No Woman No Cry Read online

  When Cedella and Eddie Booker arrived, they couldn’t imagine how we’d managed, with the children and the baggage and everything else, because in addition to all that I’d brought all the Jamaican foods I knew Mrs. Booker had been craving—roast breadfruit, ackee, mango, tea bush, every little thing. She kept saying, “How did you do it? How did you do this?” And she couldn’t believe her eyes when she took a good look at me, she said, because I looked exactly like her when she was young! Later, when we put our faces together, people said to her, “Is Rita your child or is Nesta?” (Like the rest of Bob’s family, she called him Nesta.) And I began to understand why he might have loved me so. Maybe he was really looking for a replacement after she left him and went to America, and when he saw me, resembling her so much yet as ambitious as he himself was, he might have thought, ooh, this is what I need, this is my girl.

  That was Bob’s favorite song when he was trying to catch my attention: “My girl, my girl/ She used to be my girl …” He would sing it whenever he came in: “She used to be my girl, she used to be my girl …” Hearing it, I’d know he had something up his sleeve. We had a normal lifestyle, with our secret little ways of communicating like any other young couple. The only difference was the chance that music gave us. It was a treasure to us, a gift, but we didn’t expect things, we didn’t have any great plans or fantasies about what we’d do if we got rich and famous. Superstardom was far from our minds; we were simply trying to establish ourselves and to become independent in the only way that seemed open to us.

  After a short time in Wilmington, we left the children with Eddie and Moms (as I eventually called Cedella Booker) and took the train to New York. I have to admit I was scared. When we got off the train in New York and headed for Johnny and Margaret Nash’s apartment, where we were staying, I was almost afraid to walk along the street. I kept saying, “I don’t like those buildings, they look like they’re going to fall over anytime! They’re too tall! I won’t look up—that’s Babylon and it’s going to crumble!” But everyone said, no man, it’s okay. Still, after I got over my fear, I was so impressed that it was hard for me to believe what I was seeing. This was America. Everything seemed so perfect, from the sidewalks to the storefronts to the clothing people wore. And the guest room in Johnny and Margaret ’s place—that first night, when Bob and I had sex, we didn’t want to mess up the bed, so we did it on the table in the kitchen!

  In Jamaica, when Margaret had found out that we would be coming to New York, she’d been all excited at the prospect. “Girl, when I get my hands on you, I’m gonna dress you up!” she had promised. As soon as I got there this became necessary, because it was winter and I was definitely not dressed for forty degrees. Even if I had known what to expect, I couldn’t have afforded to prepare for it in any case. So the very next day after we arrived Margaret took me shopping. She took me uptown—I remember her emphasizing that: “Rita, I’m gonna take you uptown, girl!”

  On the way there, I kept my eyes open. To my surprise, I began to see people who looked like me, more black people around. And it started to dawn on me that there was a lot I didn’t know about America. Apart from what we picked up from movies, this was also what America looked like. There were people sitting in the street, I even saw beggars on the sidewalk and homeless people around. In America! I’d thought this was only in Trench Town. I suppose Margaret took me uptown not only to shop, but for many different reasons—especially to expose me to the fact that even if I was out of one ghetto, here we were in the Big Apple, in another (though I liked it).

  In the course of the afternoon she dressed me from top to bottom, including a coat, stockings, and shoes. Then she took me somewhere else, where a woman taught me about makeup and shaped my Afro. Then we went back to Margaret’s apartment, and she prettied me up some more. I think she was just as excited as I was, because I remember her saying, at one point, “You know, we gonna really show them something!” Then we went to the studio, and Bob was astonished! “Ah, Margaret!” he said, accusingly. “What have you done to Rita?” Not only was I wearing different clothes, I even had on eyebrow pencil, something I’d never before worn (and seldom have since)!

  So I had a new look, and even after three children I had a new interest too from Mr. Marley. Later, when we were alone, he took a long look at me and said, “Wow, so you went and got yourself a fresh face!”

  It’s many years since then, but I’m still thanking Margaret for that face.

  Back then, all the magazine stories I’d read as a girl had said that when you got married it was understood that you were going to be married for life, you were going to be devoted. Even though my mother and father had split up, Aunty had divorced Mr. Britton, and Cedella Booker had had her trials, I was sure—maybe because I was so young—that my relationship with Bob would last. True, I would sometimes make arguments, usually about his flirting with other women, sometimes really just to pick a fight or even threaten him: “I think I’m gonna live somewhere else and stay away from you.” (But then I would start crying.)

  When we got to New York, though, a new element was added, because it was a record company recommendation that you shouldn’t let your fans know you were married. How could you be a devoted husband and sell records? I didn’t know this until I read, in a newspaper interview: “Bob, we hear you’re married—is it true you’re married to Rita?” And his answer was, “Oh no, she’s my sister!”

  I waited until the next time we were alone to question him about it. That night we were sitting in the living room, looking out at the lights of New York. I had the newspaper on the table, ready. I went over to him and put it in his hand.

  “Oh, I saw that,” he said. He didn’t seem interested. Maybe he was thinking about something else.

  “Yes, but what does this mean? Why you tell the press we’re not married?”

  “Oh that’s just show business,” he said. “But then, who wants to expose you? You’re mine!”

  I must not have looked satisfied, because he stood up and took my hand in his. “Listen, man,” he said. “Just cool.” That was his favorite expression, “Just cool.”

  “Because look at this,” he went on. “Let me show you something.” And he pulled me to him, until we were facing each other quite close, almost close enough to kiss. We loved to kiss, kissing was one of our main functions! So I said to myself, uh-oh, he’s gettin’ ready to kiss me now and there I go … there I go … there I go …

  But this time he was drawing something in the palm of his hand, showing me a circle. “Listen, Rita,” he said. “You see this circle, this is like life, where we have to go around different places and meet different people. But inside this circle, this is where we are, you and me. And you see this line that go around it? Nobody can break that line to come into the circle with you and me, it’s protected. This is me, this is you, this is the children, all the important people are inside this ring. Anything happens outside it doesn’t have a proper meaning, and nothing can get inside. So don’t worry yourself, man, you’re safe, you’re my queen, my wife, my life.”

  From then on I felt all right, reassured and very special, because Bob was genuine in the ways he expressed himself. And it was also like him to know I needed that confidence and to give it to me. So I learned to ignore the follies that happened around me, to tell myself, oh, they don’t matter. That’s how I felt. And I felt, given Bob’s increasingly recognized genius, that I’d become more like a guardian—a friend, a partner—than in a possessive relationship, and that I had more responsibility than just that of a wife. This attitude would get me through the more difficult times that came later, when the “sister” thing had gone further than I’d ever expected. But I always had myself somewhere in mind, and when anyone came at me with “Bob says you’re his sister—is that true?” I’d come back with “Yes, I’m his sister. And I’d rather be a good sister than a miserable wife.”

  One interesting result of the association with JAD Records was Bob’s trip to Europe, whic
h included a purely accidental meeting with my father. Danny Sims had taken Bob to Sweden to record the soundtrack for a movie, Want So Much to Believe (in which, as it turned out, none of Bob’s original songs were ever used). Bob hated cold weather, but he had moved to the cold basement of the house where Johnny Nash’s entourage was staying in order to get away from their lifestyle—the drugs, the whores, everything he disapproved of. He told me later that he thought he was going to die of the cold and had said to himself, if I’m gonna die, let me die in the basement—because they were eating pork upstairs, and cooking this and that, and oh … poor Bob. He was going through a hard time, having no friends there and no one to talk to. Someone made a tape of him in a bedroom there, singing solo with just his acoustic guitar. Especially on “Stir It Up,” I can hear all that loneliness in him: “Stir it up, little darlin’/stir it up/It’s been a long long time/since I’ve had you on my mind …”

  I suppose that’s why it seems like such a miracle that he and my father got together. I think they both thought so too (in later years Papa used to tell this story over and over). At the time, Papa was working as a taxi driver and playing music in Stockholm. One night a friend, knowing where Papa was from, said to him, “A young man came in from Jamaica man, a young man named Bob Marley. He’s somewhere in town with that American, Johnny Nash.”

  And Papa said, “What?! Bob Mah-ley? Bob Mah-ley! But that name sound familiar! I think my daughter’s husband name Mahley! Let me see the guy, man!” So he got in touch with the person who was doing the cooking for Johnny Nash and said, “Let me meet this guy Mah-ley, man. Tell him Rita father coming.” And when Papa arrived, Bob came up from the basement. And there was my father, saying, “Yes, man, Rita is my daughter. You married to my daughter!”

  Bob said it was like heaven—it was a release, as if he’d gotten out of prison, a prison term in a Stockholm basement! His letter said, “Guess what? I met your father, and he’s teaching me to play some new stuff on the guitar!” Bob said he could hardly believe it had happened—and purely by chance. From then on, Papa would come in the evenings and take him out for food and a smoke, and their relationship grew. It was my father who taught Bob some techniques of the classic guitar, things that he himself had learned after emigrating, which helped Bob to write to a more advanced level and to experiment with better chords. I remember when I got that letter I was so happy! I wrote Bob, “Here I’ve been suffering and wondering what’s happening to you, and there you are, hanging out with my Papa!”

  Working with JAD, I had stopped acting as the sales manager and had become just a singer, even though Bob and I were bound in a “keep your eyes open, we’re going to sign contracts” understanding. But then we started meeting lawyers and accountants, and anyway I couldn’t be in the studio and out there selling records too. Still, we found out soon enough that JAD was covering Wailers’ music—“Stir It Up” was a big hit for them, and “Guava Jelly,” which Barbra Streisand also covered. JAD used Bob’s capacity as a songwriter, but they wanted to make a star of Johnny Nash, not of Bob Marley, and Bob Marley wanted to be his own self, the person he had a vision of himself becoming. We were getting only minimum royalties, because they had everything set up so that they owned the publishing, the copyright, and all that.

  Just before the association with JAD was over, Bob found himself stranded in London with Peter and Bunny. After Bob’s stint in Stockholm, Danny Sims had sent for the two other Wailers with some idea that he could promote them by sending them on tour in England. They played a few dates but nothing more happened, and one morning they woke up in their cold-water flat to find they’d been abandoned altogether—Nash and Sims had left for Florida. Bob managed to make a connection that would later serve them all well, but as things stood then, they got the plane fare home, and that was that.

  Little or none of the material recorded as demos for JAD was released during Bob’s lifetime, but the market was flooded with it after he passed. We had been so inexperienced, and lacking proper guidance or preparation, that we’d been misled. So at the time we just marked JAD as an experience that had in any case been good for us.

  But then it was over; the contract was up. We didn’t know how long it would be before a new contract came along, or that we would wait out some more hard times before the world began to take notice. When it did, though, it embraced Robert Nesta Marley. I was to sing with him for the last, most successful, years of his life. Apart from our personal relationship, working with him was always new, always interesting. Everyone who ever did agrees to this. As a good friend once said, Bob was “one of a kind and truly a prophet sent … I didn’t wait until he passed to give him flowers.”

  chapter six

  A TIME TO TURN

  I DON’T LIKE TO remember the summer of 1971, it was such a low time.

  Of course I was glad to see Bob when he came home; I’d been lonely and worried. In those days you couldn’t just pick up a phone, you had to stand by the gate and wait for the postman (though with three children to care for, I didn’t have much time for standing and waiting). Still, whenever I wasn’t working, doing something, I was back to asking myself, is this all there is? Is this what my life is gonna be? What kind of future am I making for myself and my children?

  As soon as Bob returned, the Wailers went into Coxsone’s studio. I wasn’t singing background vocals for them at that time, so I had no income and nothing to do but worry. Bob wasn’t earning any money either, although he was working hard on a deal that he hoped for. We were getting some small checks from JAD and had managed to buy a little used car, but the music thing was definitely not working. Our records were not playing in America or even in Jamaica. And of course we were still at Aunty’s, which put me back into my childhood position, as though I’d never grow up and would always be dependent. My kids now used the stool that Papa had made for me.

  And then I discovered I was pregnant. The day I knew, I took that stool to the corner of the yard where I used to go after Aunty’s spankings and sat there trying to absorb this latest calamity and to figure out what to do. I was devastated; I couldn’t imagine how this would affect everyone. As a strict Rastafarian I did not use birth control or believe in abortion; it’s our belief that such practices are intended to kill off the black race.

  I waited as long as I could before making the big announcement. I told myself this was “just to be sure,” but that was just an excuse. Aunty’s response was predictable. She stood with her hands on her hips and her nose in the air, saying, “My Lord, what is this? Again? Not another baby! I knew it was gonna happen, you can’t go on like this, you’ve got to put a stop, you have to find a place to put your children! No more in here! This is going crazy! Where is the money coming from? What are you doing with your life? You cannot stay here with so many children! There’s no room—everybody is in one room and that’s not right. You never grow that way, you grow with your own room. To have so many kids in one room? No!”

  I knew that everything she’d said was true, and her talking like this really got to me. For the first time I really understood how this new situation of ours, this complete dependency, was too much for her. Bob was more sympathetic when I told him, but he was overwhelmed with career problems. We talked it over that night and I asked if he thought I could call his mother, maybe I would go to the States for a while, until he got himself out of the troubles he was in, his commitment to a record deal with JAD that was not working for us. Then maybe he could come up there and join me.

  So he agreed that I should call, and I decided that even if I didn’t go to America, I’d move out anyway. I had to get away from Aunty. I didn’t want her to see me growing a big belly again. Bob and I had actually been looking for houses but had been turned away time and again because of the children. So the more I thought about it, going to Delaware seemed like a good idea. I told Bob I would get a job. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something,” I said. “I’ll do nursing, housework, whatever it takes, an
d you’ll stay, and I’ll send whatever money I can manage to send for you and the kids.”

  So I got in touch with Moms Booker, who said yes, you can come and stay with me until Bob can get here (she was very pleased about that). My plan, as I explained to her, was to come to Delaware and get back into practical nursing. I didn’t want to leave Sharon and Cedella, but they were both in school and I thought it would be wiser not to arrive with everyone, so I took Ziggy and Aunty agreed to keep the girls. Leaving them was hard, but there just wasn’t room in Delaware at that time. On bad days it seemed as if there wasn’t room for us anywhere.

  It was winter when I got to Wilmington. I got work immediately in a hospital as a nurse’s aide, but such a low-paying job couldn’t pay my expenses—the rent I had to give to the Bookers, and what Moms charged me for babysitting Ziggy, and what I was trying to save to send back home to Aunty and Bob. Every day I wished he would hurry up and get over here, because this was a different kind of life.

  But Eddie Booker was a sweet man and so devoted to his “Ciddy”—I used to love just watching them in love. Eddie was much older than his wife, and when he heard her calling him—heard that “Eddie!”—he just smiled. He’d been a bit overwhelmed by us during the Johnny Nash period, when he knew that we were actually working with an American. It was a big deal to him, and he’d state so proudly, “Oh, they’re signed to this American man from New York!” and “Yes, Ciddy’s son is a singer, and his wife is also a singer!” And he had really embraced Bob’s writing. He’d even fixed up the basement so we could have that to ourselves, because he knew we smoked, and they didn’t like us to smoke in the house.

  When I was there alone with Ziggy, what impressed me about their family and what really got me hooked at first was that every evening Eddie took us all for a ride. Pearl, the big sister, was about thirteen, and Richard and Anthony were a few years younger. Every evening Eddie would have a sip of his Coke, and light a cigarette, and then we either had to go get a “sub” or go for a ride—“Ciddy, where we going this evening, Ciddy?” And it was always somewhere far, a couple of hours’ ride, and we’d come back when all the kids had fallen asleep. For me this was so relaxing, and so much fun, and it made me happy to see Ziggy enjoying the big kids and this real, picture-perfect “family outing.” Another family member—Bob’s cousin Dotty, whom I’d first met in St. Ann—was living in Wilmington and she really looked out for me as well.