Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

November 4. Your wife arranges a baptism in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Nobody knows that your name is now Berhane Selassie. You are a Christian now.

Something new is blowing. On a downtown Kingston wall: IMF — Is Manley Fault. General election called for October 30, 1980.

Somebody is driving you through Bavaria, near the Austrian border. A hospital sprouting out of the forest like magic. Hills in the background tipped with snow like cake icing. You meet the tall and frosty Bavarian, the man who helps the hopeless. He smiles but his eyes are set too far back and they vanish in the shadow of his brow. Cancer is a red alert that the whole body is in danger, he says. Thank God the food he forbids, Rastafari had forbidden long time. A sunrise is a promise.

Something new is blowing. November 1980. A new party wins the general election and the man who killed me steps up to the podium with his brothers to take over the country. He has been waiting for so long he leaps up the stairs and trips.

The Bavarian bows out. Nobody speaks of hope, nobody speaks of anything. You are in Miami with no memory of the flight. May 11, eyes open, you’re the first one up (just like old times), but all you see are old woman’s hands overrun with black veins and bony, jutting kneecaps. A plastic machine with veins pushed into your skin, doing all the living for you. You already feel like sleep, probably from all the drugs, but this one comes on like a creeper and you already know that wherever you go this time, there is no coming back. Something coming from out the window sounding like that Stevie Wonder tune “Master Blaster”? In New York City and in Kingston, both skies blazing bright with noon white, thunder breaks out and a lightning bolt slashes through the clouds. Summer lightning, three months too early. The woman waking up in Manhattan and the woman sitting on the porch in Kingston both know. You’re gone.

Y ou know how them girl stay, come all the way to America and still going on like them is some dutty whore from Gully. Me tired of them girl so till. Me just tell one nasty slut who was working with Miz Colthirst. Nasty slut, me say, as long as you working for this here job and living under that there roof, you better lock up that pum-pum, you understand me? Lock up the pum-pum. Of course the bitch never listen so now she pregnant. Of course Miz Colthirst have to let her go — on my recommendation of course. Can you imagine? Some little stinking bottom naigger pickney a run rapid ’round the place? On 5th Avenue? No, baba. The white people would have one of them white people things, a conniption to rahtid.

— So does she go by Miss Colthirst or Ms. Colthirst?

— So does she go by Miss Colthirst or Miz Colthirst ? What a way you stocious. Them going like you quick. Boy sometime not even me know which. Soon as she start read some magazine name Ms. , she say she name Miz Colthirst, me love. Me just say ma’am.

— Ma’am? Like some slavery thing?

For once she looked like she didn’t know what to answer. Is three years now I’m with God Bless Employment Agency and every time I come in here, she has a brand-new story about some ghetto slut who got pregnant on her watch. What I don’t understand is why she always feels I’m the person to tell these things to. I’m not trying to be understanding or empathetic, I just want a fucking job so that my slum lord doesn’t kick me out of my top-class fifth-floor walk-up with a toilet that makes all sorts of murder sounds when you flush it, and rats that now feel they can just sit up on the couch and watch TV with me.

— Try no use them slavery word around the Colthirst. New York people who live on Park Avenue very antsy about them kinda remark.

— Oh.

— At least you have one of them Bible names they love on a Jamaican. Me even get a man one of them jobs last week — can you imagine? Probably because he name Hezekiah. Who knows? Maybe them think that nobody with name from the good book going thief from them. You not no thiefing girl?

She asks me this every week I come to pick up my pay, even though I’ve been here three years. But now she looks at me like she really wants an answer. The Colthirsts aren’t the usual clients clearly. Where is my tenthgrade teacher now for me to tell her what doors I’ve opened in life just from knowing how to speak correctly. Miss Betsy is looking at me. Some jealousy sure, but every woman have that in them. Some envy too because I have what beauty contestants call deportment, after all I am a high school — educated girl from Havendale St. Andrew. Pride, of course, because she have somebody she can finally use to impress the Colthirsts, so much so that she probably trump up some false bullshit on the last girl just to get her fired. But pity too, that one most definitely. She’s wondering how a girl like me come to this.

— No, Miss Betsy.

— Good, good, wonderful good.

Don’t ask me why I was walking on Broadway past 55th because not a damn thing was going on, on that street or in my life. But sometimes, I don’t know, walking down a New York street… well it doesn’t make your problems easier or manageable but it does make you feel you can just walk. Not that I have problems. Actually I don’t have a thing. And I’ll bet anybody that my nothing is bigger than their nothing any day of the week. Sometimes having nothing to worry about makes me worry, but that would be some psychological bullshit to make me feel busy. Maybe I’m just bored. People here with three jobs and looking for a fourth and I wasn’t even working.

And that meant walking. Even I know it don’t make no sense, though it explains why these people never stop walking, even to somewhere you can get to on the subway. You really do wonder if anybody works in this city. Why are there so many people in the street? So I was walking down Broadway from 120th. I don’t know, there comes a point when you’re walking that you’ve walked too far and there’s really nothing to do but continue. Until what, I don’t know. I always forget until I find myself walking again. And besides it was only a few blocks before Times Square and Lord knows you only need ten minutes in Times Square to miss a quaint charming little place like West Kingston. Not like I’d be caught dead in West Kingston. Anyway, walking down Broadway past 55th Street and looking out for freaks, flashers and everything I always saw on TV but never see here (except for bums and none of them ever look like Gary Sandy undercover). The little sign was failing to stick out between two Chinese restaurants on 51st. God Bless Employment Agency, which was enough to make it clear Jamaicans run it, but if that didn’t do it, then the proverb at the bottom of the sign, “ A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath ,” which didn’t have a fucking thing to do with anything, certainly did. The only thing left was to add INTERNATIONAL in the title. But I had some nerve thinking I could talk down to a place that existed to help losers like me, after all there was only so many times you could call your American ex in Arkansas and ask for money to help before he said, Fine, I’ll send you some cash, but if you ever call my house again and threaten to talk to my wife I’ll just make a little call to the INS and you’ll see if you don’t find your conniving nigger ass on the next fucking flight back to Jamaica clutching one of those clear plastic bags they give deportees so all of JFK airport knows which brand of panty shields you use. I didn’t want to tell him that the word nigger didn’t quite have the kick he was counting on, nor bitch, nor cunt, since Jamaican girl don’t response to none of them things. But yeah, I was in no position to walk past anywhere called Employment Agency. His last gift was running out.