A Short Story By Edmund Narine
“Everybody blaming the government for crime, but nobody looking at what they as individuals doing about crime. Crime is not only the government problem, crime is everybody problem.” Peter Nemiah Muckup chaired the meeting. Dressed in big red Art Smart tailored shirt, he spoke loudly, as if to an audience in Woodford Square, and not to the four people, one woman and three men, who sat indignant, eager to hear Nemiah’s plan for combating crime in Gorilla Crescent, a small village on the outskirts of Port of Spain. Jacob Tacka, Nemiah’s tenant and father of nine, was moved to speak up.
“I addressing crime in my own way, Mr. Chairman. But I ain’t getting help from the government. In fact, instead of the government helping me up they helping me down. I cut Freddie ass for stealing four Julie Mango from Miss St. Rose, and you know what, is I the police come looking for. Child abuse they say! For straightening out a upcoming thief!”
“But Mr. Taka, you should understand the government’s position on child abuse. The government recognizes that a beaten child models his behavior on his beating parents, and so, generation after generation, instead of curbing their children’s behavior with licks, by beating the children the parents perpetuate the violence that we, even at this moment, are trying to cure.”
“Well said, Mr. Hardeed!” Chairman Nemiah tapped the table in agreement. His wife, Alice, the lone woman in the audience, clapped and murmured a half-dozen self-satisfying ‘Amens!’” Mr. Taka appeared bewildered. Like Mr. Forthright, Alice Muckup and Mr. Taka, Mr. Hardeed sat in the first row of five metal folding chairs with the other forty five empty seats at his rear.
“All I saying is that that is my little way of tackling crime; my contribution to solving this massive crime situation in Trinidad. ‘Bend the tree while it young.’ That is what the old people say. It was true yesterday and it is true today,” Mr. Taka said.
“I feel a different way,” Mr. Fortright said. He lived in the four bedroom house at the village entrance, the one with the high, white stucco wall crowned with blazing warratal rocks. He was a geologist, and to villagers that explained the unusual wall. “We should tackle crime from the bottom up and not from the top down as we are now doing.”
“Meaning what?” Chairman Nemiah said. “I mean, that is what we are doing here. The government fighting at the top and we fighting at the bottom, is that what you mean?”
“Yes and no. The government fighting, but they should fight different. Take for example the condition of mothers, especially young mothers, or the old people situation. I know resources are available for greater help. They should be treated much better.”
Mr. Hardeed stopped picking his teeth, a look of consternation upon his face. He had heard this defense before, what he described as liberal refuse fit only for the Labasse. “You mean the government should pamper people who instead of taking responsibility totally ignore it and then blame the government?” Mr. Hardeed said. He lived at Santa Rosa Heights and owned a haberdashery business on Charlotte Street. Scouting the constituency for occasions to meet and address groups of people, he had stumbled on Nemiah’s ‘Crime Watch’ meeting and arrived on time.
“You talking about young mothers or you talking about old people….?”
“Both, Mr. Forthright,” Mr. Hardeed snapped. He was a no-nonsense Tobagonian and a mirror image of the Diego Martin West Parliamentary representative whom he sought to replace. “Young mothers don’t have to get pregnant!” He swiveled in his seat and addressed Mr. Forthright directly. “They choose to get pregnant. For them responsibility is a four letter word. Do it and let somebody else take the responsibility, and that somebody else is the same government that the opposition beating up on like a Good Friday Bobolee and saying the government could do more.” He turned and addressed Chairman Nemiah. “The government building thousands of houses, you know, and they saying the Government should build more.”
“And what about old people?” Mr. Forthright wanted to know, disgust for Mr. Hardeed showing on his face.
“Well, old people is a horse of a different colour.”
Mr. Hardeed crossed his legs, straightened his tie and addressed Chairman Nemiah.
“You know, Mr. Chairman, you have people in this country that never lay a hand on a shovel?” he said with incredulity. “Never lay a hand on a shovel! Some play card, some sleep late, some smoke weed, all some do is drink rum – and thanks to this government some drinking whisky, drinking Double Dog like water today! They too proud to work.”
Mr. Hardeed paused. He eyeballed the participants for signs of agreement. And, except for Mr. Forthright, nodding heads told him he had it. He smirked and continued his diatribe against the poor.
“When you say “Work!” is like you cuss they mother, boy. Imagine that! Work for them is not pride in standing on one’s feet; work is a four letter word, something you do to them instead of something you do for them. And so after thirty, forty, fifty years they retire with nothing to show for it except nine children, nineteen grandchildren, and no pension. That is their fault, man.”
On Mr. Taka’s face bewilderment turned to outrage, a condition that once made him chop off the right hand of a man. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “that sound like Mr. Hardeed talking to me and the nine children I make – I work! I pay rent! I feed my wife and children!”
Mr. Hardeed had blundered. He was at the meeting to praise the Prime Minister and defend the Government with the hope that the Prime Minister would hear of his efforts and choose him to be the candidate for the Diego Martin West constituency seat- a sure win for whomever the Prime Minister chose. Mr. Hardeed was apologetic. He uncrossed his legs and addressed Mr. Taka directly.
“You try, Mr. Taka, you try. You work hard. You take care of your family. I don’t mean people like you,” Mr. Hardeed blundered on.
“But that is all he can do,” Mr. Forthright moved to Mr. Taka’s defense. He had experienced the plight of the poor in Gorilla Crescent, the overcrowded houses, the lack of recreation, the nightly gunfire, and the early morning pickups of dead young black men. He had attended both Mr. Taka’s sons’ funerals and as a result had become acquainted with Mr. Taka’s seven surviving children.
“What you mean ‘I try,’ Mr. Taka said, anger welling up in his chest. He slammed the table. “I could get real vex you know….”
“Mr. Chairman, we need to hear your crime fighting plan,” Mrs. Alice Muckup cut in and brought her husband, Chairman Nemiah, back to his purpose. Curious villagers now peered through the windows of the Community Centre. For them, meetings here were for the select few - a coterie of ruling party supporters.
“Thank you my dear wife for always advising her dear husband. Today, I expected about forty people, you know, seeing that crime is so severe and affecting everybody. But this small gathering, the five of us sitting and discussing here, is not the time and place to present what I consider a proper and workable plan. The Prime Minister is doing his part. He is hiring more police. He is building up the Army. We gone from one battalion to two. Maybe he will go to three and even four battalions. The Prime Minister buying fast patrol boats for the Coast Guard. He have a spy blimp, a real Crime Watch, in the sky. So he trying. He trying and we have to try too. But like I say, with only five people here, now is not the time to present my plan. So, I suggest that we meet again, with a promise that each one of us take on the task of bringing five people to the next meeting. And that is my plan for today,” he laughed. “Do I hear an Ayei?”
“Aye,” the quartet responded; and on that note Chairman Nemiah adjourned the meeting.
That evening Mary, one of the Muckup’s two children, the other, Rougian a police officer, visited her parents and narrated the woe in her life. That morning her man, Santos, had pitched her out for the twenty eleventh time, as Alice Muckup would later describe it. Along with her three small children, Mary had no place to go, except back to her parents’ home.
“But what about Santos’ mother house?” Alice Muckup demanded. “Is a five bedroom house she own in Macoya. How come she can’t accommodate you? Them three children is she son own, you know.”
“She say the children will break up she things and they cuss too much,” Mary said.
“What you mean they cuss too much?” Nemiah said and stopped filling his hops bread with smoked herring. “Them is small children. One is five, one is six, and one is one. What kinda cuss they could cuss?”
“Daddy they picking up cuss words from Santos. He don’t care what he tell me. He cussing A word, B word, C word, F word. He cuss every word in the book in front the children.”
Mary sat hunched over a bowl of corn flakes, tears rolling from her downcast eyes, her cheeks heavy, her make-up on her wash rag. She wiped her dripping nose and intermittently spooned corn flakes to her mouth. Six-year old, five-year old, and one-year old ignored their bowls of Quaker Oats and stared at their eating, weeping mother.
“So why you come back here? The last time you come we had bacchanal.” The family was seated in the kitchen – the adults at the table; the babies on the floor. “Santos threatened to kill your father. Now you expect we to go through that again?” Alice sugared Nemiah’s tea and placed it alongside his hops bread on the flowered plastic table cloth.
“Is we daughter,” Nemiah said in resignation.
“But where we will put her? This house have one bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. The adult children in this village adding they own room or building small-house in they parents’ yard, but we don’t have the space here. Rougian build up the downstairs and that is his home. So where will we put Mary and her three children?”
“Help me Ma, I don’t ever want to see Santos again,” Mary sobbed. For the twenty eleventh time, Alice remembered, Mary had said the same thing. In 1995 Mary was declared winner of the Gorilla Crescent beauty contest and was well on her way to contest the national Trinidad and Tobago beauty queen title when she became pregnant with her first child. In the beginning Alice had desperately tried to sabotage Mary and Santos’ romance. She went as far as to tell Mary the lie that Santos was a Buller Man. But even if she had told Mary that Santos was the man who had shot Richardson in his driveway, Mary would have continued the relationship.
“The last time you come you stayed six months. We don’t have space here. We don’t have a place to put you up. Go to Macoya.”
Nemiah listened grim-faced. He thought the time had come to deal with Santos; to deal with Santos the way the Trinidad and Tobago police dealt with gang leaders – kill him. He should kill Santos himself, or get somebody to do it. The man make big money as a drug lord. But instead of minding his children, he keep throwing them out like Kentucky fried chicken bones. I warn Mary you know. I warn her. But she break stick in she ears. Now she in trouble again, is me she looking to rescue her. Girl children don’t listen. I listen to my mother. She tell me learn a trade. My father take me to a pipe fitter and that is why today I working with WASA. I feel to chop up Santos like King fish. But what to do? Mary is my daughter. She is we own – with my grandchildren. Yes, I could pay to kill Santos, but violence is not my head. I leave Santos in the hands of God. God will deal with him.
“Alice, we have to take them in. Is we children - all four of them. We have to forget the past; we have to look to the future; we have to take them in.” He swallowed the last mouthful of Lipton. He belched and looked towards Alice for her reply.
“But Doodoo, we don’t have space.” Alice stood and whimpered to Nemiah. “These children will spread out in the living room like sausages dressed in pyjamas. Somebody bound to mash them, and if is you in your size twelve – they dead!” The remark broke the seriousness of the moment. The Muckups laughed, an infectious laugh that little Tina and Gerry caught. They too squealed with laughter. “You will mash them up, flatten out the sausages under the size twelve.” Alice laughed heartily, tears streaming down her face. “But I still say we don’t have space.”
“Yes we have space,” Nemiah insisted. He had found a solution to Mary’s problem and he laughed like a Whe Whe winner. “Yes we have space, right here!”
“Here?” Alice spit out the words like a bullet from Rougian’s Glock pistol.
“Yes, right here, in the backyard,” Nemiah said.
“You mean the two room house Taka renting?’
“Yes.”
“Taka house? That one?”
“Yes, the same house, the green paint house, the house with the galvanize paint green, yellow, and red; the house with the wife, husband and seven children. Taka have to go!”
“Nemiah, you crazy. You putting Taka out. We tenant who bringing in a little money to help you pay for the old car, have to go? Nemiah this is madness. This is massive madness.”
Mr. Taka had always considered himself Nemiah’s tenant for life. In fact Mr. Taka had never even considered moving up to a bigger and better house, or even to build a house of his own, or even to apply for one of the thousands of houses Mr. Hardeed said the Government was building. At any rate he could not build in Gorilla Crescent where, like Laventille, Morvant, Dundonald Hill, every scrap of land was occupied. In Gorilla Crescent young adults were adding rooms to their parents’ homes to house their families. He had counted forty two people living in the house next door. Two of his five sons had been shot dead. But he had reorganized his life, relocated, and now, with his wife and seven children at Gorilla Crescent, for the first time he had felt secure. His ten year jail sentence was behind him, and it did some good, it gave him rank, and secured him a permanent position in URP. He and his wife and children were happy, happy in their small, limited world at Gorilla Crescent. They had grown accustomed to this world. If scarcity of space was not a problem, so was scarcity of water and food. Mr. Taka would often mutter “This place is cramped.” He bought a bigger gold chain; but he never searched for a bigger house. He bought expensive sneakers; but he never searched for a bigger house. Gorilla Crescent was there, just like the Rose mango tree, and he loved it. He could smoke a joint and watch the Gru Gru Bouef palms float towards him and giggle. He knew his children would grieve to death if they had to give up the cloud-high Rose mango standing between his house and Nemiah’s. In fact his thoughts focused on the day when his children would grow up and like a flock of Martiniquan Sickia depart his house and head for the tallest Pomerac tree; then he and his wife would have the house to themselves.
But Mr. Nemiah thought differently. “I say Taka must go,” Mr. Nemiah said. “True, Taka does bring in a few dollars, but this is we flesh and blood. Taka have to go, and Taka have to go soon.”
NEXT MONTH: THE MEETING
Town is rife with zeppo. Who has files on whom; who downloaded what and who have what, where. The cocktail circuit is abuzz and entertained with the follies and foibles of others. Chatter abounds on personal, professional and political indiscretions of every kind. But in the midst of the enveloping awfulness that passes for public life, rises the sinking feeling that, in this Republic of the Unresponsible, nothing is about to change. Unless….
President Max Richards should be spared our self-righteous indignation. Of course, he should resign- and, like the British Speaker, one imagines he would do so in an ordered world of representative politics. In this frontier territory without rules, no one is more trapped than President Richards. He is as unable to resign as he was unable to execute the appointment of an Integrity Commission. Like everyone else, the best he can hope for is the arrival of some other nine-day wonder to claim the spotlight and put him out of his misery.
