Mr. Harris gets an earful... (an excerpt from O'Connor Street)

The absolute worst thing in the world about Sunday was the obligatory two hour ‘sleep’ after lunch, and what made it worse is that it followed the absolute best thing about Sunday – Sunday lunch.

We would eat the biggest, most enjoyable meal for the week on a Sunday around one o’clock (man, my mother could cook), and your plate literally overflowed with food. There would be rice, macaroni pie (sometimes ‘mash-potato’ pie), callaloo (a mushy, soupy concoction made with dasheen bush leaves, coconut milk, ochroes, pumpkin and pepper), avocado (a nice big slice, sometimes two if there was plenty), provision (a combination of boiled plantain, green fig, and dasheen), baked chicken or pork, stewed beef, and a cucumber, lettuce and tomato salad.

This was washed down by a big glass of soft drink, and by the time you were finished eating, everything was perfect in the world. Then my father would say one word (he had us so freakin’ trained) ‘Upstairs’, and we all groaned (or the kids at least). This word meant that we had to go upstairs, get into bed and either sleep or be quiet for about two hours.

I got into trouble almost every Sunday, because I could never sleep, and I did not understand how people could just stay quiet for so long. It was Sunday dammit, the sun was shining and my imagination was straining like wild horses.

So anyway, I am upstairs in my bed trying to be still and willing the time to pass, listening to the silence of the glorious after lunch time, the wind gently raking the leaves of the mango tree against the roof below my window, playing boy games in my head.

My whole world was still.

Then our neighbor, Mr. Harris started up.

He would get drunk and curse loudly in his backyard every Sunday after lunch, and I guess we all sort of got used to it. This Sunday was different though. He was cursing way more loudly than usual, using very, very, bad words at the top of his lungs, and it sounded like he was breaking things too.

Now, nobody looks forward to their after lunch sleep like my father, and he would usually sleep through most things. If you were ever unfortunate to prematurely disturb that sleep, well, you would incur a wrath of unstoppable intensity designed to both punish the guilty party and teach a lesson to all in proximity that this would not be tolerated.

Even my mother feared disturbing this dragon from his after lunch sleep.

I don’t think Mr. Harris was aware of this rule, or maybe on this Sunday he was too drunk to care.

Whatever the reason for his total disregard of this sacred law, he pressed on louder and louder, and from my room I heard the stirring of an angry man. Whenever something inadvertently happened to rouse him, we would all squeeze our eyes tight, lie still, and hope that his rage would pass our room straight.

His hand was hitting the bed head.

This was a move similar to the rattle of a rattle snake’s tail, and it was usually enough to tell us that he was being disturbed. Like a shot across the bow if you will; a very bad precursor of much worse things to come if the disturbance continued.

It usually was very effective too.

Not today though.

Mr. Harris continued on in full flight, and my father was tapping the bed head more now, and the world started to become a frightening place. It must have dawned on him in his half-asleep, half-awake state that this disturbance was not us, and the tapping was having no effect whatsoever.

He stopped tapping.

Mr. Harris continued cursing.

This was getting bad.

The complete silence from his room was followed by the sound of my father’s foot hitting the floor and I stopped breathing. Eyes shut tight; I pulled the covers completely over my head and tried my best to sink into the mattress. I did not want to be collateral damage today, no way, no way at all.

I heard him walk (stumble) past the doorway to my room and I knew that what was about to happen would be something I would remember for the rest of my life.

I knew it was going to be bad.

It was about to get much worse than I imagined.

On the wall of the stairway that brought you upstairs were three large swinging, tropical-styled windows with the hinge in the center, so the window swung completely horizontal and was held there by a string to a hook on the frame. They were very high up, and they overlooked Mr. Harris’s backyard.

My father climbed up and opened the window wide and enlarged my vocabulary that day to the point that I never ever heard another curse word in my life that I did not hear that day, and then some. As loud as Mr. Harris cursed, my father cursed him louder. Mr. Harris increased to hear himself (completely ignoring my father), and my father increased to be heard.

My father cursed that man continuously for about ten minutes until he (Mr. Harris) finally shut up, then he climbed back down from the window and went downstairs. The silence that followed was so loud you could hear the breath go up your nose and down into your lungs and not be disturbed by any other sound.

None of us, the children, dared move an inch.

Fear is a powerful tranquilizer, and I fell completely asleep and slept until my sister Faye-Ann woke me and told me something was going on downstairs and we were all going to see what it was.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

His anger took long to subside, and I attracted it like a magnet to steel.

With much trepidation I walked down the stairs bracing for more drama and found my house completely empty. Everyone was in the street.

I walked out through the front gate and saw my whole family and all of the neighbors in front of our house looking on at an ambulance parked in front Mr. Harris’s house. I had never seen an ambulance before, and as intrigued as I was with this amazing looking vehicle with flashing lights, I was distracted by the hysterical screams of a woman I had never seen before.

Apparently this was Mrs. Harris.

And apparently Mr. Harris had just died (again a new experience, I was feeling overloaded and confused trying to process all of this) and Mrs. Harris was pointing and screaming at my father “you kill him, you kill him, Oh God, you cuss him ‘til he dead”

Was that possible?

Did my father have the power to curse somebody to death? I was now even more afraid of this man than ever before. We found out later that he (Mr. Harris) had a massive ‘Heart Attack’ (what the hell did that mean?) and died before the ambulance arrived.

With Mrs. Harris being consoled (supported) by neighbors (she looked ready to collapse), three large men in white wheeled a large bed-looking thing with Mr. Harris strapped to it to the back of the van, opened wide the two doors exposing a world of lights and gadgets, lifted the bed inside, closed the doors, got in the front and drove off with sirens howling.

People were forming into little groups now and talking animatedly about the days events.

Not me. I went into the house, up the stairs to my room, sat on my bed and looked out the window at O’Connor Street, trying hard to digest all that had transpired that day. 

I spent the rest of the day there; waiting to go to sleep - tomorrow was school.