The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  “Sometime Peaches let me blow smoke on her pum-pum,” he said.

  I knew who Peaches was – the woman with the long wavy hair. She looked stylish and maybe famous. The kind of woman who looked good with a star like Bob.

  “She like it?”

  “Yeah-man.”

  I laughed and twirled my finger like smoke circles. He smiled mischievously. I knew what he wanted, but preferred the dance.

  “Jah live,” I said.

  He leaned forward and brushed my lip with his finger and I smiled, but pulled away.

  “You have someting to hide?”

  “Like?”

  “Every woman have a secret. Woman deal inna secrecy.”

  “Who are you to talk.”

  He passed the spliff back to me and the smoke filled my head. His eyes had little wheels in the middle of wheels.

  “The Queen of Sheba came to Solomon with a cloven hoof,” he said.

  Revelation of Wisdom According to Jah Prophets (2:09)

  (For this island is full of secrets. And know, too, there are some which have never been found, for only the feet of the steadfast can find such, and even then, only if it happens to be a particular day of the year when the earth is tilted just-so and your mind is on something else like sweet-sop or overripe guava.

  One day you are out searching for those guavas when your foot slips, finding an opening in the mountainside. You wonder how after all these years trodding this land and reasoning with it, you never knew this place. You hear the gurgle of a stream and make your way towards it, eager to drink. The water is sweet, tinged with rose-apple and you know right away this is no ordinary cave.

  And now, because you have stirred the water and because on this particular day, the earth is tilted just-so, Riva-Mumma awakes from sleep, her scales jingling like coins. When she appears, you see that this Riva-Mumma don’t shape like a picture-book mermaid; no. This Mumma wears a long skirt made of skin — a blue flesh grown down from the span of her waist, covering her legs and adorned with every precious rivabottom thing. When Riva-Mumma dances, the skirt-of-skin — all a-shimmer with scales — ripples like a meeting of waters, revealing her ankles and twelve shell toes. Long-long dreads alive with water-moss, snails and little specks of sand grow all the way to her navel. The navel is closed-shut and barely visible, for she is now the last of her kind. From Taino to Dancehall, she knows the history of this island backwards and forwards, and can answer any question put to her. For, when all is said and done, this is why you are here, no true? After Riva-Mumma finish spin and spin, she steadies her head and laughs a water laugh, looks you in the eye, waiting for your question. You better have one ready or you will lose your chance.

  “Riva-Mumma,” you say, “Is it true a boy died with a word at the tip of his tongue?”)

  LEENAH

  London, 1977: The Country in Her Voice

  I noticed the ring one day as Bob tapped out a tune on the counter, the proud lion emblazoned in gold, unabashed in its glory.

  “Sometimes is like lightning on my finger,” he said, and he rubbed the ring against his chin, then made a fist and touched it to mine. I picked up the beat and signed, “Lion of Judah,” my palms opening and clenching bass against my body.

  He had received the ring only the week before, a gift from Haile Selassie’s son, Prince Asfa Wossen. The prince explained that the ring – a family heirloom – had belonged to his father and that now, he wanted it to be worn by Bob. For Bob had shown honour to his father as only a faithful son can.

  “Let me try it on,” I said. “See if it burn me too.”

  But Bob became cross, “Is no joke ting this,” and pulled away.

  Later he said that even before he received the ring, he had seen it years before in a dream – a small man in uniform gave him a gold ring set with a black stone. The man rode into Bob’s sleep on a horse, looking important and official. No words passed between them, but the horseman put the ring on his finger, then left. When Bob told me this story, I imagined the horse galloping, leaping through his dream and on through the dreams of all the ring’s predecessors to King Solomon sleeping on a feather bed. This filled me with wonder. I had read about King Solomon’s ring once, how he tamed wolves with it. But this was not the real Ring of Solomon on Bob’s finger, was it? I wanted to know more, but seeing the bushfire in Bob’s eyes, decided to leave him alone. Something about the ring scared him. We both wanted to change the subject.

  He asked for club soda, “I-man don’t deal with strong drink,” and watched as I put away glasses on a shelf. I could tell he wanted to say something and when I caught his reflection in the mirrored wall, he said, “Where inna Jamaica you grow?”

  “Brown’s Town and Kingston. I came here when I was fourteen,” I said. And then a thought came to me and I said, “What country you hear in my voice?”

  He said, “Kingston with likkle London, and a funny riddim underneath that wash up now and then like the sea.”

  I made a wavy motion with my fingers and thought of dead fish washed up on Hellshire Beach, frothy waves, an overcast Kingston sky eager to rain.

  He looked out the window contemplating the clouds, put down his glass and said, “So how you end up inna this raas country?”

  And I said, “I killed a girl, and had to take her place.”

  The Mirror of Secrets

  Because I couldn’t tell it face to face, I turned my back and spoke to Bob’s reflection in the mirror-wall. There was a parade outside and the pub was empty. Through the mirror, I could see Bob stroking his beard. When the words came, they flew quick as birds, circled the pub and swooped through the back window; I was glad I could not hear them –

  I was standing at the bus stop at Crossroads when I saw my neighbour, Verle, and her grandmother across the street; her hair had been recently pressed and it was all shiny and she had a big smile on her face. I knew Verle’s grandmother well because she used to be a Sunday school teacher in Uncle’s church and it was she who came to cut off my locs after Mama died, and they sent me to Kingston. The whole time she cutting my hair she said, “Rasta nastiness, what kinda nastiness.” Verle with a little smirk on her face, was poking at the fallen dreads with a stick. Her grandmother threw the locs away in the rubbish, set it on fire, then washed her hands with blue soap. That day when I saw them at Crossroads they were just coming back from the British Embassy; I knew it because all week Verle had been going on about her appointment for her visa and how she couldn’t wait to get on the plane and kiss Jamaica goodbye to raas. So I couldn’t help it – watching Verle cross the street, I imagined her in England drinking tea and eating sponge cake and wearing little white gloves and I had a bad thought and called her Queen Elizabitch. I said the words right out loud, Queen Elizabitch, and I wished her dead. So Verle and her grandmother were in the middle of the road, manoeuvering traffic, and I had just barely had that wicked thought when a minivan swung from around the corner and knocked Verle down. She bounced up into the air and landed on the sidewalk, her canvas shoes flying off, all the loose change and bubble gum and tampons in her shoulder bag scattered. Her grandmother’s mouth went, Veeeerle! Jesusjesusjesusjesusjesus! I saw her mouth open and close like slow-motion movie. And in my fright, I couldn’t breathe; I turned around and ran and ran and ran all the way home to Papine. I was late with the newspaper-cod-liver-oil-and-dragon-stout and expected a cussing, my uncle waiting with the strap; but instead, he sat on the couch reading a letter with a big smile on his face – he had heard from his sister in England, and she wanted to send for me, to “take me off his hands”, she wrote, and right away I knew that there would be no pleasure in leaving, for everything had been shaken around, me to end up in London to rah, instead of Verle.

  I stopped to catch my breath and Bob said, “Fear not.” It was the first time I had told anyone about Verle. Outside clouds were gathering, but there was clapping and cheering at a passing parade. A marching band played and a man waved a Union Jack.

 
I watched Bob’s lips in the mirror.

  “Check this,” he said. “When I-man was a youth, I could read the future. One time, I read a woman hand-middle and see that she wouldn’t live. Soon after, she keel off her mule and dead.” His voice quiet, he looked at his hand and opened and closed his fist, twirled the ring on his finger.

  “Part of me did think is me cause it.”

  In the mirror his face lit up against a flash of lightning. He took a last swig of his drink.

  “What made you come to this raas country?” I said.

  “Politricks. Isms and skisms. Gunman –”

  Outside there was thunder and it began to pour, a woman dashed in from the parade shouting, “Oh God!” half at the lightning and half at seeing Bob.

  He lifted his right hand, “Rastafari”, then left through the side door, disappearing in the rain. He was always disappearing in rain.

  BACKGROUND SINGER SOUND SISTREN [SISTAH WILLA]

  Track 4.0: the youth-prophet, Robert Nesta Marley

  For there is a rain in Jamaica that comes down like horses. Massa’s horses, galloping three-hundred years to the ancestor standing at a split in the path, searching for the way to Zion-high. Every time old-time people hear that rain, they urge the ancestor on, knowing that her feet-them small, but quick.

  For the hand of this island is criss-cross just like the ancestors’ path, yes – Priestess Nanny and Bogle, and someone’s Urselyn and Cyril and Ethel and David, and the youth with the word-at-his-tongue. And don’t forget – the Nine Mile Marley boy, Nesta. That last one had it in him from the start to do spirit line of work; yes, he used to read hands and was good at it. But he hear a sound zing-zing from afar and the sound fill him, and he set his vision instead on the neck-strings of guitar. But look. Look how his guitar prophesy same like the writing on the left hand of Jah. Two paths; same prophet. Marley. Selah.

  For it is written, even in those days – six years old – he had a look in his eyes that swim the bottoms of mossy waters, count and name every stone and swallow-down fish whole. Sweet Jah.

  Hear this: it was horse-rain falling the day a woman saw Nesta under the grocery shop piazza –

  LEENAH

  Of Herstory

  I&I knew this story. Or a version of it. Bob was that way. Plenty times when he was with me I had the feeling that all things connected, the smoke from our spliff all mingled together. Bob made me feel that way, and that was part of what I meant when I said, “Our lives are crossed.” Watching Bob talk about the rain and the woman on the shop piazza with the criss-cross hand-middle, filled me with remembrance. Stories are that way. In little districts of Jamaica, they travel and reverb for generations.

  “A boy took Eunice hand-middle and studied it like a will,” is what people said. Whenever I think of this story, it plays out in my head with humming. And bongo drums. And rain. No words. The boy reads her hand-middle and sees her whole life. He looks at her with river-bottom eyes. Afterwards, she gives him a mint from her pocket, watches him put it in his mouth as he walks away. When he is out of sight, she opens both her palms, and lets the rain fall on the astonishment there. She dies the next week.

  Each time my mother told that story, she got all quiet-and-meditation. Then she would take a broom and sweep the verandah from corner to corner.

  I always wondered who the little boy was and where he went. And now, I realized. I remembered another story– about the boy and the Bobo Rasta, Riva Man, who used to sell us brooms. Riva Man was mute. People say that as a baby he hardly cried, and when he did it was fresh-wata tears. As he grew, he became a child of few words, then one day he stopped speaking altogether. They say that one day, not long after Eunice died, the Marley boy put his hand on top of Riva’s own, and said, “Take this crosses from me,” and that’s how he gave Riva his second sight. Riva was a youth of about seventeen at the time; no one was surprised when he wrap his head and turn Bobo Rasta and start to make thatch brooms and roots drink, and travel and balm the murmur-heart of the island, parish to parish, reasoning to himself. Whatever future Riva saw when he read the hand of Jamaica, he did not speak it. What he did do was make Zion of whatever he found.

  Every new-year, Mama bought a broom from Riva. By then, he was a grown man; he was like an uncle to me. I liked him because whenever he was around he made things feel peace-and-sanctify. I&I felt an immediate I-finity with him – his muteness and my deafness. Back then, I was one of the few who understood his silent-speak, the signs he had made to express himself. He would disappear for weeks sometimes, and then turn up with a bag of roots drink, his brooms on his shoulder; he’d spend the whole day on the verandah all smoky and dreamfull and far-away. In times of tribulation, it was his broom Mama would use to sweep herself to fullness.

  One day she went inside to turn off the pot and Riva made his hands like a Coca-Cola bottle; he wanted me to know that her roundness was beautiful. He wrote the word “Empress” on his forearm with a piece of coal. I think my mother liked him too because he smiled a lot but was quiet and therefore did not interfere. She was tired of interference. This was after Papa died and she liked the way his eyes watched her without being threatening. And he looked out for us too. By then Gran Winnie was dead as well, and it was just the two of us. People in the district did not like Rasta. They thought we were turning the island into backwardness. An evangelist was in the habit of visiting the yard, just standing there as if he had a god-given right, praying and rebuking us to dutty hell fire.

  “Is where hell?” I asked Mama.

  “You in it,” she said.

  She put an extra lock on the door and painted a sign: “No Word Used Against This House Shall Prosper.” Riva Man put up a red-green-&-gold flag on a bamboo pole, and then swept the place clean with great care and ceremony, cleansing it of every evil thing. We named the yard House of Zion. After that, my mother got a new reputation – obeah woman. Still, she wrapped her locs pretty in a piece of yellow cloth and stepped out into the road like the empress that she was. I practiced to hold my neck high like hers, though there were always eyes watching from behind a fence, words mumbled, “Dutty gal,” under the breath.

  The last time I saw Riva Man was in 1966 when my mother died. All my life I&I have wanted to find him since.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Shoe Brush

  [Found Sound]

  For a whole week, Fall-down does not see the boy. Then he returns one day wearing his dusty back-pack and worn shoes and with a look on his face of a warrior come back from war. He stands at the bus stop, his shoulder against the zinc fence. A police car, siren blaring, weaves its way through traffic, headed toward Crossroads. Schoolchildren and vendors of every made-in-china thing fill the sidewalks.

  “Babylon!” Fall-down calls after the police car. The boy, lost in thought, watches a dead roach carried by an army of ants. The police car disappears around the corner and Fall-down picks up his staff. It is one he has carved himself – a snake’s tail engraved all around, rising with revelation-fire from the cedar wood. Fall-down taps the boy’s shoulder with the snake’s tongue.

  “Youth-man, no school last week?”

  The boy pushes the roach brigade with his shoe.

  “I never have no bus money,” he says.

  “Where your mother?”

  “She home with the new baby,” the boy says, the roach on its back, “But go cross-question someone else. Leave me alone.”

  Fall-down looks away and taps his cane on the sidewalk three times. The traffic light turns green and wind plays at a woman’s dress as she crosses the street. A group of schoolchildren crowd into a bus.

  “Is me deliver the baby,” the boy says after the light turns red then green again, “A little girl with a purple mouth.”

  “And your mother?”

  At the mention of his mother, the boy looks away, suddenly disturbed.

  “She alright?”

  A blind woman with a cane walks by. She taps around the boy’s feet, t
hen continues into the crowd.

  “Is what happen?”

  “I leave her sleeping,” say the boy.

  “Angel come?”

  Down the road, the blind woman taps her steps over cracks in concrete, wondering at the mixed scent of death and afterbirth on the boy’s clothes.

  “Why is only fallen angel full up Jamaica?” the boy says. “What happen to all the rest of the angel-them – Cupid and ting? And archangel!” There are tears in his eyes.

  “Never mind, youth-man,” Fall-down says, and he takes the shoe brush out of the satchel he carries and reaches for the boy’s feet.

  “Watch me shine your shoes till you see your true face in them.”

  The boy kicks his foot and moves away.

  “No!”

  But Fall-down grabs a hold of him and holds his feet to the ground with strong hands. The boy begins to cry; there is a pain inside like the bass hunger in his make-believe guitar. A newspaper vendor nearby calls out to Fall-down, “Leave him! Leave the boy!” But then, seeing the shoe brush on the ground, resumes counting her coins. Helpless, the boy lets go, leans into the zinc; and Fall-down begins to clean – ceremoniously – because angels, even fallen ones, do everything with devotion and complete munificence.

  The little brass Africas clink-clink as Fall-down breaks a twig from the tamarind tree behind the fence, scrapes mud from the crevices of the rubber soles. An old rag dipped into a water bottle comes next. Fall-down proceeds careful as wiping an infant’s bottom. He pulls a tin of black shoe polish from his pocket, sniffs the varnish for quality before spreading it with small even strokes. And then comes the brush – the bristles from an old stallion.

  “Tell me when you can see your face,” he says.

  He works the brush until little beads of sweat form on his forehead. The boy’s feet are broad and flat and he has worn down both his heels; there is a tiny hole on the left toe and the laces are frayed. None of this stops Fall-down; he polishes and buffs as if life itself depends on the shoes’ shine.