No Woman No Cry (10 page)

When he arrived, she said to him, “Robbie, you feel up to it?”

And he said, very definitely, “Yes, Aunty!”

“Okay, you can help then,” she said. “Just give me a drink.” And he got her a drink of Wincarnis, a beer for himself, and thyme tea for me, and they called the midwife. And of course there I was with no anesthesia,
ooh, ah, ooh
, in pain, until the midwife came and announced, “She's ready!”

At that point Aunty said to Bob, “You go dig a hole in the yard, because we're going to have to put the afterbirth in it. And get the water and more newspaper! Come, come! Move fast, she's in hard pain!”

Poor Bob! I looked at him and he was so … pale! Poor Bob—he looked like
he
was going to have the baby! But we kept our eyes on each other, and in the end he was very much a part of the delivery. And when he saw that the baby was a boy,
oooh!
He went outside to his friends and I heard noise, and when he came back in he was so uplifted! He couldn't stop smiling, and he was so proud—all night you could hear him telling his friends, “I have a son, man! I have a son! A boy! A boy! A boy!”

And later, after Aunty and the midwife and the helpers had cleaned up, and everyone had gone home, he begged Aunty, “Can I sleep on the bed tonight, with Rita and the baby? Will that be all right?”

Aunty by this time was pleased with him, because he really had been helpful, and she was touched by his excitement. “Of course,” she said, but then added, “As long as you're clean!”

I said, “Oh, Aunty, you know Bob is clean!”

“Yeah,” he agreed, but then just to be sure, he said, “If that is the case, let me go bathe.” So he went outside and took a shower. And when he came to bed we named the baby David, for King David, of course, though he became known as Ziggy, a pet name Bob himself had once had, and which he gave the baby three days later, saying he had football legs. Ziggy describes a move by a football (soccer) player who can outmaneuver everyone on the field.

At the time our work with JAD began, Bunny had been incarcerated for marijuana use, so most of the demo tapes we made consisted of Bob and me and sometimes Peter Tosh. When we finally did sign a contract, I would be in the studio for
hours
. We worked in Jamaica until JAD got us passports and visas to travel to the United States. We got tickets for ourselves and the children to Wilmington, Delaware, where we planned to stay a while with Bob's mother and her family before leaving for New York. To the children it was a dream come true to be to going to see Grandma and her husband Eddie Booker, and their Aunt Pearl and uncles Richard and Anthony, none of whom they'd met. Going to see Bob's family and going to school in America! (At that time Cedella Booker was running a nursery, a day care center for children, and ours were to be part of it, so that I would be able to go to work.) So that was a catch! And a new experience for the kids and me, moving to America.

But then we wondered how it was going to work and if it was going to work at all. What kind of decision was this, to pack up and go? My position, and I said it more than once, was that this move must be for the better. We could not be in the situation we were in now, in Jamaica with three kids and still not seeing any future in the music business. And this hand-to-mouth thing was getting out of order.

On the flight to Delaware Bob was such a good father. Assisting with diaper changing, feeding bottles, everything. I don't know what I'd have done without his help, because that was an experience, flying with three children! After arriving and going through customs—another ordeal with three children—we sat down in the terminal, waiting to be picked up. Moments later, Ziggy, who was still nursing, wanted to be fed. So I took out my breast and started to feed him. Bob had gone somewhere and was on his way back to us when he saw me doing this—and he got so upset! “Why are you doing that?” he said. “Cover up yourself—you don't do that in America!”

Now it was my turn to be upset! I said, “What are you talking about?”

“How could you do that?” he said. “You know, if my mother saw you doing that she would never … In America you can't feed the baby like that! You go one side or maybe go in the toilet!”

I couldn't believe it. That seemed absurd—to feed your baby in the
toilet!
I said, “Come on now, Bob, that's nothing. My baby's hungry, and when my baby's hungry I'll feed my baby anywhere!” A few years later women in the States actually had to demonstrate for the right to nurse their babies in public.

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, which 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.”