After Edward Seaga get elected in 1980 things get better, but his government couldn’t grow the economy enough for people’s liking so by 1989 Michael Manley was back in power. But him older now, more circumspect, and I think the fire had gone.
Then I start to think that maybe it wasn’t just from Manley that the fire had gone. It was gone outta me as well. And maybe it was gone outta Jamaica. It was almost like the whole island move into a different phase of life. We live through our turbulent youth and come out the other side. And that other side was a place of acceptance. Not a place of contentment, it didn’t feel as happy or as comfortable as that. Maybe it was a place of resignation. We become resigned to how things was, and we just decide to try do our best with that.
It wasn’t a bad place to be. We had a kinda truce now that put a stop to the violence, and encourage back the foreign investors and the tourists. There was less talk of Africa and the Rasta revolution, less prophesising ’bout how Babylon was going to fall. Some said that instead of hope there was surrender. Me I just think that maybe we miss our chance, and I remember how many times Zhang say to me that people were against communism because they pronounce the word wrong, that if they pronounce it right they would feel better about it. He would say, ‘Emphasis not at beginning like comm-unism. Emphasis in middle, commune-ism.’
And even though we still struggling to sort ourselves out after the English come here three hundred years ago and set everything up so careful and tidy – Africans on the bottom, the Indians, the Chinese, English on top – I think we doing OK. But I wonder to myself how many other countries there are like Jamaica? How many other countries been through what we been through? How many of them still going through it like us? All because some long time back somebody decide to pick themselves up and sail halfway ’round the world to come colonise us. And it not just about the English and the slaves. It about the Americans and the money.
So one Sunday I go take a drive to see Michael and I stop off at Holy Trinity on the way. I park the car under the shade of a mango tree and go inside. The church practically empty. It surprise me. Every other time I been there the place was busting at the seams, all the pews packed and a whole heap of people standing, some of them all cram together at the back. The sun shining down on the altar, and hanging on the wall behind it a life-size carving of Christ on the cross and, above that, a stain-glass window of the same thing in blue and red and yellow.
But this Sunday there was just a few young people getting them First Communion, in a heavy heat because the ceiling fans wasn’t doing a thing to help. So people was sitting there fanning themselves and listening to the priest tell the young people that now they received the body of Christ, Christ was inside them and they should behave like Christ. That people interpret everything from within the worldview they have, and therefore they cannot understand another perspective unless they suspend their own past experience and what they think they know, and seek to understand what they see. And that Christ would help them to do that, like a uncle or godfather.
Afterwards, when I see Michael, I give him the envelope I bring for him. He take it and look at me and say, ‘What is this?’
‘That is the arrangements for my funeral.’
‘Your funeral!’
‘I reckon it time I sort a few things out. I not going live for ever.’
When he go to open it I stop him. ‘There will be plenty of time for that when it happen. You can let the glue rest till then.’
Him look at me sorta quizzical so I say, ‘I feel like I come to a new place what with Zhang and Ma and Henry and Cicely gone. And then a while back I had to go ask a man for a favour. A man that I distrusted my whole life. And I discover that maybe my life don’t have to be all ducking and weaving and manoeuvring. Maybe I could afford to take my foot off the gas, especially after I get a fright about how all of this could end, and manage to make it through OK. So I think it time for me to count my blessings and stop reaching after something that maybe was nothing more than a idea I had about myself. Maybe it time I just be who I am and settle for something that is real.’ And then I laugh and say, ‘That is till the time when the Almighty make up his mind to come for me.’
Michael just sit there and look at me kindly like him taking confession. And then I say, ‘I get a letter from Mui. She going come home. She done with all the excitement of them big important cases that keeping her busy this last little while and she say it time she come home and make herself useful. After all these years, eh? Anyway, I thought you would want to know if she not already tell you herself, that is.’
And right then I think to myself I glad I keep the knife and little notebook for her. Maybe when she come home she can decide what she want to do ’bout Helena Meacham.