Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid

to a resounding end with his death, what would the world be like then? But it was too late for that, already there existed Mr. Potter, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, and that man, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, was my father.
    And Mr. Potter, the man who became my father, the man named Roderick Nathaniel Potter who lived to be seventy years old and who in all that time could not read and did not learn to write, was born on the seventh day in January in nineteen hundred and twenty-two and died on the fourth of June in nineteen hundred and ninety-two. And in those seventy years of his life, he did not wish to be anyone better than himself and he most certainly did not wish to be anyone worse; and in those seventy years, each day held its own peril, and each day’s peril was so unbearable and then so ordinary, as if it were breathing, and in this way suffering became normal, and in this way suffering became life itself, and any interruption in this suffering, be it justice and happiness, or more suffering and injustice, was regarded with hostility and anger
and disappointment. And at the beginning of his seventy years, how unimaginable such an expanse of time, seventy years, was to Mr. Potter, and at the end of his life, all he had been seemed like a day, whatever that might be, a day.

A nd it was in the middle of the night when there was no wind and there had been no rain for a long time, it was in the middle of a drought, on the seventh of January in nineteen hundred and twenty-two, that Mr. Potter was born and his mother’s name was Elfrida Robinson and he was her only child then and he remained her only child for the rest of her life. And in the middle of that long drought and in the middle of the darkest part of the night is how Mr. Potter came into the world and nothing cared and his appearance in the world did not end the drought, the absence of rain, his appearance did not make the world pause. And why should it, why should it be worth mentioning that the world did not pause when Mr. Potter was born, and the world did not ignore his birth, the world was only indifferent to it: to the
world, that is, as it is created by God and the world as it is continually created by human activity. And it was in the small village of English Harbour, in the Parish of St. Paul, on the island that was (and still is) Antigua, that Mr. Potter was born, and as he came out of the womb of his mother, Elfrida Robinson was her name, in a small ball of, first, complacency and then exploding into the startling rashness that is a human being, he cried out, but it was not in sorrow, it was only to expand his small, gelatinous lungs, it was only an instinctive effort, his will then being not known to him. And as he emerged from his mother’s womb (her name was Elfrida Robinson) she felt herself as if cast asunder, as if split into many pieces, and each piece flung far away from the other and would not be united again and she wondered who she was and what she came from and struggled to remember her own name, for that might amount to something, her name was Elfrida Robinson, and she remembered her name and it was Elfrida Robinson. And her son, for this collection of tissue, bones, and blood was her son, was not held gently by the midwife, Nurse Eudelle (her name was Sylvia Eudelle and her services of midwifery were available to anyone living in the villages of English Harbour, Falmouth, Old Road, Liberta, Urlings, and John Hughes, for beyond those distances she felt a great haughtiness toward people who might need her,
and so refused to travel toward their environs, their vicinity). Mr. Potter when born was held with contempt by the person who received him into the world, the midwife Nurse Sylvia Eudelle, for she had brought so many beings just like him into the world, in the very same way as Mr. Potter had come into the world, and no sign of any kind had appeared to reveal to her a departure from her routine, no hallowed moment had made her see