There is a saying among Jamaicans that I first heard on a sitcom sometime in the late 1980s, maybe three or four years after I arrived in the United States:
“You are a Jamaican if you work three jobs.”
I remember hearing it and immediately understanding what it meant. There was nothing foreign about the idea to me. What was strange was that, although I was working four jobs at the time, I had never heard the saying before.
I wasn’t trying to prove that I was Jamaican. I wasn’t thinking about some great immigrant work ethic. I was simply trying to stay afloat. I had to eat, pay my bills and somehow save enough money to make sure I could pay the $350 monthly rent on my one-bedroom apartment in Compton, California.
So I worked.
And worked.
And worked.
My regular daytime job was at a student loan servicing company in Carson. That was my highest-paying job: $4.25 an hour.
At night, I worked as a security guard, sometimes three nights a week. Security paid $2.35 an hour.
I also cleaned buildings at night. That brought me another $150 a month for cleaning two nights each week, although sometimes I did it three nights a week.
Then, on Saturdays and Sundays, I worked at a janitorial supply store for another $50 for the weekend.
The owner of that janitorial supply store is another story. I’ll tell you about him another time. But he was also the person who sold me the cleaning contract that gave me those additional two or three nights of work each week.
And even the $50 a week I earned working at his store had somewhere to go. It paid the monthly payment on my car, a 1979 Toyota Corolla hatchback that he had fronted me.
That was how life worked for me then. One job paid for one thing, another job paid for something else, and whatever was left had to stretch far enough to keep me afloat. There wasn’t much room for anything to go wrong.
Four jobs.
The hardest part wasn’t even the work.
It was my pride.
I was glad I was in California, where I didn’t know anybody. Nobody knew me, so I didn’t have to worry too much about someone seeing me going to or coming from one of those jobs.
Yeah, that bothered me.
I was working and doing what I needed to do, but my pride still bothered me.
Then I would remind myself of something very simple:
Who was gonna put food on my table?
Only me.
I was the only person who had control over that.
One of my security assignments was all the way out on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the South Bay area of California. My shift ran from 11:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m.
When the shift ended at seven in the morning, there was no going home to sleep. I would get into my car and drive straight from Palos Verdes to Carson to begin my day job.
Then I would do it all over again.
One morning, though, my body finally said no.
I finished the security shift and got into the car to make the usual drive to Carson. But I was so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open. I was almost falling asleep behind the wheel.
I knew I couldn’t make it.
Instead of driving to Carson, I turned around and headed home to Compton. I called the office and told them I was sick.
When I got home, I was tired, but I was also hungry.
So I put a pot of pinto beans on the stove to boil. My plan was simple. I would lie down for a little while, let the beans soften, then get back up and make my regular stew peas.
I went to bed.
I must have fallen completely asleep.
The next thing I remember was opening my eyes.
Everything around me was white.
White smoke.
But I was so tired and disoriented that my brain didn’t register smoke. It didn’t register danger. It didn’t register fire.
The first thing that came into my mind was:
Heaven.
I thought I had died.
I really did.
After all, that was what I had seen in the movies. When somebody went to heaven, there were white clouds everywhere. God was somewhere in those clouds. Angels were somewhere in those clouds.
So when I opened my eyes and saw all that white surrounding me, my exhausted mind came to what seemed, at that moment, like the most logical conclusion.
I must be dead.
I am in heaven.
Then came this sound.
BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! BOOP!
A huge, heavy pounding.
Again.
BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! BOOP!
It wouldn’t stop.
In fact, that pounding was probably what had awakened me.
Slowly, my mind began putting things together.
That wasn’t some sound from heaven.
Someone was beating on my door.
And those weren’t clouds around me.
That was smoke.
My apartment was on fire.
Even then, I wasn’t moving with the urgency you might expect from somebody whose apartment was burning. That’s what exhaustion can do to you. I got up and began moving toward the sound of the pounding.
To reach the front door, I had to pass the kitchen.
It was a small one-bedroom apartment. The living room and kitchen were only partially separated by a wall, so as I moved toward the door, I could see into the kitchen.
That’s when I saw it.
Red.
The biggest, reddest fire my eyes had ever seen.
I had seen a major fire only once before in my life. I was about ten years old in Oracabessa, Jamaica, when Rice Yard burned down. That image had stayed with me.
But this was different.
This fire was inside my apartment.
And it was coming toward me.
By then I knew one thing for certain:
I wasn’t in heaven.
And if I didn’t get out of that apartment quickly, I might soon be heading somewhere else.
I followed the pounding through the smoke.
BOOP! BOOP! BOOP!
The closer I got to the door, the more intense it became.
Someone was still out there, beating and beating and beating on that door.
I reached it.
Unlocked it.
And opened it as quickly as I could.
Just before I went through the doorway, I looked back one final time.
That enormous red fire was coming toward me.
I jumped.
And landed on a man.
Ferdie.
Ferdie was the building manager.
He had seen smoke coming from underneath my apartment door. He knew somebody was inside, and he had stood outside for a long time pounding on that door, trying desperately to get my attention.
That was the BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! I had been hearing through the smoke.
Ferdie didn’t stop.
And because he didn’t stop, I woke up.
I had made it out just in time.
Ferdie saved my life.
Almost as soon as I got up, the fire department personnel were there and took control of the situation.
Ferdie was Panamanian.
How Ferdie and I met in the first place is another story. I’ll tell you that one another time.
But here’s the strange part.
About thirty years later, after California and after all those years had passed, I was living in Florida.
And my kitchen burned down again.
Twice in one lifetime was enough for me.
Mi stop cook from den.
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