No Woman No Cry Page 4

  But she said, “No no, next thing you come breeding here again and another baby … and this one that one … no no. Jesus! He has to go!”

  So I said, “Well, if he has to go, I’m going with him.” I was furious by that time. I said, “You know, Aunty, that’s sin, to make him leave at this hour of night, for him to walk back up there alone, in the dark! Anything could happen to him, Aunty, they could kill him, thievery …”

  “No no!” she insisted. “I don’t care!”

  So I said, “Okay, Robbie, come.” And I grabbed his hand and went toward the door.

  But she said, “No! He has to walk back through the window! Wherever he walk in, let him walk out!”

  And so poor Bob had to go back out through that window. And I walked out the door, while Aunty was saying, “Must I lock the door?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Because I’m not coming back. I’m gonna stay with Robbie tonight. I’m not coming back.”

  “And who will look after the baby when the baby wakes up?”

  I knew she was just trying to make me feel guilty, so that didn’t bother me. I didn’t care, I just walked, thinking, no, this is it now. I didn’t want to be rude to her—this was the first time I’d ever slept out—but I was not going to let Bob sleep alone, in that place, again. I grabbed a blanket—her blanket, which was my blanket …

  As we walked away, onto the dark road, Bob said, “Rita, you sure? Aunty gonna kill you tomorrow.”

  And I said what I really meant. “I don’t care.”

  We were both so exhausted by the time we got back to the studio that we lay down on the door and fell right to sleep. Until there was the sound he’d been describing, “baow.” I lay there, listening, aware that he was awake too.

  “You see?” he whispered. “Every night it happens about one and it continues until five, six in the morning, just straight.”

  And I listened … and then the thing, whatever it was, came into the room—not physically, but the sensation. And I went … out, not unconscious, but I couldn’t speak. I was trying to let Bob know how I was feeling, but the words wouldn’t come although I knew I was awake. Then I felt hot and started to shake—and he said, “Lord have mercy!”—and ran out to get the watchman, yelling, “Come quick, something happening to Rita!” And they came in and threw water on me, and when I came to myself I realized that something had happened, though I couldn’t tell what. And Bob said, “I told you, I told you, Rita, this is what’s been happening.”

  Next morning I went home and had to beg Aunty. I said, “Now, Aunty, we have to look out for Robbie, at least I do. Aunty, please, we won’t have sex or anything. But let him sleep for a time in the room with Dream. It’s very important. Please.”

  It was now clear to everyone, even Aunty, that Bob and I were serious about each other. I had started really thinking about him, trying to decide whether this guy could be the man for me. I didn’t want to make another mistake. Besides, Bob was a good example, a good role model as we’d say today. What I liked, to begin with, was that he approached me with a sense of consciousness about me as a whole person; I was very impressed by that. Here is one who really has a different direction, I thought. It wasn’t all about “Hey, can I touch your tits” or “Let’s have sex,” the usual teenage lust. It was something a little bit more, maybe because he was a country boy. But he had reservations and respect about that aspect of life. After six or seven, fine, but during the day you could see he was about something else: Let’s either make music or talk about the future.

  I really felt that this boyfriend of mine was different from other guys I’d met, and that I might be able to learn something from him. That had to be good for me, I thought, and for Sharon too, because even though Aunty was in charge, once you have a baby you’re a woman, whether you’re twelve or twenty. I knew that in the long run Sharon was my responsibility, even though Bob was so adaptable to her. He really did love her, really saw her through the eyes of one who wanted to see. And even though I was making a little money at Coxsone’s and was able to contribute at home, I couldn’t contribute very much. Bob was aware of that, and he began to contribute things, too. He was always making sure that Sharon and I had what he thought was best for us.

  When we started to date, he’d introduced me to his friend Georgie. Anything you want, Bob said, anything you need, just ask Georgie. If I’m not here, here is Georgie till I come. Georgie was an older man, like many of Bob’s friends. Older or not, they were his pals, though, because Bob was inclined that way. I wouldn’t say he was above his time or above his age, but his level was always more mature. He would often bring a bundle of okra or some callaloo or some oranges from his friend Vincent Ford (called Tata). It was in Tata’s kitchen that Bob ended up living, which quieted Aunty for a while—but it should come as no surprise that in Tata’s kitchen Bob and I first made love. His friend Bragga would bring me fresh cow’s milk in the mornings, always with a cheerful “Everything aright?” And I would say, and oh, I really meant it, “Yeah, man, everything cool.”

  I often think about men like Tata and Bragga and Georgie, who became my friends too, men whom I knew Bob would look out for, men who always looked out for Bob. Tata was credited as the cowriter of “No Woman No Cry,” which Bob did to honor such a close friend, another father figure like Coxsone. Sometimes Tata would come up to see us and then walk home with Bob, and I’d feel better that there were the two of them, turning back into the dangerous streets of Trench Town in the dark hours of the night.

  As for Georgie, who in that very song, “would make the fire light,” he is still around and still my friend. I have vivid memories of times when Georgie did indeed make the fire light, and it was true that it would burn “through the night.” Bob always wrote about real things, about his feelings. They would be playing guitar and all of us singing and drinking cornmeal porridge or sharing whatever was cooked for the day. All the rest of that song turned out to be true, too. And because Bob was so real, so true to himself, I feel that I need to insist on that here. Aunty always said, “Don’t tell no stories,” by which she meant lies. So this is not a “story,” this is my life.

  One holiday some of Coxsone’s major artists—the Wailers and Soulettes, Delroy Wilson, the Paragons—were performing live at an all-day dance on Bournemouth Beach in Rockfort. It was a beautiful day, with puffy clouds in a blue sky—Jamaica’s best weather—and the roar of the ocean and the bright sun seemed to calm everyone down. Before we went on Bob and I slipped away from the crowd, and found a secluded cove, and started to sing. By then he had his own guitar and always had it with him, and he was forever saying, “Let’s try this, and this and that”—he would want to practice twenty-four hours a day! That day he said, “Let’s just rehearse a little, because today we have to be good. There’s a lot of young people here, and this is their exposure to the dancehall type of people, the wild guys and girls, and we have to show them the best of us.”

  This was the serious Bob, the moral Bob I admired. He made me want to try, by trusting my musical instincts and making me responsible for harmonies. But demanding perfection. And so we were there rehearsing in this little cove, and oh, we were suddenly so taken away, and looking into each other’s eyes and singing, and then we put our mouths to each other’s—we were still singing—as if we were giving oxygen to each other, giving each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! And I’m thinking, is this love? And the song with that title hadn’t even been written yet! Is this love? And then we’re kissing and laughing and looking into each other’s eyes and I’m thinking, wow, this is magic! This is magic, I’m in love with this guy, I love him! We love each other!

  We got married on impulse, because Bob’s mother had sent for him. Unlike a lot of girls, I hadn’t been dreaming of being married at that age, it wasn’t something I had in mind. I never thought about “my wedding day.” To begin with, we didn’t have anything to be married on, and in those days in Jamaica, you couldn’t wake up one day and want to marr
y, you had to plan, and you had to save money for it.

  But Cedella Malcolm Marley had married Edward Booker, an American. Having gotten her own legal papers, she could now sponsor her son. So Bob had to emigrate, but he said he wouldn’t leave unless I eventually went with him. Though we were well in love, we hadn’t even talked about getting married until this happened. Bob thought that if we weren’t married before he left, I would find another boyfriend. I don’t know if that would have happened—maybe—but he wouldn’t allow it to happen. And by then he was my “straight boyfriend,” as we say in Jamaica. I was neither seeing nor thinking about another man. He was my Number One. Plus he was now getting some recognition; he was waiting for his muse, his music was playing on the radio. We both thought we were made for each other.

  Our plan was that he was going to sponsor me when he got to Delaware. Even after his mother’s experience, we refused to believe that this couldn’t happen quickly and easily. We had no idea that things would turn out the way they did. But I think I got involved with the Robbie I knew because he was so clearly a strong young man. He was very straightforward and strong-headed, in terms of “This is what I want to do, this is what I’m going to do.” And very serious about his family and life. His spirit was there, too, the strength of his spirit showed. I guess I have a strong spirit too, to identify one. As partners and soul mates there was some chemistry that was natural and positive. And our astrological signs were right—him being an Aquarian and me a Leo, we faced each other on the zodiac. And I think our relationship came out of wanting, needing, seeing the need in each other. My need is in you, I need someone like you. To help me, to make me what I am, what I want to be. And I think we did great.

  We were married, at eleven in the morning on February 10, 1966, a couple of days after his twenty-first birthday. Bob got ready at Aunty’s and I went to my Uncle Cleveland’s, where my cousin Yvonne got me really sharp. Then we met at the office of the Justice of the Peace. Bob had on a black suit and fancy shoes that Coxsone had bought for him; I wore a borrowed mother-of-pearl tiara, and a ruffled white wedding dress cut just below the knee, with a short lace veil (both made by Aunty, of course, who—without my knowledge—had gone with Bob to buy the ring with his small savings). I was nineteen going on twenty, very happy, but almost unable to believe I was actually getting married.

  Sharon was not quite a year. Aunty had put her in a chair, where she had been sleeping but then woke up just in time to take the wedding picture. She stood up in the chair, very surprised at all the excitement, and just as the photographer was clicking the shutter she pulled up her little dress, and she peed! In the photograph her dress is lifted up, and she’s standing with the pee coming down and looking at it!

  We had a wonderful day. Aunty cooked curried goat and rice with green bananas, and made what we call a “three-sister” cake. Our pictures show how much in love we were. We look as if we’re thinking, how did this happen? But it’s happening! We’re husband and wife! But oh, we were so … like twins.

  The Wailing Wailers had a concert at National Stadium that night, on the bill with the Jackson Five. Sometime during the show, we heard on the mike, “Congratulations to Bob and Rita, who got married today!” We were absolutely surprised—Bob said, “Who told them!”—and the Wailers gave a first-class performance. That night we were so happy we went home and made love all night.

  Two days later, he left for Delaware. This was dread. After taking him to the airport, I came home crying, feeling empty and lonely, and shocked, as if I’d been caught in a whirlwind and set down somewhere strange. I remember going to the studio with Bunny and Peter and Dream, recording a song called “I’ve Been Lonely So Long, Don’t Seem Like Happiness Will Come Along.” Five days later I got my first letter. “My Dear Wife,” it said. “How are you? I miss you very much, it’s very cold here in America.”

  chapter three

  CHANCES ARE

  DURING THE TIME I was getting to know Bob, he’d been exposing me to the faith of Rastafari, which began in the early twentieth century with Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who was also from St. Ann. Garvey went to New York, where he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to encourage black pride and advocate the repatriation of black people to Africa.

  Some Jamaicans paid particular attention to Garvey’s prophecy that an African king would deliver us from our situation as colonized people, and they came to believe the Ethiopian ruler Emperor Haile Selassie I to have been that person. Selassie’s original name was Ras Tafari; his followers and believers are Rastafarians, Rastas for short.

  Before the sixties, no one outside Jamaica knew much about Rastas. Within Jamaica, ordinary citizens viewed them as “blackheart” men who lived in the gully and were always smoking ganja (an East Indian word for marijuana). People said they would steal your children away. They didn’t cut their hair or straighten it, instead letting it grow naturally into “locks,” or “dreadlocks.” The word “dread,” now used in many ways, has its origins in the Rastafari challenge to Jamaican colonial authority. Which of us is “dreadful”?

  In Jamaica, Rasta was the last thing you wanted your children to be involved with. People said it turned its followers worthless, that besides smoking ganja Rastas didn’t eat properly, wash their hair, or brush their teeth. Only the worst things were said about them—no one mentioned the Rasta message of peace and love and understanding and justice, its refusal of pain and abuse, although they silently agreed with its message of black pride.

  For black people everywhere, the 1960s was a time of consciousness-raising. In the United States, people were considering not only “Black Is Beautiful” but “Black Power.” These ideas reached us too; at one time we were all carving small black fists from wood and selling them at the record shop. People bought them to wear around their necks. For one album cover the Wailers posed for photographs holding toy guns and wearing the berets usually associated with the Black Panthers.

  As soon as Aunty allowed Bob to take me out, he’d begun to show me the Rasta way to live. “You’re a queen, a black queen,” he said. “You’re pretty just as you are, you don’t need to do anything else. You don’t have to straighten your hair, you can wear it natural.” After so many years of submitting weekly to a hot comb, I put mine away. Bob was also very intent on telling me how great black people were, and how far we’d come because of Marcus Garvey. Aunty was big on Garvey too, and had even given me a book about him, so I already knew about repatriation and the story of the Black Star Line, and was somewhat conscious to begin with. And certainly very aware, from an early age, of the condescension behind being called “blackie tootus.”

  But after I stopped pressing my hair Aunty began to worry, my God, is Rita smoking that stuff, that terrible stuff that would make you go crazy and put you to prison! And of course she wanted to blame Bob, because I had started smoking a little herb, though I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it from her. When I smoked in my room, I’d squirt baby powder into the air to cover the smell. But I liked smoking for the way it made me feel—cooled out and meditative—and I think if I were to blame anyone it would have to be my father. (Though I don’t blame anyone and have no regrets.) Papa was nowhere near Jamaica when I started smoking, but I remembered that sometimes he’d had a smell about him that I liked. It was only after he’d gone out to smoke that he smelled like that—which would piss Aunty off, until she’d threaten him: “Don’t even come near this house!” So when I discovered that I’m liking it, I’m saying tschoo! It’s from my father, it really doesn’t have anything to do with Bob. It isn’t Bob!

  While we were courting, one of the many things he and I had often talked about was what you should and shouldn’t eat. At the time, like most people who lived in Trench Town, I ate pork. It was always available to poor people and made up a large part of our diet—we ate trotters, pig feet, and the pig’s tail that we put in our peas and rice. Stew peas and rice was one of our favorite dishes. When Bob mentioned that t
he Rastafari believed that you were not supposed to eat the pig, I thought he was crazy. I said, “What are you talking about? The sweetest meat, and that’s what I was grown on?”

  But I listened to his explanation from the Old Testament and considered that maybe there was some truth to it. Still, how could I not eat something when I had no money to make my own choices? Without money, I had to eat what Aunty gave me, and I’d wanted to avoid her discovery that I was changing my diet. This was part of her old fear, that the Trench Town rude boys would get to me. But the fight was unavoidable. Bob was now passing through the house to get me for studio. One day she’d been cooking callaloo and codfish, which traditionally is cooked down with pork. I went into the kitchen and, as calmly as I could, said, “Aunty, I won’t be eating any of that callaloo today because of the pork.”

  And she went crazy! She told everybody—calling over the fence to our neighbor Mother Rose, “You know Rita just tell me she not eating any of the dinner because pork in there!” And Mother Rose said, “I told you that boy …” And they started to put the blame on “Robbie and this Rasta thing.” But I was stubborn, and refused to listen, and from then on Aunty realized that I was going through changes and was trying to become more conscious, and she accepted the fact that I had to find out certain things for myself. Such as, what was really black? And why is black so black? Why is black so black and white so white?

  The interesting thing to me now is that everyone wanted to blame all my decisions on other people, as if I couldn’t possibly be thinking on my own. But I began to feel that we were the generation who had come to rise up. Also, Bob had introduced me to some of the Rasta elders, and after meeting them a few times and listening to what they had to say, I was convinced that these people were for real. The whole thing seemed intelligent to me; it wasn’t just about smoking herb, it was more a philosophy that carried a history with it. That’s what really pulled my interest, the powerful history that hadn’t been taught to me in school.