No Woman No Cry (11 page)

And Papa said, “What?! Bob
Mah
-ley? Bob Mah-
ley
! But that name sound familiar! I think my daughter's husband name Mahley! Let me see the guy, man!” So he got in touch with the person who was doing the cooking for Johnny Nash and said, “Let me meet this guy
Mah
-ley, man. Tell him Rita father coming.” And when Papa arrived, Bob came up from the basement. And there was my father, saying, “Yes, man, Rita is my daughter. You married to my daughter!”

Bob said it was like heaven—it was a release, as if he'd gotten out of prison, a prison term in a Stockholm basement! His letter said, “Guess what? I met your father, and he's teaching me to play some new stuff on the guitar!” Bob said he could hardly believe it had happened—and purely by chance. From then on, Papa would come in the evenings and take him out for food and a smoke, and their relationship grew. It was my father who taught Bob some techniques of the classic guitar, things that he himself had learned after emigrating, which helped Bob to write to a more advanced level and to experiment with better chords. I remember when I got that letter I was so happy! I wrote Bob, “Here I've been suffering and wondering what's happening to you, and there you are, hanging out with my Papa!”

Working with JAD, I had stopped acting as the sales manager and had become just a singer, even though Bob and I were bound in a “keep your eyes open, we're going to sign contracts” understanding. But then we started meeting lawyers and accountants, and anyway I couldn't be in the studio and out there selling records too. Still, we found out soon enough that JAD was covering Wailers' music—“Stir It Up” was a big hit for them, and “Guava Jelly,” which Barbra Streisand also covered. JAD used Bob's capacity as a songwriter, but they wanted to make a star of Johnny Nash, not of Bob Marley, and Bob Marley wanted to be his own self, the person he had a vision of himself becoming. We were getting only minimum royalties, because they had everything set up so that they owned the publishing, the copyright, and all that.

Just before the association with JAD was over, Bob found himself stranded in London with Peter and Bunny. After Bob's stint in Stockholm, Danny Sims had sent for the two other Wailers with some idea that he could promote them by sending them on tour in England. They played a few dates but nothing more happened, and one morning they woke up in their cold-water flat to find they'd been abandoned altogether—Nash and Sims had left for Florida. Bob managed to make a connection that would later serve them all well, but as things stood then, they got the plane fare home, and that was that.

Little or none of the material recorded as demos for JAD was released during Bob's lifetime, but the market was flooded with it after he passed. We had been so inexperienced, and lacking proper guidance or preparation, that we'd been misled. So at the time we just marked JAD as an experience that had in any case been good for us.

But then it was over; the contract was up. We didn't know how long it would be before a new contract came along, or that we would wait out some more hard times before the world began to take notice. When it did, though, it embraced Robert Nesta Marley. I was to sing with him for the last, most successful, years of his life. Apart from our personal relationship, working with him was always new, always interesting. Everyone who ever did agrees to this. As a good friend once said, Bob was “one of a kind and truly a prophet sent … I didn't wait until he passed to give him flowers.”

I
DON
'
T LIKE TO
remember the summer of 1971, it was such a low time.

Of course I was glad to see Bob when he came home; I'd been lonely and worried. In those days you couldn't just pick up a phone, you had to stand by the gate and wait for the postman (though with three children to care for, I didn't have much time for standing and waiting). Still, whenever I wasn't working,
doing
something, I was back to asking myself, is this all there is? Is this what my life is gonna be? What kind of future am I making for myself and my children?

As soon as Bob returned, the Wailers went into Coxsone's studio. I wasn't singing background vocals for them at that time, so I had no income and nothing to do but worry. Bob wasn't earning any money either, although he was working hard on a deal that he hoped for. We were getting some small checks from JAD and had managed to buy a little used car, but the music thing was definitely not working. Our records were not playing in America or even in Jamaica. And of course we were still at Aunty's, which put me back into my childhood position, as though I'd never grow up and would always be dependent. My kids now used the stool that Papa had made for me.

And then I discovered I was pregnant. The day I knew, I took that stool to the corner of the yard where I used to go after Aunty's spankings and sat there trying to absorb this latest calamity and to figure out what to do. I was devastated; I couldn't imagine how this would affect everyone. As a strict Rastafarian I did not use birth control or believe in abortion; it's our belief that such practices are intended to kill off the black race.

I waited as long as I could before making the big announcement. I told myself this was “just to be sure,” but that was just an excuse. Aunty's response was predictable. She stood with her hands on her hips and her nose in the air, saying, “My Lord, what is this? Again? Not another baby! I knew it was gonna happen, you can't go on like this, you've got to put a stop, you have to find a place to put your children! No more in here! This is going crazy! Where is the money coming from? What are you doing with your life? You cannot stay here with so many children! There's no room—everybody is in one room and that's not right. You never grow that way, you grow with your own room. To have so many kids in one room? No!”

I knew that everything she'd said was true, and her talking like this really got to me. For the first time I really understood how this new situation of ours, this complete dependency, was too much for her. Bob was more sympathetic when I told him, but he was overwhelmed with career problems. We talked it over that night and I asked if he thought I could call his mother, maybe I would go to the States for a while, until he got himself out of the troubles he was in, his commitment to a record deal with JAD that was not working for us. Then maybe he could come up there and join me.

So he agreed that I should call, and I decided that even if I didn't go to America, I'd move out anyway. I had to get away from Aunty. I didn't want her to see me growing a big belly again. Bob and I had actually been looking for houses but had been turned away time and again because of the children. So the more I thought about it, going to Delaware seemed like a good idea. I told Bob I would get a job. “I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something,” I said. “I'll do nursing, housework, whatever it takes, and you'll stay, and I'll send whatever money I can manage to send for you and the kids.”

So I got in touch with Moms Booker, who said yes, you can come and stay with me until Bob can get here (she was very pleased about that). My plan, as I explained to her, was to come to Delaware and get back into practical nursing. I didn't want to leave Sharon and Cedella, but they were both in school and I thought it would be wiser not to arrive with everyone, so I took Ziggy and Aunty agreed to keep the girls. Leaving them was hard, but there just wasn't room in Delaware at that time. On bad days it seemed as if there wasn't room for us anywhere.

It was winter when I got to Wilmington. I got work immediately in a hospital as a nurse's aide, but such a low-paying job couldn't pay my expenses—the rent I had to give to the Bookers, and what Moms charged me for babysitting Ziggy, and what I was trying to save to send back home to Aunty and Bob. Every day I wished he would hurry up and get over here, because this was a different kind of life.

But Eddie Booker was a sweet man and so devoted to his “Ciddy”—I used to love just watching them in love. Eddie was much older than his wife, and when he heard her calling him—heard that “Eddie!”—he just smiled. He'd been a bit overwhelmed by us during the Johnny Nash period, when he knew that we were actually working with an American. It was a big deal to him, and he'd state so proudly, “Oh, they're signed to this American man from New York!” and “Yes, Ciddy's son is a singer, and his wife is also a singer!” And he had really embraced Bob's writing. He'd even fixed up the basement so we could have that to ourselves, because he knew we smoked, and they didn't like us to smoke in the house.

When I was there alone with Ziggy, what impressed me about their family and what really got me hooked at first was that every evening Eddie took us all for a ride. Pearl, the big sister, was about thirteen, and Richard and Anthony were a few years younger. Every evening Eddie would have a sip of his Coke, and light a cigarette, and then we either had to go get a “sub” or go for a ride—“Ciddy, where we going this evening, Ciddy?” And it was always somewhere far, a couple of hours' ride, and we'd come back when all the kids had fallen asleep. For me this was so relaxing, and so much fun, and it made me happy to see Ziggy enjoying the big kids and this real, picture-perfect “family outing.” Another family member—Bob's cousin Dotty, whom I'd first met in St. Ann—was living in Wilmington and she really looked out for me as well.

But it soon reached the point where I had to do housework as well as nursing. I had various jobs, and then got one as a live-in nurse-housekeeper for a very old woman, whose wealthy children let her live by herself. Maybe they couldn't stand her, or maybe she preferred this, although from what I could see, she was miserable. But she owned a mansion, and that's where we lived, just the two of us.

Working for Mrs. Carrington was a task, and frightening, because although aged she could be scary. So was the neighborhood, where only rich white people lived, and the only black people I ever saw were the maids. It gave me a weird feeling when I thought about it, that I was a helper now, a maid. If I sometimes snuck a phone call, I would have to listen to Mrs. Carrington going over her bill: “Who made this call? That damn
maid
!” Old as she was, she would inspect her silver with a magnifier to be sure I had cleaned it properly and count it to be sure I had not stolen any on my day off.

After Mrs. Carrington had her morning coffee, and maybe toast and scrambled eggs, she didn't eat again until two or three o'clock, when she would pick out what she wanted for dinner. She counted everything—each slice of bread (and you could only have one), each egg. She measured all our food by the spoon, never a measuring cup. For the two of us she'd dole out maybe two to five spoonfuls of whatever we were eating, or one lamb chop and one baked potato—for us both, and that was it for the night! So I'd find myself many nights, after I put her to bed, sneaking down to the kitchen to steal an egg or a chop, even a piece of bread or a potato, because I was always hungry—and not just because I was pregnant, though that certainly had something to do with it. Thinking about this now, I realize I've really had a life …

But even more than the hunger, and the fear and embarrassment involved in stealing food, what I minded was the loneliness. My room was in the attic, and there wasn't all that much work to do. I missed home—not only Bob and my girls but Jamaica itself, with its sunshine and music. I missed Ziggy, whom I was able to see only on my weekend off. Sometimes I'd cry myself to sleep, other times I swore I heard ghosts in that cold, empty house. Just the silence of the place alone would drive me crazy. But I stuck it out—and Mrs. Carrington was even going to sponsor me to the United States, I was told, if I stayed on as a live-in. So I guess I was a good enough maid.

I kept waiting for Bob to come to Delaware, but then he got a draft notice from the U.S. government. It was the time of the Vietnam War, and because he had taken out citizenship papers, they wanted him for military service. The letter said, essentially, “We got you!” But Bob's response was, “No, I'm gonna run.” So there was no more talk of his joining me. And at the same time he would not give up on his music. So each day he would write two or more songs about, as usual, his life—for example: “Talking Blues,” “My Woman Is Gone,” “Baby Come on Home.”

Caught up there in Mrs. Carrington's attic, with no end in sight, I had a lot of time to think. Something in me still couldn't believe that this was it, that this was where I'd remain. I fooled myself into believing that what I was going through was just to keep my independence, and that things weren't going to be this way always. And then sometimes—just when I needed him, it seemed—Bob would call to give me encouragement, to say again, “Just cool, soon everything will be fine, either you come back to Jamaica or whatever, but don't stay there and worry yourself.”

It was sweet Eddie Booker who gave me the most immediate hope. Just before my weekend off, he'd call to say, “Oh Rita, I'm coming to get you!” And he'd drive me home and oh, I was so glad to see my boy Ziggy! But then one day it was snowing, and when I got home I found that Ziggy had been playing in the park across the street with some kids who'd thrown snow inside his jacket. He came down with pneumonia and I had to rush him to the hospital that night, one of his lungs almost collapsed. I nearly died, I cried so, I kept saying, “No no no, I can't leave Ziggy anymore, 'cause they're gonna kill him.” Things were getting out of hand now, I thought, I think it's time for me to go, this would never have happened around Aunty. I called Bob, and said, “I'm coming home.”

He said, “It don't make sense to come home, there's nothing to come home for because nothing is happening in Jamaica.”

I was so upset. What had happened to “Just cool—soon everything will be fine”? I knew I'd have to have the new baby in Delaware if I couldn't come home right then, because I was almost due, and soon it would be too late to fly. A kind of uncertainty crept in about Bob that I'd never felt before. I realized we're separating, we're growing apart. What's happening here?