Grant Mr. Chin absorbed the news, a lump of frustration forming in his throat. Sitting across from him the loan agent smiled her trained response smile. 'Well, as I said, we can't possibly give you another loan until your outstanding loans have been settled.'
He stood and shook her hand, a strange heat creeping up his neck. Then he turned on his heels, nodded to the security guard at the door, and left.
All the way back, he mused on his dilemma. Anxiety pitched its tent in the pit of his stomach: the deadline was approaching and he had no idea how he would come up with the money. The light changed from amber to red and he slammed his foot down on the brake.
Four men approached his Pajero with squeegees and plastic bottles of dirty soapy water. He shook his head and mouthed the word 'No', not daring to wind down his window to address them. They were grimy and shirtless; one had the juiceless butt of a long-expired spliff in his mouth. The corners of his lips were dry with the white streak of desperation, a desperation he himself could feel forming in his stomach.
When the light changed he hastily hit the gas and turned the corner, a few blocks from his establishment. There stood the sculpture they had recently unveiled to 'bring culture' to the community. The parish council had been pulling out all the stops to brighten the downtrodden ghetto communities, but he wondered how a giant chicken in the middle of a playground would do that. The children saw it as another apparatus to climb or swing from; the ghetto philosophers, trying to 'ovastand' the situation, saw it as a taunt.
'Dem a remind we seh we hungry, but we belly already a tell wi dat,' an angry customer had commented when the topic of the big silver chicken had come in his store.
He turned onto the avenue that led to his store. His daughters would be there: Ling and Mitsanna. His wife's worried eyes would lock with his at the door, then crease into a smile when she realised it was he, and not one of the community members she feared. He pulled into the almost empty driveway and removed the keys from the ignition, his fingers massaging the leather key ring his father had given to him. His family had come a long way since his great-great-great-grandfather had survived the voyage on the Vampire, the ship that had taken the Chinese workers from the malaria-infested pits of the Panama Canal.
He looked up at the establishment his father had left him and wondered if there would be any legacy he could leave his own children. At the time his father built Chin's Hardware, Kingston 5 was a relatively upscale community. Then, as the '60s wore into the '70s, and Rasta, rude boys, and reggae took over, walls became a canvas on which inner-city youth would express their angst, fences and gates were broken down to permit the free movement of party supporters, and 'the oppressors' had been chased out.
Many had abandoned their businesses, making what had been an area of industry into a virtual ghost town. But the Chins had remained, and now they had a tentative trust, with a small bill at the end of the month: a trust which ensured their business would not be robbed or burned and that Mr. Chin's wife and daughters would be safe. But this trust, along with his overheads and the rising taxes on imports, was putting him out of business.
'Beg yuh sumting nuh, Missa Chin!' a lanky youth in the middle of a group of boys across the street shouted, derailing his train of thought.
He forced a smile and shrugged. Inside, the cool blast of the air-conditioning unit greeted him. Mitsanna was at the cash register. His wife was assisting a customer to select a toolbox. Ling wasn't there; she had the flu - they had gone to pay respects at the old cemetery and it had rained. At first he had thought her sniffling in the back of the car was because of what she had seen at the cemetery - what the cemetery had become.
Aside from a source of cheap housing for the impoverished, the headstones of their ancestors were a place where half-naked women would sit and gossip. The mausoleums erected in honour of heritage now housed the insane and the homeless. Babies ran around in diapers, marking the pictures on the graves with crayons. The graves of his ancestors had become to them mere lawn ornaments. Young boys armed with machetes and spliffs were on hand to 'beg a work'.
'I can clear weh the grass for you, Mr. Chin.' They called everyone who was Chinese Mr. Chin.
He had looked at them, saddened by their disdain for his heritage.
'Weh yah she, Chin?' Wally, a faithful customer, asked, bringing him back to the present.
'I'm alright, yuh nuh, Wally,' he responded, his eyes locking with his wife's, then surveying the store, and finally resting on his daughter Mitsanna. He walked through the store to the room at the back where, sure enough, his lunch wason the table. He was eating silently, contemplating his situation, when the door swung in and Mitsanna greeted him. She sat across from him, concern evident on her face.
'What did they say?'
He shook his head and stuffed more food into his mouth. Her face fell. Mitsanna was the only one who knew the situation. She had an aptitude for business; he had seen that trait in her since her youth, just as his father had seen it in him. He remembered coming out to the store on a Saturday morning, watching his father at work. There was always music playing. He and his cousins would help with the customers. His father had a great rapport with his customers and the other business owners. He remembered going across to Mr .Wallace's barbershop to get a buzz cut and everyone laughing when he returned. He remembered his sister in her first pair of platforms, singing along to Millie Small, oblivious to the curious looks from their father and uncle.
'So what did they say, Daddy?' Mitsanna asked again. She was the level-headed one, always serious.
'I can't get another one,' he heard himself reply.
Mitsanna was at the top of her Lower Sixth Form economics class. It was she who sorted out their income tax and handled the bookkeeping.
Mitsanna and her sister were night and day. Ling was the dreamer, the artist, the free spirit who reminded him so much of his mother.
He remembered a painting she had done, the one that now hung in the foyer of their home. It was a series of rings, circular grey in some areas, black in some areas, the shadows circular as if reverberating some karmic mantra; round and round, round and round, life goes round and round. He wondered if he would be able to send her to art school, and whether Mitsanna would become the marketing executive she wanted to be.
They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts.
The crash of glass shattering brought them back. Mitsanna ran out ahead of him, screaming her mother's name.
His wife was kneeling behind the counter covering her ears and shaking. Mitsannahad run over to the cash register and emptied its contents. Customers lying on their bellies raised their frightened faces to him.
'A wah dat, Chin?' Wally whispered.
The question was followed by a barrage of gunshots; they forced Mr. Chin down behind the counter with his wife. They held onto each other. Her hair smelled of jasmine; the comb she always pinned it with had come undone and was falling out.
'Daddy, Mummy, yuh alright?' Mitsanna cried.
'We're OK! Stay on de ground!'
His wife looked at him; her eyes were large pools of fear and misery.
'How much more, Sam?' She asked, taking hold of handfuls of his shirt, the tears brimming over and cascading down her face.
He remembered her disarming smile the first time he saw her. He had paid his sister five dollars to find out who she was. A year later, the seamstress from May Pen had been his bride. They had taken over the business when his father died and had raised two daughters. Over the years, the laugh lines on her face had been replaced by wrinkles of anxiety. Now he held her to him, rubbing her back and stroking her head. It was harder for her, he knew; she had seen so much, borne so much. That was why he didn't burden her with the worries of their financial situation.
The sounds of sirens and gunfir They lay there, afraid to move. His wife's crying had subsided and he could hear the customers speculating in hushed tones. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it ceased, and slowly the customers got up and joined the gathering spectators across the street. There was a body there; he could see the blood seeping into the cracks of the sidewalk. It was the lanky youth who had called out to him
Mitsanna and his wife swept up the broken glass from the shattered door. People gathered anxiously around the cameras as the television people prepared the lead story for the nightly newscast.
Chin's Hardware closed for the day.
- Natalee Grant
