Authors: Nick Lake
He crossed worlds and time, and he was a boy, and loud music was playing – except he thought perhaps it was all in his head – and a man was saying something in English that Toussaint could not understand, and the notes and beats of the music were like a scream of furious anger, like a murder made sound.
I’m trying to remember all the words to
Ready to Die
by the Notorious B.I.G. – Biggie Smalls, they also call him. He’s got two names, like I do. I don’t know what his real name is. Was. He’s dead now, just like Biggie, who took his name.
I have my own real name, but I stopped being called that when I started rolling with Biggie and Route 9. Then I became just Shorty, cos that’s what Biggie called me. It means kid, and it means small, too. That’s about right, I guess. I was the youngest in the crew.
Taking a name is dangerous shit, cos you can bring down a person’s fate on you – Biggie learned that his ownself when he got gunned down just like Biggie Smalls.
But Biggie was proud to be called Biggie. He was always mouthing off about the East Coast Crew, about Tupac, all this stupid bullshit from a country he had never been to. He said someone got to carry on that legacy, someone got to represent. When he wasn’t listening to his own songs, he was always listening to Biggie Smalls, especially
Ready to Die
. Over and over. It makes me mad that I can’t remember all the words, cos I must’ve heard those songs, like, a thousand times. The Notorious B.I.G. was a gangster before he was a rapper, and I think Biggie learned how to be a gangster from these songs, at least in some ways.
I got the first verse down, so now I try and remember the second one. This song, it’s like it’s in my blood, in my brain cells. It’s from songs like this that I learned English. This is the verse where Biggie Smalls talks about getting a Lexus, getting a Rolex, getting paid. I always knew a Lexus was a car, cos I saw a couple of them on the road to the airport, but when I was younger I thought a Rolex was a car, too. Tintin laughed when I told him that, called me a cretin. But you think Tintin ever saw a Rolex in his whole goddamn life? You do, you’re a fool.
I’m trying to remember the words so I don’t lose my mind, all that shit about having a Glock, about making all the mother fuckers duck, but the third verse I can’t remember.
Last time I slept I dreamed I was in a marsh, riding a horse. I’ve never ridden a horse in my life, but I was riding it easy. And I saw this old man, I think he was a houngan cos his place was like the truck that Biggie’s houngan lived in. He called me Toussaint and spoke about Ogou Badagry, who Biggie wanted on his side when we went to war.
It was crazy, but it was like I knew everything that Toussaint was, everything he knew. How he’d learned medicine from his father. How his wife’s eyes had been the precise color of polished amber at dusk. How Toussaint knew what that looked like – amber, I mean – cos his master used a piece of it as a paperweight in his study.
I forgot most of it when I woke up, but I remember those things. And it freaks me out, cos I don’t even know what a paperweight is. And I’d never seen shit that was made out of amber, but still I can picture that paperweight in my mind, see the bubbles in the yellowy stone.
You feel me? So now I think, maybe I’m losing my shit, cos I can’t be Toussaint l’Ouverture – that would be crazy. I keep telling myself I’m just dreaming, that I’m remembering this stuff cos Biggie was always talking about Toussaint, how he was just an illiterate slave who learned to read and write, and how he destroyed the French navy, how he was the hero who made us free. Sometimes he said that Dread Wilmè was Toussaint l’Ouverture born again, but as I lay there in the darkness after waking up I thought, no, that’s not Dread – or maybe it was Dread once, but not anymore – that’s
me
, I’m Toussaint. But then I made myself stop thinking that, cos it’s completely mad, completely crazy.
Me, I never saw the big deal with Toussaint, anyway. I never thought we were so free as all that in the Site. We couldn’t get out, except if we had a pass. We had soldiers guarding us, and the people were starving. I thought that made us kind of like slaves, but if anything Biggie had more of a hard-on for Toussaint than for Biggie Smalls, so I kept my mouth shut.
Yeah, I say to myself. You’re remembering this stuff from Biggie.
But then I think, no. Biggie never said nothing about a paperweight made of amber, and besides, I don’t even know what amber is.
So then I’ve gone round in a circle, and I’m back to the start. I’m going mad with the darkness and the loneliness. The hand has stopped crawling toward me, making that rustling sound, and I think it was only doing that in my imagination to begin with. There’s nobody else here. Just me. No wonder my mind is spinning out, making up this story for when I’m sleeping, and I try not to let myself think the worst thing – there’s a part of me that’s looking forward to going to sleep again, so I can see what happens next.
I get bored of saying the words to songs, so I sit and crack my knuckles instead. It makes a sound like guns going off a long way away. I wish I could see something. Anything. I wish I could see my hands. If I could see, I wouldn’t feel so crazy.
I need to think about something, anything, so I think about Biggie. Yeah, Biggie. The mofo named himself after a dead gangster, like that was a good idea, like that was good luck.
Biggie, the first time I saw him, he was standing by Dread Wilmè’s right-hand side, and that’s not just an expression, man – that shit means something. It meant he was the second-biggest gangster in Solèy 19, the general who carried out all of Dread’s black ops. And Dread got his orders from Aristide, so that made Biggie part of the government in the Site, almost.
We were in some shack somewhere, cos Dread was always moving around to avoid the militia who wanted to bring down Aristide’s government. One of his guys found me and Manman in Papa’s boat, brought us to see him. This was, I don’t know, a few months after Papa got killed and Marguerite went missing. Dread, he was sitting on the bed, a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, his dreads hanging over his face – you didn’t see Dread’s face till he wanted you to see it. There was a smell of unwashed clothes in the air. Manman and me, we were trying not to look at the young men standing around us with guns.
Dread was younger than you would think – thirty, maybe. He had this music on when we came in, not rap like Biggie liked, but some real old Haitian stuff, maybe vodou songs. Dread wasn’t looking at us, just reading some book. Biggie was standing next to him, only I didn’t know he was Biggie then, if that makes sense. I just knew he looked cool, with his baseball cap and his low jeans, his underwear showing. I guess he was only fourteen, maybe fifteen.
Dread still didn’t look up, but he tossed the book at me and my hands flashed out and I caught it.
— Read the third page, he said.
I fumbled with the book, got it open.
— Toussaint was a slave, yes, but he was a man of noble countenance and –
— Good, said Dread.
He looked up for the first time and I saw that his eyes were huge and black, like windows into something bad, like his soul was older than I could imagine, only not in a good way like Marguerite’s. In a scary way.
— I heard you could read and I didn’t hear wrong, he continued. Your papa raised you right.
Manman did this, like, half-choke, half-sob thing, and I looked down at the ground.
— I’m sorry, said Dread. I’ve heard about what happened to your husband. To your papa. Dread took a cell phone from his pocket and waved it at us. I’ve spoken to Aristide. He agrees with me. We’re going to give you a house here in Solèy 19. We’ll look after you, keep you away from those anti-government fuckers. And we’ll send you to school.
— Oh, thank you, thank you, said Manman. There were tears on her cheeks. Merci, Dread.
— Don’t thank me, he said. Thank the prime minister.
I turned to Manman.
— What about Marguerite? I asked.
Manman swallowed, then nodded at me. She took a step forward and put her hands together, like she was praying.
— Dread, you know I’ve been Lavalas all my life. Aristide, he delivered my children.
— We know, said Dread. That’s why we want to do right by you, keep you protected.
— So, said Manman, the men who killed my husband, they . . . took my daughter. She’s the same age as my son – they’re twins. We . . . I . . . we need her back. Will you look for her?
Dread, he looked at her slow for a moment before he stood up and took her hands. I saw how big he was then. He reached the ceiling and it was like the room was too small to contain him, like anything would be too small to contain him. There were scars on his face and his neck, like someone had tried to remove his head.
— We’ll try, he said. He turned to the guy next to him. Biggie, he said. And that was how I heard Biggie’s name for the first time. Take them to their house, he told him. And make sure the boy receives an education.
At that moment, I didn’t see the guns, I only saw the book I was holding, which I handed back to Dread.
— No, said Dread. Keep it. Read it. That book will open your mind, tell you how the Haitians rose up to throw off the yoke of oppression, man. These people who want to remove Aristide, they want to make us slaves again. Truth. Read that book, maybe you can help fight them better.
— Thank you, I said.
You know what? I never did read that book. I think I lost it, maybe, when we moved. I was thinking so hard about my papa, and about Marguerite and whether we would see her again, that I forgot all about it.
Right now, I wish to fuck I had read it.
My mind drifts off, and I start to think about vodou. Toussaint, he went to see a houngan, talked about some thing that was inside him. I saw a houngan once, too – right before Biggie shot him – and he said I was half a person. I thought vodou was bullshit back then, a lie for people who wanted to feel safe. I thought it when Dread was burned, and I thought it afterward, too.
Biggie was different. Biggie thought that cos of the bone dust the houngan had sprinkled on him bullets couldn’t kill him. Like I said, I thought that was about the stupidest thing ever.
But now I’m not so sure. I’ve seen Biggie talk to me, bullet holes all through him, like a bowl for draining vegetables. And I’ve seen . . . I don’t know what I’ve seen. I’ve seen myself flying through the night air and rushing down and going into the mouth of a man, and then I was dreaming of Toussaint. I think, maybe there’s something to this vodou stuff after all.
I reach into my pocket and I take out my pwen. I hadn’t really thought about it till that moment. Dread Wilmè gave it to me. It’s a stone with a god in it, from the old country. A gede lwa, one of our ancestors. It’s meant to protect me, so I think, well, now is the time. I hold it in my hand. It’s smooth, round. It’s like it came from the sea it’s so polished. I thought it didn’t work when I got shot in the arm and ended up in here. But now I think, what if it stopped me getting shot in the heart? Or in the head?
I lift the pwen to my ear.
— Tell me, lwa, I say. Tell me if there’s a way out.
Nothing.
I hold the stone tight. I ask it for strength. I ask it to stop me going mad. I ask it to find me food. My stomach is a tiny curled-up thing, like a cat, and it’s got claws that dig into me. My mouth is a desert that stretches miles in every direction. My stomach is a creature hurting me from the inside.
The pwen is silent, but I’m feeling its smoothness with my fingers and I have another thought. I put the stone in my mouth and I suck it, and there’s, like, a firework burst in front of my eyes, even though there’s no light. Saliva runs down my throat, and I swear it’s like I’m drinking a glass of cold water, even though there is no water.
I think, maybe the pwen will save my life after all. I take the stone out of my mouth and I say:
— Thank you, lwa.
Then I suck it again.
I’m glad I didn’t give the pwen to Tintin. Right now, it feels like it’s saving my life. I know it’s just a stone and all I’m drinking is my own spit, but there’s a little part of me that believes something different – there’s a little part of me that thinks the stone is giving me water, keeping me alive.
I told you I saw two men killed before my eyes by the time I was eleven years old.
This is how it happened the second time.
I was, like, one month from my eleventh birthday. Manman and me, we’d been living on our own for 877 days, and I’d been going to school on Dread Wilmè’s dime, while Manman had been doing I don’t know what for Lavalas. Only, that got harder, cos in between Papa dying and this time I’m talking about now, Aristide got kicked out of the country for, like, the third time, and you can imagine how happy Lavalas were about that.
I was playing again, but alone this time. I was in the middle of our street, trying to build a bike. I’d seen one on a TV which someone had set up in one of the squares in the Site, so that people could sit on the ground and watch it. I’d found a couple of wheels from old prams, and some chains and other parts that were on the trash heap. I spent hours on that bike and never had much to show for it.