Bob is quiet. The white hands holding the chick are shaking. He knows those hands. He knows the feel of them, clammy and hot against his.
“Is you them call Norval?”
RASTAMAN
Rhaatid
Check this. I look in the white man face and is like I&I see meself. Rhaatid. Me, Bob Marley, see meself in the little white man face. Is like me looking on meself, only is a white man me looking on. I turn me head one-side, because me couldn’t face it, Rasta. Is true me talk one love and justice for all; and is true Jah no partial, but that day inna the clock tower when me see meself in the white man face, me frighten. How his structure match my structure. Down to his foot-bottom same as mine. But hear me now – him never recognize me; because me inside the Fall-down skin.
Bob Marley and Norval Meet in the Clock Tower
“I had a son once,” Norval says. “His name was Nesta. The last time I saw him he was five years old – a little half-caste boy. I was a bloody coward and I gave him away. As I left him at the gate, I felt his eyes – like red ants on my back. But I kept on going. Back to my mother’s house.”
The bird in Norval’s palm falls asleep and he puts it in his shirt pocket.
“If I could do it again, I would keep the boy. But that was 1951.”
The bird chirps and sticks its head out.
“Me glad you never keep the boy. He would turn fool. Like you,” Bob says.
Norval wipes his eyes and looks away. Someone outside pees against the door; it is warm and musty inside the clock. There is a sound up in the rafters like the murmuring of a congregation. Feet shuffling. Bob looks up, peering at cobwebs.
“They say one time there was a cotton tree in this place, right where we stand. Cotton tree harbour duppy; them draw dead like a magnet. Is my grandfather, Omeriah, tell me that. Omeriah – that man was a healer. And a conqueror.” Bob gives Norval a sideways look.
At Omeriah’s name, Norval starts to cry – like a small boy, wringing his eyes with his hands.
NORVAL
Jamaica Whiteboy; 1887
(The piano is black with white teeth. Mother keeps the lid closed. A mouse lives inside it; I feed it cheese.)
*
Mother, is it true that Great-grandmother was a black woman, black as the Ace of Spades? Where did you get that? Keep your bloody mouth shut. I don’t want to ever hear you ask that again. Well, is it true that the Ace of Spades was a great black grandmother? Norval! But I asked something different –
*
We are English from Sussex.
*
(and white with black teeth.) and mother, why did we get a piano if no one can even play it? Can we fix it, Mother? Pleaseplease? Can we? You promised –
*
(My mother has a silent piano. The piano has a silent mother. The silent mother has a piano. The silent piano has no mother. The silent piano needs tuning. We are an out of tune family. There is no family in this tune. This family needs tuning.)
*
Mother, last night I dreamed of a boy. He looked just like me, except he had a dark face and knotty hair. Where do you get all this bloody nonsense? Nowhere, mother.
*
The thing you need to understand is this: We are rare birds on this island.
*
(The doctor bird is a rare species of humming bird found only in Jamaica. Jamaica is full of a rare species of humming. The rare bird is humming. The humming doctor bird is a rare bird. Humming birds are rare doctors. A rare bird is the humming doctor bird. Rare birds like that are in fact common. There is no humming in this rare family. Humming in this family is rare. This rare family does not hum.)
*
Norval, why are you crying? A girl laughed and called me whiteboy. You are too soft, Norval. Soft boys do not survive on this island. Stop the foolish crying. You have to let these people understand who you are. Whiteboys like you have rights. Exercise your rights.
*
(Whiteboys exercise rights on this island. This island exercises white boys’ rights. Rights on this island are a whiteboy’s exercise. White rights are exercised on this island. This family has white right boys. I am a whiteboy.)
Confrontation
“There is a recording which plays over and over in my head. It goes like this:
Iamacowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardacowardjam–
The record never stops; it keeps on going. Most of the time it is barely audible, but it is always there and with no knob to turn it off –
Iamacowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardjamaicawhite mancowardcowardcowardwhitemanthat’swhatIamacowardjamaicawhiteman–
Death has brought no relief –
Iamacowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardacowardjamaica cowardcowardwhitemanthat’swhatIamacowardwhitejamaicawhitemanIam acowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardacowardjamaicawhite cowardcowardcowardwhitemanthat’swhatIamacowardwhitejamaicawhite mancowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardacowardjamaica owardcowardwhitemanthat’swhatIamacowardwhitejamaicawhitemancoward mancowardwhitemanacowardwhitemanajamaicawhitecowardacowardjamaica wardcowardcowardwhitemanthat’swhatIamacowardwhitejamaicacoward– That day, the little bastard just stood there watching me leave.
“Me wait for you but you never come back.”
Norval studies the face in front of him.
“You are not the boy –”
“Is me. Is me the boy.”
“Ugly as sin. And a liar too, you are.”
Bob raises his hand as if to whip the whiteman’s face; then thinks better of it; turns away and kicks the wall.
“The whiteman smell like pussy,” a boy had said as Norval walked away. Bob remembers these words, sharp as bottle-glass now. “Pussyman!” the boy called when Norval couldn’t hear no more. “Is your faadah dat?” a girl asked. Bob felt ashamed and shook his head, “Nah,” but still stood there watching, swallowing the bits of broken glass till they made a heap at the bottom of his stomach. He wanted to call the whiteman back, but didn’t know what to call him. He was too fraid to call the whiteman “daddy”.
There is one more spliff hidden in his hair. Bob lights it and draws in the smoke, holding it awhile before breathing out.
“Bloodclaat.”
Norval preoccupies himself with picking feathers from his trousers. Up in the rafters, the congregation of brethren and sistren has grown quiet.
“You coulda put me on the bus and send me back to country.” Bob inhales again. Then releases. “But check this; check the workings of Jah. The stone which the builder rejected has become Rastafari.”
Mi chile, mi chile, mi chile, a woman outside bawls. Her wail sounds from pit-bottom pain-o-heart. Inside, bird droppings and dust fall from the rafters. And so the woman bawls, so the dark rain falls and so the veil is lifted from Bob’s face till Norval, awakened, sees him – a boy with short-pants and riverbottom eyes, his back against a zinc fence: Evening and there was yellow love bush everywhere, the lane lit up by a curious gold filtering from holes in the zinc fence. The boy’s milk tooth had fallen out and he offered it, a sole possession, on his hand middle. Norval took the tooth and put it in his shirt pocket, then turned and walked away.
“I promised you thruppence for the tooth,” says Norval. “But what can this old fart do for you now?”
Bob outs the spliff and tucks the rest in his hair. Norval is as disappointing now as he was then. “Is late,” he says. “You right. You miss your boat.” He wants to forget it all, to go to sleep and wake up in the yet-to-come. It will be his last chance to find the gate. He rests his head on the satchel and closes his eyes, listens to the congregation stitching their drums.
“You cried that day, did you?” Norval whispers in the soon-dark.
The congregation hums.
“I wanted to call you back, but never know what to call you. I was too fraid too call a whiteman ‘Daddy’.”
“But see, I’m here now.”
“And is late. Two o
f us dead and lock-up inna Half Way Tree.”
“ I want to do something. There must be something a dead man can do. Nesta!”
“Bob. They call me Bob now.”
“What can your dead father do?”
Outside a clamour of news beats the clock tower – chips of voices, streams of laughter. It sounds like a short-wave radio. Inside, the clock is warm and still. Bob raises himself up from the satchel and leans against the wall.
“Look me in my two eye. Tell me who you is. I always wanted to know who you really is.”
Zion Gate VII; or, Revelation of Wisdom According to Jah Prophets (3:25)
(For it is possible to journey to Zion through the vortex of your father’s mottled eye. In this wheel you are taken through saltwater/rotten tamarind/sorrowstones and gunshot/down a lane where a boy stands and waits for his daddy/all the way back to the stink of Columbus and the winds of contention/ the sound of the sound of the heels of the unrighteous/ corrupted and foolish they are/ the song of a Taino woman on a stretch of lone beach/livity in her voice moving the water/Africa split open/a priestess catching the bullets of St. Babylon/war and rumour of rumour of/the hooves of destruction/botheration and heartlice/tribal bloodflies/the abomination of white salt/in your no cry eye —
Your father bli/nks/ a yellow ring around his iris reeling to the quietness of a house on a hill with hibiscus and cassia flowers. You see him — your boy-faadah. Six-years old. Holding a mouse. The salt of his tears. He must kill the mouse, mother said. He feeds it cheese, foolish boy. She gives him a bag to tie it up and throw it away. Coward, she says. He ties the knot, puts the bag in the piano, closes the lid, locks it and hides the key.
Something stinks in the piano. The piano stinks. There is stinking in the piano.
Nights the boy speaks to a piece of moon. It is still like the small white bones in the piano. I’m sorry, he says. I’m a coward, mother said so. Beware, beware, a lizard croaks. The moon sinks low behind the jackfruit tree as the boy closes his eyes and dreams of valour, his horse and sword scouring the land, saving mouse and rabbit and chick, every feeble, trembling thing. And you cry for this mawga, shame-face sleeping boy — your boy-faadah. You cry, for such pure of mind will soon come to naught/ misshapen into wickedness /the wishapple turn rancid /but see him there now — the boy-sweetness of his mouth dreaming redemption/and, you forgive him. Unexpected eye-water/washes off/your heart.
Somewhere someone shakes a maraca. Spirit hands bear you high higher/Omeriah hums and
a woman wipes your face with her long-grey locs; holds you/yes-I/ like a chile/
“You found it”/ she says,
“You found the gate.”)
That Heartical Place
There is a peace that passes all higherstanding, a peace-mind not even a spliff can bring. The grey-hair woman has brought Bob’s guitar; she offers it, arms stretched in the nowlight. Bob holds it careful as newborn baby. A small moth dances around the neck, flutters into the soundhole. Zion is Zion is Zion go the strings.
On the up-strum, a slave-boy with a noose around his throat appears in a corner of the clock tower. His feet are broad; toughgong from running. There are 300-year tears in his eyes, and a word on the tip of his tongue.
“I want to play freedom song,” says the boy.
“Is a place in the heart.”
“I want to play it.”
Bob hands him the guitar.
“I heard you play once,” says the boy. “I danced to the music as I died and I heard the wail of a great multitude and a word filled me –
The boy’s noose is rotten; it falls from his neck, and he plays guitar through dreams of the fallen, and of bankrupt ships and muffled voices and lost language, and places of no hope and no light; across continents and centuries and back again; to an angel at a gate, and a girl reading a book; to Taino sister re-mixing the riddim; all the way to a far-off coast where a woman holds an ostrich egg and greets him on the shore.
“So long I’ve been waiting,” she says.
DUB-SIDE CHANTING
Track 19.0: Bob Marley Returns [Rewind]
All night Bob rests in the pretty grey-hair woman’s arms. When he awakes, his head is on the rock at the bottom of the Dub Side. He is naked; his clothes neatly folded on the grass. He looks at his navel, his penis. There are still no lines on his palms, but at least the hands are his. His locs are gone; maybe they’ll grow back. He puts on the redgreengold underwear, his pants and denim shirt; counts his toes and wriggles them.
H.I.M. is under the nutmeg tree, eyes closed and a smile on his face. He hears the Prophet’s footsteps and blinks, awakened from dream.
The air is clean here; oxygen fills the Prophet’s lungs and the effect is of a good lambsbread spliff. He breathes in deep drafts of it and feels every pore of his skin numbered.
“And so?” H.I.M. searches the Prophet’s eyes.
Another green breadfruit falls on a roof in Babylon; and only then does Bob remember why he left.
AND WITH FULLTICIPATION, THEY SAID
HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE
Sixth Morning: Year of Yet-to-Come [in G Major]
Something is not right in Half Way Tree. There is a crowd gathered around the clock tower. The sky crazy-crazy with birds. The clouds are unusually low.
My mother get shot! My mother get shot! It’s a young woman shouting and pushing her way through the crowd. A man tries to stop her, but the woman wheels free and screams a scream that comes from so deep it sends the whole of Half Way Tree to a halt.
Everyone recognizes the wail – the six generations of sufferation in the woman’s voice. Its pitch holds all the mash-down parts of themselves– the holes in their hearts stuffed with dead children/ rotten chicken-foot/the price of flour/Bata tight-shoes/cane trash and/wata lock-off and bloodclaat rage.
And this woman will not be held back. She parts the crowd, like Ras Moses parting the Red Sea. The people quiet; her mother on the ground, baptised in blood.
Anjahla Calling
Mama bleeding; she bleeding. The blood too red. It red like Christmas poinsettia flowers. I want to call her name, but the word won’t come.
“Mama!”
Leenah, her name is Leenah. I must not forget her name. She name after her great-grandmother, Murlina, who came to Jamaica from Cuba on a fishing boat; her locs smell of wood smoke and pimento and poinsettia blood. I must dwell in that smell; trod back through macca and woodland to a far-inside place. For a man came to me and said in a dream: Open the Zion tin where Nana Vaughn loc keep – the lozenges tin buried at the bottom of the yard in Mama’s heart. Open it, he said. I must open it with the sound sistren of all our names.
“Mama!”
She get shot. My mother get shot. A hundred and forty-four locs baptised in blood. But the blood too red. The blood should not be as red as this.
“Mama?”
I am Anjahla Winnifred Morgan, half-angel daughter of Leenah, Rastawoman chile of Vaughn who built her house and lost it and built it again. No weapon used against this house shall prosper. Vaughn, daughter of Winnifred who lost her husband – Hector – to Millicent, and swept that corner clean and is the daughter-in-law of Murlina who crossed sea to a place of brackish water. Anjahla Vaughn, Leenah Winnifred, Vaughn Murlina, Winnifred Beryl, Murlina Shawn. If I call all our names it will open the Zion tin and Mama will hear; she will hear me.
“Mamaaaaa!”
THE PEOPLE
Babylon is fallen, is fallen
Seventeen minutes have passed and still no ambulance. The woman bleeds on the ground. The crowd is restless. The people look at each other; prayer and cuss under their breath. Someone puts a towel to soak the blood. A man picks up the woman’s broom; it is carved with lizards, a long-neck priestess on top. Higherstanding, he begins to sweep. He sweeps a sweep of supplication. Bits of chewing gum, bird feather, tamarind pod. He sweeps. To strengthen the crowd/ to hurry the ambulance/ to remember the quiet/of his face in his shoes. He sweeps. And farfar
on the roof of a carved-in-the-rock church in Ethiopia, another man stands and looks to the horizon. The roof of rock is wrought like a cross, but to the man it seems an X – a changing variable, a crossroad, a multiplication of sound. He takes his broom and sweeps the roof. Jah live. Jah live. Two men sweeping the far corners of the earth.
Nineteen minutes. Blood stains the concrete. The woman’s daughter chants a strange language. The people trace Babylon, their cuss layered under the daughter’s tuning. Wind blows open a girl’s book; the leaves flap-flap, pale yellow-yellow. She holds up the book and lets the leaves fly. A madwoman across the street grips her knife, tastes a word on her tongue.
What kinda shitness. The policeman goes in his car; calls for back-up. The shot woman reminds him of his sister, her long dark toes in plastic slippers. He wishes now he did not shoot. The shot was meant for the man who broke into the clock tower. The man came out naked with a staff in his hand, chanting down Babylon. It was instinctual; he is so used to shooting. His gun – like an extension of the body – went boom. He didn’t see the woman coming from the other side of the tower. He didn’t see her dark feet until it was too late. But he saw the man’s eyes and the ancient spinning inside them – something not of this world. Maybe the spinning made the shot miss; the ground tilted at a strange angle as the earth skipped a beat. He should not have shot at all/he should not have shot at all/he should not have shot at all – The people have had enough. Three men are shaking the car; the police revs the engine and pulls away from the sidewalk; locks the doors. Still they shake the car. He turns on the siren and revs the engine again. Where is back-up? The two in front jump on top of the hood and he pushes down the road with both of them still on it.
*
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread Page 17
