8
The year after Xiuquan gone to America Zhang tell me he want to stop.
‘I have lost two Yangs. Yang Tzu to glory and the revolution and Yang Xiuquan to the Americans and their war. I am tired, Pao. This business is not for old men like me.’
I reckon he think it was a new era because in 1944 Jamaica get a new constitution giving us representative government and they decide to call a general election so everybody was running round excited to go vote for the first time. So maybe Zhang think it was my time as well. My time to come of age. I take over little bit by bit, so that by the time the war end in 1945, and they say I turn twenty-one, I had complete control of Chinatown. And that was when it hit me. That after all these years I wasn’t playing at this thing no more. I was responsible.
Next thing Miss Tilly get herself a man and she want Hampton to move outta the house. Zhang say it OK Hampton can come live at Matthews Lane, so he move into the room next to Zhang. And this is when I discover how come Hampton so big and strong because when him move in him bring a tiny little bag with his things and a whole heap a iron that he set up in the yard so that every day he is busy doing bench and curl, and clean and jerk.
But then Tilly say she want all the surplus move outta her outhouse as well, and even though we have the storeroom at Matthews Lane Zhang say he don’t want the surplus in the yard. So me and Hampton have to go find somewhere to put it.
We rent a shop in West Street. It is a dark, rundown wreck of a place but it cheap and it have a big, dry storeroom out the back. We got no intention of turning our hand to shopkeeping but we reckon with a little fix-up and a lick of paint we can make a nice office away from Matthews Lane.
The only problem is we have to put something on the shelves to make it at least look like we in business. So we have to go buy some things because the surplus we have in the storeroom we can’t put out on the shelf like that in broad daylight. Well that is OK but we don’t want to put out so much stuff so we actually start attract business, not that there is much likelihood of that in a place like West Street. So we balance it out. Every now and again we get a vagrant come by and we have to give him something to scram. The whole thing work out right in the end.
Now me and Hampton and the Judge down there most days eating oysters and drinking beer. We still have Zhang’s weekly pick-up ’round Chinatown, and his pai-ke-p’iao business, which is good because Chin and the Chinatown Committee not looking after us like the way they do with Zhang in the beginning. Chin say that was a long time ago and a different sort of arrangement. Now we have to make our own way. So we got Bill, and now we have a Chinaman at a chicken farm in Red Hills telling his boss the chickens weigh four pounds when they weigh six and doing all sort of calculations over how many eggs he got; and we driving chickens and eggs all over town and taking our cut.
So business is good and we just beginning to think that maybe we should be hiring up some help, and that was when she turn up. Gloria. And everything that start with her start.
9
The thing that play on my mind right after that night I go to tell Gloria about the wedding was how come she already know ’bout me marrying Fay. There wasn’t but three days between me asking Miss Cicely and me going to tell Gloria, but when I get there she already know all about it, I think it curious as is only me and Miss Cicely in the picture, apart from maybe Fay if Miss Cicely bother to mention it to her and I couldn’t see Fay going to Gloria with the news. So anyway I decide I going go ask Gloria but I dunno how to do it. I reckon I wait till Tuesday come round. That way she have the whole of the weekend to think on it and Tuesday is my regular day anyway. So I just bide my time and think that when Tuesday afternoon come I will just turn up on the doorstep like I do every week because my time with Gloria is Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon, and then Friday evening when I go make my collection but that is just business.
I dunno why it like that. It seem to me that Monday, Wednesday and Friday would make better sense. But it no matter what I think. My days is fixed just the way Gloria want it so that is how it is.
So Tuesday coming and I can’t decide whether to go over there or not. I don’t want to go in case she don’t want to see me. But I don’t want to not go in case she think I not interested. I don’t want her to start think that now I going marry Fay being with her, Gloria, don’t mean nothing to me. I hope she know that she mean more to me than that even though I can’t marry her. And then I start think what do I mean to her? She got so many men coming and going maybe she just think I one of them. One of them stupid, clumsy, good-for-nothing oaf that she and the girls always joking and laughing about when they gone. But I don’t think she see me that way. After all she even tell me I didn’t have to pay if I didn’t want to, but that no seem right to me. It would seem like I was taking advantage because I think she only say it to me because of the protection we providing. But then I think I must mean something more than that to her because if I didn’t she wouldn’t have react the way she done when I tell her ’bout Fay. She would have just shrug her shoulder and say pour a drink so I can make you a toast. But she didn’t do that, so that must tell me something.
When Tuesday come, I go. I knock at the door and after some long time she finally turn up and open it. She look at me, sorta up and down, and she just shut the door. She never even say a word to me. She just leave me standing there on the porch when she turn back and go inside. And looking at the closed door like that, I realise I wasn’t going ask her nothing that day.
When Thursday come I can’t make up my mind what to do. Is she testing me? Is she wanting me to show her how sorry I am? Maybe she want to teach me a lesson or maybe she just nuh ready. But the last thing I can afford to do is look like I don’t care, so I go.
Gloria open the door and step back inside. And she just stand there looking at me. So I ease past her and step into the living room. And after a little while she walk out. I reckon she gone go make the tea so I sit down on the sofa and make myself look as prim and sorrowful as I can. I keep both my feet on the ground with my knees together and my hands in my lap so I don’t take up too much space even though I am the only one sitting there. Then I start look ’round the room and I think how masculine it look considering there is only four women a live here. So I try figure out what make it look that way, and I realise that there isn’t one single ornament in the place. Not a picture on the wall. Nothing. It like the place strip down apart from the two sofas and a coffee table, and some Venetian blind at the window and the bar in the corner. And I think how different this look from the back room that I have dinner in that very first time I come here. And how the spirit of this room sorta still and empty apart from the little breeze that is coming through the window. And how different it feel compared to that night in the back room when the four of them was singing and dancing and talking ’bout Bustamante setting up the Jamaica Labour Party. And how the life in them and their energy and their spirit lift up the place. Sitting here in this stagnant room it didn’t seem like that other thing could even be possible. I start to wonder how come I never notice before what this room was like. Never notice before the sadness in it. And I realise that every other time I was in the room it was full of men and music and liquor. And when it wasn’t that it was me and tea and Gloria. And right then I wasn’t looking at no wall to see they not got no picture on. All I was looking at was her.