Rion Scott - Insurrections

Our swarm, it move like a flock of birds. All these beautiful black people in motion. Moving and shifting with a kind of intelligence. When we reach the destination, we just know it. That shining palace on the hill overlooking Rhode Island Avenue. Ha! The Safeway.

We get to the place and all of we stand there watching it. And the manager, a short, little, bald, pink, fat white man in an apron standing out front. I recognize him and his tiny, condescending eyes. A black person ask him questions, and he real curt. That man wouldn’t let me return some bad chicken I bought there earlier in the day one time. You think they could act like that out Bethesda? Safeway had a lot to answer for, Kin. I hated going to that place.

Please don’t do this, the manager say.

I’m thinking, Why put your life on the line for a bunch of groceries? He must think Mr. Safeway go cry big tears at he funeral. Some guys surround him and they start shoving him back and forth and all around, passing him from man to man like a basketball.

The manager pull away and run into the riot. Bad move. One of the fellas catch he and hit he one — whap! — to the back of he head.

I ain’t feel bad about what happen to the Safeway. You go in there, you never see one of us working in front. The meat bad sometimes, and you point that out, you get one cussing from the manager or someone under him. Prices always a dollar, two, three, five higher than some other places like the Giant up Georgia Avenue, but it not easy for me to get to the Giant most times. I never realize it before, but I resent Safeway like hell from the moment I start shopping there until the moment we standing in front of it. No one talking, but as a group we decide the store’s fate.

A teenager grab a big rockstone and crash the thing through the store window. I want to say, Hey! We not done deciding, but I guess we finish.

Something in me, maybe is something by my heart, it tell me turn around. Go home. But then I see it clear as clear, the man King standing there on the cover of his book with his arms folded. Title say, Why We Can’t Wait .

I had it out on my desk in class one day back in teacher’s college. I pick it out at the library. You know, you hear bits and pieces about what the negroes in America is doing, striking and sitting down and thing, but I needed to know more.

The teacher come by and she tap my book. This why you didn’t do so well on the last test, Neville?

But I get an 80.

Oh, excuse me. I took it from your earlier work that you’re not the type of student who is fine with an 80. My mistake. Careful with this stuff you reading, Neville. Careful.

I take it back to the library that day and I ain’t read it till I get to America and realize everybody reading these books. Teachers assigning it in class. People talking about The Communist Manifesto and thing. Howard was real. That afternoon when I take it back to the library, I supposed to go play cricket, but when I get to the library, I see the book. The Book. The fires burning on the cover. Like an animated thing, you know. Like the whole table on fire, and when I sit down the flames start to speak the pages. Three Insurrections . I have a cricket match, you know, but who could remember cricket staring at all that beauty? I miss the damn game to read the book. All the insurrections sewn together like a beautiful garment on each page. The Haitians have a insurrection. The Riverbabies — the Cross Riverians — they have an insurrection. And there is one to come and it’s mentioned with the ones that happen like it’s a piece of threaded gold passing through the garment. I don’t see my name, but I see me. I see you and you don’t even exist. You just a vague daydream in the back of the mind of two people who was on the same island, but ain’t meet till they travel thousands of miles to go Howard. You was just a sperm that’s fifteen-plus years from being manufactured and an egg resting inside your mother.

Something make me left that book in the library, though. Maybe it was too much to take, the way it make my mind spin and spin. I wish to hell I had grab it and run. From then on, Cross River is burn in my brain. I never thought too much about what’s to happen with me next. I knew I ain’t want to stay teaching forever. Some people expect me to come headmaster like Daddy, take over where he left off, but that’s not who I am, I knew that. Whenever I think about the future after that day in the library, I hear Cross River whispering behind my thoughts. Maybe it’s always been there. I don’t know. I wouldn’t doubt it.

But what kind of people is this? I think. These Cross River folks bloody they masters and live free like they not afraid. The book talk about the Haitians too, but I hear about them plenty. The Cross River negroes is new to me. I see my island in a footnote. Some Cross Riverians set off through the Americas, trying to export insurrection. Some even settle in Trinidad, the beauty just hold them, even though they have slaves all over to free. I don’t know much about our history before Daddy. Maybe we come from Cross River? How I know our people ain’t take part in the Great Insurrection? And that is what draw me and your mother to our homeland, Cross River. Maybe. Who knows, is all I’m saying, Kin.

Something about this book, Kin, you don’t read it. You read it, but it make you live it, like a dream. I come a Haitian that day, and then I come a Cross Riverian. And just like a dream I live that third insurrection too, but when I close the book, when I leave the library, I forget what it’s like in the third insurrection, and then I must spend the rest of my life chasing it down.

After I read it, I say to Alton, This happen somewhere in America.

I sit there and retell the Cross River part of the book as if I make it up right there. I wasn’t sure I didn’t.

They burn down the plantation and kill they masters dead, I say. Boy, they ain’t teach us none of that up St. Mary’s, oui. And I suspect they not going to teach it to you neither.

Alton nod, from politeness more so than interest. When all this happen? he ask me, but I can tell he not that concerned with my answer.

Back in the 1800s, I say. Early part. I go go back to the library tomorrow and get that book for you. They call it the Great Insurrection. Got a town standing to this day in America. They ain’t never shut it down. I have to get you that book, boy.

Alton make he lips so and turn from me like he can’t be seen with a liar.

The librarian shrug when I go back. It not on the shelf. No record of it ever being in the library, she say.

You sure? I ask.

Perhaps it was a patron’s, she tell me. But I don’t think it was. I look for it in bookshops off Eastern Main Road. Every time I see a bookshop, I look for it. When I get to Howard, I dig through the library stacks in search of it. I still look for it to this day. Now we got the Internet, and I look for it there too, but no dice, Kin.

The smoke from behind that Safeway, I think it like what I experience when I read the book. You look at me crazy, Kin. When you ever know me to not be rational? I studied chemistry when I was at Howard. I’m a man of science, but you can’t tell a feeling nothing about science.

Them people in the crowd start to pelt one set of bricks and rocks and thing at the Safeway, and then when they finish they swarm like a crowd of ants. I ain’t hear no sirens in the distance. It occur to me I ain’t see not one cop. Later they send the National Guard to lock down the streets, but D.C. belong to us right then.

I think about turning around, leaving the place to the people and they anger. Come back to the Safeway only when I need bread and milk. But the book. The book is the thing.

Someone pull me. A woman. A young woman. Come on, she say. Come on. Don’t stand there. Come on.