Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

I almost forgot it. I rubbed my hands on it three times in the sun, feeling each groove of the stamp. The stamp makes it real. The stamp made it smell good, yes I smelled it. Seeing it never made it real. Touching it made it real, but the smell made it realer. My fingers smell like American paper, like chemicals waiting to evaporate. I almost forgot it. Kim, try to forget everything around it. And stop smiling like that, it makes your cheeks hurt. But if you don’t smile you cry.

You smell. Have to wash the stink out. Wash the ink off you damn finger. How could I have forgotten? He’ll be home in a few hours and I haven’t washed the stink out. Girl, go wash the… enough. This is what I will do. This is what will work. I will go bathe. I will cook the man his ackee. He will take me upstairs and he will fuck me. No, we will fuck each other. And we will wake up together, and he will — no, we will not leave for at least three weeks. I will pack. Go girl, wash the stink out.

Each day he takes home something from the office. Part of it seems like how these Americans grew up. They collect things. So Tony Curtis or Tony Orlando will show up at Mantana’s and they all ask him for this autograph business, which is him signing his name on a napkin. And they cling to it, and collect it like they’ll never see Tony Curtis again. Now Chuck is taking things home, collecting them like he had to make sure they were safe. I don’t know what he has to protect a coffee cup from. Or five boxes of rubber bands, a picture of Farrah Fawcett, a picture of President Carter or a box full of liquor as if they don’t have liquor in America. Or a sculpture of a Rastaman grabbing on to his erect penis, the head bigger than his actual head. The man must think he is Noah saving a statue of a Rasta with a huge cock for his ark. If he’s saving that fucking sculpture and don’t plan to save me I swear to God I will kill him.

I’ll go bathe and then I’ll go cook ackee and saltfish. No, ackee and corned pork, no saltfish. And tomatoes. Kim Clarke, go wash the stink out. Don’t think, just leave these in the kitchen and go wash. And brush your teeth. And swallow just a little Listerine. Maybe it’s just the same for men. It is? Maybe, I don’t know. Insert whatever I’m supposed to be feeling right here:________________ so I can feel it. I don’t feel anything. Maybe I should feel something about not feeling anything but I don’t feel that either. What kind of a woman are you, Kim Clarke? Every time you lick your lips, you smell and/or taste him. Wash him out of your mouth at least, nasty girl.

I can see him kicking me out. It will be like in a movie where everybody is talking Italian. He’s dragging me out of my house — his house — the house and me on the floor screaming and begging and crawling and bawling Chuck do, no kick me out, do, no kick me out, me beg you. Me will walk on all fours fi you. Me will cook you food and breed you pickney and suck you cocky even when you don’t wash it first, Do! Do! And he will look at me and ask what the fuck you mean by do? What kind of ignorant bushbaby bullshit is it when do means the same thing as please? A cock is a cock is a cock to you, he will say because it sounds savage, like he didn’t spend any time to think it up, so then he can be angry and still be smart while me on the floor whimpering do, do, do, and wonder if I can just be like in Dallas and say it’s not what it looks like, honey.

I should bathe, brush my teeth, wash it out with soap. But then won’t I be too clean? Then I’m so clean that it’s suspicious. We at the stage where I don’t have to comb my hair or wear lipstick and perfume, and don’t care if he catches me scratching my batty and stirring the pot with the same hand. He now bursts a fart whenever he wishes, which I really don’t like. American farts are stinker, they smell like they eat too much meat. Careful what you wish for when you finally make a man feel comfortable around you. You realize how much of this courting bullshit was just show. Not show, performance. How long would he have kept the act going, and if it was longer than he bargained for would he have just cut me loose and move on to the next local girl staring into her drink? Thank God that black skin don’t show. A black woman can hide the traces on her. Maybe that’s why man think it easier to beat a black woman. You can track the relationship between a man and a white woman on her skin. Stupid girl, then just make him not want you tonight. Give yourself a headache, say you on your menses, he especially hates when you call it menses, says it sounds like pussy measles.

Do I have any passport photos left over?

Do they have hot water in America?

Dumb bitch, of course they have hot water. And they don’t have to turn on the heater and wait either. Maybe I should put a capful of Pine-Sol in the water. Jesus Christ, Kim Clarke, you have his sweat on you, not pus. Look, boss, that is all the money I have, you have my watch, you even have the chain he gave me last week. Now I’m going to have to say that it fell down the drain or something. Give me the damn passport. What you mean me have one more valuable thing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Oh.

I tell you, you could be from the South Pole or south St. Catherine you man is all the same Don’t back-talk to the man, Kim, just get it done . Here? In your office? People outside of course people outside. He wants everybody outside to hear and know . How do I know you going to hand it over afterwards? Don’t aggravate the man, silly cunt you been waiting two years, almost two years but still a long time, and he can tear everything up right in front of you — do I have any more passport photos — I really don’t like when people take pictures of me, do I have the negatives? Pictures all over the wall, naked white women, two black, squeezing their titties together. Oh don’t take off my dress? Jesus Christ wait nuh, I can pull down my own panty thank you. Kim stop looking at calendars and remember to act like it’s a big hataclaps when he pushes himself in you, he’ll Ooh, ooh, oh God you never tell me you was so big Big like a rotten banana, don’t you agree Miss December? You see him taking it out all the time to every woman who comes through that door that needing something they’re not supposed to have. Will I have time to buy ackees after this and still wash him out? Maybe I can go over to the hotel across the street and slip in their bathroom and wipe this son of a bitch off me. Hush, Kim Clarke, close your eyes and think of Arkansas. Uh huh uh huh uh huh . On his door is NOTARY PUBLIC and JUSTICE OF THE PEACE in reverse. When a man behind you can never tell what he have coming. Shit, didn’t even notice that me frigging finger was in the stamp pad. Great, purple ink on fingertips while this man keep working me from behind and all I can hear is skin flapping and slapping. Maybe I should steal these fake stamps just in case I need another passport. You soon come? One year, five months, seventeen days, eleven hours, thirty minutes and this is what you come to. This is what it takes to finally get it, the passport, the visa, the ticket out of bombor’asscloth Babylon — I hope to God this man comes soon. Just close your eyes and think of tumbleweed, Kim Clarke. Arkansas, no Arkansaw, I love it. We’re going to pull up in a wagon on top of a hill and Laura Ingalls and Mary Ingalls and the little one who keeps falling in the grass are going run towards us for by now we have three children all girls, okay maybe a boy, but only one. God, good thing I’m on the pill. Maybe this son of a bitch won’t give me gonorrhea. I hear people in his office stopping to listen. No finger has struck a typewriter key in seven minutes, I’ve been tapping the seconds and watching the clock on the wall. And Miss April, Miss May, Miss September and Miss August, not pressing her titties but spreading her — maybe if I get on like a blue movie girl this would finish quicker — Chuck, does he know that I know that he keeps all the Hustler magazines under the cash box in the hidden drawer at the back of his desk in the study? Screw behind the golf bag? Penthouse in the same box as his ties because he wants me to find that one so that I can get tips from The Happy Hooker? This always goes on longer than you think it will go. Funny how it’s the sex that brings me back to thinking in Jamaican, no, Kim Clarke, you will not now think about what that makes you . The son of a bitch was fucking me for seven more minutes. Nobody outside typed a single letter. He gives me the passport and I open it again to look at me looking at me with a visa stamped across my head. It’s B1B2. I was going to cuss that I had paid for a green card, but then thought maybe I should take what I get and let Chuck do the rest — who knows what this son of a bitch would want me to do for a green card.