‘Uncle Zhang, ’im fi yu papa?’
‘None of yu business.’
I turn. Walk off. Him follow. Then I spin ’round real sudden and I scream right in his face, ‘Ahhhhhh!’ But him just stand there. Not even flinch. Not even bat an eye. So I turn ’round and carry on walk and him follow.
Later on, is me look out for him. Is me dawdling so him can catch up. Is me bring him glass of lemonade I get from Mr Fung. Is me give him rice and sausage I get from Madame Leung. When we get back to Matthews Lane I stop at the gate and say, ‘What your name?’
‘Hampton Stokes. Tilly me big sista.’
So that was Hampton, and after that him come ’round with me most days excepting when him sister need him to go do something for her. All the time him keep asking me ‘How old you is?’ and I tell him it don’t matter. But it seem to matter to him because him keep asking and asking. So one day I tell him, ‘I was born on the second moon of gui-you, jia-zi in the year of the rat,’ but it don’t mean nothing to him. So I say, ‘How old is you?’ and him tell me fourteen. So I say, ‘Same as me, fourteen.’
Then one day Hampton tell me him got a cousin little older than him name Neville Finley that want to meet me. ‘What for?’ I ask him.
‘Him just want to meet you, man. Any crime in that?’
So one Sunday Hampton take me over to East Kingston to the house where it turn out him live with him sister, Tilly. Miss Tilly seem like she sweet on me already and I don’t hardly know her. All I do every day is say, ‘Good morning, Miss Tilly, and how are you this morning?’ or ‘Good evening, Miss Tilly, have a good night.’ That is it, but all of a sudden she wrapping herself ’round the porch post and giving me some half-toothless smile I ain’t never seen the like of before. Hampton start grinning to himself, so I lean over to him and whisper, ‘She too old for me, man,’ and him laugh out loud so god knows what Miss Tilly think I say to him.
Then him take me by the hand and lead me ’round the back to some old shack of a outhouse he say is his palace. Well it is nothing but a rickety old shed, with a creaking door and open rafters in the ceiling. So I look up and I say to him, ‘Yu nuh, if we fix up the door and put some boarding up there we can use it to store things.’
‘Store what things?’
‘I dunno.’
Right then the door fling open and this tall wiry thing is standing there. Hampton go over to him and give him a 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
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’.