Kerry Young - Pao

Judge Finley say to me, ‘You all excited ’bout Michael Manley, but not everybody so happy with him.’

‘What yu mean?’

‘Yu nuh notice how many of them jumping on a flight to Miami since him introduce all these changes and especially since the property tax?’

‘If yu going to redistribute you have to take from somebody to give to somebody else. That is how it work. Anyway, they can afford it.’

‘Well, maybe they don’t want to because them got five flights a day to Miami and every one of them getting fuller day by day.’

Finley was right. I just think to myself good riddance. If them don’t want every woman and man to have a roof over them head, fair wages and equal opportunities, then let them go.

But what catch my attention was how all of them so busy trying to smuggle money off the island. They got US dollars stuff in them beehive hairdos, sew in the lining of them clothes and straw baskets, bury in cakes and little patties, stick to them leg and then put plaster over it like the leg broke. It was high adventure, that what it was. And every day in the newspaper there was more news ’bout people getting stop at the airport and where them got the US dollars hid.

But they carry on do it anyway, because they wasn’t going leave them money behind. And they didn’t seem to care nothing ’bout it being illegal under the Exchange Control regulations.

By the time we get to 1974 and 1975 things really getting bad because all we got is half the supermarket and wholesale business and although that going alright it not really enough to keep everybody going. The men getting restless. Sun Tzu say, ‘ When the troops continually gather in small groups and whisper together the general has lost the confidence of the army .’ So I start worry that I going lose some of them. Most likely Milton and Desmond. Me, Hampton and Finley been running together since we fourteen so I reckon we going stick together no matter what.

Sun Tzu say, ‘ A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates ’, but I don’t know how to make it mean anything. All I can think is there is some opportunity here if I can only figure out what.

When I write to Mui I say:

I know you want to come home but business is very bad down here. So it is better for you to stay in England for now. I sent Karl the money he asked me for to open up his nightclub so maybe you can help him with that. Why he want to call it the Opium Den I don’t know. I suppose that is his business. But whatever you doing you need to study, because when the time come for you to come back it would be good to have a trade, like being a barrister like Norman Manley. That way you will really be able to help the people.

Then one day Margy telephone me. She finish her college course and move to New York where she do some other course and some other course, and now she working in a cosmetics company.

‘What you do there?’

‘I scout out new products and find ways to sell them.’

‘You think you could do that for yourself if I set you in business?’

‘Are you serious, Uncle?’

‘Yah, man. But we need to have the company registered office in America, can be New York or anywhere you like, but New York is good. And we have to have a subsidiary here on the island.’

We set up Yang Cosmetics Company, which import raw materials and export locally enriched face creams, body lotions and other beauty products. The company registered in New York with business premises in Port Antonio. This is where Margy want to live when she on the island, because she think it truly beautiful over there.

The cosmetics company allow us all sorta currency exchange so now I am selling US dollars to all these rich Jamaicans in such a hurry to leave. We passing the US dollars through the cosmetics company and the Jamaican dollars through the supermarkets. And as these people getting to Canada and the US they helping me move more money through the imports and exports because they reckon they helping others like them to get their money out.

Everything turn out fine because I was selling US dollars at ten times the official exchange rate to people who would rather have US $100,000 in a American bank account than a million Jamaican dollars in Kingston. Especially since constant devaluation mean that the Jamaican dollar worth less and less even while it just sitting there in the bank. Plus, doing business with me mean that they nuh take no risk of getting caught at the airport and getting their money confiscated. Business was booming.

I make sure I put a good roll in the bishop’s collection box because all the time now he got more and more projects for poor relief. And I stand by Michael Manley and his land and welfare reforms.

Zhang take sick. I call Morrison and tell him to come take a look because Morrison only last six month in Scotland before he tell Margaret he can’t take it no more and she say she want John finish his education in Edinburgh and it alright with her if Morrison do what he got to, so he come back to Jamaica and breathe a big sigh of relief. When him come he say Zhang got pneumonia. Him say Zhang probably got more than that wrong with him but he would have to go to hospital to find out. But Zhang say him not going to no hospital. So that was that.

When Morrison ask Zhang how old he is him say he dunno. I dunno how old Zhang is and it turn out Ma dunno either. It seem like Morrison think Zhang just sick from old age, which don’t surprise me none because when I come to Jamaica thirty-seven years ago Zhang was already a old man with grey on his head.

‘I can treat the pneumonia but I suspect this is just a secondary infection. My guess is there is more to it, but if he won’t come for tests I don’t know what else we can do.’

When I tell Zhang what Morrison say, he say he not taking none of Morrison’s medicine. He say him live this long time without a doctor and he going go to the herbalist and get something fix himself. But just as he try get up off the cot he fall back again. This make him vex so he just lay there and start mumbling and grumbling to himself.

Ma say it alright, she going go to the herbalist and sort it out. Zhang don’t need no medicine from the imperialists. And she give Morrison a look and brush past him as she going up the yard with a bowl of red-wine broth for Zhang.

The day after that Ma tell me she going have Hampton move Zhang’s cot into her room and I say no, she can put him in my room. It bigger and it got better light what with the two wooden doors that open out on to the little concrete square that catch the sun. When Hampton move the cot, Ma also get him move Zhang’s rocking chair and she put it in the room with him and that is where she start sleep every night.

I move into the room next door that was Ma’s room and every night I hear them talking and talking to one another till I fall asleep to the sound of it. And when I wake up next morning it still going on.

I can’t get over how much they got to say to one another, because in all these years I can’t remember ever seeing them talk to each other, not even once. It get so I start think that Zhang nuh talk to no women, because the only women I see him with is Ma and Tilly and he nuh speak to neither of them. It make me wonder what go on between the two of them all the time I not there. Maybe that is when they talk. But then I can’t understand why they would do that. Why it would matter whether I see them talk to one another or not. Or maybe that not it. Maybe they just save it all up till now. Maybe they catching up on everything that happen since Zhang leave China in 1912.

Some nights I even lay there awake on purpose, just listening to them hushed voices. Just so I can marvel at it. Because even though I can’t make out what they saying I can hear the tone of it, and I can hear them laugh. And that, the laughing, I never hear before, not from either one of them.