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
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
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