The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  FROM THE HUMMING OF LIONS IN THE GARDEN OF JAH

  Track 20: The Seat of the Most High

  For years, H.I.M. had tossed at night, fearful of backbiters and unable to sleep, but now that Riva Man had come, it was the duty of the Jamaican to sweep and protect the chamber. Each morning, Riva Man swept the twelve corners of the Most High’s suite, cleansing it of the previous night’s bad dreams, of the plots of enemies, and the malcontent of warring ancestors. He swept, Jah live, Jah live, until the chamber was peaceful ground.

  Night, the Most High entered his apartment and quickly forgot his concerns – the crocodile teeth in the Minister of Culture’s mouth, the odd scent of absinthe in the afternoon tea. He slept curled on his side, facing east, soothed by the cleansed, well-swept room.

  Each afternoon, Riva Man bound new thatch, for the old broom carried the weight of the previous day’s worries and could not be used again. The thatch was gathered carefully from palms he tended himself. Only the stick of the broom remained constant, made from a sycamore tree, and engraved with hibiscus buds and blossoms of oleander – same like Aaron’s rod in the Book of Numbers.

  Riva Man served the King of Kings seven years and forty-four days. And in all of those years, not one hair on the Most High was singed. For Riva Man swept in silence; and in Jamaica, Rastafari chanted down Babylon; and across the island the smoke of holy herb rose up, wondering at the inner chamber of Jubilee Palace.

  Jah-live.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Pharmacy

  There is a woman standing in front of York Pharmacy. She has her back turned and is looking at a sign in the window, one loc hanging loose from beneath a yellow head-wrap. Something about the loc reaching towards ground, thirsty for water, makes Bob cross the street. He stands there behind the woman for just a moment before she catches his reflection in the glass, her eyes meeting his – watching him watch her through the window.

  “Dawta of Zion.” His voice is like nutmeg on an old grater and Leenah hears it. She puts her hand to her mouth in disbelief, watching his lips as he sings the song written for her. At the end of it, she stands silent, still watching him in the glass.

  “You want to know how to run Rastaman duppy?”

  “Fry up pork in hot oil and add plenty salt,” she says.

  A girl absorbed in a book goes into the pharmacy, a blast of cool air coming from the open door.

  “Is you the conqueror.”

  “But of course.”

  “You never did tell me how you turn deaf,” Bob says.

  His words are earnest, and Leenah answers as if she had been waiting at the shop window for his question for years:

  “I heard a wickedness and paid the price. I was looking for jimbilin behind a zinc fence when I heard two men talking and plotting wickedness against Rasta. They were going to burn down a record studio; too much dutty Rasta in it. And they were going to kill people too. Your song was on the radio. I tried to keep quiet but one of them heard me cough and quick jumped on me and held me down as the other took something like a bicycle spoke and rammed it down one of my ears and then the next. For a moment there was no pain. I heard a pop and it was as if my head cleared – everything beautiful and quiet like the bottom of an underground cave – and then he pulled the spoke from my ear and there was a rush of air like a mad torrent surging through me. I opened my mouth to scream, only I couldn’t hear myself. It was like in a dream – opening your mouth, but no sound coming out. He was yelling something, his mouth moving, Shut up shut up; I couldn’t hear him but I knew what he was saying, Shut up shut up; and all at once there was Mama’s voice, Leenah! I heard her voice as if from far away and my scream became a roar; I knew I was roaring because I felt it in my body. The way lions know they are roaring in their dreams. The roar filled me up, entered my brain and my eyes; I bit into the man’s jaw, tasting his blood in my mouth. The other man had to pull him away and they both took off, running like mongoose lightning.”

  When she is done speaking, she still does not turn around for she has the distinct feeling that if she looks at him directly, Jah light on his face will be unbearable. Leenah stands, trembling in front of the window-glass. And Bob, as if understanding, touches her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Is alright,” he says. “I&I come back; have no fear.”

  “Unfinish business.”

  “Spirit tings. Or maybe me just come back – to see Zion dawta.”

  “Bless.”

  He kisses her neck and she feels the hum of it and shivers. He breathes in her scent.

  “The angel want your ras berry. It written in the book.”

  She turns around then, taking in the breadth of him. He takes the book from his satchel.

  “All I&I have is this.”

  And she remembers. It is the book the angel carried the night he came to the window.

  “And this.”

  And he holds up the wooden staff and takes out the shoe brush and polish and the transistor radio.

  “And one more thing.”

  And he shows her the ring wrapped in toilet paper.

  Anjahla comes out of the pharmacy. She has Leenah’s eyes and lips and fierce cheekbones. “Mama?”

  She goes quickly to her mother’s side, pulls her away from the tall man with the chime earrings.

  “Meet me at the clock in five years,” Bob calls.

  FROM BLOODFIAH, RECORD OF DREAMSLOST

  Track 9. 1978: In the Middle of the Middle of the Night

  This shu-shu has never been told. One night while Bob slept, Negus touched the prophet’s forehead with a tamarind switch. It was late and Bob was sprawled on his bed, dreaming of galloping on a horse across an African savannah. The horse had stripes of black musical score against its white hide – the riddim bass and bloodfiah in Bob’s ears. Its chorus repeated over and over and Bob knew that as soon as he awoke, he would reach for his guitar and write the words.

  When the horse paused to drink from a red stream, Negus slipped the Judah ring off the prophet’s finger. Bob turned in his sleep and pulled his hand away, but did not wake up. As the horse broke into a trot, Negus replaced the ring with an imitation, then tucked the original under his tongue. It was the next night that he went to see the ripe mango woman, Leenah, and climbed in through her window.

  The truth is, Negus intended to give back the ring, but fell down-down into pestilence and tribulation before it could be returned to Bob’s middle finger. That falling afternoon when he awoke on Hellshire beach, he fished it from under his tongue, dropped it in his pocket and no one ever knew a thing.

  Later, after Bob’s cancer-foot passing, there was big banga: This one wanted the ring sealed in the mausoleum and that one wanted it returned to Ethiopia. This one wanted it sold for thirty pieces of silver and that one wanted it returned to the right hand of Jah. This one wanted it behind glass in a museum showcase and that one wanted it worn on their babyfinger. Only Fall-down knew that the fight over the rightful place for the ring was fought over an imitation. The half, Almighty Jah, has never yet been told.

  LEENAH

  Rastaman Vibration

  I heard Bob; I heard him. Right here-so, in front of York Pharmacy. The words were Bob’s I’m sure. So was the scent of herb and coconut oil, the kerosene lamplight in the eyes. But the lips were those of the angelman in the dream. The height and the breadth of him. And the earrings, the little brass Africas – I remember them against my skin the night he drank from my navel. Today at the window, a roar ignited my tailbone for the second time. I looked at the reflection behind me, and knew right away it was Bob and all my words sped out of my mouth for there was a feeling that I needed to make haste like when a star falls and you speak quick –

  The last time I saw one drop was the night they buried Bob. The sky over Jamaica does not give up stars easily. Bob would have said: “Jah stars no fall; them rise.” Maybe it all depends on what window in the cosmos you are looking from. When I&I saw that star rise, I made
a wish quick-quick that I would hear Anjahla’s voice.

  And then, Anjahla came out of the pharmacy. I saw her lips move. She pulled me away to the car; she always thinks she needs to protect me. Meanwhile, I heard Bob clear-clear like small stones raining in a field of silence. He called after us, Meet me at the clock –

  So I&I will wait; five years. Babylon goes on. I never did finish at UWI – the university not ready for deafspeak. But I make brooms, art brooms – ornate and handcarved – long necks that balance sistah-queen heads on top; I thatch them up nice, like Riva Man showed me. No money in the brooms but I do social work, bringing arts and culture to deaf-Kingston. Anjahla comes with me sometimes; she is in high school. She likes butterflies and moths, and writes stories about frogs that fly. My patient at Mt. Olive Nursing Home is Mrs. M; she is the only deaf there; and the nurses don’t know what to do with her. She likes the picture I show of Michelangelo’s finger touching the fingertip of God. Then I show one I did – me reaching for the fingertip of Jah. She smiles, covering her mouth and peering at the ring on his His Majesty’s finger. “I like it,” she signs. Mrs. M. has bright eyes but is no bigger than a rat-bat. Michelangelo would have loved to paint her. She likes to wear a black nightgown and stick red hibiscus in her hair. She says it is the gown she wore on her wedding night. I picture Mrs. M. beautiful that night, her skin smooth and her princess-neck gown showing cleavage. In 1927, she must have been a knockout in black satin. The nurses call her crazy. She arrived one Boxing Day with some clothes in a suitcase, a cosmetic bag and a Bible. Her son hardly turned his back before a nurse raked through her things and snatched the Jean Nate talcum powder from the bag. It turned out that there was salt in the tin. Another nurse found a dead roach in a bottle of face cream. Mrs. M. sat on a chair by the bed and pretended to doze. I have liked her ever since.

  One afternoon she reaches for my hand and does not let go. She unfurls my fingers and opens my palm, careful as a present. She is excited about something, her mouth a little beak opening and closing. “Look. There it is.” She points to a line right under my forefinger, a crescent carved into the skin. A nurse who has been watching from her corner-eye on the other side of the room, comes over to look. Mrs. M. kisses my palm like treasure. Her lips are brittle, little bits of dry skin scratching my hand-middle. “That line. See – right there – the Ring of Solomon.”

  Rising

  So that was why Riva Man smiled when he saw my hand. I waited twenty years to find out. Some people have a clear line for fame, a long line for life, a curved little finger. They say that those who have the ring of Solomon have the gift of second sight. Second sight? Bullshit. A deaf woman good at reading lips and making signs, that’s all. I don’t see people’s minds. If I could, I would not have needed to listen behind the zinc fence; I would have already seen Papa’s head roasted on the ground; I would not have called Verle, Elizabitch; and I would know where to find Mama’s loc.

  All this went through my mind as I looked at the crescent under my finger. Curved like a small wry smile. It took me a while to realize that I do see what others don’t. I saw the six-finger woman at Mama’s bedside; too, I recognized and heard Bob in the pharmacy window and maybe in a funny kinda way, I foresaw Verle’s death in the middle of the street, and if I am willing to think back through macca and coral vine, there are other things too. Like the angel. But why did Bob appear in the angel’s skin? I am afraid of I-self.

  Barbary lions are in the news. They were thought to be extinct, but then someone found some standing at the brink of death in a zoo in Addis Ababa. Seeing Bob in Half Way Tree fifteen years after his passing was like finding those Barbary lions. Can a roar return from extinction?

  FROM THE HUMMING OF LIONS IN THE GARDEN OF JAH

  Track 13.0: Barbary

  They say the Barbaries were waiting at the palace gate when the Queen of Sheba returned from the land of Israel. More ancient than the very dirt on King Solomon’s shoes, they roamed Northern Africa – the females with keen, intelligent faces and a watch-yu-self roar; the males with dark manes that extended to the groin. They were the lions the Romans fed the Christians to. And the lions that guarded the Queen of Sheba’s newborn son.

  Everyone thought the last Barbary roared in 1922, shot by a hunter, until, sixty years later, eleven were discovered in an Addis Ababa zoo – descendents of the lions that once roared in Selassie’s palace garden. They had been put in the zoo to humble the Most High, but those lions kept on roaring. They had roared when Mengistu’s men arrested H.I.M. at the Jubilee Palace, taking him away in the blue VW. They roared when they slaughtered H.I.M.’s household and ransacked his papers, threw his small body in Ethiopia’s sewage. Descendents of a dynasty of Barbary, which had defended the very gates to the ark of Jah-Jah covenant, they would not stop now. Rasta live.

  When they lived as queens and kings among fig trees and bougainvillea in the garden, H.I.M. fed them bits of meat from a gold-plated dish. He always had a way with animals, especially lions. They understood him as kinfolk. “There, there,” he would say, stroking their chin and tossing a bit of meat from the plate with his seal, “there, there.”

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [page 1,493: tambourines]

  September, 1910 – Young Tafari’s sheets smell of peppermint. Tonight he dreams of a girl who smothers him with a pillow, then lets him out for menthol just before he asphyxiates. She throws back her head and laughs and does it again. He likes this dream and does not wish to leave.

  Twelve angel’s trumpet blossoms fall at 2.47 am in the east garden.

  The boy and his father, Makonnen, pose for a picture. Neither of them smile. “People will shoot arrows through the very gaps in your teeth, if you let them,” says Makonnen. Tafari remembers this all his life.

  The moon over Addis Ababa has a yellow haze around it. Hyenas skulk the outskirts of the city. Tafari turns in his sleep and wishes for the girl to return.

  April 6, 1962 – An earthquake shook Addis Ababa today. The emperor was sitting at his desk when the brass lion used as a paperweight fell on its side. An old letter from the empress was on top. Afterward, he reported a headache and had to lie down.

  August, 2000 – A man, Sebaut Gebre Yesus, has opened a museum in Addis Ababa. He has included the emperor’s old iron bed and other personal effects collected over the years.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Star

  Bob draws another star on the ground with a piece of stone. The points of the star uprise like a lion’s mane. He circles a tail around the top, pondering Jah-time. There is something else he understands now. At first, he counted them in fives, but the number of years between mornings could well be arbitrary. He gazes down the road at the clock tower. It is now a quarter to three. A breeze lifts up a girl’s dress. Jah wind does not blow by appointment. If Leenah comes in five years, she will probably miss him. He tosses the stone and sits on the curb; listens to the car stereos and the new-time music with its too much electric and double treble. More bass, people, more bass. Bass is the root.

  Management does not want him standing outside the pharmacy, so he walks down a little way, pacing pharmacy, gas station, and post office, watching people lick their stamps and drop letters in the box. Something is about to happen in Half Way Tree. He feels it.

  A thought comes to him that he could post a letter to Rita, but he quickly lets it go. Where she is now anyway? Two schoolboys throw an empty box drink at him.

  “Bet you don’t come little closer,” Bob calls.

  One of them edges nearer, a big grin on his face, and Bob takes out the ring from the toilet paper.

  “This ring for your lunch money,” he says.

  The boy looks at the ring and is about to reach for it when the other one pulls him back.

  “Look the mad man wrap the ring in the same paper him use wipe him batty. And is a play-play ring; it don’t even worth nothing.” They both run off.

  Half Way Tree smells of dog pee-pe
e and rotten june plum. The traffic light changes, red green and gold over and over.

  “This ring for a money,” he says. “This ring for a cool drink.”

  The post office closes and he decides to forward in the other direction, reason with the Rasta breddren. But everything change-up and the Aquarius Record Shop is not there anymore; there is a shop selling shoes in its place. He walks toward the place Delroy sells bottle water. The youth called him faadah and he denied it. He wished now he had kept his mouth shut, the pain-o-heart on Delroy’s face was only a flicker, but it was real. You can’t suck words back.

  Delroy has not yet packed up for the day; he looks tired. “Ras?”

  “Me sorry me had was to leave for them years,” Bob says. “A father should not pick up and go just like that.”

  There is a brief silence between the two; like a scratchy pause between vinyl songs.

  “No worry. You’re a fall-down angel. Remember?”

  Bob smiles and looks down at his palms. Such linelessness makes him feel like nobody – and everybody.

  “So you think the ring worth anything?” He takes it out of his pocket again.

  “You still have it? Is what them call a reproduction, I tell you. Is not a bad one though – you might get something for it. But the real one now – that one priceless. Bob bury with it. But don’t you know more about them things than me?”

  The lights are still red; pedestrians cross.

  “Me no remember no ring in the coffin. I did have mi guitar and someone did put an icey-mint in mi mouth, still wrap in the paper; the wig on mi head like one dread barrister to –” And then he catches himself – it’s useless to talk about himself as Bob. Delroy hands him back the ring. “But I-man no need material things. Just a box drink and two patty me looking.”