No Woman No Cry Read online

  After Cedella’s birth, Sharon became the proud big sister, a role she very much enjoyed, and Aunty had two daughters to look after, which she loved because she could sew them pretty dresses. That was always her big thing, to make dresses for us, and she made a lot of them! Cedella and Sharon were the jewels in her crown, and as for me, her help was like a backbone. I could leave the kids to go out to work, because my working was as necessary for their welfare as staying home with them would have been. Even after six months away, there was still a demand for our music, so now that we were back in Kingston it was easy enough to pick up where we’d left off. Once we started working, we both felt better, and I began to understand even more clearly that music wasn’t just something I had to do to feed us, but something that satisfied me the way nothing else ever would. (Though there were times when I thought I should try to go back to nursing just to save my family’s face.)

  After I got married, Marlene Gifford had left for New York, looking for her own life, because by then a little jealousy had started up. I guess she figured that because I was married and the mother of two, I might not need the Soulettes anymore, that the fun would be over. Shortly after she disappeared, Dream emigrated too, also to New York, to live with his brother Kenneth Smith and to get some schooling. Now Cecile Campbell and Hortense Lewis were singing with me, and this is when the Soulettes became triumphant characters. When we got to the three girls thing, we were hot—international musicians playing in Jamaica used us as an opening act, and we even went to Canada. Sometimes Bob would travel with us, like a security guard, to see our show and keep an eye on me. I loved it! We were busy—booked into various hotels and in demand for concerts. They called us “the Supremes of the Caribbean,” and we were really kicking ass!

  Cedella was about seven months old when Bob decided he’d had enough of staying at Aunty’s. He felt like a parasite, he said, like a boy and not like the man he wanted to be at twenty-three. He felt he should take up his responsibilities and move his family out. He didn’t feel free to express himself, to curse (he would never curse around Aunty). Besides, she had moved us from the main house and built a little one room for us at the front. And Bob said, you know what this means? Aunty herself wants us to go now. That was what he thought, of course; I myself wasn’t so sure, since she was my right hand.

  But I understood his position, and we decided to find a room with a shop. A room like ours at Aunty’s, that was a shop by day and a bedroom at night, didn’t work with children. Besides, though Bob thought having two daughters was great, he wanted a son (just like most Jamaican men do, it seems to me). So, with two babies and the prospect of another one soon, we began looking all over, and though it wasn’t easy, we eventually found a room off Waltham Park Road with a shop front that adjoined it, where we could sell our records. It’s amazing to me to look back at the person I was then. It’s only now that I realize how young and inexperienced I was, going through all those changes and responsibilities and dealing with them quite normally. I’m surprised that I didn’t wake up one morning and run away from it all!

  But then things began to get a little complicated. The landlady found out who I was and then that Viola Britton was my aunt, and soon considered it her duty to report every action that took place in our rooms. Sometimes Bob and I actually got into physical fights, although it was like we were children, not in a “kill dead” fight but a love fight—the one you get into in order to make up. And I would fight! I wasn’t going to take a blow, I was going to hit back—you hit me, I’m gonna hit you! I think Bob respected me for that. But though I was always the first to scratch, I’d start crying in a minute. And then, because he didn’t like to see me cry, he would say, “Hey, that’s not how we’re supposed to live, I’m sorry” or “You made me do it,” and things like that. And we would always make up before the night was over. I never let Aunty know, but she would look at me sometimes and say, “Uh-huh, you had a fight last night, I can tell” or “Why your face look like that?” or “What happened to your hand there?”

  One night Bob and I had a fight because dinner was late. It was late because we didn’t have a kitchen—I had to do the cooking on the ground in the doorway. Every morning and evening I had to catch a coal fire, fan it until it lit, and then wait for it to burn properly, which was hardly easy with one small baby not even sitting up yet and another still around my feet. The night we fought about the late dinner, Aunty’s watchman got right on the job. As soon as she heard, Aunty came for me; she actually wanted to move me out, back to her house. And this was really a turnoff for Bob. “Am I not man enough to control my house?” he shouted. “Why can’t I have a quarrel with my wife?”

  But Aunty—so small but so powerful—said, “No, this is not what I sent her to school for!” And other things, because once again she thought I was being worthless. “When a man hits you, it’s not good,” she insisted. “It’s a bad sign. So here it is, you’re being mistreated, and this is not the life you’re supposed to be living, this is not what I brought you up for!” And all of that and blah blah blah … So I let her take me back to her house. And then Bob came and he and I made up, of course. And Aunty, too.

  At that time, the husband-wife thing seemed to me an unbreakable bond—you’re bound to this relationship, you never think about getting out of it. Or you just have a commitment that you think, oh, this is going to be for the rest of my life, there’s no way out. The vow alone was proof enough—for better for worse, for richer for poorer (for good or for bad, it seemed to me). Besides that, I was loving it and never thought, at that time, that this could ever end; I never thought Bob would leave me so soon and go to rest at the age of thirty-six. I never anticipated most of the things that happened because when I married, like most nineteen-year-old girls, I thought we were just going to be this way, love and happiness always. But marriage was a definite, real commitment to me, and added to it was that I always felt in sympathy with Bob and felt that I would always be his friend, come what may. It seemed more than a husband and wife thing with us; we were friends or, to look at it another way, despite whatever happened between us, we decided to be friends.

  As for Aunty, and the question of where we would live, all that had to be put on hold, for the time being at least. Soon enough the new records the Wailers were making for Studio One as well as our own Wail’NSoul’M productions, and the airplay we got, made us stars again in Jamaica. The Wailers/Soulettes group began to go on little dates, overnight gigs to the North Coast, to Bournemouth Beach, to Cuba, and other Caribbean places like Gold Coast Beach in St. Thomas. And there was Aunty, who as always had my back, was my back, and who very agreeably became the nanny. No way could we have done what we did without her, and Bob, even with all his misgivings, knew this too, and loved her for being there for us.

  But I realized, also, that I had taken up too much responsibility too soon. By the time I was twenty-two I had two children and still hadn’t left Trench Town. I felt bad about the possibility of their growing up in an environment that didn’t seem as if it was going to change. Poverty, corruption, violence—everything around us was the same as it had always been. Bob saw that I wasn’t going to be laying back, accepting the situation as it was, accepting anything that happened, “I don’t care, I’m gonna sleep today.” How could I let this be my children’s future?

  No, I thought to that. Every day I’d say, “What’s gonna be? What’s gonna happen? Let’s make something happen!” And I became what I guess you’d call a “quiet storm.” On the surface you’re smiling, but underneath you boil, and when you have to, you roar.

  chapter five

  LIVELY UP YOURSELF

  IF YOU HAD been listening to Jamaican music in the late sixties, you’d have heard Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Hortense Ellis, Marcia Griffiths, and certainly the Soulettes and the Wailers. One person with an ear out for all this was the American soul singer Johnny Nash, a frequent visitor to Jamaica who was looking for material for his company, JAD Records. In J
anuary 1967, at a Rastafarian religious ceremony, Rasta Elder Mortimo Planno introduced Nash to Bob, recommending him as “the best songwriter I know.” Nash obviously agreed with Planno’s assessment, because later he told his business partner, Danny Sims, that every one of the twenty-odd songs Bob played for him that night could be a hit.

  Neville Willoughby, one of Jamaica’s leading radio personalities, had also recommended Bob to Johnny Nash, so when Nash and Danny Sims came to Jamaica looking for us later that year, we were ready and interested. Now, we thought, at last, something good is going to happen. At that point we really needed something, because life seemed at a standstill: Sharon was still too young for school, Cedella was still in diapers (which I had to wash every day), and we were still at 18A Greenwich Park Road, all of us in that one little room at Aunty’s. And soon there’d be more of us, because I was pregnant with my third child, hoping for the son we had asked Jah for.

  Yet once again we had to thank Aunty, because at least we had a home with a veranda, where we could entertain these Americans. When they arrived, as usual she liked all the attention and excitement, and was happy to bring out drinks and crackers and cheese. And I had someone there to help me look after the children so I didn’t have to feel pressured to be the singer, the hostess, and the mother all at once. After we started to work for JAD and began to see U.S. dollars for the first time, I said, “Aunty, see? Making good money now, good money coming in!” And so her story changed somewhat: Now when people asked about me she’d say, “Oh, she turned out not as we wanted, but t’ank god, she’s not the worst!”

  Americans can speak, they give you a picture on the wall that looks great. We were enticed by this prospect that our life was finally going to change. Here was what we’d been waiting for, people who could take us from one level to another. And at the beginning this seemed so true, because our initial meetings with the JAD people took place in a house that Johnny Nash owned, in the mountains overlooking Kingston in Russell Heights. Our first visits to—oooohhh, a house on the hilltop! Breathtaking!

  Margaret Nash, Johnny’s wife, befriended me right away. She was attracted to us but thought we were weird, she even said it right out: “You all are strange-looking people with your dreadlocks! And you’re so quiet!” But I thought she was the quiet one. She was a very pretty, light-skinned woman with a lot of American Indian in her, and very kind, always looking out for me. I began to notice things, though, whenever I visited her house, things I hadn’t ever seen before, and I realized that she was going through experiences I’d never even thought about. And I’m saying, wow, is this how Americans do it? Because Johnny would be in one room with girls, groupie kinds of girls, and Margaret would be in the next room talking business on the phone! And later I said to Bob, “Is this how married people live in America? This is Babylon life! This is Babylon life, Bob,” I kept insisting. “Do you see what they’re doing?” I was really shocked and vowed never to get caught up in that way of living. I felt very insecure and skeptical about the whole situation, and I worried about what we were getting into, even as I was drawn to it all. I liked the next level and certainly the dollars, but I felt that as Rastafarians we should be careful about this kind of exposure.

  One day they wanted a photo session, and when I arrived Margaret said, “Oh no, that’s not how we want you, Rita! You’re too young and beautiful, you need to dress up, we want to see your strong legs!” So she gave me a minidress, one of hers, and oh! To my surprise, I was so excited to be in that dress! By then my hair was in a short Afro, and after Margaret gave me some earrings to go with the minidress she put me in front of a mirror and said, “Look! This is you! Look how pretty you are, look how pretty you are!”

  And I looked. I hadn’t seen myself that way for a long while, not since I was seventeen or eighteen. After that I’d been really into being a true Rasta sister. And maybe I relaxed, right there. I guess I understood that there was part of me that hadn’t changed, that wouldn’t change no matter what I wore. Because I still felt like a true Rasta sister. Maybe that’s why I appreciated Margaret’s encouragement so much, her always reminding me how pretty I was and always watching out for me amongst the men. Whenever she thought I seemed tired, she’d say, “Oh, you have to come in and lie down on my bed. You can’t keep up with these guys, Rita, you’re pregnant!”

  Because “these guys” would be strumming guitar from six in the evening until six in the morning. And I’d be there thinking, wow, we’re really in this now, and wondering how do they do it? Then Danny Sims would pass out things he called “vitamins.” I didn’t even realize it at the time, but those vitamins were uppers—yes, uppers! That’s what we found out later! And I’m saying what a wicked man, this is so dangerous! He could have killed my baby!

  That baby, my third, was a home delivery, born in Trench Town in our little room in Aunty’s compound. We had decided not to go back to the public hospital with this one; we figured we could save money by just having the village midwife come by, since it wasn’t as if I was inexperienced. I forget where Bob was when I went into labor—somewhere but not far. Aunty, having prepared Bob for the experience, left to send someone to tell him, and when she returned she said, “He is going to help with this one, let him see the pain! Let him see the pain, let him see!”

  When he arrived, she said to him, “Robbie, you feel up to it?”

  And he said, very definitely, “Yes, Aunty!”

  “Okay, you can help then,” she said. “Just give me a drink.” And he got her a drink of Wincarnis, a beer for himself, and thyme tea for me, and they called the midwife. And of course there I was with no anesthesia, ooh, ah, ooh, in pain, until the midwife came and announced, “She’s ready!”

  At that point Aunty said to Bob, “You go dig a hole in the yard, because we’re going to have to put the afterbirth in it. And get the water and more newspaper! Come, come! Move fast, she’s in hard pain!”

  Poor Bob! I looked at him and he was so … pale! Poor Bob—he looked like he was going to have the baby! But we kept our eyes on each other, and in the end he was very much a part of the delivery. And when he saw that the baby was a boy, oooh! He went outside to his friends and I heard noise, and when he came back in he was so uplifted! He couldn’t stop smiling, and he was so proud—all night you could hear him telling his friends, “I have a son, man! I have a son! A boy! A boy! A boy!”

  And later, after Aunty and the midwife and the helpers had cleaned up, and everyone had gone home, he begged Aunty, “Can I sleep on the bed tonight, with Rita and the baby? Will that be all right?”

  Aunty by this time was pleased with him, because he really had been helpful, and she was touched by his excitement. “Of course,” she said, but then added, “As long as you’re clean!”

  I said, “Oh, Aunty, you know Bob is clean!”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, but then just to be sure, he said, “If that is the case, let me go bathe.” So he went outside and took a shower. And when he came to bed we named the baby David, for King David, of course, though he became known as Ziggy, a pet name Bob himself had once had, and which he gave the baby three days later, saying he had football legs. Ziggy describes a move by a football (soccer) player who can outmaneuver everyone on the field.

  At the time our work with JAD began, Bunny had been incarcerated for marijuana use, so most of the demo tapes we made consisted of Bob and me and sometimes Peter Tosh. When we finally did sign a contract, I would be in the studio for hours. We worked in Jamaica until JAD got us passports and visas to travel to the United States. We got tickets for ourselves and the children to Wilmington, Delaware, where we planned to stay a while with Bob’s mother and her family before leaving for New York. To the children it was a dream come true to be to going to see Grandma and her husband Eddie Booker, and their Aunt Pearl and uncles Richard and Anthony, none of whom they’d met. Going to see Bob’s family and going to school in America! (At that time Cedella Booker was running a nursery, a day care center for children, a
nd ours were to be part of it, so that I would be able to go to work.) So that was a catch! And a new experience for the kids and me, moving to America.

  But then we wondered how it was going to work and if it was going to work at all. What kind of decision was this, to pack up and go? My position, and I said it more than once, was that this move must be for the better. We could not be in the situation we were in now, in Jamaica with three kids and still not seeing any future in the music business. And this hand-to-mouth thing was getting out of order.

  On the flight to Delaware Bob was such a good father. Assisting with diaper changing, feeding bottles, everything. I don’t know what I’d have done without his help, because that was an experience, flying with three children! After arriving and going through customs—another ordeal with three children—we sat down in the terminal, waiting to be picked up. Moments later, Ziggy, who was still nursing, wanted to be fed. So I took out my breast and started to feed him. Bob had gone somewhere and was on his way back to us when he saw me doing this—and he got so upset! “Why are you doing that?” he said. “Cover up yourself—you don’t do that in America!”

  Now it was my turn to be upset! I said, “What are you talking about?”

  “How could you do that?” he said. “You know, if my mother saw you doing that she would never … In America you can’t feed the baby like that! You go one side or maybe go in the toilet!”

  I couldn’t believe it. That seemed absurd—to feed your baby in the toilet! I said, “Come on now, Bob, that’s nothing. My baby’s hungry, and when my baby’s hungry I’ll feed my baby anywhere!” A few years later women in the States actually had to demonstrate for the right to nurse their babies in public.