Kerry Young - Pao

What we get from all of that was unemployment and poverty, and no social welfare. And a bunch of people that think they got nothing left to lose except the miserable few streets in the neighbourhood they think is their territory. So if we think we see violence before we had no idea just how bad it could get. It was outright warfare. Right out there in the street. Shootouts, fires, bombings, rape, murder, everything. And all the time there was rumours that all of this was part of a CIA operation to destabilise the country because America didn’t want another Cuba right there in their back yard.

So finally on 19 June 1976 they declare a State of Emergency, the second one since Independence.

Sun Tzu say, ‘ To win battles and take your objectives, but to fail to exploit these achievements is ominous and may be described as “wasteful delay” .’

I write to Mui:

I know you finish your law degree now but things very bad down here in Jamaica. It so bad the government even introduce a new law to make illegal possession of a firearm a crime punishable by mandatory life sentence. They have set up a Gun Court to provide quick trials for those charged with gun offences. They have amnesties and they even using shock treatment on the gunmen. But life sentences and amnesties don’t make jobs or put food on the table, so there is open gang warfare in the street. This is not the Jamaica you have in your mind. Not the Jamaica I want you to be coming home to. So you carry on studying for your barrister bar exam. Things will get better down here.

In December 1976 Michael Manley win a second term of office, but as time go on him social reforms was gradually grinding to a halt because we owe so much money in foreign debt and we had to concentrate on paying it off. Plus, we still losing skilled people. And it wasn’t just the Chinese and it wasn’t all over money. All sort of people was leaving, and for a lot of them it was because they just couldn’t take the violence no more.

With all of this going on I never get to see Michael, he so busy trying to do something ’bout poor relief. And then I get a note from him.

Pao,

Please see the attached. It would mean such a lot to me if you decided to come.

Michael.

The attached was a official invitation to attend at Holy Trinity Cathedral when the Right Reverend Bishop Kealey is to be installed as His Grace the Most Reverend Michael Kealey, Archbishop of Kingston.

I go see Michael become archbishop and I feel proud like he was my own brother. I sit there and I look at him in all his glory and I think we tread different paths me and Michael, but we travelled through this life together. Everything that I ever tell him stay with him. And everything that he tell me ’bout Fay and such stay with me. And even though him archbishop now, I know that Michael going always be there. We bonded to each other.

I never get a chance to talk to him that day but afterwards him tell me he see me sitting there in the cathedral, in the third pew back, and he think to himself maybe he got a brother after all, which I understand he mean me, because Michael an only child.

Then him laugh and say to me, ‘Even if we have very different ways of communing with our Father.’

Three month later Esther get married. It seem to me that Gloria been planning this wedding for the past two years but maybe that not quite true. It just seem like it a long time in the making.

The morning I go up to the house it is a pandemonium. I dunno why Gloria tell me to get there so early. Maybe she reckon I going be late so she give me this early time. God knows what on her mind why she think I going be late for my own daughter’s wedding, but it is two long hours she got me sitting there watching the dressmaker fuss ’round the place with a tape measure hang ’round her neck and I think well if she still sewing at this stage then the whole wedding in trouble.

The bridesmaid is two girls Esther know from St Andrew High School where all of them take their GCEs together. Cambridge Examination Board just like in England. These girls so thin I can’t imagine any man managing to get hold of them. It must be like trying to pick up a glass but even after you completely close yu hand ’round it the glass still slipping through yu grasp. But both these girls already engaged so that just go to show what little I know ’bout it. They seem like they nice enough girls though, and them and Esther look like they close so that is good.

The make-up woman got a lot of tubs and tubes and bottles and jars that she spread out everywhere. She put a little cloth ’round every woman neck in case she go spill something on their chest and then she start rub little of this and that on the back of their hand so she can get the right colour and tone, so she say.

She say she going make them look perfect. That is her favourite word. Every time she finish do a little powder or rouge or whatever it is she do she stand back and she look at them and she say ‘perfect’. And she do this with Gloria and Esther and the two bridesmaid till I start think that if I hear her say the word ‘perfect’ one more time I going get up and throw the woman outta the house.

The four of them just sit there and let her carry on perfecting ’round them while they hold out their hand because some other woman is busy at the side of them filing and shaping and painting on the finger varnish.

The hairdresser do a lot of oohing and ahhing. And he like to rest him hand flat on his cheek and swing him head from left to right. I suppose he trying to take in every angle of these creations that he busy concocting on top of the heads of these four women. He is standing there with one hand on his chin and the other one on his hip, and I am sitting there with one ankle resting on the other knee and my hands in my lap, and as he is studying them I am studying them. He is looking at the side and I am looking at the side. He is looking at the back and I am looking at the back. And then I start say things like ‘Maybe it need straighten out a bit more’ or ‘Maybe you could sweep it up a little more at the side there.’ And he stop and turn ’round and look at me and then turn back and look at the hair, and then maybe the chin and hip thing again, and then maybe he say, ‘Yes, I think you are right.’

And then after a while I start to think to myself yu know maybe this not such a bad job. It artistic. You get to be with a woman and look at her. Really look. Really take her in. Most of the time a man don’t do that. He look but he don’t see nothing. But this way you get to make a woman feel cared for. Make her feel beautiful and good about herself. How many jobs is there where you get to do that? Yu get a chance to make somebody happy even if it only for a day.

When the wedding car finally turn up I feel relieved to be stepping out into the midday sun. Just as I get to the car I turn ’round and see Esther standing there on the veranda. She look beautiful, with the white frock just off the shoulder, flowing all the way down to the ground with the train that Gloria busy fetching up in case it drag over the dirty yard and the veil that Esther going pull down over her face. I never imagined I would feel so proud. I never imagined the day would come. It was almost like I never thought I would live long enough to witness a thing like this. Esther walk right up to me as I standing there holding open the car door and she say, ‘Thank you, Daddy.’

And I think to myself that is the first time she ever call me that. All these years she always manage to say what she got to without calling me anything at all. Or sometime when I hear her talking to Gloria she say ‘my father’, and the way she say it didn’t always sound too nice. So I look at her and I look at Gloria and then I look at Esther again and I think this girl really gorgeous, just like her mother.