Kerry Young - Pao

When I open my eyes I realise Matthews Lane completely silent. I still hear the dogs barking but that is way out there somewhere. Not here in the yard. The thing that I can’t hear is life. I can’t hear life going on. I can’t hear Ma beating the batter or Tilly picking the saltfish and throwing the skin and bones in the pail, or Hampton sweeping the yard, or Zhang rustling the pages he turning on the Chinese newspaper.

So I get up and pull on some pants and step into the yard to see what going on. I stand on the step of my room and I look ’round. Ma got the bowl in the crook of her arm and the wooden spoon in her hand beating the batter for the saltfish fritters. And I see Tilly there at the sink washing off the saltfish she already soak and boil and drain off the salt water and now she picking off the fish and throwing the skin and bone into the pail. And I look up the yard and Hampton got a yard broom working his way down from the duck pond. And Zhang is sitting there with his rocking chair in the shade reading the paper. And there is not a sound from any one of them.

It so quiet I start wonder if I done lose my hearing. Is only the barking dogs telling me I not got no need to fret ’bout what all that Appleton do to me.

And then I look ’round again and I think it not so much that the place quiet. What wrong with Matthews Lane is that the place empty. The place done lose its energy. Maybe some would say it lose its chi because everybody was going about their business just the same as they always do except there was no substance to it. It was like they a bunch of duppies just waving their arms about but there was nothing there. No intention. Just their empty movement.

Then little by little as the days go by I start notice how Ma grumbling to herself that there is no little hands to help chop a few vegetables, or a little voice that showing interest in how you season the duck or pickle the cabbage. No one eager to wash the rice, or help set up the mah-jongg table, or greet your friends with a warm welcome and a hot bowl of tea, or light a extra incense stick at temple, or just sit with you and pick the bean sprouts, or help cut a few threads on your mending. Now you have to do everything on your own.

Zhang solemn as well. Like he dragging them wooden slippers up the concrete path rather than lift up his feet. All the news in the paper is bad news. Everybody he read about and everybody he know and everybody he talk to is dishonourable and cantankerous. There not one good thing in the whole of Zhang’s world. Not like when you have somebody take some interest in history, and the revolution and what is honourable and noble, and wants to know what is the right thing to do in different circumstances, and is a good student of tai chi, who practise hard and ask sensible questions, and who is getting better every day at reading the Chinese newspaper, and who want to understand that there is a connection between the plight and destiny of poor men and women everywhere in the world.

Hampton huffing and puffing with every clunk of them weights on the bench press. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. With the sweat pouring outta him in the midday sun. It almost like Hampton want to kill himself with exercise. Well what you going do when you not got nobody to play shove ha’penny, or go fishing off the wharf with a hook, line and sinker, or go swimming over Lime Cay, or to bring you two piece of wood that need nail together, or they got string and paper and they want to make a kite, or you need to go get some old truck tyre to take to the beach, or you got to make a cart with wheels that turn. What you going to do if there is no one to ask you ’bout what you and your friends used to get up to when you boys, and what you know ’bout Uncle Xiuquan, and what her papa like when he young? What you going to do apart from pile the next few pounds on the barbell?

The thing I can’t understand is how come I no notice when all of this was going on. Mui so busy with everybody in the house, while I was driving from here to there with chickens and cigarettes and paying the child no mind. I try hard to think what it was I do with her because I wasn’t making no cart or kite or singing the praises of Sun Yat-sen or Mao Zedong, or picking the root off the bean sprouts. Truth is all I was doing was reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar. I was sitting down in my room or in the little sun trap just outside, outta sight of all of this with the faint sound of it coming to me on a breeze drifting down the yard. And the only thing that I do that seem important to me was to haul the children ’round Chinatown thinking that this was going to be their inheritance like it was mine. And all that happen from that was Xiuquan go get himself arrested and bring me face to face with them two good-for-nothing constables.

I say to Zhang, ‘What is it you think the children get from me? I mean it seem like everybody got something they do with them except me. They cooking and talking and playing and what not. What you think I do with them?’

‘You teach them tai chi.’

‘I start teach them. But every time they got a question is you they running to. Is you they want show off to how well they practise. Well, Mui anyway. Xiuquan don’t seem like him that interested. What Xiuquan interested in, yu think?’

Zhang pour more tea and he look ’round the empty yard because Ma at temple and Hampton out doing his chores.

‘Life not so easy for Xiuquan. Mui she spend much time Matthews Lane. Xiuquan he spend much time Lady Musgrave Road. Mui she learn ask question. Xiuquan he learn stay quiet. Mui she ask question in own head and tell you what on her mind. Xiuquan he got question in head but he not telling you nothing. Or maybe he tell people up Lady Musgrave Road. I don’t know.’

‘What question she ask you?’

‘Like she say, “In 1865 Paul Bogle and his comrades marched up to the courthouse in Morant Bay to protest about the injustice and abuses suffered by the people. He did not shoot his neighbour. He went to the authorities to air the many grievances of which the peasants of the parish complained. Why don’t the people today go to the authorities with their grievances?” And I say to her, maybe because they do not believe that the authorities are going to listen to them. And she say, “The authorities didn’t listen to Paul Bogle. They hanged him. That is why we struggled so hard for self-government and the right to government of the people, by the people, for the people. So how come a hundred years later the people still can’t get their grievances heard?” ’

‘But where she get all of this from?’

‘You. She get from listen to you. “Killing your neighbour not going solve unemployment and poverty. Foreign investors taking all the profit. The masa don’t even have to beat the slave any more in Jamaica.” This is you. Mui listen good and then she make up her own mind. The night you and Fay fight, Xiuquan confused but Mui know exactly where she want to be, and it with you.’

Sun Tzu say, ‘ If a general is not courageous he will be unable to conquer doubts or to create great plans .’

I sit there on the veranda and I look at Miss Cicely and she just say to me, ‘The children were silent when they were here. Maybe Mui played some game with the maids, but Karl sat silent and read his comic book under the mango tree, or comforted his mother who was often distraught.’

‘And what about when Father Kealey come to visit?’

‘That was strictly a private matter between him and Fay. The children did not seem to be a part of that although it was obvious that Mui thought a great deal of him, and he in turn was very fond of her.’