Free Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

vulnerable to the whole history of evil directed at him and at all who looked like him, and so vulnerable to the many, many small indignities that rained down on him in particular, did not influence his view of the world as far as he knew it then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and after a long time, long after he had been a boy but quite close to the time in which he would die, he could not remember his mother’s name, he could not remember his mother’s face, the shape of it, the color of it, the feel of it, he could not remember her name, he could only remember that his mother smelled of onions, a food not at all necessary to sustain life. His
mother smelled of onions and onions and onions again.
    How each moment is brimming over with the possibility of change, how each moment is brimming over with the new; and yet how in each moment the world is seemingly fixed and steadfast and unchanging; how for some of us we are nothing if we are not like the cockle in its shell, the bird in its feathers, the mammal covered with hair and skin; how certain we are that the world will ensure our fixed state of happiness or misery or anything of the vast range in between; how in defeat we see eternity and how so too we see forever and ever and ever again and again in victory; how in some dim and distant way we feel we are nothing and how certain we are that we are everything, all that is to be is present in us and no thing or idea of any kind will replace us.
    And there was a man named Mr. Shepherd and he was married to Mrs. Shepherd and they were both descended from African slaves and also other people who were of no real account, to look at Mr. and Mistress Shepherd; they looked mostly as if they were descended from Africans who were slaves. And Mr. Shepherd said … but there was nothing for him to say, for everything was in his face, so tautly scrunched up as if mimicking in every way a hand made into a fist, and this fist, powerful for it was a ball of anger
made physical, could not release itself and so Mr. Shepherd’s face looked like a face, it was a face, but it did not telegraph acceptance, kindness, love, curiosity, or the feeling that what was to come would be a welcome and divinely sanctioned adventure. Mr. Shepherd’s face was full of the vigor to be found in the hated. Mr. Shepherd was common, as are all human beings in a way; in a very particular way he was made up of his past, and all human beings, when they find themselves with other human beings, are made up of their past, their past is their true currency. And Mr. Shepherd said nothing even though he spoke many words, but his words could certainly not change the past, nothing could ever do that, the past was a certainty. And Mr. Shepherd paused, he stopped, he froze permanently, eventually, and the world as he came to know it was the taut fist waiting to meet a deserving something, and this was his face. His face was always a representation of these two things: the potential of triumph and the certainty of defeat. It was in such a world and in the care of such two people, Mr. Shepherd and Mistress Shepherd, that Mr. Potter, my father, for Mr. Potter was my father’s name, grew up; that is to say, he attached himself to the world, attached himself to the world we all know, the world that is round and has an above and a below and an across, and an over there, and a just right near here and a beyond there and a how could such a thing be: a
mystery, something confounding, something that was beyond an explanation on which he could agree. Mr. Potter thickened. And injustice became so real to him it was like breathing, it was like oxygen, it was like standing up, it was like the blue that was the sky, it was like the water that made up the ocean, it was like anything that stood before him: always there, it had a right to be there, and its disappearance would mean a new order, and in that case where would Mr. Potter be? But Mr. Potter kept