE DOOR SO THAT WE WON’T THINK SHE STILL THERE LISTENING.

Now she gone.

—You’s a bad motherf—

—Shut yo mouth.

—This day done write down. Nothing you can change about it now, even if you did want—

—I tell you already. I don’t know what you talking about. And I certainly don’t know what you talking about needing money when you same Josey Wales fly to Miami only two weeks ago. But you know how I know you don’t need no fucking money? You fly up for just the day. Come back, what, seven o’clock?

—That was a little business.

—Nothing little about you. Or your other little trip, to the Bahamas. Every man who about him business in this country have a fucking secret.

—The Singer meeting with Papa-Lo and Shotta Sherrif same time.

—Tell me something I don’t know.

—Papa-Lo plan to meet up with Shotta Sherrif talk serious things where nobody can hear them. They both stop eating pork, by the way.

—Oh. That I didn’t know. What the fuck them two up to? Seriously, what could they possibly have to talk about? And what you mean they both stop eat pork? They turning Rasta? Is this the Singer doing? Is him getting them to talk?

—You really need help to answer that question?

—You talk too much fucking step with me, naigger boy.

—Boy in your fucking brief. The price gone up.

—Take that shit to CIA.

—Rasta don’t work for the CIA.

—And Josey Wales, I don’t fucking work for you. Take my foolish advice and use the door. And don’t come here again.

—Me taking the rum.

—Take two glass while you at it and teach yourself some fucking class.

—Haha. You is something else. Even the devil look ’pon you and go, You is something else.

The man leaves, not closing a single door.

There is another man I see around these dead lands who I don’t know. A dead man who died wrong, a fireman who would have gone in peace
had he died in a fire. He is in the room as well, he came in with the man named Josey Wales. He walks around him, walks through him at times which Wales mistakes for a shiver. He tries to strike but goes right through him. I used to do that with the man who had me killed, tried to strike, punch, slap and cut and the most I ever did was make him shiver. The rage goes if not the memory. I would say you live with it but the irony is too bitter. I know his story too since he cries it every time. He’s crying it now, not seeing that I’m the only person in the room bearing witness. Running to the fire on Orange Street, him fireman number seven. A fire set in a two-story tenement, the flames a mad snake looping through the windows, five children already dead, two shot before the fire. He grabs the hose, knowing the water will only sputter, and runs through the gate. His cheek burns on the right and his temple explodes on the left. The second bullet hits him in the chest. The third grazes the neck of the fireman behind. Now he follows the man who sent him to be with people like me. Josey Wales leaves through the window. The fireman follows. The day is young but is already dead.

Nina Burgess

Y
ou can’t really know
how it feels, just knowing deep down that in a few minutes these men will rape you. God take you make fool, this Cassandra from Greek mythology in history class who nobody listens to, who can’t even hear herself. The men haven’t touched you yet but you’ve already blamed yourself, you stupid naïve little bitch this is how man in uniform rape a woman, when you still think they are there to take your cat out of a tree, like this is a Dick and Dora story. The first thing you realize is how fucked up this is, that word wait. And now that you’re waiting all you can think is how the hell did you trip and fall and land under some man? They haven’t raped you yet but you know they’re going to, the threat of it in the third time you catch one looking through the rearview mirror without smiling or laughing and his hand adjusting his crotch like he’s playing with, not fixing, himself.

It’s the slowness that gets you, the feeling that there is still time to do something, to get out, to run, to close your eyes and think of Treasure Beach. You have all the time in the world. Because when this happens it’s your fault. Why didn’t you get out? Why didn’t you leave? The policeman hears my mind and stomps the gas, raising the stakes. Why don’t you get out? Why don’t you leave? If you open the door and jump out, just grab your knees and roll until you stop. Then just run to the right, into the bush, over somebody’s fence, yes you’ll probably have broken something but adrenaline can get you far, very far, I also learned that in class. I might bruise a shoulder, I might break a wrist. The policeman drives through his fourth stoplight. Is kill you want kill we, the other one says and laughs.

I heard a story about a woman who went to the police to report a rape but they didn’t believe her so they raped her again. You are afraid and you
can smell your sweat and you hope sweat doesn’t mean they think you were digging it. You cut your nails only two days ago because this glamour business is damn expensive and now, because you have no nails to scratch the sons of bitches, you hope that no scratch doesn’t mean you were digging it. But more than anything else, the one thing that makes you blame and judge yourself and acquit them even before this reaches a court of men who probably discipline their wives with a punch before leaving for court, is that you don’t have any panties on. Not only are you the slut your mother talked about but even she will look at you with that you-got-what-you-were-looking-for look. And I’m thinking oh really? Well who told you to be a woman when three gunman came calling? Your rape is your fault too. After a while you realize you’re shaking not from fear, but from fury. I take off my right heel, the one that’s still there, and grab the shoe tight. As soon as they open the door, one of those bastards will never see out of one eye again, I don’t care which. He can kick me, shoot me, rape me in the ass, he’s going to have to live with knowing that this pussy he had to pay for.

I can’t imagine anything worse than waiting for a rape. If you had time to wait on it, you must have had time to stop it. If you’re not for sale, don’t advertise, my high school principal is saying at this very moment.

You’re already thinking past the rape, to the longer dresses you will buy, the stocking that will reach just above the knee and make you look old, dresses with frilly collars like I’m in the opening credits for
Little House on the fucking Prairie
. I’ll stop processing my hair and shaving my legs and armpits. Stop wearing lipstick. Go back to shoes with no heels and marry a man from Swallowfield Church who is willing to be patient with me, a dark man who will balance everything against my giving him light-skinned children and still think he got himself a bargain. You want to scream stop the fucking car and take the fucking pussy and be done with it, because that sounds tough, like it’s almost tough enough to scare them a little, but you know words like that could never come from a mouth like yours. It’s not that you have the decency, not a r’ass, it’s that you don’t have the nerve. And that just makes you hate these goddamn police even more, the way they treat you like a bird to their cat. Maybe this is like a man digging his own
grave, seeing the end already and just waiting on the middle, the it, the thing that supposed to happen.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, but I’m definitely saying fuck way too much. Any more cussing and I might as well call myself Kim-Marie Burgess. She should be the one in this car right now, she and her freeloving ways. No. That is a wicked thing to think. Except me can’t stop thinking it. Nobody deserve this. But she deserve it more than me. They were supposed to turn left, heading to Havendale. Instead they turned right, heading to downtown claiming it’s a shortcut. Two of them, one of them saying he never see nothing like that yet, Prime Minister calling election in just two weeks. Sound like some samfie business, he says. But that shouldn’t mean nothing to you, you no longtime socialist, says the other one.

—A who you ah call bloodcloth socialist? Better you did call me coolie, or Rasta.

—And you, sweet sugar dumpling, you like socialist or Rasta?

—Haha, says the other one.

—Oi, you in the backseat like coolie duppy.

I want to say sorry, I’m too busy thinking about how woman in 1976 either get herself fucked or fucked over by a man but instead I say,

—Excuse me?

—Rasta or socialist? We waiting on you answer.

—How much longer is this shortcut?

—Longer if you don’t cool youself and act right. And . . . what the bloodcloth? How much time me fi tell you me no like no bombocloth cigarette ash ’pon me uniform?

—Then brush it off.

—To r’asscloth.

—Stop the car then. Engine need a break anyway.

So they stop the car. I don’t bother to say I need to get home. I know what they are thinking. Any woman walking with one shoe on Hope Road after midnight couldn’t possibly need to get anywhere. Maybe this election was called a little too quick. Maybe communism isn’t so bad, I hear there is no such thing as a sick Cuban or a Cuban with bad teeth. And maybe it’s a
sign that we getting sophisticated or something that every now and then the news is read in Spanish. I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that even I am getting bored waiting on these police to leave me in a ditch somewhere. I wish I was afraid. A part of me knows that I am supposed to be afraid and wishes it; after all, what does it say about the kind of woman I am if I’m not? They are both leaning on the car, blocking my door. I could get out on the other side right now and run, but I don’t. Maybe they are not going to rape me. Maybe they are going to do something and that thing, good or bad, maybe even good, sure beats the nothing that I have been doing all day and all night. This is morning though. This is his fault, his security guard’s fault, this whole goddamn peace concert’s fault. The country. God. Whatever beyond God, goddamn I wish they would get over with it already.

—Starsky and Hutch wicked last night. That episode top the chart! So Starsky get inject with this secret poison, right? And the brother have only twenty-four hours to find who inject him before him kaput and—

—Me never know who is Starsky and who is Hutch. And why them have to be so touchy-touchy so, like sodomite?

—Man, everything for you is battyman this, sodomite that. Man even have one woman, you think is ’cause him is battyman. A big-time show that. But me still don’t know how that car can jump so high and so far.

—You want we to try it out?

—And kill the sweet thing in the back?

Hearing them mention me I ask,

—We going to Havendale or should I get out and continue walking?

—Ha, you know where you deh?

—Kingston is Kingston.

—Eh-eh! Who tell you that you in Kingston? So sweet cheeks, which one of we cuter, me or me brethren? Eh? Which one of we going be you boyfriend?

—If you going rape me, rape me already and leave me in whichever ditch you leave woman. Just stop bore me with your r’asscloth mouth.

The cigarette falls out of the policeman’s mouth. They look at each
other, but don’t say nothing for a long time. So long that I can’t even count it, more than minutes. More than five minutes. They’re not just quiet with me, but with each other, like what I said took away anything they would want to say to each other or to me. I don’t say sorry, after all what was a woman to think when two strange men drive her to some place she doesn’t know and didn’t ask to go? At midnight where all she can do is hope that when she scream the dark don’t suck it out.

They take me home. The one who was smoking says, next time if is rape you looking for, tell we early so we can drive off and leave you where we find you. They drive off.

That was four hours ago and I still can’t sleep. I’m in bed, still in the clothes I’ve been wearing all day, ignoring that my feet still burn and the dirt is soiling the bedsheets. I’m hungry, but I don’t move. I want to scratch me feet but I don’t move. I want to piss, to shower, to wash off a day that is already gone, but I don’t move. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday morning and that was just grapefruit cut in half and drenched in syrup and sugar, exactly the way my mother told me would lead to early diabetes. My mother is so afraid of trouble that trouble sticks to her close just because he never gets tired of proving a point. Tomorrow is the peace concert and all it will take is one shot, just one shot, even a warning shot in the air for all hell to break loose. Earlier this year at the stadium, rain started to drizzle and the spectators panicked. It only took fifteen minutes to kill eleven people, stomped to death. Nobody is going to take a shot at him, nobody would dare, but they don’t have to. Hell, if I knew that such a big PNP thing was going to happen in little over twelve hours I would take out my gun too.

This country has been swinging into anarchy for so long that the whole thing is going to be an anti-climax. I don’t even sound like myself saying that. Jesus Christ, I sound like Kimmy, or her other boyfriend, the communist, not the Rasta. JLP goons are going to drive down on the park, just a small section, maybe by the Marcus Garvey monument, and shoot somebody. They only need to shoot one. They’ll get away but the crowd will burn down half of Kingston. Copenhagen City will put up a fight but the crowd will be too huge then, when they step I’ll feel the tremor from all the way
up in Havendale. They will burn Copenhagen City down to the ground killing them all and people from Copenhagen City will burn down the Eight Lanes killing them all and a big tidal wave will rise up from the harbour and wash all those bodies and all that blood, and all the music and all that ghetto bullshit out to sea and maybe, just maybe, finally my mother can stop wrapping up her body like a mummy just to keep nasty men out of her vagina, and keep sane and sleep in peace.