The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  I wait at the bus stop a listen Lady She, when a madman go, Pssst. I think he psst me because I sexy, so I don’t pay him no mine. I just keep listening Lady She. I want practice move my hip like hers, like a wheel inside it. This weekend I going over Juanita house to touch up my hair roots and afterwards the two of we will practice. This is when I remember I need go York Pharmacy to get some Revlon. I wish I could get a weave, but school rules don’t allow it. Pssst, the madman go again. Kiss my raas, I say, and I cross the street and walk over to the pharmacy.

  When I come out and go back to the bus stop, he’s still there. I hold my head straight and make sure I stand far away, but he walk to where I am and sit down on the curb behind me. I want to touch up yuh roots, he say. And his words shock me because the Revlon in my school bag, so how he could know? No. Maybe is just because my roots so nappy and him notice – but still! Or maybe he have a nasty mouth.

  I just ignore him and I look down the street like I watching for the bus. You need to touch yuh roots, he say again. And when I don’t say nothing, him start to hum and I move away again because I still listening Lady She in my ears, and I visioning how her two knees touch and part, touch and part. I like when she sing, Hell-o, just as they about to part.

  Someone calling my cell. But the madman still won’t leave me. He move up gainst the fence and he still humming. I kiss my teeth and take Lady She out my ears, and then is like his voice vibrate the ground under my feet. I feel it on my foot-bottom, like something under the ground reaching up through my skin. And then the roots on my head start tingle. I touch my scalp, so nappy like a forest my fingers get lost in it. I circle the top where my auntie said my tender spot used to be when I was born. The hair coily and soft there and I remember something – my mother holding me when I was a baby. Who remembers their mother holding them when them was a baby? Shit, you not supposed to remember that far back, but something about the madman and his humming make me remember it. I have my head against her chest and she singing a song. Is a Bob Marley song. My mother always used to like Bob Marley. She was young when she had me and went abroad when I was four years old; I believe American cares-of-life swallow she, because she don’t come back since. Is my auntie I grow with. But my head against my mother’s chest now, and she smell like nutmeg sprinkle on milk and I close my eyes and see something else, clear-clear: my mother in her mother’s arms – my grandmother, the small bird-woman, holding my mother so proud, and a fire tears-drop on her cheek, and in the tears-drop I see the bird-woman in her mother’s arms – my great-grandmother, the strong-back maroon woman, and the picture in our tears just keep going back and back to all of us in our mother’s arms and on and on, can’t stop, all of us with the same tender spot at the top of our heads and all of us thinking of the ones before us; the heat in our tears, like we are one woman.

  My bus coming down the road, but I stand there with my fingers in my roots, so much baby laugh and gurgle coming up from inside me, and the hair so twist and spiral around, and the man behind me humming like a prophet. Ti-ting-ting, his earrings blow in the breeze, as I coil my roots around my finger. And I love them, I love them. And I wonder if Lady She ever feel that way.

  She looks like a sugar and a plum, plum, plum,

  [Schoolyard Ring Fight]

  Today Grade Three in the school yard playing ring games when fight break out. The game was going alright when all of a sudden Minerva say, Hold on, and she stop the game. She say we missing a verse. Is not so the song go, she say. Minerva always want everything perfect and Renita can’t stand it, or maybe is just Minerva voice tick her off, I don’t know. Anyway, Renita say, Shut up yu know-all, Minerva. And watch how you want bring bwoy in the game too. Is a girl game, and the boys don’t let us in their games. Minerva say, Well the game nicer when it have plenty people. Just let the boys play. Everyone know we have more sense than them, so maybe they will learn something to rah. The whole time the boys on the side watching. All you have to do is call us brown boys, Peter say. Peter grow with him granny, Owen say. And then Susan Chin say, There’s something I don’t like. Is a brown game. What if some of us are not brown? Shut up! All of us brown, Minerva say. Even you, Susan. Look how sun burn you. And anyway, is just a song. Except Sharon, she black-like, Nadine say. That’s when Sharon box Nadine in her face and soon the ring game turn ring fight – Sharon and Nadine in the middle.

  The whole time a man at the fence watching us. Him have on a red turban and look like him travel from far. Renita whisper, Don’t look at him because he’s mad and if you look at him he will cross your face and you will die. The man wind-pipe have a guitar in it, and he sing a song that shake the leaves on the tamarind tree, and right away the fight stop, and everyone turn around and look at him, and all the green tamarind fall down. Even teacher come to the door.

  I go teach you a new game, the man say. Get back in the circle, he say. Everybody look at each other, and we get back in the circle. For what there was to lose? We already look him in the face. Close your eyes, he say. This feel like church, Owen say. The man laugh and his earrings go ting-ling-ting. For this game, we need one person in the circle, he say. Minerva step forward; she is always good that way. She put her hands over her eyes and shut them, just like he tell her, and he start hum.

  When I close my eyes, I see my mother washing clothes in the yard, Minerva say. She washing yuh panty, Owen say. Everybody start giggle, but Minerva all serious. She want to give me a number 11 mango, Minerva say. Take it, the man say. And Minerva take the mango and taste it and you could hear a stone drop because all of us taste it too, sweet-sweet like only number 11 can taste, and true like the soft thing in Minerva mother heart.

  Everybody get a turn in the ring. Sharon go next and her grandfather give her piece of black cloth with a new moon in it. She unfold it and we feel the night on our skin, because each one of us turn a star in it.

  Susan’s auntie give her a red ginger lily. Ginger Lily beautiful everywhere it grow, her auntie say. She say it in Chinese, but we understand, because we are all holding hands.

  A man Owen don’t know give him a cut-in-half calabash. He put the calabash to his ears and we hear a soft singing, like how you sing to a newborn baby. Owen’s father singing a just-born song to his son, all bass and loveful, and Owen start cry because is the first he hear his father voice.

  When my turn come, my mother give me a needle and piece of blue thread. As I thread the needle and look through the eye, I see all the way across the sea to an old-old woman with long white plaits, holding out a page with my voice on it. My name is Zion she say, and we all walk on the salt water towards her.

  Skip across the ocean, tra-la-lala-la

  Skip across the ocean, tra-la-lala-lala

  Skip across the ocean,

  [Lane Youth]

  Is three of us in the lane. We find a dead bird and we want roast it – bird meat is the sweetest meat. We push at it with a twig; the eyes and the beak still open and we slide it in a scandal bag. The plan was to roast the bird and eat it, and then slap up the girl at the shack shop on the corner and make her give us three sodas. She is a fool-fool slut and we like to do her that way. That’s when we hear a voice behind us. The voice say, Mine that bird. We turn around and is a funny-looking Rastaman – maybe he mad too – with a red turban and two map earrings and a carve-up rod. Rhaatid, don’t be Rasta and mad.

  He grab the bag from us, like he rule over it and he say, Mine you eat yuh next of kin.

  And who talk like that to bloodclaat? The three of us have knives in our pockets, not just for the bird, but for anyone who need swipe up. And we would cut this man too to raas. We stab an old man in his eye one time, just for so – for practice. He bawl, and a thick, slow blood ooze out the cut; and we make our self watch.

  So the three of us reaching in our back pocket now, when the Rasta hold up his two hands and say, Stop that thought. And is not what him say that make us stop, is his hands – he don’t have no lines on them. Them blank like a line
less paper.

  How old you is? him say.

  Ten and eleven and eleven, we want say, but we can’t say it. The words won’t come.

  You young enough to know better, him say. And the whole time we watching the two hands – how big them is – one of them with a ring that glint.

  You remember times of slavery? him say.

  But we can’t answer because is like when you in a dream and no sound come out yuh throat.

  You remember times of slavery? him say again, louder this time.

  And one of us mumble, No Ras.

  Well yu should remember, him say, Because you still in it.

  Then he start hum a tune, an old-time Bob Marley tune, and is like him voice is a soundtrack. We all know the words – Emancipate yourself. He still holding up his hands, and now a flim showing on them, a double-screen flim. There’s a ship crossing sea, and three boys on it, look like us, but chain to each other. And then the scene change and the three boys in a cane field, and there’s a girl too – with one-cent skin, like the shack shop girl. She holding her belly and she ready to drop down, and she turn around and mouth, Help me, to the camera, like she know we watching, standing in the lane from four hundred years away. And the scene change again and the girl leaving quick in the night. And this time she don’t look in the camera; her eyes watch the ground. Later, the three boys tell which way she run and the whiteman give them salt pork and they chew on it and drink rain water, and the whiteman get his horse and dogs. Two grey hounds with tails like whips.

  There’s barking. The flim on the Rasta hands goes blank, and when we look over his shoulder, a girl, running toward us – is the shack shop girl – and a dog chasing behind her. She have that same-same look in her eyes, Help me. And we taste salt pork in our mouth. And we spit it out.

  Turn and take a partner, tra-la-lala-la

  [Singing Boy]

  I hate school; I hate that concrete drill sergeant place, and I not going there today. And I hate my yard too; I hate the tough mattress in the corner, and the sirens that go whoo whoo in the night. Every time you hear a siren, you know somebody else dead. I know a place where I can go, though – here under the stinkingtoe tree, making a song; I like how it feel when I belt it out. When I grow up I want to be a musician. I am going to go to a recording studio and record a song. My song will be a kinda reggae, kinda dancehall, kinda rebel, kinda gangsta song. I’m not sure what I will call it yet, but it will have a name. Or maybe it don’t need a name. I like it when the Rastas flash their locs; it look like freedom, so maybe I’ll get locs, long ones that sweep the air. I like dancehall and the nice dancehall girls too; I like their long legs in crisscross stocking; though sometimes when the words so slack, I shame to sing in front my mother; she watch me from her corner-eye. But them girls can dance though.

  So, I under the stinking-toe tree minding my own business, making up a song when a Rasta man come and sit beside me. I think he mad, but I not sure. I want to teach you to chant down Babylon, he say. He little bit different, but I not scared because he have kindness in his eye.

  Sing, he say. And I sing, Whoo concrete and sugar-and-wata tears; and he sing with me and we both know all the words, the two of us making them up together. We stay under the stinkingtoe and make a drum from a turn-over bucket, and we chant down Babylon and every badness in it. He know what sufferation is, this man. We chant down guns/ and wata/ lock-off/ and electric city bill/ and hungrybelly/ and the padlock that keep/ my faadah/my faadah/my faadah in jail.

  And after that, we sing a freedom that take up the whole sky and the whole air, and a whole sea and all the fish in the sea and all the sand at the bottom and the whole of the whole of it

  You feel alright?

  Yes, I say. And I know something now too. I know where Zion is, I say.

  Is a place inside, he say. Keep it close and carry on, he say.

  [WE, JAH-JAH CHILDREN]

  For we are the madman children. Who knows how many of us there is? But if each of us shine seven children shoes and each of those children shine seven more; soon we will have a whole army. And if each of us sing seven songs and each of those seven songs reverb in the four directions of the four faces of Half Way Tree, we will have a whole choir. Jahrithmetic does multiply that way. Turn and take a partner, tra-la-lala-la-la. And if each of us tell seven stories and each of those seven stories fly, tearing full speed off the pages of our spiral books, the sky over Kingston will resound with such a twittering, even the Prime Minister, no, even Mr. Barak Obama-self with his good all-lined-up-in-a-row teeth, will have to listen, tra-la. So help us, Jah.

  Red Ear Girl

  A girl is reading a book at a bus stop on Hagley Park Road. Bob knows her face now – pretty, with pimples on the forehead, which she picks as she reads; each day, she is the only one who never changes. Always the same age, and always rapt in the pages, only her hair and clothes different. This time she wears a T-shirt with words: Here-so.

  “Tomorrow is my last chance,” he says.

  She turns a page as if she does not hear him.

  “Yu find I&I name yet?”

  He begins to sing, but that does not work on this dawta. She blinks and turns another page. A bus comes, but she does not get on it. A fly pitches on her eye-lid, but she does not brush it away. And then, the clock at Half Way Tree chimes. Who would think it could chime? The girl looks up in the direction of the square. It is six o’clock.

  “What yu name?”

  “They call me Red Ear,” she says. “I spell it the Jahlexic way.”

  hear this; hear this:

  the rain it a fall it a fall/ the wind it a blow it a blow/

  is a anti-clock wind

  wise-up yu-self

  revolution deh ya quick-quick

  quick/

  HOUSE OF ZION

  ADDIS ABABA, 1972 MEHARENE

  The Imperial Apartment [Version]

  Me and the sweeper, the mute Jamaican, were the only ones allowed in the emperor’s apartments. To change the sheets, remove the laundry and dust the furniture was my job. Immediately after His Majesty left, I was to take care of these chores.

  Each morning, I waited beside the door as I was not allowed to enter until H.I.M. departed. When his door opened finally, I stood to the side and looked down at the floor, for to look H.I.M. bare-faced in the eye, I dared not. He was an early riser and liked to walk mornings in the garden. As soon as he left I stripped the bed and spread clean linen, left fresh pyjamas on top the pillow. I had received explicit instructions to fold the pyjamas with the buttons undone, the shirt placed on top of the trousers. His bed slippers were to be put on the east side of the bed. The pyjamas always blue, ordered from London, and his matching bathrobes had silk collars and little breast pockets in which I found sometimes peppermints or a Vicks inhaler. Such items I left on the bedside table, always. Sometimes from the upstairs window I glimpsed H.I.M. down in the garden. He was a lonely figure, there among the hibiscus, his only companion a little dog. Chihuahua, very loyal dog.

  The whole time I clean, the Jamaican waited by the door, as I was never allowed in apartment alone. As soon as I finished strip the bed, he swept the room with great ceremony. Was there a school somewhere in Jamaica for rooms sweeping? I had never seen it done that way. I paused at the door and watched him, his broom like an instrument of consecration, no corner left unsanctified – seventy times seven. And the bed – under it and around, in one direction and then the other – and after that, the ceiling. At the end of it all, he bowed his head and was gone.

  Before I came to Jubilee Palace, my mother worked here. We are from a family of goat herders and her employment by Empress Menen was a great honour. She became the empress’s personal assistant in all things domestic. It was my mother who packed the empress’s clothes – nineteen trunks full – when she died. The empress had two hundred and twenty-eight pairs of shoes, ninety-two brassieres, a hundred and four pairs of knickers, forty-nine petticoats, twenty-six pairs of gloves, si
xty-seven handkerchiefs and perfume enough to scent the wrists of every woman in Ethiopia. One afternoon, as my mother sorted and put away, a note fell from a feather slipper.

  Dearest Tafari,

  A lion ought not lose his whiskers so easily.

  She pushed the note in her brassiere and took it home. From then on, the emperor’s whiskers the subject in our family of many jokes.

  Mother worked for the emperor until she was fifty-seven; then one day her heart gave out and they sent instead for me. I was nineteen and worked there sixteen years. To attend to His Majesty’s linen, wardrobe and personal effects was my job. He demanded cleanliness and order. In its place, every pin.

  One morning, as I waited the emperor to leave the room, he remained inside unusually long. Finally, just a crack the door opened. I heard shuffling about the room and thought I heard “Come,” but to look inside I was too afraid. Later the emperor left in his usual manner and I cleaned the room and wondered. It was just a small thing, but the emperor was a man so predictable in his habits. The Jamaican showed no sign of noticing anything at all. He consecrated the four-poster bed, tapped his broom three times at the threshold, then locked the door. That was the other thing about the sweeper – he was the only servant entrusted with keys to the apartment.