The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  “Your locs hold the smell of mi one-daughter.”

  It is a woman’s voice, but Bob cannot see her yet; the stems climb higher reaching for the rafters, and then he makes out a face amid the smokey flowers. She is tall and cedar, this dawtah. Jah-Jah empress dressed in white; her locs cover her bare shoulders. Cowries and red johncrow beads dangle at her ears. Something about her face is little bit familiar.

  “I would know her smell anywhere,” she says. “Like blood mix with frangipani blossom. Why you still hold her smell in your spirit hair?”

  And when Bob does not respond, she takes the spliff from his hand and draws in smoke between her two ripe lips.

  “She neva tell you mi name?” She hands back the spliff, and the smoke unfurls newborn birds from her mouth. She leans into the wall, smiles a smile of remembrance.

  “I remember the day of the fire. She was so brave. I cut off one of my loc to give her, and she hold it in her fist like she coulda fight down Babylon right then and there.” She reaches for the spliff again. This time the smoke rests in her hair, like wings in branches.

  “I&I name Vaughn, Sistah Vaughn. Is Leenah me talking. And me have a grans now too, Anjahla.” When she says, Anjahla, her lips shape each syllable as if very utterance of the name will set worlds in motion. And then she laughs, “Watch yu-self; is woman time now.”

  Bob is still watching the branches, wondering at the flock there. Leave it to Leenah to have a mother so beautiful.

  “Leenah – me know her,” is all he can say. “Me did want a baby with her.” Vaughn sits on the floor in front of him; her skirt rises just above her bare feet. In the semi-dark, her toenails are bits of fall-down moon-ting. Bob reaches for the spliff.

  “Is who Anjahla faadah?”

  “Nobody know for sure. Not even she. But why you business with dat? Is true you love woman, but you was never one to let them distract you. And don’t is only two days you have left?”

  The birds in her hair have taken flight. Moths hatching from cocoons take their place.

  “Tell me why you come.”

  “I smell mi one-chile in your hair.”

  “And is true that why you come check me?”

  “I want you tell Leenah where mi loc bury. Is only you she can see, not me. I&I pinch her arm, and she think is mosquito; I shake the ice in her drink and she look at it strange, but don’t know is me.”

  “Duppy inna second-hand skin. Is top ranking duppy dat.” And then he remembers – he was supposed to meet Leenah in front of the clock –

  Vaughn takes the white scarf in her hands and wraps it around her head. With her locs pulled away, Bob notices her cheekbones, like Leenah’s.

  “The loc bury under the little cocoa tree in Leenah heart. Is she same-one take it and drop it there and then wind and rain and cares-of-life cover it.”

  The pods and tendrils rise higher. One end of Vaughn’s scarf catches up in the unfurling.

  “And me have a word for the children too,” she says. “Tell them, Mt. Zion is a holy place.”

  The smoke makes a lid of higherstanding above them; they are quiet in the dark. Vaughn falls asleep on the floor and sleeps the sleep within sleep that only the dead can know. For at times, there is a peace this way. Bob watches her closed eye-lids and wonders is where the latch of the gate of Zion; the little Africas at his ears will not stop jing-a-ling.

  Duppy inna second-hand skin (duB/oom duB/oom)

  /Duppy inna second-hand skin.

  The tune in his head layers over the syncopation of election bloodshed and hungry-belly outside. He pushes against the door, anxious to be about his father’s business, but the years have not passed over and the density of the people’s pain is so great, the door will not open.

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [abeng]

  The invention of the clock has altered human pleasure. There are minutes and seconds in the day now, and not enough for love.

  A little watch ticks in a man’s trouser pocket on the floor. The angel stops the minute hand at 2:29 pm. The spider plant on the bedside table touches his lover’s cheek.

  Wind-day, 1759 – The English clockmaker, J. Harrison, completes his design of the H-4 timepiece. It is built for seafaring and he intends to use it to measure longitude and map the world.

  Portsmouth, November, 1761 – William Harrison, records high-noon with his father’s H-4, then boards the HMS Deptford and sets out for Jamaica. On board, a young cook is besotted with the captain’s daughter. He makes her onion broth flavoured with wine from Madeira.

  January 19, 1762 – The Deptford arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica. Here, high-noon is balmy, the sea cloud-green; William records time while the cook finds carrots and tomatoes for the girl’s soup. Meanwhile, the girl longs for William; William watches the sky.

  The difference in high-noon between two points is the same as the difference in longitude between those points. The difference in longing between two people is the same as the difference in the taste of a salt tongue between two people. This is how maps of desire are charted. The mapmaker always makes history.

  The invention of the clock has altered human navigation. Ships criss-cross the seas with ease, carrying grand pianos and chained slaves.

  The line of longitude through Jamaica is measured at Port Royal: 76.8

  And what if the sea takes back her land?

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Fifth Day: Year of Stones

  Vaughn disappears with the smoke and in the morning only her john-crow beads are left, scattered on the floor. The door cracks open easily now. What hath the years wrought? The air has the same dead-fruit smell, but there is a new madwoman guarding the clock. She holds a kitchen knife and stands perfectly still. In truth, it is not the clock she guards but the still-alive roots that agitate underground. Every cell in her foot-bottom feels; she smiles when a tingle thing travels up her legs. “Rah,” she says soft, still watching the concrete.

  Delroy is across the street setting up his banana chips, Cheese Krunchies and bottle drinks. Bob calls out to him and he turns with a wide, slice-breadfruit smile.

  “I come to shine your shoes!” Bob says, and Delroy laughs. He has the same laugh of how-many years ago, only a little hoarser, like something catch up in his throat. “Is not joke I making; I come to shine your shoes,” Bob says.

  Babylon pushes through traffic with a blue-noise siren and the madwoman shifts the knife to her right hand.

  “Big-up all madooman,” says a breddren sitting on the curb.

  Two schoolgirls step off a bus; each holds a spiral folder like a shield against her chest. The madwoman blinks away flies.

  Duppy inna second-hand skin, Bob sings, and he stands at the curb and checks for his shoebrush and polish and soft-soft cloth. He takes out the radio and gives it to Delroy.

  “It power with herb,” he says. “Just put two spliff where the batteries go.”

  “Ah, Rastalogy for true.” Delroy’s eyes are bright like a small boy’s.

  “Ashe,” whispers the woman with the knife. A young dread balances a stack of newspapers on his head. There’s war and rumours of war on the front page – a boy in Trench Town points a gun at the camera; a girl behind him holds up her dolly. All day Bob wanders the streets of Kingston, meeting the eyes of the children, something in their voices – a ping – like gullybottom stones.

  ATLANTIC LULLABY, 1790

  [G major]

  There is a remembrance that goes this way:

  One hundred and eighty-four slaves left on board the Sarah. Thirty-eight less than at departure from Calabar. They bring some of the sick ones on deck to wash them down. Dowse them with vinegar-water from a pail. The far-gone ones are made to jump overboard.

  A child watches as her too-feverish mother is forced to jump. They lash her mother’s legs to make her move. The whips make her feet dance the wet deck. Soon she is up against the stern, for there is nowhere else to go. The captain makes her straddle it; such long,
dark legs. Like memory/

  When the vessel leans to the side, the babymother dips/ then flies/ over the water – the green-blue parts/ and covers her nakedness/ for a moment/ all silent/ the sea mad mute.

  When at last her head rises above, the child shrieks an alarm, sounding all the way to yet-to-come. Cold rain falls on the Atlantic, and a wind rushes in from the edge of the horizon. A sailor has arms quick as whips; he holds back the child with a firm grip. The others watch from the deck.

  Iya? Mama! the girl-child calls, her legs kicking hard against the man’s belly.

  But by then, Iya is already washed away, far under the deep-deep, salt water in her lungs.

  And she cannot hear.

  KINGSTON RINGTUNE

  There’s a brown girl in the ring, tra-la-lala-la,

  Brown girl in the ring, tra-la-lala-lala,

  [Girl in a Blue Uniform]

  I was just seven when Daddy slap me because I couldn’t read the time on the clock tower at Half Way Tree. He slap me up right in the middle of the square; I so shame. Everybody see him slap me on my face and everybody walk past and don’t say a thing. I never know how to read Roman numerals is all; the numbers get me all mix-up. Why they have to put Roman numerals on the clock when we are not Roman? Sake of how Daddy slap me, I hate that clock. I wish it would drop down. I would like to smash it down. I still feel the slap-them on my face-and-arm-and-back-and-head. Big cocoa head, that’s what him call me. Slow. Yu big and slow-like, him say. One day I going to throw a stone and smash that clock, I say.

  Everyday I to get off the bus at Dunrobin, but today I get off at Half Way Tree because I come to smash the clock. I stand up under the lignum vitae, watching the minute hand, when I feel somebody touch my shoulder. I move quick because I don’t want any madman touch me up. A man did touch up my cousin in the bus one day. The bus was pack and he put his hand in her skirt pocket and touch up her front that way. She take her pencil and jab him in the side and nobody never even know why him jump off the bus so quick a cuss. So I wasn’t going to take no chance – I have three stones and if I don’t smash the clock face, I smash his own.

  But then the man say, I want to sing for you. And I know I not to answer no madman, but something in his voice sound kinda different, like him come from somewhere, not from foreign, but from somewhere don’t have no name; so I say, What? And him say, I going to sing for you and when I sing, you going to see your face.

  His locs tie up in a red scarf and he have two brass ears-ring that go ting-&-ting.

  And him stand up straight and sing with a voice sound like it come out an ole-time radio, all scratch-up and far away. And I forget all about the clock and three stones in my hand, the man voice so – I don’t know how to say it! His voice so dream-and-ting, like I in a soft-breeze place full of fireflies – no, like my grandmoddah standing up in church in the spirit with her arms spread out, only is not church song the man singing – no, is Rasta song him singing, Rasta spirit tings, Rasta firefly, spirit tings. And I find myself start move to the bass, and his ears-rings shape-like-Africa justa move with me. And is the first time anybody sing me a song; nobody never sing for me-one. Is sunhot, but the fireflies turn on them lights and you know firefly light only supposed to turn on at night, and never in Kingston. Yes, me and the singing man in the square in a circle of little light-up tings, and Daddy can’t reach through the firefly light to slap me no more; and it don’t matter if I late for school, for is not true I slow. I look over the madman shoulder at the big clock and I know the time on every clock in every town in every country, for is only one time all of them have – and is now.

  And the madman sing, You see your face? And I glimpse myself in his brass ears-rings, right in the middle of Africa, and I say, Yes, I see mi face; I see it.

  She looks like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum,

  [Twin Girls]

  Our moddah say the reason we are twins is because two man rape her one-time. How can two man rape you one-time? We don’t want to know how that work. Our moddah say she take trouble and turn it into luck. Twins are luck. You must always take trouble and turn it into luckiness, she say. Still, when we see the madman coming, we wasn’t going to trouble trouble. People call us the Bend-up Girls – that’s because our two spine curve so bad we lean over to the side; one of us curve to the right and one curve to the left – we look like twisted trees. Our moddah said to turn twist-back into blessing, just like when you take bitter cocoa and make it sweet, but we don’t know how. At least you are not Siamese, she say. The two of us share one school bag between us; that way when one back start hurt, the other one takes it. Yu lucky! the one taking the bag says to the other.

  So we on the street sharing a bag juice, when the madman say, You know there used to be a tree right where you standing? He have a smile on his face and even though he dress like madman, he don’t sound like madman. His voice sound like it come from a storybook, the kind that you turn the page, and turn the page, and every word important. Before the clock tower, there was a tree, he say. They cut it down in 1912 to build the clock for an English king. Dig this. It was a powerful tree, silk cotton. Market people used to sit under it and catch their breath, and sake of that, the tree know plenty story. It know the sufferation of the people. And it know rejoicing too. The twist in the branches – you know where them come from? We shake our heads, No. Is when the tree dance with the sun, he say, Each twist it make, it become more beautiful.

  The two of us, we look at each other and we look at the madman. He say, If you close your eyes, you can still feel the roots. Most people too rat race to close their eyes in Half Way Tree, but what a revelation if them would try.

  We under his spell now, so we close our eyes; and we feel it, we feel it. Something trembling under the earth. Like a reggae vibe, it travel our back-bone, riff by riff, and when it get to our head-top we so shock, our eyes open quick – sound stretching us higher. The man still in front of us, standing there, smiling. Hold yu head up, he say. Feel Jah light. And he walk away and cross the street.

  That night we tell our moddah about the man and the tree and the love thing that travel our back, and it make water come to her eye. She cover her pot and hold us, and then she sit at the kitchen table and make us earrings shape like Africa. She carve them from coconut shell that throw outside, and she polish-polish till we see our face in it. When she hook them on our ears she say, Even coconut trash can turn blessing.

  Show me yu motion, tra-la-lala-la,

  [Boy with a water gun in his school bag]

  See me here standing at the bus stop and I don’t really want to go to school because I was too hungry last night to study my seven times, and today Miss going to make us recite it. Government say not to beat us, but Miss have a ruler and sometimes, if you don’t careful, you feel it sting your shoulder. I have a play-play gun in my school bag. It look real, and come recess, I going to shoot myself with it.

  Anyway, I standing at the bus stop thinking on the gun, when a man bend down and start clean my shoes; quick-time I move and say, What yu doing? And he say, Just cool, and he take out a brush and start shine my shoes, same-so, like is that he born for. He look up at me and say, Seven is a number in Jahrithmetic. And is like he read my mind and know all my worries, just like that. The brush have some bristles that massage under my skin, and he shine and shine and I don’t want him stop, for each time him move the brush is like me make from the number seven, every little bit of me come in sevens.

  Seven is the number of greatness, him say. And me feel the number seven justa multiply inside me, pass seven times everyting – and is like me going on too; the numbers can’t stop. No end to the number seven, no end to my greatness, an ever-sound that tremble like an electric guitar string.

  Seven is the number of greatness, the man say again. You feel how great you is? And the greatness don’t stop. It justa multiply and multiply and it go all the way out to a place don’t have no edge, and that make from the same thing that sound make fro
m. Where belly-laugh come from, and music, and baby cry. I start to cry too, and the cry turn into a laugh and the laugh can’t stop; it just multiply like the sevens. And when the man finish shine my shoes, the little maps at his ears jing-a-ling on and on like a dub ting; and he say, That’s how great you is.

  I late, but I go to school in time for Miss and her seven times drill. Miss call on everybody one-one and when she get to me, she point with her ruler and say, Seven times seven? And I say, Forty-nine, Miss. Miss, do you know the number seven is the number of greatness? For by now, I can carry seven to the place of Jahrithmetic. For is like I fill with more than stars in the sky. And is like the good thing I fill with can’t stop; it go on and on and I know all the numbers; I just counting them like lucky Jack sevens. My uncle is a Seventh Day Adventist, but their seven don’t multiply; it stop and start, stop and start again. This seven go on and on like a cup of water that have no bottom, like shine tings in the sky that can’t count, like a pomegranate that can never run out of seeds – every time you spit one out, you find more; like playing in soap water and the bubbles coming up, coming up. I get to find me is the number seven, multiplied over and over, no end to me, no stopping me, and no matter what Miss ask, is me the number, me the factor, me the product, me the answer.

  Miss coming back down the row of desks and when she get to me again she say, Seven times twelve? And I say, Eighty-four. Then I look at her and say, But Miss, eighty-four really too small for how great I am and how great you is. And Miss look at me like she want faint and she say, But Jesus.

  Show me yu motion, tra-la-lala-la,

  [Schoolgirl Queen]

  The principal say not to dance and whine up yourself on the street when we in school uniform. Hem your skirt at least two inches below the knee, she say. And no long nails look like claws. But the principal can’t control we. Them put we in this uniform like a straight-jacket because them want control we. Them fraid of sexiness; them fraid it jump out on them. My two titty so ready to push out, the buttons on my blouse straining. You are over-ripe for your age, my auntie say. Sit with your legs closed. Force-ripe, girl, she say.