Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

protective covering, something not to be lived without. And Mr. Potter did not know about his father Nathaniel Potter and the voluminous joy he—Nathaniel—experienced from reaping the bounty of the sea, the voluminous joy he took in making so many children, and the lack of sadness or regret that should have come from not loving them really or even caring about their existence, their ups and downs, and all this too, Nathaniel Potter’s life and the absence in him of fatherly feelings toward his own children, all of them, became a skin for Mr. Potter, not like a skin, but a skin itself, a protective covering, something that could not be lived without.
    And when Mr. Shepherd showed some kindness to Mr. Potter, it was on a Christmas Day (he spent even
Christmas Day in the Shepherds’ household), and Mr. Shepherd gave him a small glass of port, a sweet liquor he had purchased from the large general store of Bryson & Sons, and a piece of plum pudding from a tin, purchased in the large general store of Joseph Dew & Sons; and the port would have been awful but Mr. Potter would not have known that, he had no other port with which to make a comparison; and the plum pudding would have been awful, but he could not know that then, he could only know that many years after, when he came to know my mother, Annie Victoria Richardson, and she was a very good maker of many good things to eat but on balance she added to his life an excess of bitterness and ill feeling, so much that he extended it to me, and I can write it down and make clear how all this came to be. And this kindness at Christmas of a glass of port and a slice of plum pudding from a tin did not leave a lasting impression on Mr. Potter, he did not incorporate it into his own life, he did not repeat it in his own household when he eventually had a household; after this Mr. Potter never again drank port; and he was hardly ever kind after that, and when he was kind, it was not at the same time every year and it was not accompanied by anything familiar from a time before.
    And this boy in Mr. Shepherd’s household, despised for his vulnerability (his mother had abandoned
him and had chosen the cold, vast vault that was the sea), held in contempt (for he could not protect himself, he could not protest when he was too tired to do one more thing that was required of him), thought Mr. Shepherd was a man of some distinction and he liked Mr. Shepherd’s hat and the way he wore it, as if it topped off something, something substantial, so substantial that no words could be given to it; his hat made Mr. Shepherd, and when Mr. Potter saw Mr. Shepherd, he thought, There is the hat and there is Mr. Shepherd. And Mr. Shepherd had that handkerchief in the pocket of his severely tailored and nicely ironed trousers made of coarse brown linen, and tucked into his trousers was a shirt of white poplin and it was very white, for it took four days to be laundered and two of those days that shirt was spread out in the hot sun on a heap of stones, and was constantly made wet by a woman who did only that, tend Mr. Shepherd’s clothes. And Mr. Shepherd’s shoes were brown leather and given a proper coat of polish once a week (Sunday evenings) by Mr. Potter and then each evening, by the light of a small oil lamp, Mr. Potter buffed them up. And so Mr. Shepherd went to work each day, to teach and discipline the wayward boys at the Shepherd School, and the boys were so poor and so malnourished they could hardly keep themselves steady, for their stomachs were empty and their
clothes were sometimes dirty, sometimes full of holes, and all this made Mr. Shepherd hate them; their misfortune was a curse and to be cursed was deserving of hatred. Mr. Shepherd had been judged cursed and he had been judged deserving of hatred, but when standing before the boys at the Shepherd School, or when standing before Mr. Potter, how could he be expected to remember such a thing? For all people hold