Pao

hug. I look at the two of them standing there together and I think, well Hampton got a baby face but him not bad looking and him broad and strong. But the other one, him face look like a horse. I don’t say nothing but Hampton see the look on me and him start jumping and screaming like a jackass. Him laugh so much the tears running down his face. ‘Go on,’ him say to me. ‘What you think me cousin look like?’

Well a thing like that wasn’t for me to say. But Hampton keep going, ‘Go on, go on,’ till in the end I say, ‘He look like he could judge a good horse.’ This send Hampton spinning and turning and holding on to him belly like it going to bust.

‘Horse judge! Man, that is good. What you think of that, Neville?’

And Neville Finley just say, ‘I think your friend can recognise a man of wisdom.’

So after that me, Hampton and Judge Finley start go ’round together. Xiuquan not interested, in fact Xiuquan not interested in anything. He don’t hardly even want to leave the house. He don’t want to do the chores Zhang give him to do, and sometimes it seem like he don’t even like Zhang that much. Him got some big problem ’bout being in Jamaica. All he talk about is how he going leave, which Zhang don’t want to hear, so not that much pass between them.

When I ask him ’bout it he just say nobody ask him if he want to come to Jamaica. Nobody ask him if he want Zhang to replace his father or take over his life, treating him like a child when he is already a man. A man capable of looking after his own mother. Nobody ask him if he want to become some two-bit hoodlum.

‘Zhang not no two-bit hoodlum. What make you want to talk ’bout him like that? He done nothing but look out for us and look after Ma.’

‘Yu think he looking out for us or yu think he looking out for himself? Looking out for who going look after him when he get too old to be lord of the street.’

I can’t believe Xiuquan saying this to me.

‘If we stayed in China you would most likely be dead by now.’

‘Well maybe I would be better off dead than having to watch every day while my mother run after some man she hardly know, and feel grateful to him for bringing us here to this country where the only decent job a Chinese man can have is to become a shopkeeper and where the black man only look at you when he want something and kiss his teeth as soon as he turn his back.’

‘They not all like that.’

‘They not all like that? Yu busy defending yu little friends? Well you wait and see what your friends do when the trouble really get bad.’

But I not paying Xiuquan no mind. Me and Finley and Hampton still just carry on go everywhere together. Up and down every street in Chinatown like we own it. Into any shop or bar or any kind of place, barber’s, grocer’s, baker’s. We eat for free and we take what we want. People step aside when them see us coming. We big men now. It feel good but Zhang say, ‘You boys make sure you don’t wear out these people’s patience’; and another time him say to me, ‘Don’t think more of yourself than a decent man ought to.’

Then one day the three of us take some bicycles and go over Rockfort way for a swim. Coming back we riding nice and fine till we turn into North Parade and run into some big protest gone bad. There was people running every which way and a whole load of screaming and hollering, and police and soldiers. I even think I hear some gunshot. It get so dangerous we just have to get off the bicycles and leave them.

Later on when I see Zhang him say to me, ‘See you ride bicycle today. Turn corner but not put out hand. And because you not put out hand, truck get into trouble and run up on sidewalk and kill baby. And mother so shock she scream and cry and fall down in the street. So husband get worried and pick her up to shake her. But policeman think man beating wife so he arrest him and take him to the police station.’

‘All that happen?’

‘No, but it better if you put out your hand.’

4

Doctrine

So what with all him bicycle talk I never get a chance to tell Zhang ’bout the commotion, and how the dockworkers bring the whole of downtown to a standstill. But it no matter. Next day it all over town ’bout how Alexander Bustamante get arrested because they think he the one leading the strike, and how the English government probably going send a commissioner to look into the disturbances , that is how they say it, even though nobody can see no point in that because everybody already know what the trouble is – no work, no food, and no hope that anything going get any better.

Zhang say it not the Jamaicans’ fault, they just hungry. He say the British set the slaves free but they didn’t give them no education or training or any jobs other than the same ones they was doing on the plantation all them years for nothing. Plus after emancipation the British plantation owners go get themselves thousands of Indian and Chinese labourers so the ex-slaves not got no jobs and now all of them just trying to scratch a living outta nothing.

And even though a lot of the disturbance is against the Chinese, Zhang say it not about them and us. Zhang say Marcus Garvey is only concerned about the African, but the African’s plight is the plight of the poor man everywhere. He like that word ‘plight’. Just like it is the plight of the Chinese peasant ‘who is right now fighting for liberty, equality and fraternity’. Zhang say Garvey right ’bout one thing though: ‘the people will never be free as long as they are colonised by a foreign power.’ Zhang say the Jamaicans same as the Chinese, poor and exploited and oppressed. He say we are ‘brothers in arms’.

Every night Zhang tell us ’bout the revolution. How the British smuggle opium into China, and how the Chinese fight to stop it, but the British send armed forces and warships, and we lose. And then afterwards we have to pay them everything we got in war indemnities, and they still carry on with the opium anyway. Zhang say the revolution is a war between ‘an army of workers and peasants determined to overthrow the feudal warlords and foreign powers; and the imperialists and counter-revolutionaries who wish to suppress them’. That is how Zhang talk.

Then one day me and the boys sitting on some empty orange crate on the corner of Barry Street trying to catch some shade when Hampton look across the street and say, ‘That bwoy well out of his jurisdiction,’ which start me and Judge Finley laughing.

Finley say, ‘Where you get a word like that, bwoy?’

And Hampton lean over to him and say, ‘Is the wrong word?’ which set me and Finley off laughing even more.

I look over and see some skinny white boy standing outside the post office trying to look mean.

‘Is a white boy?’

‘No,’ Hampton say, ‘him just like to think so. Him papa white, but his mama just some whore from West Kingston.’

‘What, a real whore?’

‘They all whores, man.’

‘So who he is?’

‘Him called Louis DeFreitas, fancy himself a big-time gangster, but him nothing but a punk.’

I turn to Judge Finley, ‘You know him?’

‘Not as such. I know about him. I know him got a gang in West Kingston.’

Then Hampton jump in, ‘Him got a gang alright, but him don’t have no inheritance.’

I look at Finley but him don’t say nothing, so I say to Hampton, ‘What you talking ’bout inheritance ?’

‘God will forgive me for saying this, but when Uncle Zhang gone all of this is yours, man.’ And him extend both arms, palms turned up to the sky. ‘Your brother don’t have it in him. Yu going to be the man. Everybody know it. I know it the first time I clapped eyes on your scrawny ass that day yu land at the dock. Uncle know it too. I can tell