Uploaded by paul nguyen on March 1, Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. No-No Boy — John Okada, John Okada A classic of American noir, part murder mystery and part black comedy, set in dark No-no boy, a novel,. Rutland, Vt. Tuttle Co. John Okada's No No Boy is the Tran, Vietnamerica.. Submitted by Ellen Palms on October 15, - pm. John Okada's No-No Americans, is no longer a place where they ought or want to be.
Andrew Lam, Perfume Dreams. Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia. In fact, he served in the Army There was a ripple of laughter and Ichiro turned and looked at the crowd without wanting to. From the creators of SparkNotes..
No-No Boy book. Read reviews from the world's largest community for readers. John Okada was born in Seattle, Washington in He attended the Univ.. No Boy John Okada pdf free no boy john okada manual pdf pdf file. Page 2. Jan 1, — No-No Boy. Article PDF first page preview.. This is in large part due to the preface. Author John Okada did serve in the U. Happy reading, lesson plan nono boy by john okada english edition Pdf Book everyone. Nov 28, — otherwise. For my first paper, I decided to write about John Okada's No-No Boy and address Ichiro's insanity due to his lack of personal identity..
John Okada's novel No-No Boy, published in , is a more bitter work depicting the psychological damage and social isolation of a young Japanese American.. Pamela Hammons. No-no boy by John Okada, unknown edition,. Murayama's All I Jan 17, — Was this guide helpful? YES NO Among these choices, who would you be most interested in seeing headline SummerSlam against Roman Reigns?
It was she who opened my mouth and made my ,lips move to sound the words which got me two years in prison and an emptiness that is more empty and frightening than the caverns of hell. She's killed me with her meanness and hatred and I hope she's happy because I'll never know the meaning of it again. She had hardly changed. Surely, there must have been a time when she could smile and, yet, he could not remember. There were eggs, fried with soy sauce, sliced cold meat, boiled cabbage, and tea and rice.
The father cleared the table after they had finished and dutifully retired to watch the store. Ichiro had smoked three cigarettes before his mother ended the silence. The statement staggered him. Was that all there was to it? Did she mean to sit there and imply that the four intervening years were to be casually forgotten and life resumed as if there had been no four years and no war and no Eto who had spit on him because of the thing he had done?
You must go and complete your studies. Nobody's going to Japan. The war is over. Japan lost. Do you hear? I know it. America is still here. Do you see the great Japanese army walking down the streets? There is no Japanese army any more. The letter had been mailed from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and was addressed to a name that he did not recognize. Word has been brought to us that the victorious Japa- nese government is presently making preparations to send ships which will return to Japan those residents in foreign countries who have steadfastly maintained their faith and loyalty to our Emperor.
The Japanese govern- ment regrets that the responsibilities arising from the victory compels them to delay in the sending of the vessels. To be among the few who remain to receive this honor is a gratifying tribute. Heed not the propa- ganda of the radio and newspapers which endeavor to convince the people with lies about the allied victory. Especially, heed not the lies of your traitorous country- men who have turned their backs on the country of their birth and who will suffer for their treasonous acts.
The day of glory is close at hand. The rewards will be beyond our greatest expectations. What we have done, we have done only as Japanese, but the government is grateful. Hold your heads high and make ready for the journey, for the ships are coming. It was like a weird nightmare. It was like finding out that an incurable strain of insanity pervaded the family, an intangible horror that swayed and taunted beyond the grasp of reaching fingers. We are not alone. You're crazy.
I'm crazy. All right, so we made a mistake. Let's admit it. The letter confirms. It proves there's crazy people in the world besides us. What are you doing running a grocery store? It doesn't figure. It doesn't figure be- cause we're all wrong. The minute we admit that, everything is fine. I've had a lot of time to think about all this. I've thought about it, and every time the, answer comes out the same. You can't tell me different any more. It is in the letter. If you have come to doubt your mother - and I'm sure you do not mean it even if you speak in weakness - it is to be regretted.
Rest a few days. Think more deeply and your doubts will disap- pear. You are my son, Ichiro. There was a time when I was your son. There was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother's smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel and about the old woman who found a peach in the stream and took it home and, when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy.
I was that boy in the peach and you were the old woman and we were Japanese with Japanese feelings and Japanese pride and Japanese thoughts because it was all right then to be Japanese and feel and think all the things that Japanese do even if we lived in America.
But I did not love enough, for you were still half my mother and I was thereby still half Japanese and when the war came and they told me to fight for America, I was not strong enough to fight you and I was not strong enough to fight the bitterness which made the half of me which was you bigger than the half of me which was America and really the whole of me that I could not see or feel.
Now that I know the truth when it is too late and the half of me which was you is no longer there, I am only half of me and the half that remains is American by law because the govern- ment was wise and strong enough to know why it was that I could not fight for America and did not strip me of my birthright.
But it is not enough to be American only in the eyes of the law and it is not enough to be only half an American and know that it is an empty half.
I am not your son and I am not Japanese and I am not American. I can go someplace and tell people that I've got an inverted stomach and that I am an American, true and blue and Hail Columbia, but the army wouldn't have me because of the stomach. That's easy and I would do it, only I've got to convince myself first and that I cannot do. I wish with all my heart that I were Japanese or that I were American. I am neither and I blame you and I blame myself and I blame the world which is made up of many countries which fight with each other and kill and hate and destroy but not enough, so that they must kill and hate and destroy again and again and again.
It is so easy and simple that I cannot understand it at all. Defeatedly, he crushed the stub of a cigarette into an ash tray filled with many other stubs and reached for the package to get another. It was empty and he did not want to go into the store for more because he did not.
He went into the bedroom and tossed and groaned and half slept. Hours later, someone shook him awake. It was not his mother and it was not his father. The face that looked down at him in the gloomy darkness was his brother's. It's time to eat. Then he added quickly for fear of losing him: "No, I said that before and I don't mean it the way it sounds.
We've got things to talk about. Long time since we saw each other. A fellow's got to have all the education he can get, Taro. I want in. Can't you wait? They'll come and get you soon enough. What I did? His mother had already eaten and was watching the store. He sat opposite his brother, who wolfed down the food without looking back at him. It wasn't more than a few minutes before he rose, grabbed his jacket off a nail on the wall, and left the table. The bell tinkled and he was gone.
He's never home except to eat and sleep. Mama tells him. Makes no difference. It is the war that has made them that way. All the people say the same thing. The war and the camp life. It is hard to understand. And in his hate for that thing, he hated his brother and also his parents because they had created the thing with their eyes and hands and minds which had seen and felt and thought as Japanese for thirty-five years in an America which they rejected as thoroughly as if they had never been a day away from Japan.
That was the reason and it was difficult to believe, but it was true because he was the emptiness between the one and the other and could see flashes of the truth that was true for his parents and the truth that was true for his brother.
We came to make money. We came so we could make money and go back and buy a piece of land and be comfortable too. He went out to the store and got a fresh pack of cigarettes.
His mother was washing down the vegetable stand, which stood alongside the entrance. Her thin arms swabbed the green-painted wood with sweeping, vigorous strokes. There was a power in the wiry, brown arms, a hard, blind, unreckoning force which coursed through veins of tough bamboo.
When she had done her work, she carried the pail of water to the curb outside and poured it on the street. Then she came back through the store and into the living quarters and emerged once more dressed in her coat and hat. They will wish to know that you are back. He was too stunned to voice his protest. The Kumasakas and the Ashidas were people from the same village in Japan. The three families had been very close for as long as he could recall.
Further, it was customary among the Japanese to pay ceremonious visits upon various occasions to families of close asso- ciation. Yes, he had been gone a long time, but it was such a different thing. It wasn't as if he had gone to war and returned safe and sound or had been matriculating at, some school in another city and come home with a sheepskin sum rna cum laude.
He scrabbled at the confusion in his mind for the logic of the crazy business and found no satisfaction. His father hastened out from the kitchen and Ichiro stumbled in blind fury after the woman who was only a rock of hate and fanatic stubbornness and was, there- fore, neither woman nor mother. They walked through the night and the city, a mother and son thrown together for a while longer because the family group is a stubborn one and does not easily disintegrate.
The woman walked ahead and the son followed and no word passed between them. They walked six blocks, then six more, and still another six before they turned into a three-story frame building.
The Ashidas, parents and three daughters, occupied four rooms on the second floor. You have come back. Just to- day he came home. Ashida sat opposite them on a straight-backed kitchen chair and beamed. I know she is only listening to the radio.
You will find many of your young friends already here. All the people who said they would never come back to Seattle are coming back. It is almost like it was before the war. Akira-san - you went to school with him I think - he is just back from Italy, and Watanabe-san's boy came back from Japan last month. It is so good that the war is over and everything is getting to be like it was before. He showed me all the pictures he had taken in Japan.
He had many of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I told him that he must be mistaken because Japan did not lose the war as he seems to believe and that he could not have been in Japan to take pictures because, if he were in Japan, he would not have been permitted to remain alive.
He protested and yelled so that his mother had to tell him to be careful and then he tried to argue some more, but I asked him if he was ever in Japan before and could he prove that he was actually there and he said again to look at the pictures and I told him that what must really have happened was that the army only told him he was in Japan when he was someplace else, and that it was too bad he believed the propaganda.
Then he got so mad his face went white and he said: 'How do you know you're you? Tell me how you know you're you! It is not enough that they must willingly take up arms against their uncles and cousins and even brothers and sisters, but they no longer have respect for the old ones. If I had a son and he had gone , in the American army to fight Japan, I would have killed myself with shame. It is the fault of the parents. I've always said that Mr. Watanabe was a stupid man.
Gambling and drinking the way he does, I am almost ashamed to call them friends. He wanted to get up and dash out into the night. The madness of his mother was in mutual company and he felt nothing but loathing for the gentle, kindly-looking Mrs.
Ashida, who sat on a fifty-cent chair from Goodwill Industries while her husband worked the night shift at a hotel, grinning and bowing for dimes and quarters from rich Americans whom he detested, and couldn't afford to take his family on a bus ride to Tacoma but was waiting and praying and hoping for the ships from Japan.
Reiko brought in a tray holding little teacups and a bowl of thin, round cookies. She was around seventeen with little bumps on her chest which the sweater didn't improve and her lips heavily lipsticked a deep red. She said "Hi" to him and did not have to say look at me, I was a kid when you saw me last but now I'm a woman with a woman's desires and a woman's eye for men like you. She set the tray on the table and gave him a smile before she left.
Her face glowed with pride. She read it eagerly, her lips moving all the time and frequently murmuring audibly.
Okamoto will be eager to see this. Her husband, who goes out of the house whenever I am there, is threatening to leave her unless she gives up her nonsense about Japan. Nonsense, he calls it. He is no better than a Chinaman. This will show him. I feel so sorry for her. They only call themselves such. It is the same with the Teradas. I no longer go to see them. The last time I was there Mr.
Terada screamed at me and told me to get out. They just don't understand that Japan did not lose the war because Japan could not possibly lose. I try not to hate them but I have no course but to point them out to the authorities when the ships come. You will come again, please, Ichiro-san? Outside, he lit a cigarette and paced restlessly until his mother came out. He followed, talking to the back of her head: "Ma, I don't want to see the Kumasakas tonight.
I don't want to see anybody tonight. We'll go some other time. Business was good and people spoke of their having money, but they lived in cramped quarters above the shop because, like most of the other Japa- nese, they planned some day to return to Japan and still felt like transients even after thirty or forty years in America and the quarters above the shop seemed adequate and sensible since the arrangement was merely temporary.
That, he thought to himself, was the reason why the Japanese were still Japanese. They rushed to America with the single purpose of making a fortune which would enable them to return to their own country and live adequately. It did not matter when they discovered that fortunes were not for the mere seeking or that their sojourns were spanning decades instead of years and it did not matter that growing families and growing bills and misfortunes and illness and low wages and just plain hard luck were constant obstacles to the realization of their dreams.
But now, the Kumasakas, it seemed, had bought this house, and he was impressed. It could only mean that the Kumasakas had exchanged hope for reality and, late as it was, were finally sinking roots into the land from which they had previously sought not nourishment but only gold. Kumasaka came to the door, a short, heavy woman who stood solidly on feet planted wide apart, like a man.
She greeted them warmly but with a sadness that she would carry to the grave. When Ichiro had last seen her, her hair had been pitch black. Now it was completely white. In the living room Mr. Kumasaka, a small man with a pleasant smile, was sunk deep in an upholstered chair, reading a Japanese newspaper. It was a comfortable room with rugs and soft furniture and lamps and end tables and pictures on recently papered walls. Kumasaka struggled out of the chair and extended a friendly hand.
We like it here. Kumasaka sat next to her husband on a large, round hassock and looked at Ichiro with lonely eyes, which made him uncomfortable. If he had given his life for Japan, I could not be prouder. Ignoring him, she continued, not looking at the man but at his wife, who now sat with head bowed, her eyes emptily regarding the floral pattern of the carpet. To sleep with a man and bear a son is nothing. To raise the child into a man one can be proud of is not play.
Some of us succeed. Some, of course, must fail. It is too bad, but that is the way of life. Then, smiling, he turned to Ichiro: "I suppose you'll be going back to the university? I have im- pressed upon him the importance of a good education. With a college education, one can go far in Japan. He would have made a fine doctor. Always studying and reading, is that not so, Ichiro? Kumasaka uttered a despairing cry and bit her trembling lips.
The little man, his face a drawn mask of pity and sorrow, stammered: "Ichiro, you-no one has told you? No one's told me anything. Write about what? It was in the whiteness of the hair of the sad woman who was the mother of the boy named Bob and it was in the engaging pleasantness of the father which was not really pleasantness but a deep understanding which had emerged from resignation to a loss which only a parent knows and suffers.
And then he saw the picture on the mantel, a snapshot, enlarged many times over, of a grinning youth in uniform who had not thought to remember his parents with a formal portrait because he was not going to die and there would be worlds of time for pictures and books and other obliga- tions of the living later on.
Kumasaka startled him by shouting toward the rear of the house: "J un! Please come. Just writing a letter. Yamada and her son Ichiro. They are old family friends. The little man waited until Jun had seated himself on the end of the sofa. He's on his way home from the army and was good enough to stop by and visit us for a few days. Buddies - is that what you say? Please, just this once more. Everybody was feeling good because there was a lot of talk about the Germans' surrendering.
All the fellows were cleaning their equipment. We'd been up in the lines for a long time and everything was pretty well messed up. When you're up there getting shot at, you don't worry much about how crummy your things get, but the minute you pull back, they got to have inspec- tion. So, we were cleaning things up. Most of us were cleaning our rifles because that's something you learn to want to do no matter how anything else looks.
Bobbie was sitting beside me and he was talking about how he was going to medical school and become a doctor - ' , A sob wrenched itself free from the breast of the mother whose son was once again dying, and the snow- white head bobbed wretchedly.
Jun looked away from the mother and at the picture on the mantel. I was nodding my head and saying yeah, yeah, and then there was this noise, kind of a pinging noise right close by. It scared me for a minute and I started to cuss and said, 'Gee, that was damn close,' and looked around at Bobbie.
He was slumped over with his head between his knees. I reached out to hit him, thinking he was fooling around. Then, when 1 tapped him on the arm, he fell over and 1 saw the dark spot on the side of his head where the bullet had gone through. That was all. Ping, and he's dead.
It doesn't figure, but it happened just the way I've said. And in her bottomless grief that made no distinction as to what was wrong and what was right and who was Japanese and who was not, there was no awareness of the other mother with a living son who had come to say to her you are with shame and grief because you were not Japanese and thereby killed your son but mine is big and strong and full of life because 1 did not weaken and would not let my son destroy himself uselessly and treacherously.
Ichiro's mother rose and, without a word, for no words would ever pass between them again, went out of the house which was a part of America. Kumasaka placed a hand on the rounded back of his wife, who was forever beyond consoling, and spoke gently to lchiro: "You don't have to say anything.
You are truly sorry and 1 am sorry for you. We can talk even if your mother's convictions are different. Mean and crazy. Goddamned Jap! Then he hurried out of the house which could never be his own. His mother was not waiting for him. He saw her tiny figure strutting into the shadows away from the illumi- nation of the street lights and did not attempt to catch her. As he walked up one hill and down another, not caring where and only knowing that he did not want to go horne, he was thinking about the Kumasakas and his mother and kids like Bob who died brave deaths fighting for sornething which was bigger than Japan or America or the selfish bond that strapped a son to his rnother.
Bob, and a lot of others with no more to lose or gain then he, had not found it necessary to think about whether or not to go in the army. When the time came, they knew what was right for them and they went.
What had happened to him and the others who faced the judge and said: You can't make me go in the army because I'm not an American or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed. And some said: You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it a just thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese and you couldn't have loyal Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy'?
Round them up. If you think we're the same kind of rotten Japanese that dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor, and it's plain that you do or I wouldn't be here having to explain to you why it is that I won't go and protect sons-of-bitches like you, I say you're right and banzai three times and we'll sit the war out in a nice cell, thank you. And then another one got up and faced the judge and said meekly: I can't go because my brother is in the Japanese army and if I go in your army and have to shoot at them because they're shooting at me, how do I know that maybe I won't kill my own brother?
I'm a good American and I like it here but you can see that it wouldn't do for me to be shooting at my own brother; even if he went back to Japan when I was two years old and couldn't know him if I saw him, it's the feeling that counts, and what can a fellow do?
Besides, my mom and dad said I shouldn't and they ought to know. And after the fellow with the brother in the army of the wrong country sat down, a tall, skinny one sneered at the judge and said: I'm not going in the army because wool clothes give me one helluva bad time and them 0.
The judge, who looked Italian and had a German name, repeated the question as if the tall, skinny one hadn't said anything yet, and the tall, skinny one tried again only, this time, he was serious. He said: I got it all figured out. Economics, that's what. I hear this guy with the stars, the general of your army that cleaned the Japs off the coast, got a million bucks for the job.
The only way it figures is the money angle. How much did they give you, judge, or aren't your fingers long enough? Cut me in. Give me a cut and I'll go fight your war single-handed. Please, judge, said the next one. I want to go in your' arrrlY because this is my country and I've always lived here and I was all-city guard and one time I wrote an essay for composition about what it means to me to be an American and the teacher sent it into a contest and they gave me twenty-five dollars, which proves that I'm a good American.
Maybe I look Japanese and my father and mother and brothers and sisters look Japanese, but we're better Americans than the regular ones because that's the way it has to be when one looks Japanese but is really a good American. Yet Popo was not a popular man in the street. Popo had the habit of taking a glass of rum to the pavement every morning.
He never sipped the rum. But whenever he saw someone he knew he dipped his middle finger in the rum, licked it, and then waved to the man. Man not make for work. Not a proper man. She used to wait for me in the afternoons and take me into the big kitchen and give me a lot of nice things to eat. It was as though I was eating for her. She asked me to call her Auntie. She introduced me to the gardener of the big house. He was a good-looking brown man, and he loved his flowers.
I liked the gardens he looked after. The flower-beds were always black and wet; and the grass green and damp and always cut. Sometimes he let me water the flower-beds. And he used to gather the cut grass into little bags which he gave me to take home to my mother. Grass was good for the hens. I found Popo sad in his workshop. He was sitting on a plank and twisting a bit of shaving around his fingers. Popo found himself then a popular man.
The news got around very quickly. The sawdust no longer smelled fresh, and became black, almost like dirt. He smelled of rum, and he used to cry and then grow angry and want to beat up everybody. That made him an accepted member of the gang. He is a man, like any of we. He was at heart a loquacious man, and always wanted to be friendly with the men of the street and he was always surprised that he was not liked.
So it looked as though he had got what he wanted. But Popo was not really happy. Then one day Popo left us.
He gone looking for he wife. It came out in the papers. Hat said it was just what he expected. Popo had beaten up a man in Arima, the man had taken his wife away. It was the gardener who used to give me bags of grass. Nothing much happened to Popo. He had to pay a fine, but they let him off otherwise. The magistrate said that Popo had better not molest his wife again. They made a calypso about Popo that was the rage that year. It was the road-march for the Carnival, and the Andrews Sisters sang it for an American recording company: A certain carpenter feller went to Arima Looking for a mopsy called Emelda.
It was a great thing for the street. Boy, he could carry his liquor. He growled at me when I tried to talk to him, and he drove out Hat and the others when they brought a bottle of rum to the workshop.
He was working hard, and I wondered whether he was still making the thing without a name. But I was too afraid to ask. He ran an electric light to the workshop and began working in the night-time. Vans stopped outside his house and were always depositing and taking away things. Then Popo began painting his house. He used a bright green, and he painted the roof a bright red.
One day, about two weeks later, Popo returned, and he brought a woman with him. It was his wife. My auntie. Not the man. But the new house paint up, and all the new furniture inside it.
I bet you if the man in Arima had a new house and new furnitures, she wouldnta come back with Popo. I was glad. He had stopped working, and his wife got her job with the same people near my school. People in the street were almost angry with Popo when his wife came back.
They felt that all their sympathy had been mocked and wasted. Hat always read the papers. He read them from about ten in the morning until about six in the evening. It was a fantastic story. Popo had been stealing things left and right. He had stolen things and simply remodelled them. That was how he had been caught.
Even the paint and the brushes with which he had redecorated the house had been stolen. Why he had to sell what he thief? Just tell me that.
But we felt deep inside ourselves that Popo was really a man, perhaps a bigger man than any of us. A year? And I give she three months good behaviour too. She not only kept her job as cook, but she started taking in washing and ironing as well.
No one in the street felt sorry that Popo had gone to jail because of the shame; after all, that was a thing that could happen to any of us. They felt sorry only that Emelda was going to be left alone for so long. He came back as a hero.
He was one of the boys. He was a better man than either Hat or Bogart. But for me, he had changed. And the change made me sad. For Popo began working. He began making Morris chairs and tables and wardrobes for people.
George was short and fat. He had a grey-moustache and a big belly. He looked harmless enough but he was always muttering to himself and cursing and I never tried to become friendly with him.
He was like the donkey he had tied in the front of his yard, grey and old and silent except when it brayed loudly. You felt that George was never really in touch with what was going on around him all the time, and I found it strange that no one should have said that George was mad, while everybody said that Man- man, whom I liked, was mad.
It was a broken-down wooden building, painted pink on the outside, and the galvanised-iron roof was brown from rust. One door, the one to the right, was always left open. The inside walls had never been painted, and were grey and black with age. There was a dirty bed in one corner and in another there was a table and a stool.
That was all. No curtains, no pictures on the wall. And even Bogart had a picture of Lauren Bacali in his room. I found it hard to believe that George had a wife and a son and a daughter. Like Popo, George was happy to let his wife do all the work in the house and the yard. They kept cows, and again I hated George for that. Because the water from his pens made the gutters stink, and when we were playing cricket on the pavement the ball often got wet in the gutter.
Boyee and Errol used to wet the ball deliberately in the stinking gutter. They wanted to make it shoot. And while George sat on the front concrete step outside the open door of his house, his wife was busy. George never became one of the gang in Miguel Street. He had his wife and his daughter and his son. He beat them all. And when the boy Elias grew too big, George beat his daughter and his wife more than ever.
She just grew thinner and thinner; but the daughter, Dolly, thrived on it. She grew fatter and fatter, and giggled more and more every year. Elias, the son, grew more and more stern, but he never spoke a hard word to his father. I mad to break old George tail up, you hear.
But that was the sort of boy he was. He was serious and he had big ambitions. I began to be terrified of George, particularly when he bought two great Alsatian dogs and tied them to pickets at the foot of the concrete steps. Now, when Hat had an Alsatian, he made it like me. Go brave. I never discussed it with the other boys in the street, because I was too ashamed to say I was afraid of barking dogs. Presently, though, I grew used to the dogs. One day George was on the pavement as I was passing and I heard him mumbling.
I heard him mumble again that afternoon and again the following day. Why he does keep on calling me names? Hat began laughing. But you must forgive him. He old. He have life hard. He not educated like we here. He have a soul just like any of we, too besides. That empty front room became sadder and more frightening for me.
The strange thing was that I felt a little sorry for George. Boyee tell me that the evening before she dead he hear George giving the woman licks like fire. For fun? The woman dead from blows. I telling you. London can take it; but not George wife. You suppose he going to beat she still? George was very sad for the first few days after the funeral. He drank a lot of rum and went about crying in the streets, beating his chest and asking everybody to forgive him and to take pity on him, a poor widower.
He kept up the drinking into the following weeks, and he was still running up and down the street, making everyone feel foolish when he asked for forgiveness. You milking them? You feeding them? You want to kill your cows now too? He beginning to pay for his sins. During that time we saw more of Dolly. She swept out the front room and begged flowers of the neighbours and put them in the room.
She giggled more than ever. Someone in the street not me poisoned the two Alsatians. We hoped that George had gone away for good. He did come back, however, still drunk, but no longer crying or helpless, and he had a woman with him. She was a very Indian woman, a little old, but she looked strong enough to handle George. We heard stories of beatings and everybody said he was sorry for Dolly and the new woman. My heart went out to the woman and Dolly.
The pink house, almost overnight, became a full and noisy place. There were many women about, talking loudly and not paying too much attention to the way they dressed. Many American soldiers drove up in jeeps, and Miguel Street became full of laughter and shrieks. Hat and the rest of the boys were no longer assured of privacy when they sat down to talk things over on the pavement.
But Bogart became friendly with the new people and spent two or three evenings a week with them. He ate his meals outside. He was trying to study for some important exam.
He had lost interest in his family, Bogart said, or rather, implied. George was still drinking a lot; but he was prospering. He was wearing a suit now, and a tie. They all appeared to like him as well as respect him. He remained himself. I have to be father and mother to the child. And I say is high time Dolly get married. It was hard to think of a more suitable name for this man. He was small. He was thin. He had a neat, sharp moustache above neat, tiny lips.
The creases on his trousers were always sharp and clean and straight. And he was supposed to carry a knife. Razor and Dolly were married at church and they came back to a reception in the pink house.
The women were all dressed up, and there were lots of American soldiers and sailors drinking and laughing and congratulating George. The women and the Americans made Dolly and Razor kiss and kiss, and they cheered. Dolly giggled. She crying really. Then they made Dolly and Razor kiss again. Dolly only giggled more.
Then George spoke out. Then Dolly stopped giggling and looked stupidly at the people. Dolly picked up a handful of gravel from the yard and was making as if to throw it at the sailor. But she stopped suddenly, and burst into tears. There was much laughing and cheering and shouting.
I never knew what happened to Dolly. Edward said one day that she was living in Sangre Grande. Hat said he saw her selling in the George Street Market. But she had left the street, left it for good. Bogart nodded. The trouble with George is that he too stupid for a big man. Within six months George was living alone in his pink house. I used to see him then, sitting on the steps, but he never looked at me any more. He looked old and weary and very sad. He died soon afterwards. Hat and the boys got some money together and we buried him at Lapeyrouse Cemetery.
Elias turned up for the funeral. No boy in the street particularly wished to be a sweeper. The men were aristocrats.
They worked early in the morning and had the rest of the day free. And then they were always going on strike. They struck for things like a cent more a day; they struck if someone was laid off.
They struck when the war began; they struck when the war ended. They struck when India got independence. They struck when Gandhi died.
Eddoes, who was a driver, was admired by most of the boys. Eddoes came from a low Hindu caste, and there was a lot of truth in what he said.
His skill was a sort of family skill, passing from father to son. One day I was sweeping the pavement in front of the house where I lived, and Eddoes came and wanted to take away the broom from me.
I have experience. Wait until you big like me. I was sad for a long time afterwards. It seemed that I would never never grow as big as Eddoes, never have that thing he called experience. I began to admire Eddoes more than ever; and more than ever I wanted to be a cart-driver.
But Elias was not that sort of boy. What you want to be then? A sweeper? But we recognised that Elias was different, that Elias had brains. We all felt sorry for Elias. His father George brutalised the boy with blows, but Elias never cried, never spoke a word against his father. We were just about two houses away when we saw George.
Elias grew scared. George liked beating Elias. He used to tie him with rope, and then beat him with rope he had soaked in the gutters of his cow-pen. You wondering how me and he get so friendly so quick. I was prepared to believe that he would become a doctor some day. Eh, Elias? Elias began going to the school at the other end of Miguel Street. London, External Passes in the Cambridge School Certificate Guaranteed The odd thing was that although George beat Elias at the slightest opportunity, he was very proud that his son was getting an education.
Titus Hoyt came down to our end of the street. Every word that boy write going to England. People always making mistake, especially when it have so much names.
Who correct the papers? Englishman, not so? You expect them to give Elias a pass? If they know what hell the boy have to put up with, they woulda pass him quick quick. This year! This year, things going be much much better.
We go show those Englishmen and them. We saw next to nothing of him. He was working night and day. He get a third grade. His name going to be in the papers tomorrow. I always say it, and I saying it again now, this boy Elias have too much brains.
He was a good-for-nothing, but he wanted to see his son a educated man. They talked about everything but books, and Elias, too, was talking about things like pictures and girls and cricket. He was looking very solemn, too. Look for work? He wanted to be a doctor. I think I going to take that exam again, and this year I going to be so good that this Mr Cambridge go bawl when he read what I write for him. It sounded like something to eat, something rich like chocolate.
Elias moved back into the pink house which had been empty since his father died. He was studying and working. He is one of the brightest boys in Port of Spain. He was the cleanest boy in the street. He bathed twice a day and scrubbed his teeth twice a day.
He did all this standing up at the tap in front of the house.
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