The vision that end the time of expectance came like this:
I was sitting out in the yard, lost in the Ethiopian egg, when a man called, psst, from under the cashew tree. It was Hector, only young-looking and with no crease down the middle of his forehead. Everything hush as he studied me through the eye-&- eye of a silver needle, me like a young lioness he find in a field. When I make to rush to him, he disappear, and stand in his place was a small man in a well-adorn khaki suit and a smile, with a gap between the teeth. He give me a ripe Number Eleven mango from a bowl, and soon as I bite into it and look away, he gone.
Mama listen to me tell the vision and she say right away, That’s it, Hector not coming back. She put a croton pot in the space save for his return and wake up that same night with a feeling to sew. Next morning, she go into town and buy three yards of cloth for a new red dress, and cut it and stitch it and sew it by hand and not a woman in Brown’s Town hold their head high as she.
That was the same year I turn seventeen and meet Gully. I was so small then, my waist slim like a bamboo. I stand outside a storefront reading the magazine and I see Gully from my corner-eye, watching me. After a while he say, “Dawta of Sheba,” and I look up and smile – his face dark and his teeth white and line up all pretty; his hair push up in a tam. He had a little picture hang around his neck, and when I look good it was the same-same emperor-man, just how I did vision him. I so frighten to see my vision justa dangle before me, I couldn’t stop look. The Most High rise and fall gainst Gully chest and, Jah be my judge, every time the picture rise up is like H.I.M. nodding, Yes, yes. Signs and wonders no come more than that. Three months later, me go live with Gully and me pregnant with Leenah.
“I could see it coming,” Mama said. “Mine you get burn.”
But Gully wasn’t like some Rastaman. When him call me his empress, him mean it and him treat me like it too. If Gully have only one orange, him share it with me, and if him reasoning with a breddren, him call me come. “Woman flow like a river and the river is life and life is the source of Jah holiness,” he say. Nighttime, he roll my locs and count them and call me Africa. That’s how him school I&I, and I&I witness him strength. But listen me good, is not Gully why I turn Rasta. You see me? I didn’t follow nobody. I had a vision. That’s how I turn Rasta.
LEENAH
Years later, Miss-Winnie, my grandmother, would tell me that my parents met in Brown’s Town when Vaughn turned the page of an old magazine and contemplated an ostrich egg on a plate. Later, Vaughn tore out the pages and stuck them to the wall. The caption under the ostrich woman: How will you have your egg? So these are the words I sing to Anjahla. I make up a song about a woman with an ostrich egg on a plate. The woman dare not break the egg or else the children will have no vision, and where there is no vision, the people perish. Look-here, I say. The woman holds the egg steady on the plate; she listens for Vaughn, my mother’s voice in a far-off wilderness, the nyahmbic beat of a Rastawoman’s feet – Sing, Vaughn, sing.
SONG OF VAUGHN
1965 Sistren Speech Piece
I&I is a Rasta woman. I have one hundred and forty-four locs because the square root of a hundred and forty-four is twelve and twelve is a number perfect as the twelve moons that circle the twelve gates of the house of Zion. Sometimes when I pile the hundred and forty-four on top my head, the locs-them catch waves straight outta Zion and is like I carrying Jah-Jah ark on top I&I head. I&I is a Rasta woman. Is lion-woman I is.
One day I wash my hair and sit down on a rock to let it dry in the sun and the sun so sweet, I vision a woman with a sceptre of righteousness in her hand. The woman oil my locs one by one with an oil sweet as rosemary and each time she oil one, she call me by a different name. When she finish reason with me, even the very secrets in the belly of the fish at the bottom of the river I coulda see.
But they have some bad-mind people fill up this island. Babylon! They don’t like see a Rasta woman strive. They take me for mad. They take me for insane, how I wear my dreadfullness and knot it up nice and trod like an empress on the face of the earth. Bad-minded people. You have to careful of them.
This is how it all started. They stone my house at night when me and my baby father in bed sleeping. Yes! And it wasn’t no science stone neither – is bad-minded people do it! Boom-boom, I hear rockstone coming down on the zinc. Jah! Next day, I rope my dreads and wrap them up good and hold my head high and step out like a queen. I wasn’t going let those people stop me. Badminded people! Is true they don’t want no Rasta in the district. They think Rasta is backwardness.
But that wasn’t the end of it. One day me and Gully go market and them burn down the house, crisp-crisp to the ground. Mighty Jah, what a wickedness. The only thing left was a pair of iron scissors did belong to my father. I take the scissors and I cut off piece of my locs and give it to Leenah and I say, “If anything happen, remember who you is,” and I send her to her grannie, not even have a change of clothes to her name. I wasn’t going to let them hurt my one-daughter! How you mean?
Me and Gully stay behind with Riva Man. The neighbours mouth-them seal; nobody wasn’t telling a thing what them did see. Fear fill them up. Riva Man help us build back the house, and Jah anointing come down on me that even the little pear tree that did scorch, spring back and bear so, till we had was to give some of the fruit away to the very cowards that did stand and watch the house burn.
Now in those days, Riva sell brooms in the market – that’s how we meet him. He never really have to help us, but he see how we suffer, and he do it out of the goodness of his heart. That day, when the house finish, I take one of his brooms – just like he show me – and I sweep the twelve corners, each corner twelve times; and the whole time I sweeping, I just calling the twelve names of Jah – the Alpha, the Omega, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the Root of Jesse, the Elect of God, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty, Haile-I Selassie-I, The Most High, Jah Rastafari – and the whole time I calling Jah, the bad-minded people-them driving by, watching from their corner eye. One of them even send her puppy-dog to my door with a size twelve science shoes in its mouth! But hear me now – the power of Jah come down in the house and fill me up and cast out the dog. You watch me and them. Rastawoman! I dwell betwixt and between and no evil shall overcome she-lion; yu see me? I hold my neck proud and balance Jah-Jah ark on top I&I head.
LEENAH
1966: Jah Live
“Bring in all Rastas, dead or alive!” That’s what the Prime Minister, Bustamante, had said. We were all criminals to them. Too brazen and unmanageable for them. We had found our own God; told our own story; fashioned our I&I language; trod to our own riddim without their consent; held our knotty dreads high; everything on our own terms, I-fiantly.
“Is war then,” Papa said. He walked on the street, holding up a sign, Rasta Live. People warned him, “Mine you get kill,” but he did not care. At night, his bongo drum shook the ground. O-I&I /will ne/va leave dis field/till I vic/tory is won/-O
In the end, because they hated Rasta so, bad-mind Babylon shot Papa down and left him for dead under a tree. Later that night, some drunk youth found him and set him afire. It happened a year after the house burning – I saw the burnt tree stub with my own two eyes. I wondered whether Papa was still alive when he catch fire. There is a history on this island of trees bearing witness. Did Papa die with a word at his tongue like the boy at the silk cotton? If trees could talk.
A boy at school boasted how he saw Papa’s head on the ground, black as roast breadfruit, only it didn’t smell that way. He said it smelled of roast-dog. I couldn’t stand that boy. Afterwards in Kingston, and later London, when the smell of my burnt hair came back to me, it would be mixed with roast-dog. I remember vomiting on the train once, the stink on my coat was so bad.
Even after the burning, Mama held her head high. I have a feeling she did not always feel as strong as she made out to be. But she could fool anyone, the way she balanced that ark on her head.
She was two months pregnant when they killed Papa; the baby was supposed to be the thing that would balm her and bring her back, only it didn’t work out that way.
Thanks be to Jah for Ras Riva Man. He knew the language of sufferation and always had ways of distracting me. He taught me how to bind his straw brooms with two strips of metal and we sold them together in the market at Brown’s Town. On Saturdays, Mama let him take me with him. I sat on the crossbar of the bicycle while he balanced his brooms on one shoulder.
“Mine you don’t kill my one-daughter,” Mama always called. But we would be off down the road, the ends of my headscarf streaming behind. I loved the market: the noise and the cuss-cuss, the snow cones with red syrup, the smell of overripe mango and the fat woman with three bellies who sold spice and called me, “Miss Nice”.
But one Saturday when he came for me, I had a mind to stay home. I loved to read like Mama, and a new girl at school had given me a book on Egyptian mummies, which I couldn’t wait to devour. I did not know it would be the day the strange six-finger woman with straw hat and skirt to the ground would appear at the door and come to take Mama and the baby born too-still. When the baby was pulled from between Mama’s legs, not even the mid-wife saw the woman, but I did. She was standing next to the bed fanning Mama with a banana leaf and saying, “Never mind, never mind.” The baby was small and blue like a bit of night sky and the midwife sucked in her breath and put the infant in a plastic basin at the foot of the bed and covered it with a white cloth. Then she sucked in her breath again and began stuffing rags between Mama’s legs. The room smelled of bay rum and Vick’s vapour rub. The six-finger woman motioned to Mama, “Come,” but Mama held up a finger as if to say, “Not yet.” Then she called me to her side, reached for a paradise plum in a bag on the bedside table, and put it in my mouth. I knew that every strong and everlasting thing she felt for me was in that sweet.
“Jah live,” she said, and closed her eyes.
The plum melted in my mouth as the six-finger woman reached into my mother’s chest, pulled out a tiny dragon-fly and released it through the window.
“Mama!” I called, but her breath was fly gone.
The mid-wife was rubbing Mama down with Limacol and had not seen a thing. “Oh God, oh JesusGod,” she said, when she finally saw that Mama was not breathing anymore.
I ran inside the next room to find the piece of loc Mama had given me, back when the house burned down. I pulled out all the draws, emptied boxes under the bed. Mama! But couldn’t find it nowhere. The loc with her voice inside of it. How could I lose it? I hated myself. Mama lay on the bed with her hand over her heart. Come back, Mama! Come back! But the midwife wouldn’t let me near her. I watched from the doorway as she covered the dressing table mirror with a sheet.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I lost the loc, Mama.
Later, Riva Man swept the four corners of the room with a new broom and drew the curtains, and shut the door. It was 1966, the year Haile Selassie I visited Jamaica. After the funeral, because I needed a respite from grieving, Riva Man took me on the bus to the airport in Kingston to see the emperor disembark from his imperial jet plane.
BACKGROUND SINGER SOUND SISTREN [SISTAH DAWN]
Track 8.0: The Workings of his Majesty
Hear me, you think that 1966 visit was just for so? For the Most High looked to Jamaica Rasta and said to himself, “What a way these people love me. Not even my own people in Ethiopia show such honour as this, for even within the palace gates, even within the holy of holies of Addis Ababa, I have to be watchful of Judas and his pomegranate kiss.” Now this is a secret known to few, and certainly no one in Jamaica, but long before his arrival, the Most High sent out a scout, scouring the island from hill to gully. The Most High sought for a locs-man of ordinary vocation, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, a man humble in his ways, a man who would follow his Most High and serve him with true livication. For even in Ethiopia, the Most High was a man who took no chances, picking his confidantes with a careful stick like searching soon-ripe julie mango from a tree.
And so it came to pass that Riva Man was the one chosen by Jah. At first no one missed him – he was given to going off into the bush for contemplation; only mongoose and rat-bat would know his whereabouts. But then one day someone said, But wait, is where that Rasta who used to sell the brooms-them out by St. Ann’s Bay? The question fell into the river; rippled for a while before vanishing without a trace.
The truth, of course, is that Riva Man returned with the Most High, an honoured servant, all the way to Ethiopia. For when the scout came to him in the middle night, bearing the seal of the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Riva Man dropped the broom he was making and said three words and three words only: Here am I. Next week, the consulate quick-time signed papers and they dressed him up nice like an Ethiopian, and took him through customs with the rest of the Emperor’s entourage, and nobody in St. Ann, in the little district of Priory, ever knew a single thing. The half has never yet been told.
Nowadays, if you go to Shashamane looking for Riva, you will not find him. And if you go to the market in Addis Ababa or Harar or Nazret, you will still not find him. Even if you go to the resting place of the Emperor’s small white bones, bearing rum and incense and frangipani flowers, you will notice many things, but there will be no sign of Riva. You will find Riva, instead, in a cave in Debre Dama, smoking wisdom weed and counting the rings he makes with the smoke. Jah live, Jah live, Jah live.
LEENAH
Lion-Man Appears in the Sky
It was lion rain falling the day me and Riva Man went to see the emperor at the Palisadoes airport. The sky opened up and the rain came down with a mighty roar, but Riva said not to worry, Jah just cleansing the earth before he stepfoot on it. He expressed all of this with a glory of deafdread, his fingers new as rainwater. And he was right – the moment Jah iron-bird appeared in the sky, the heavens closed and the rain ceased.
A huge crowd had come to greet H.I.M. They came with flags and with drums, with thirst and with hunger, with dreadfulness and hearts out of order, with empty pockets and hundred year disappointment. They came with love and raspect, in fullticipation of Jah majesty.
H.I.M. appeared at the plane’s doorway, a small man in khaki uniform. There was a dog at his side. The crowd could not contain itself; each person united in praises, it surged together, “Rastafari!” I held Riva’s hand tight and Mama’s words leaped from my throat, Jah live! Jah live! Jah live! For there was a feeling that Mama was alive inside of me, pressing me on. The Judahlion held up his hand and my scalp tingled, each hair on my head numbered. Afterwards, a man in the crowd said, “Every Rasta locs grow highah today.” Outside in the charged air, I walked straightbacked, my hair wrapped tall, carrying the ark of Jah-Jah covenant on my head. That would be the last time, for a long time, I held my head Sheba that way.
From the airport, Riva Man took me to my uncle Wilson’s house in August Town because Uncle was my only flesh and blood and it had been decided that he should care for me now. Uncle Wilson was my father’s brother. Short and bulla-faced, he did not look like Papa – they were both cut from different flour bag. Uncle was a member of Mt. Ephraim Pentecostal Church; he wore suits on Sundays and spoke in tongues and went to the barber every other Friday. He meant well, but I knew he did not approve of the way my parents had raised me. And here now was Riva with his wrap-head and bead necklaces and shirt out of his pants, like Papa.
It wasn’t until he stood by the gate, ready to leave, that Riva Man explained to me that he was going to Africa. He pointed to the red continent on his shirt; he was leaving on a plane. I started to cry and he took my hand and studied my palm as if he was looking for something to soothe me. Finally he broke into a smile and pointed to a thin line under my forefinger. I was twelve years old and didn’t ask what it meant, but knew that my hand-middle held something special. It was getting late and Uncle came and stood in the doorway. I pu
t my hand on the red Africa and said goodbye. After that night, I never saw Riva Man again.
HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE
The First Morning
Bob awakes in the clock tower the next morning. It is early but the street is already astir with vendors beginning to set out their sweets and made-in-china things. He sits up and leans against the wall, his arms and legs heavy. He slips out of the clock with no one noticing, except a girl reading a book at the bus-stop.
In the shadow of a tamarind tree behind a bar, Bob takes off his clothes and examines his body in the yellow daylight. He finds himself tall and muscular, his arms long as if built for flight. His penis is dark and shrivelled; he takes it out and pees at the base of the tree, then shakes it gingerly, aware of holding another man’s member. There are no lines on his palms, no past and no future. The red headscarf falls to the ground and he is pleased, praise Jah, to discover that he is in fact a locsman; the dreads alive with a little spliff tucked inside. It is already high sun when he puts his clothes back on, wondering what to do. He empties the canvas bag – no money, only the set of keys, the container of shoe polish and stiff brush, a radio with no batteries, a bottle of Kananga water, and an old ledger book. Rhaatid. He will walk back to 56 Hope Road again, scour all of Kingston until someone recognizes him to raas – Rita, one of his children, his lawyer, his manager, one of his babymother, one of the breddren.
Rita is pulling out of the driveway when he arrives. He rushes in front of the car and blocks her way; she throws a fit, and for two long seconds all is slow motion, Rita beautiful in her rage, her nostrils flared like a passion flower. But the car pushes forward and in one quick motion Bob leaps onto the hood, presses his hands hard against the glass to show that – Jah be judge – there are no lines on his palms.
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread Page 7