Free Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Page A

collected in the corners of his eyes, the corners of both eyes, and the thick coalesced liquid in the corners of his eyes causes him to see at first dimly and falsely and this makes him angry and he violently scrubs the film from his eyes and all that is before him is clear: he will step out of bed, he will put on his clothes (he has no shoes), he walks away from his sleeping life now, he walks into the world and he is in perfect harmony with himself, for perfect harmony is the province of a good God, or the
province of the ordinarily degraded. Mr. Potter, my father, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, was of the ordinarily degraded. And see him now round a corner, not yet in possession of the knowledge of his own misery, never to be in possession of the knowledge that the world has rained down on him injustice upon injustice, cruelty upon cruelty, never to be in possession of the knowledge that though his very being was holy, his existence was a triumph of evil. See him round the corner of the alley, any alley, carrying an object in which he takes pleasure: a stone over which he tripped, and the stone has a funny shape for a stone, or a strange texture for a stone, or he picks up the stone for a reason he will never know; and when carrying the stone, as he rounds the corner of the alley, he is skipping, a sign of playfulness, he is tossing the stone in the air and successfully catching it, a sign of playfulness, and he is alone and the joy of himself skipping as he throws a stone into the empty air and catches it is his own, it is something he possesses; and in that moment he is in harmony with his joy and is himself, something he possesses. See Mr. Potter, a small boy, his spirit in harmony with his own actions, his actions in harmony with his spirit; see Mr. Potter, boundless and joyful, as he traverses a very small corner of the world, see him in this way when he was a child, for this is so rare in his life, a joyfulness that was without boundaries. See him as a small boy, for he was
Drickie then, he was not Mr. Potter yet, he was not even Roderick, he was Drickie, a small boy, and his mother had walked into the sea, and his father had died after cursing the small share he received of the fruits of the sea, and he was living with people who could not love him, who could not love anything at all, and neither could he, Drickie, who was not yet Mr. Potter.

A nd Mr. Potter’s mother had smelled of onions, that was all he could remember of her, that she smelled of onions and that the last time he saw her she placed him, this small boy, her only child, in the care of Mr. and Mistress Shepherd, and she walked away from him and for a long time after that (what exactly could that be to a small boy?) he thought she might come back and get him, and then he thought she might come back and say something, anything, to him, and then after that he thought, She will come back just to take a glimpse of me, I will see her as she takes a glimpse of me, and then all this was followed by a large blank space of darkness and light, sometimes separated, the darkness and the light, sometimes mingling, the darkness and the light, and this single blank space of only darkness and light—separated
or commingled—was where Elfrida Robinson, his mother, stayed. And when he smelled onions, he remembered her, just the smell of onions being cooked or sometimes the smell enclosing the words as they emerged from someone’s mouth, or sometimes the smell of onions just in the air when there was no explanation for it at all, as if the smell in the air was a premonition, a sign of some kind. But onions were not food, onions only flavored food, onions were not a staff of life, onions only made a staff of life more palatable, more enjoyable. And his unfulfilled longing for his mother did not create a feeling of emptiness in him, as far as he knew then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and his mother abandoning him when he was so small and