Is Just a Movie by Earl Lovelace

Author:Earl Lovelace [Lovelace, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, epub, Fiction
ISBN: 9781608461769
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2012-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Africa

Sweetie-Mary wasn’t happy with all these changes. She had little life beyond working in the shop and minding her children. And although Sonnyboy had taken her only once to the Oval to see Test cricket and two times to a calypso tent, those were great events in her life and had given her a base from which to contribute to discussions on cricket and calypso as an equal. Also, her excursions with Sonnyboy in the steelband on Jouvay morning was still one of the sweetest times she had had with him. But his changes in attitude had left her with a feeling of unease and she showed it. Now and again I would hear Sonnyboy grumbling about her behavior: “She start back eating meat . . . She want more jewelry . . . Buying a set of clothes . . .”

I overheard her: “But, Sonnyboy, Africa is not a prison. You can’t make Africa a jail.”

Sonnyboy sought my opinion: “King, what it is she want? What she want?”

“Man,” I tell him. “If I was you I would just go in the Carnival band and beat the iron and let the woman play her mas.”

He looked at me as if he wanted to hit me.

“King,” he said sternly, “Sweetie-Mary is an African woman.”

“If you know who she is, then what you asking me?” I didn’t usually talk to him so sharply. But really I wasn’t joking.

I had to say goodbye. I felt a certain sympathy for Sonnyboy, and admiration, even. I do not mean to sound superior. However, I expected that Sonnyboy would occupy the exile of his comfortable harbor until he saw something else to move on to.

Aunt Magenta was puzzled at my concern for Sonnyboy. “Donny, Sonnyboy is no revolutionary, he is a badjohn. What you expect from him?”

The heroes we had inherited had it easy. Distance had crowned them with haloes. Sonnyboy was in the here and now. In the brilliance of this light, we could see his every flaw.

I know Sonnyboy was a hustler. He had lived a twisted life, I know, there was nothing pure about him. I knew his story. But he stood for something. And I was beginning to see that however twisted he might be, what he had contributed to us was a No. I not fucking taking that. That no joined the No’s our heroes had said to the colonizing world. His No was directed at his brethren, not only from a point of view of not wanting what was on offer, but in the suggestion that there was something else we had to build. That was his importance to us. And that is why I had to have us see him not in terms of delinquency, but as serious actor and cause.

I didn’t know if I was making myself clear. My aunt and Clephus continued to criticize me for holding up Sonnyboy as some kind of hero. I know they meant well, but I also knew that they were responding with the prejudices of their education, our education.

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