Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— I still don’t know what you talking about.

— Shelly Moo-Young said she was sure she drive past a woman that look like you, hanging outside him gate yesterday afternoon when she went to pick up her kids.

— Brown girl in uptown. Of course, nobody else look like me.

— When she pass back with the children, she see you again.

— You spoke to your mother?

— Me know that you fuck him.

— Fuck who?

— Him.

— That is none of your—

— So is true. Now you laywaiting him like prostitute.

— Kimmy, you don’t have other things to do? Like tell your mother that is the shitstem that beat up her husband and rape her?

— Nobody rape Mummy.

— That what Rasta Trent tell you? Or him tell you that is Babylon rape her? Go on, tell me. Tell me what him tell you because you sure as shit don’t have an opinion for yourself.

— Wh-what? What? What? Nobody rape Mummy. Nobody rape…

— Considering that I’m sure Ras Trent just hold down and take way with you, how the fuck would you know?

— Him, him, him was only trying you out, you know.

— Trying me out.

— Trying you out because he still can’t forget me.

— Oh Kimmy, most people forget you within minutes of meeting you.

— Is a pity Mummy and Daddy don’t know you is such a fucking bitch.

— No, but them probably know that you don’t wash you pussy no more because you turning Rasta. I have to work.

— You don’t have no fucking job.

— But you do, and why you don’t get back to it? Ras Trent shit-up batty probably need to wipe.

— You is a wicked bitch. You is a wicked bitch.

Usually I let her berate me until she runs out of breath, but I went too far this time. I shut up because I know I want to go further. She doesn’t see me holding my lips shut.

— And, and, and the only reason him fuck you was to see if good loving run in the family.

— So him going after Mummy next?

— T tell me about you.

— T tell you about everything. You haven’t had a single thought for yourself in two years. You hear yourself? Calling me about bombocloth Marcus Garvey like you is a history teacher. Ras Trent sit you down like a fucking four-year-old and tell you little history then you think hmmm, who can I talk down to and make me feel bigger than somebody, and as usual you call me. Well, I don’t care about your history lesson, I don’t care about Garvey and I don’t care about your fucking Rasta boyfriend who probably sucking pussy when he go to New York. And another thing, if you think that red skin asshole ever going to help you get a visa so you can find out what he really does in New York, you’re even more stupid than that Ganja University t-shirt you always wear.

I want to go on. I have things to do, but I go on. I have two parents who are sitting ducks, just waiting to be attacked again, from the same bastards who’ll probably come back for what couldn’t fit on their bikes the last time. I’m so ready to go that I don’t care if I start burning bridges even before I cross them, even if it’s my fucking sister. I want to go back to Hope Road to just stand there by the gate and scream and scream and scream until he either opens the gate or calls the police. And if he calls the police I’ll just spend the night in jail and come back out and scream and scream again. He’s going to help me, damn it, because if I could help myself I wouldn’t give a fuck about him and his “Midnight Ravers” song either. And he’s going to give me money, enough money so that I would shut the fuck up, enough money that I can go to the U.S. Embassy through the back door and leave with three visas because Kimmy won’t want one and fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her. There’s at least ten more years stuck in the back of my mouth that I’m finally letting out and fuck all who don’t care. I want to spit in her goddamn face and explode all over her bombopussy r’asscloth ears. But she hung up.

I have an appointment with Doctor Love. The day was just starting when the phone in the living room ring. I was up already, moving about my house like a morning ghost. Before he say hello, I say, You really have a fuckup sense of timing, Doctor Love. He wanted to know how I know it was him. I said he was the only man who would risk getting a bullet in the head for bothering me before morning tea. He laugh, say see you by the usual place and hang up. Weeper still snoring on the couch even though the ringer was set to loud.

Peter Nasser introduce me to him on day he come also with the American, Louis Johnson, then both men make the mistake of thinking they could control all communication between me and this Cuban. But a church pastor say to me one time that man might not know man, but spirit know spirit. He was using it to explain how faggot find each other. I couldn’t care less about that shit, but what he say stick with me forever, I even use it as a judge. Yes, you can tell me all sorts of word, I already know the power of word, but will spirit know spirit? So when I first meet Doctor Love most of what we say to each other we didn’t use words.

Peter Nasser, in one of his rare trip to the ghetto in broad daylight, pull up in his Volvo one day in November 1975 saying he brought an early Christmas present. I look at him thinking what a fucking fool this stocky Syrian clump of dog shit is, and I look at the Cuban to dismiss him too but could read when he roll him eye that he was thinking something close. Peter Nasser never shut up, even when him fucking, so I notice when a man don’t talk.

At first I think that since he was from Cuba, he didn’t know enough English, until I realize that he only talk when he have to. Tall man, skinny too, with a beard he scratch too much and curly black hair too long for a doctor. Instead he look like Che Guevara, who was a doctor too. Except Doctor Love try to kill Che at least four time. That little maricón, that little putito es not even Cuban , he say when I point out that the two of them was in medicine and they both leave it behind to pick up gun. Part of what draw me to the man is just to know a thing or two. How you go from saving life to taking life? Doctor Love say doctors take life too, hombre . Every fucking day. The day Peter Nasser bring him here, he say to me, This man going take you to a whole new level.

Here is the thing now. Louis Johnson did try to tell me foreign policy in that low draw-out way that white people talk when they think you’re too stupid to understand. Louis Johnson know Doctor Love because they both was in the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy’s little poppy show to try and kidnap Cuba that flop in everybody face. Doctor Love is to Bay of Pigs what 1966 is to me. I look at him and I know. While Peter Nasser and Louis Johnson walk off because Louis Johnson promise him that he would try cow cod soup since, according to Nasser, he fuck his wife like a sixteen-year-old boy after that, the Cuban stay behind. Luis, he said,

— Luis Hernán Rodrigo de las Casas, but everybody calls me Doctor Love.

— Why?

— Because counter-revolution is an act of love, hermano , not war. I’m here to teach you things.

— Already learn enough things from Johnson. And why the fuck you people always assume black people so stupid you need to teach them things?

— Whoa, muchacho , I didn’t mean to offend. But you offend me as well.

— Me? Offend you? I don’t even know you.

— And already you’re lumping me with the americano . I see it in your face.

— You man take two different bus come here?

— Hermano , it’s because of that man and men like him why things fucked-up to shit in Bay of Pigs, him and every dumb Yankee fucker who got involved. Don’t put me in him.