Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Read Free Book Online Page B

buried, near the place where he thought Mr. Potter was buried, near the place where, because he had become tired of me, he insisted Mr. Potter was buried, I thought of Mr. Potter for he was my father. And Mr. Potter, like his father Nathaniel, could not read and neither of them could write, and their worlds, the one in which they lived and the one in which they existed, ceased, and the small, irregular stumble that their existence had made in the vast smoothness that was the turning of the earth on its axis was no more and was not celebrated or even regretted by anyone or anything. And from Mr. Potter I was made, and I can read and write and even love doing so.
    And Mr. Potter was not an original man, he was not made from words, his father was Nathaniel and his mother was Elfrida and neither of them could read
or write; his beginning was just the way of everyone, as would be his end. He began in a long day and a long night and after nine months he was born and Nathaniel Potter knew nothing of his existence until one day, when he was on his way to the shade of the tree under which he mended his fishnet, he saw a small boy who walked like him and his face looked like his own face and the boy (Roderick was his name, he would become Mr. Potter) was accompanied by a woman and her name was Elfrida. And on seeing Mr. Potter, Nathaniel looked the other way, for this was his son, but not a son he had wanted, he had never wanted any of his sons, he had never wanted any of his children; and on seeing Mr. Potter walking with his mother Elfrida, Nathaniel thought not of the joy in loving someone, or of the contentedness that comes from a kind and sympathetic companion, nor did he even think of the satisfaction to be had on seeing the sun set on a day in which everything he did was full of purpose and was useful and was complete. On seeing Mr. Potter, the young boy who was Roderick, the boy who would become my father, Nathaniel thought of the many snags that he would find in the thread as he mended the small breaches in his fishnet, he thought of the smallness that was his life, the pain of entering into the beginning of each day, the way fortune had denied him its goodness, his fish pots so
often insufficiently filled, his past never holding a different future. Who am I? never entered into his thoughts, not even when he saw the young Roderick, the boy who became my father, and Nathaniel could not read and he could not write.
    A very long “Oooooohhhhh!!!” sighed Nathaniel Potter just before he died and many times before that and it was his only legacy to all his children and all who would come from them: this sound of helplessness combined with despair: “Oooooohhhhh,” they all cried and cry, all who came from Nathaniel Potter. And the months were August through September, December through February, and April to the end of July; and the years were the same and the weeks were the same as the years and then so too were the days and the minutes and Nathaniel was trapped in all of that—years and months and weeks and days and hours and minutes—and then he died, the way all people do, he died, and he left Mr. Potter, his son, and Mr. Potter was my father, my father’s name was Roderick Potter.
    And the end of Nathaniel’s life did not bring a beginning to another life. His life ended in the silence so common to everything and in that way he was extraordinary and in that way he was not. And as he was dying, crazy from pain and misery and not with despair, despair did not enter into it, his whole life did
not pass before him, and the faces of his children did not float in the invisible air in front of him and he did not call out any names, not his children’s, not his own mother’s and father’s, not his own name. And he did not curse the day on which he was born, he only cursed the day on which each and every one of his ancestors was born. And if all the diseased efforts of his ancestors could come