Rion Scott - Insurrections

Naw, Alton, I sure ain’t.

But that wasn’t the truth, Kin. Your uncle Raoul had long split for Canada. Same with your aunt Janice. And your aunt Maisie was in England. I think Alvin was in Rochester by this time. When I get chance to go Howard, I learn D.C. not too far from Cross River in Maryland. I mean, it’s farther than I thought but, uh, I have to see Cross River, the place I read about in the book, the place of the Insurrection.

And since my father pass, I had been going and going and going. I had to slow it down just to get hold of my thoughts.

The fêtes and the girls and the football and the cricket and there was a drama workshop and of course the teaching and teacher’s college. I ain’t expect to come a teacher growing up, you know. My father was respected in the teaching community. Headmaster of the community school in Tacarigua, and he run the teacher’s union for a while. So one of his friends, a fellow teacher, show up after I finish high school and say, Come, Neville, let we take a ride.

Before I know it, I’m at the District Office filling out forms, and that Monday I get a letter assigning me to an elementary school in Tunapuna as an apprentice teacher. Teaching’s in our blood, Kin. I was happy when you start teaching at Freedman’s University. Your aunt Janice taught and Raoul taught and even Blair for a time. Now he the school resource police at District Central. That’s your grandfather speaking through us.

I keep digressing. Where was I? Ah, yes. Out on the street. Me and the crowd. We marching now. Moving like an entity. Every few steps someone join up. Every few steps someone break off. I see people mashing up windows of stores. Some places got Soul Brother or Black Owned spray paint across the front. The crowd leave those alone. Most people just want to make a little mischief. Then they got some that’s taking off with goods. In the truth, I thought about breaking off, running through one of them stores. I just lose my job taking customer calls at the Washington Post . It was either play football or take a Sunday shift they ain’t schedule me for. Guess which one I pick.

I get help from friends and thing, but it still hard. This before I start driving that illegal taxi for a while back in law school. Why you make your eyes big so for, huh? This after your brother born. You do what you do to survive. If you ain’t see that with Djassi yet, you will.

I march steady, steady, though. What go through my head is what my father would say he see me ransacking a store. I imagine Vernon Samson watching me.

My father. Boy, what can I say? I loved him. A lot. We was close. All of us. Everyone have he own relationship with Daddy. He a man without a past. You think I quiet about my old days. I an amateur next to he. After he pass, Maisie tell me a little what she know. His father may have been Indian, half Indian, something, but I never know any of his family. He an outside child and when he come an apprentice teacher, they assign him, coincidentally, out San Fernando near where his father live. Daddy tell his father, I never ask nothing from you and you never give me nothing much, but I getting my career start, I need a place to live out here while I apprentice. His father have a reputation. Lot of people look up to him. The whole world can’t know he have an outside child running round, so he tell him, Boy, I can’t help you and please don’t come back asking for nothing.

So Daddy cut off all ties and ain’t speak not once of his father to us. A professor up at the teacher’s college one time pull me to the side and he say, You look just like your uncle, boy. I just blink, not sure what he talking about. Later I find out it have a justice in Port-of-Spain, Garvin Samson, but I never knew the man.

Everything about Daddy steady and quiet. He have he own way of teaching you, eh. I tell you, when your father the headmaster, you have to be a little tough. Back in elementary school I supposed to stay in class during the first ten minutes of recess to get some extra help in maths. My friend Kelvin schups and say, Why we have to stay inside while everyone out playing? Well boy, three of us out of seven choose to go to recess when we supposed to be inside. Me, Kelvin, and John. We playing football and laughing it up. We even go by the window and point at the fellas who stay. No one telling us nothing the whole time. Later in the day my father announce that he giving the whole school some free time. An hour to play outside instead of sitting in class. Everyone start clapping and laughing and thing.

We get up and my father say, John, Kelvin, and Neville, please step to the front. Instead of the ten minutes we was supposed to have on lessons we spend the whole hour going over maths, listening to everyone outside, watching people come by the window and point. Daddy, boy.

Now later, when I get older and I’m in line for a scholarship to go London, I make the score, but they give it to some whiteboy in my class. Teacher say, Neville got the brains but he too fast by he mouth. He not England material. Well, Kin, I feel defeated. Deflated. You hear certain things, like one of the Irish priests who teach in my high school always telling us that negroes in America too out of place and thing, but that’s the first time I was make to feel… look, I wasn’t no shrinking violet. I was kinda like Laina, oui. I ain’t hold my tongue. Teachers and them don’t like that. After that happen, I just stop doing the work. I do it, but I do it in ten minutes before I go play football or cricket, and it show when my marks come.

Daddy call me to his office in the back of our house and say, You comfortable with that?

I say, No. I mean, Kin, what you think I go say?

Then he pause and he look away and he sigh. He say, You shouldn’t be comfortable with those marks. But you going to be a big man soon. I can’t tell you what you should be comfortable with. You have to decide what sort of man you going to be. Someone who comfortable with these sort of marks or someone who want to show the world what kind of light he got.

He ain’t say no more, but I tell you I never brought home marks like that again. He ain’t have to rant and yell like… well, like I used to when you was being hardheaded. I guess I could take a lesson or two from Daddy, but you was something else, Kin.

It’s not long after that — it’s not along after that that Daddy—

When he pass, we was all together. Except Raoul. He was off in Canada already. It was strange for us to all be in the house at the same time. Except Alton, we was all grown or nearly grown. So much running around to do. It was the Christmas holiday or thereabouts, and Daddy come home saying he not feeling too well. I remember he and Mom have a community meeting to attend that night. Mom go without him and let him rest, and it happen just after she get home. I hear she call out, Come, something happening with your father!

We rush in, all of us, and—

Well, boy, that is why you never get a chance to meet your grandfather. I happy as hell I get to wrestle with Djassi and all the rest of the grandchildren. I know your grandfather would have loved y’all like nothing else.

All that going and going and going. Never holding still from after Daddy’s funeral to the time I left the island. All that stop me from dealing with how sudden, how unfair it was. Becoming a father ain’t even offer me space to deal with it. I ain’t even realize that I never reconcile it until you make me talk about Daddy right now. Even after I leave the island, there was school and football and shutting down the campus in protest and getting adjusted to America and then they kill the King.

For that somebody must pay. So the riot happening all around me. It feel like J’ouvert morning. A swarm of us walking down the street and don’t no one know where we supposed to end up. I feel protected from the chaos, but a part of it too. Any moment the police go come break us up, I feel. Or someone in the crowd go start something. I don’t know these people, but quick, quick, quick, it come like all for one.