Free Pao by Kerry Young Page B

my place. It told me who I really am to you. Your three-time-a-week whore.’
    I grab her shoulder and turn her ’round.
    ‘Gloria, it not like that. It not like that at all.’
    And she look me in the face and say, ‘How is it then, Pao? What is it like?’
    ‘It is like –’ and I stop because I really have to think what I am going to say to her. ‘It is like every day you go out and you see this independent, strong, beautiful animal. Maybe something like a tiger, and you happy with that, but everybody tell you that a grown man got to have him something to keep at home. He can’t be out every day chasing after some tiger that is going about her own business. And you think yes, so you go get yourself a cage and you get the tiger and you put it in there. And maybe you happy for a while but it not long before you start to think well this tiger just sitting there every day now, waiting for me to feed it, and clean out the cage, and entertain it and tend to it when it sick. It don’t do nothing for itself no more. And after a while it start to vex you because it nothing like the animal that you used to see running free and full of life. Now it just lazy and dead. Yu no get no pleasure from it no more, but you have to live with that because is you that kill it.’
    ‘That is all about you. You ever think that maybe the tiger, as well as wanting to be free, also sometimes want some security and some rest so maybe it don’t have to fret every day ’bout where the next meal coming from or how it going defend itself against everything out there that want to hunt it down? That maybe the tiger want to be able to look forward to some support and company, especially when it getting older and it not so independent, or strong, or beautiful? That maybe the tiger just want some day to find some peace?’
    ‘You can have all of that, Gloria, and yu don’t need no cage to get it.’
    She just look at me like maybe she believe me or maybe she don’t. And then she say, ‘You spend too much time listening to what everybody tell you.’
    Well after we done say all of that I realise I can’t go ask her now how she hear ’bout me marrying Fay. So I miss my chance. And that was that.
    After I leave Gloria, Hampton is waiting for me outside in the car and I say to him, ‘Come on, man, let us go walk back to town.’
    ‘Is ten o’clock at night, man, you mad? Don’t you know it dangerous?’
    ‘What, you ’fraid duppy going get you? And anyway, who you think foolish enough to go jump you and me? Come on, leave the car, you can come get it in the morning.’ And we start walking.
    When we nearly reach into town we hear a commotion in a alley, like a barrel knock over or something like that. And we follow the noise because we think maybe somebody in trouble. When we get down there, there is the two of them. One of them stand up with his pants open and the other one kneel down in front of him. When the one on him knees turn ’round we see him young, and him get up and run. The other one is a grown man. Him do up him pants and disappear ’round the next corner. Me and Hampton just look at one another and carry on walk back to town.

10
    Compassion
    So I marry Fay, and we do the church and we do the party that Miss Cicely organise up Lady Musgrave Road with pink champagne and a little orchestra in the garden and a whole heap a people I never see before and never had nothing to say to, and who had nothing to say to me. And we drive up to Ocho Rios.
    The whole week me and Fay having the honeymoon she say hardly two words to me. She busy with her hair, she fixing her face, she straightening her dress. She instructing the maid and telling the waiter what she want to eat, and she chatting with these complete strangers that she meet here and there every day. Me, she don’t say nothing to. She can barely even bring herself to look at me. We got the double bed right there inside the room and I am sleeping so far over my side I nearly