Augustown: A Novel

Irie Tafarie, known as Ma Taffy, smells a strange scent coming from the little boy Kaia as he walks home. Ma Taffy has been blind since a large family of rats fell through her ceiling 10 years ago, gouging out one of her eyes and badly damaging the other. She can recognize all the smells in her environment, but the smell on the boy is different. It almost smells like the rats that took her vision. She puts down her joint and listens to Kaia approach. He is crying, and she thinks that he needs more of a backbone. 

Ma Taffy is a steady presence in her community. Two years prior, she intervened in a standoff between the police, referred to as Babylon, and the Angola Gang. She walked through the line of fire, causing the shooters to stop. She walked through the ruins of an old house to find five of the gang members, just young boys. She told them that she knew that the police wrongfully shot and killed a young man named Petey for stealing money from the woman he did yard work for, a crime he did not commit. She then showed Soft-Paw, also known as Marlon, where the corporal who killed Petey was. As she walked home, she heard a gunshot and watched as Soft-Paw ran away.

In the present, Ma Taffy hears Kaia ask where his mother Gina is, even though he knows she is at work. To comfort Kaia, whom she calls her grandson though she is really his great aunt, Ma Taffy takes him on her lap and begins to tell him the story of the Flying Preacherman.

Ma Taffy was the same age as Kaia during the time of the Flying Preacherman, and she remembers it well. There was a church in Augustown called Union Camp, constructed from beautiful white stone, which was feared by Babylon, a name some of the members of Augustown have for the white system of power present in Jamaica. The preacher of the church was Alexander Bedward, who said one day he would fly. Kaia recognizes the name and recites a rhyme stating that Bedward broke his neck trying to fly. Ma Taffy chides him for interrupting before returning to her memories.

Ma Taffy was born Irene Mackenzie. She was raised by her mother Norah and Maas Bilby, her mother’s partner with whom she had three additional daughters. Her sisters all left Augustown but left their children behind with Ma Taffy to raise. Bilbly worked to support Norah and the children, both in legal and illegal ways. Despite his illegal activities, he was always home before dark to have dinner with the family and appreciate Norah’s inventive cuisine. 

One day, over dinner, Norah began to share a story from Sister Liz, Preacher Bedward’s wife. Liz said that Bedward was floating in his sleep. Liz asked for prayers as Bedward was staying in his bedroom and drinking only water until the mysterious floating resolved itself. Bilby thought perhaps the “stone” of oppression had finally fallen off Bedward, letting him become light enough to float. They began a prayer circle, Ma Taffy included.

Ma Taffy can still remember the feeling of holding hands in the prayer circle. She tells Kaia that she saw Bedward fly herself. She reaches to touch Kaia’s head and finds his dreadlocks gone. Kaia tells her that his teacher, Mr. Saint-Josephs, cut off his dreadlocks.

The narrator states that there have been other stories of people floating in Augustown. Ma Taffy remembers Clarky, a man who moved to Augustown as a teenager and sold callaloo, a leaf vegetable. The police arrested him under false pretenses. He walked through town after being released, and the people of the town could hardly look at him because the police had shaved off his dreadlocks. Later, Ma Taffy’s girls came running to her and Sister Gilzene, crying. They followed the girls to Clarky’s house, where they found him hanging from a mango tree, “floating.” Like Clarky, Ma Taffy had taken the “Nazarite vow,” which prohibits haircutting. Clarky took it so seriously that losing his hair made him lose his will to live. 

In the present, Ma Taffy soothes Kaia and tells him that his locs are “just hair” but then tells him to find Soft-Paw.

Ma Taffy can sense the guns that Soft-Paw has stored underneath her house. She doesn’t think anyone else in the Angola Gang knows about the guns besides Soft-Paw. The Army once came into Augustown to look for guns and only found four. There are many more than that under Ma Taffy’s house. One night, she caught Soft-Paw coming to retrieve a gun. He told her that he did not care if he died defending Augustown from Babylon, which saddened Ma Taffy as she thought that he did not appreciate the frailty of life. 

Soft-Paw walks Kaia home, and the community watches, judging Kaia and his family as Rastafarians and Soft-Paw as a gang leader. When they arrive at the house, Ma Taffy tells Soft-Paw that he needs to move the guns. She plans to deal with the teacher who cut Kaia’s hair on her own, but Babylon might come, which is a risk with the guns. Soft-Paw thinks she is being ridiculous, but when she frames it as a favor, he agrees. Even though he views her as the old Augustown and himself as the new Augustown, the future, he still respects her. He takes the rucksacks away in broad daylight as the community watches, transfixed.

Mr. Emanuel Saint-Josephs, Kaia’s teacher, sits and sweats at his desk and thinks back on the events of the day. He is an insecure, slightly nervous teacher, and as he writes on the chalkboard, he turns around and sees Kaia whispering to his friend. He explodes in anger, grabbing Kaia by the hair and lifting him out of his chair. He then cuts off Kaia’s dreadlocks with a rusty pair of scissors as Kaia cries in shock. He then sends Kaia home and spends the rest of the day teaching in a “Pentecostal,” shouting fashion.

Mr. Saint-Josephs complained about Kaia and his dreadlocks to the principal, Mrs. Garrick, when he first began as a teacher at the school, complaining about the school’s lack of “tidiness.” He was Head Deputy Teacher at his last school in Trelawny, and he feels upset that the Christian Augustown elementary school is not upholding the same dress code standards, though he acknowledges the students are all in uniform. Mrs. Garrick tells him that Kaia is a Rastafari child and therefore allowed to keep his dreadlocks. 

Mr. Saint-Josephs goes home, after looking at Kaia’s dreadlocks on the floor, thinking that the wind moves them and makes them look like snakes.

Mr. Saint-Josephs has a specific morning routine that he carried with him from the more rural area of Trelawny; he reads the Bible and some Charles Darwin, he washes himself with cold water that he collected himself, and he styles his hair in a specific way that he thinks looks chic but quickly falls out into an afro that others in the community call “pitchy-patchy-head” (51). He views himself as having a sharp jawline, light skin, and mixed-race, curly hair, but the rest of the world sees him as weak-jawed and dark-skinned. He takes pride in his self-view and views himself differently from other Black people.

This is a point of contention that leads to the end of his marriage. His wife, Mary, was 19 when she began pursuing him. Mary’s skin color is lighter than his, and she is from a bourgeois family in Trelawny. When she began flirting with him, Mary was interested in the Black Power movement and the writings of political activist Marcus Garvey. She thought that Mr. Saint-Josephs reminded her of Garvey. However, Mr. Saint-Josephs thought that Mary perceived him as brown instead of Black. She proposed, and they were wed. After two years of marriage, they were only sexually intimate seven times; once, Mary “virtually raped” Mr. Saint-Josephs. Mary then started sleeping with other men. Mr. Saint-John discovered her with another man. Mary called him “a very stupid blackman,” which prompted Mr. Saint-Josephs to hit her and break her nose since he could not handle being called Black due to his internalized anti-Black sentiments (58). These events, which happened a year ago, caused Mr. Saint-Josephs to come to Augustown.