The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  “Just something I feel –”

  She looks out the window, as if counting the raindrops.

  “I read in a book that whales sing to each other. Do you think mother whales sing to their young?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “And do the young sing back?”

  I laugh. But she is serious.

  “I am going to sing a whale song so high-high that it goes low-low,” she says.

  Light moves across her eyes like a film flicking by.

  “That’s nice,” I say. “But a girl singing like a whale would be like turning a tree into a Philharmonic choir, a book into a 12- string electric guitar, an apple into Motown. Your voice can’t –”

  That’s when Anjahla slaps me on the mouth. I am astonished. She is not a rude child; and has never acted this way.

  “And why not, Mama?” She puts a stress on the Mama. I see it – by the way her lips make “m” twice. It is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. And that’s when I know not to hold back this child. For she is a rebel girl with a will to do; she will sing her whale song and shake her whale tail, if she wants. My Anjahla.

  King Edward VII Goes Home

  Edward is playing a game of solitaire up on the ladder. A Queen of Hearts card floats to the ground. Bob is tired now. He has wandered two days hoping to stumble upon the gate of return. He unwraps the ring from the toilet paper and puts it on his finger; something in the air is suddenly disturbed. There is a flutter of wings up in the rafters and Edward’s cards come swirling down. The ribbon of cold air, which is Edward, pushes under the crack at the bottom of the door, then whirls down Hagley Park Road, all the way to the waterfront and out to sea, a squall transporting him, “Britanniaaaaa”, to a ship just leaving the harbour.

  Bob feels the troubled air; picks up the cards and stacks them in a corner. He takes off the ring, replaces it in the toilet paper and settles down for the night.

  Third Morning: Six Point Star

  Early-early the third morning Bob gets up and cracks the door. It’s raining outside. All night his arms and legs and the far places of his back have itched; he’s in the skin of a frienemey. Quick, he dashes into the rain; the warm water soothes. He stands in the middle of Half Way Tree; his open mouth receives the water. There is a new energy in the street, something more electric; radiowaves travel the length of his locs. It is not long before the square is filled with business.

  He will watch today for the gate of Jah. Your heart will tell you where it is. Perhaps his foot will slip and he will find it. He wants to get out of Kingston Babylon, catch a bus to Nine Mile and eat some drop-down mango; visit Omeriah’s grave, but something, again, tells him he must remain in Half Way Tree, close to where the old cotton tree used to grow. The ancestor spirits love cotton trees; this is what his grandfaadah, Omeriah, used to say. They were vex that the tree was torn down to put up a Babylon clock tower. When Bob stands with his feet firm, he feels the roots of the old tree underground – the still-alive roots, extending forty feet across the street, holding communion with ancestors. And isn’t this the true reason so many mad come to Half Way Tree? The lifeforce and spirits of the old cotton tree call them.

  There is something else too. Bob notices that each time he awakes and steps through the clock tower door, something about Babylon has changed. The first day, all seemed as he had last remembered it – the raucous of the four directions, the hum of heat rising from concrete, the soprano of sufferation, the earth spinning on its axis like a turntable. On the second morning, something shifted, though he was not sure what. He stepped out into a new hifi of tribulation, made a mental note of it and headed up the road. A bobo Rasta gave him a black mango; he bit into it and praised the Most High. And this third morning, he notices something else – it is in the rhythm of the dawtah crossing the street in tight jeans and big earrings, the wonder of the little phone ringing like a sound system in her back pocket. Bob has never known a phone like that.

  He follows her all the way to the post office, watches her flip the phone open as she goes inside.

  “A patty and a box drink for this ring,” he says when she pauses at the counter.

  She licks her stamps and does not look up; the lion waits humble as a lamb in the toilet paper. In her haste to get away from Bob, she drops an envelope on the floor. He picks it up and calls after her, but she does not look back; the phone in her pocket rings again against her bottom. He stands there at the post office door, holding her letter up to the sun when there, in the upper right corner, he sees himself on the stamp – in full colour – holding a microphone, his locs flying. The stamp reads, “50th Anniversary of the Birth of Bob Marley.” Fifteen years have gone by since his passing, perhaps even more.

  Outside, Bob looks up and down the street, taking in the square. The clock has a fresh coat of paint. A man rides by on a bicycle, a flag with a six-pointed star blowing behind him. Across the road, an old woman smiles and waves.

  “Me know you!” she calls.

  “Where you know me from?”

  “You is God pickney,” she says.

  Music blares from a youth’s car stereo, fast and electric. The youth spits through the window and pushes through traffic.

  “What they call this new music?” Bob shouts to the woman.

  “Is dancehall – even an old lady know that.”

  Bob walks away; contemplates how sound has changed. He bends down and draws a star on the concrete with a piece of chalk stone, for now he overstands that each morning as he opens the door to Half Way Tree, he steps into a different year, and new era. But look the workings of Jah. He will journey the six points of the star – through years and rumours of years – all the way to the yet-to-come.

  1996: The Future of Ras

  With new higherstanding, Bob walks down the road, noticing how Babylon has changed yet remained the same. In the end, Babylon is Babylon. He walks until he comes across a man with a small stall at a bus stop. He sells bottled water and bag juice. When he sees Bob, he calls, “Ras!” Bob pauses and is about to move on when he recognizes the man as the youth he saw the first day, the boy with the play-play guitar. He is older now, his head tied with a red bandana and a little ram goat beard at his chin.

  “Is you that, Ras?” the man says, “when me never see you, me think them kill you to raahtid!”

  “Me come back.”

  Then he looks at Bob hard. “So where you disappear go?”

  “Inna the clock – down the street.”

  “Ah, Ras! Still full of jokes! Still full of jokes!” He laughs and slaps Bob’s back, speaking with so much excitement little bits of spit accumulate at the corners of his mouth. “And not a year show on your face!”

  “But tomorrow when me come again, you will show five more,” Bob says.

  Delroy laughs and slaps Bob’s back again. Then he stops and says, “You still checking the girls?”

  “This morning me see a dawtah with a phone in her back pocket.”

  “That’s the Ras I know! That’s the Ras I know!” Delroy says, the spit bubbling at his corner-mouth.

  Bob is pleased to discover that his responses satisfy Delroy. By now he realizes that it is useless to insist on his true identity. He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a little bundle. “Two patty and a box drink, for this ring.” he says.

  Delroy looks at the ring with interest.

  “Oh, is a Bob Marley ring!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah-man. Bob Marley used to sport a ring like that. Everybody want one now. Where you get it?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “But where you get it?”

  “My faadah give me it.”

  “Ah, Ras. Mad same way! Mad same way!” He cups the ring and blows on it, then rubs it to a shine with the hem of his shirt. “Them have a jeweller downtown make these kinda Rasta ring. I bet is him do this one.”

  “Take it,” Bob says. “Where me going me no need material tings.”

&
nbsp; “Nah?”

  Delroy blows on the ring again. “Where you going?”

  “Zion,” Bob says.

  Delroy puts the ring back in Bob’s hand, then crosses the street. He comes back with a patty and a coco bread and a pineapple box drink, gives Bob a stool next to the stall.

  “Keep the ring,” he says. “Is your faadah give you it.”

  Bob eats the patty and crumples the brown bag. He is thinking of his children. A little girl with thick plaits. He misses her. Misses his nice girl. She would be grown up now; all his children grown up now. And his sons – one of them maybe about this man’s age. He pictures him. Yes, standing in a doorway, eating an orange. “Daddy?”

  “Where yuh faadah deh?” Bob turns to Delroy.

  “How you mean? Is you my faadah,” Delroy says. “Ever since that day you shine my shoes, is you my faadah. Only a faadah could shine a shoes like that.”

  “Shine shoes don’t make faadah. Is not me yuh faadah.”

  There is a flash of hurt on Delroy’s face. Just a twinge – but Bob sees it.

  DELROY

  Birthday Cake

  You see me? I know where Zion gate is. Is in a shoe brush and a can of black polish. I glimpse inside the gate already with my own two eyes. Strike me dead if is lie I telling. Zion is in the mad man shining your shoes and he shine and shine and shine so long, you forget about your mother lock up in the freezer and your baby sister mouth turning purple like periwinkle flowers and your auntie house too full to hold you. You see me? I know where Zion is. Zion is in the mad man’s hands moving the brush over your feet. At first you refuse to let him to rah, but then he brushing harder and harder and you feel the bristles through the leather, your skin pricking up. His hands so strong and so powerful, he pressing down your soles till your feet start grow roots and now you don’t want him stop, cause the roots growing longer, cracking the concrete, digging under ground, pass cockroach and sewage and Public Works pipe, to water and worms and earth so brown and so pretty you could slice it and eat it like a piece of cake – the kind of cake that bake only in picture book for nice little girls and boys with pointy hats on their head and their mommies and daddies clapping nearby. And all the while the mad angel brushing and brushing, the little Africas at his ears going clink-clink, clink-clink. You see your face? You see your face yet? And you look way down and you look again. And Africa ringing out a tune just for you. And, yes, you see your face – shiny and smiling and eating birthday cake in Zion to raas.

  Lives of Our Fathers

  “Is you my faadah,” Delroy says, and the thing Bob glimpses on his face reminds of an ache in the chord of a song he used to sing. The song was I Know a Place and the blood always rushed behind his eyes when he got to the end.

  “How old you is now?”

  “Twenty-four.” Delroy pulls at his ram goatie. “I have a daughter – three years old. When she get big, I want you shine her shoes!”

  “I would like that,” Bob says, and he traces the lines on his wood staff.

  “The babymother is a balm woman.” A truck drives by carrying a load of chicks in crates. “I went to her yard to wash off my heart.”

  Delroy opens two Maltas and they sit by the side of the road, watching the sky darken.

  DELROY

  The Deliverance Bath

  I was just a youth living in the park with the frogs and my make-believe guitar. At night, the park full of bad man; some of them had guns. I had a gun too – I find it buried under leaves one night and I keep it for myself. The gun name was Lloyd. I put it in my school bag because I wasn’t going school nomore, just begging a money from the nice girls when they come out of class. Some of them give me change and some of them give me them left-over drinks. The Rastas in front Aquarius take care of me too; sometime them buy me patty and one time one of them let me hold his guitar. And I make friend with a duppy boy. I only see him once, but I know he is there – over by the clock. He have a rope around his neck, and one early morning he used the end of it to beat a man who try to steal my bag. But at night, the frogs croak and carry on and I sleep with my head on the bag and Lloyd inside of it, and when rain fall I don’t have nowhere to go. The shoes – the ones the mad-angel shine – too small for me, but I cut off the back and wear them like slippers.

  The rude-boys in the park, them older than me and they take me for joke: Youth, if you shoot that frog for me, I buy you a box drink. Youth-man, if you shoot that dog, I give you a money. I fraid of them so I do what they tell me. One night one of them say, Youth, hold up a shop with me tomorrow, I buy you a new pair of boot. He take me to a shop in August Town just as the Chinie-man was closing it; and I watch the door with my gun while he hold up the man and clear out the cash register. When he done, he make the man stretch out on the ground like Jesus on the cross and he shoot him in his two hand-middle and in his feet and in his side. I see the whole thing. Is me the Chinie-man eyes rest on before him dead. Next day, he take me to Sammy’s and he buy me a new pair of shoes, just like he promise, but I never enjoy those shoes. Those shoes never bless. Those shoes torment me more than the frogs at night and the mosquito in the bush. Every night I dream-see the Chinie-man on the cross.

  Church couldn’t help me; the church people too clean-and-shave-and-powder-up to rhaatid and I was a dutty streggae bwoy. Is only my little play-play guitar see me through, and the music coming from across the street, and the rememberance of the mad-angel shining my shoes like my feet was the only feet in the world. When them send me go juvenile detention, is that remembrance save me – me, looking down on the shoes in Zion looking glass.

  But look, I turn man and start my little higgler business right here on the street. A poor man still, but my own man. You understand. And I save my one-one cocoa and I go to a balm woman to wash off my heart. St. Thomas she come from. She put me in a basin and wash me down with all kinda country leaf and powder. She burn two red candle. And after she done, she say, I going to give you deliverance.

  The balm woman sleep with me and whisper compellance in my ears – she was nice that way – but she take all my money, and afterward I still dream-see the Chinie-man at night, his eyes on me. And no matter what shoes I buy, them never the same as the one the mad-angel did shine. For God be my judge, I go Zion gate and see myself in those shoes. I wish I could get two vision-shoes like that –

  NORVAL

  Bob’s Faadah Has His Say

  As I walked away from Nesta, I didn’t know what to do with my arms, so I put my hands in my pockets and tried to hold my head straight. A little girl across the street pointed and said, “Look the white man a cry,” and I wiped my face with my cuff. Call me lily-liver if you want. That night, I took an exercise book and wrote on the pages fast, back and front, back and front:

  Iamacowardwhitecowardwhitemancowardjamaicawhiteman–

  “Is you mi faadah?” Nesta’s little voice picked at me like a mosquito. And he looked like me too – my name written all over his face. The long bridge of his nose, the slanted forehead – me in dark skin. But the lips, the star-apple stained lips, those were Cedella’s. I fancied her to madness. She was beautiful in that over-ripe, black country girl sort of way. And I was the white man in the district; the white man on a horse. She was young, but nobody, except the father, cross-questioned me. And even he turned his face the other way after a while. But I never meant for it to go so far. For in the end, what can a man like me, a white man, a soldier with bloody England in his veins, do with a little black country gal like that? Then came the child. The marriage to make things respectable. By the time the rest of the Marleys found out, they were outraged. Could I bring the boy to visit, I dared ask. The room was so quiet, you could slice the silence and serve it on a plate. Oh the look on mother’s face! This woman who liked to remark that her Steinway was the only black to ever step-foot in the family. And there in the silence the thought came: nobody has ever played her old piano. It had come on a steamer from London, the inside of the stool filled with
barbiturates and packaged with a relative of a relative’s used trousseau. In December 1883, it arrived in Kingston harbour, scratched and broken and out of tune, and after clearing it from the docks, nobody could afford to fix it. It had remained off-key for as long as I could remember.

  Mother put her hand on the piano and eased herself up from the chair. Her feet were unsteady and the loose skin of her jowls shook. I took one look at her and knew I could not keep the boy. As she turned her back and walked into the bedroom, I began to cry. “Stop it, Norval! Just stop it!” she said. She would cut me off, disinherit me quick as a lightning bird, I knew that. There I was; in my sixties; my pockets empty; only a pound and five shillings in my wallet.

  I got rid of the boy. What would Cedella care? Her son would do better out of the country-bush anyway.

  MAMA

  Mama Talks Back

  Shut yu mouth! Is not me throw Nesta away, is him faadah throw him away! He take mi boy-chile, said he was going to send him to a good school in Kingston. The liard. How was I to know that he would just give Nesta away to strangers like that? Give him away, just like that to an old woman – Miss Grey. Miss Grey too old to even knot her own stocking much less make a decent cup of tea to offer mi pickney. But God bless her soul, she did her best by him. One whole year, I don’t hear from Norval. The rat disappear. Is only by the grace of God, a woman see Nesta pon street and come a Nine Mile to tell me. But you know what? I don’t hold nothing gainst Norval. Let bygones be bygones. My womb bless. What the builder rejected has become the chief corner stone. You see me here? I am a bless woman. Sometimes when I think about it, you know. Sometimes when I think about it, my heart just rejoice. Look at my children. Look at my grandchildren. Look at my great-grands. Look how my table spread pretty in the presence of mine enemies. Almighty! No, I don’t hold nothing gainst Norval. Not a thing. It was so long ago, I can barely even remember what he look like. When I look at Bob is not Norval I see, you know. No, is His Majesty I see! His Majesty-self, Almighty Jah.