No Woman No Cry (19 page)

Phone calls sort of took care of the children, but I missed my garden, too, and my akee and salt fish, and my porridge in the mornings. To offset these cravings on that first tour, we had Gilly—a juice man and a good cook, who would fry fish, or make us some bammies, just to keep our taste buds going. And we learned to travel with our Jamaican seasonings like scallions and peppers.

We worked in Europe mainly, for about three months, and when we came back, oh, I was so happy to be home! Though missing your kids may not be fun, at the end of the tour it's great when you're able to bring a suitcase full of presents for them! And when you reach home, the first thing—“Mommy, what did you bring for me?” Because I always enjoyed looking for presents, pretty things for them, for the house, for myself, for my friends and my workers.

By then we had started making
good
money. After the first tour in Europe, when we realized that we had dollars, I said to Bob, “Why don't you send your mother some money?”

He looked confused and said, “For what?”

I said, “For no reason, just for a surprise.” Because Aunty had brought us up like that, when you make money, you share. Buy a bread or something. And that first tour brought us more money than we'd ever seen. So Bob did send his mother some, and she was so happy—she called to say, “I knew you did that, Rita.” I also made sure that his other children got their support, that their mothers didn't have to come and hang around and ask. None of them can say they were ever deprived of child support. Eventually, though, it was easier to take some of those children into our household. The way I thought of it was, if you have to check for their dentist, and their school, and their this and their that, you might as well just give Bob and me a cool head, give us less stress. It could be confusing, it could be just too much for us to deal with every weekend. When we decided to keep them, their mothers came to visit at Hope Road, and they would sit there and play with the children, and say, “Oh, they grow big,” and “Hi, Miz Marley,” or “Hi, Sister Rita” when they saw me. In our relationships I was always seen as the mother figure, the caretaker, even though some rumored, “Oh she wears the ring, but I have the man,” and those kinds of stories. But after a certain point there were so many I couldn't have cared less, and I'd think, that's my husband, whatever …

I never questioned what I was doing in this respect. I guess I carried my cross, but it seemed more about true love. About what Bob was doing, I didn't approve, but I had no control over it. I know I tried to be a good mother and provide for my children. Most of the baby mothers were local girls, neighbor girls, maybe a one-night stand here or there, as far as I knew it wasn't anything said to be a relationship. Sometimes Bob said he didn't know how it had happened—crazy! But he always respected them and saw them as women, “and man mus have nuff women,” he'd say. Again Aunty was a great support, and helped to bring up the kids, though she thought it strange and couldn't understand why I was doing it.

Then, between tours, Bob began seeing Cindy Breakspeare regularly. Cindy had been one of Chris Blackwell's kittens, already living at Hope Road, with her brother, when Bob got the place. Chris had these little pussycats as his conveniences and she fell right into Bob's hand as his tenant; she was actually paying him rent for a while. As much as I knew about her then, she came from one of those families in Jamaica who would rear their daughters for men who had money. They took trips, were available for weekends, they had their lifestyle. So Bob really came in to save Cindy, because he liked her, noticed that she was a
nice
girl, and helped to turn her life around. She was really going to be Miss … Whatever. Bob gave her ambition. He was like that—this was another good thing about Bob—he was always real to women, always one to say, “I see more in you than you are showing.” He said that to me, too.

Cindy was one of the women in his life that I couldn't, and still can't, understand. First of all, I didn't like that name: Cin-dy. I'm very funny with names. When I heard about Cindy I said, “Bob, why you and this girl, Sindy?” I was speaking to him as my buds now, because we had reached the stage where we were real friends and could speak like this, because the wife and husband thing could have gone into a divorce long before. So we had overcome that, although we still maintained our relationship as the primary one. And so I said to my friend, my buds, “What the hell is this Sindy? That's strange. Maybe she should change her name.”

And Bob said, “What you talkin' about? You always carry things way out!”

I said, “Because I don't think I like that name ‘
Sin
-dy.' And if you're going to be going with
Sin
-dy with an ‘S' or a ‘C,' stay away from me.” That's how I felt at the time. I was very straight-forward with him. And he knew that, which is why sometimes he'd say, “Hey gal, you feisty.” I do tend to be feisty sometimes, I guess. It's my only way of showing my hurt. Back then, as today, I knew I was black and beautiful—and I was proud. Like the slogan: “Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!” What else could I be but black and proud around all the light-skinned “book pretty” girls?

I remember being at Hope Road one day, when Cindy lived there as Bob's tenant, and he was there, and they were carrying on their relationship. I saw her but felt calm about it, knowing that I wasn't going to make any strife. If Bob wants that, fine; if Bob likes her—that's his heart, he's having a good time, fine. But I was hurt, I guess that's normal. I remember her looking at me, and she knew I knew what was going on. But she also knew that he comes home to eat, and see his wife and children, and he stays by her sometimes. And she knows how he relies on me to keep his family together, and makes excuses about late rehearsals.

On tours sometimes we'd go shopping, and he would say to me, “Rita, Cindy asked me to bring some things for her, for the shop.” And I'd say, “That's nice.” But sometimes—for whatever reason, being angry at him for one thing or another, or just to test his feeling for me—I'd say, “Let me have some,” just to see how he'd react. And he'd say, “Of course, have some, or all of it if you want!” For peace … all for peace!

Women like Cindy could be a threat to your relationship, they could really take your man, and of course that is their intention. They were the ones who said, of me, “But she's so
ordinary
. Why she doesn't do this? Why she doesn't do that? She's so
ordinary
.” I was quick to realize those women were different; it wasn't like they just “had eyes for him.” They were not about to be in a situation where a woman can be, as we now say in Jamaica, “your matey”—where you and another woman are dating the same man and you can maybe be “friends.” But after that one scene with Esther Anderson, I never again got myself into a position of arguing with a woman over him, never. I'm a fighter, but certain things I don't fight about (though I may get sarcastic). I even began to like Cindy eventually. She would turn up at concerts in different parts of the world, and when she became pregnant, I was happy because Bob was happy.

But another thing I'll say for Bob is that he never allowed any of these women to act disrespectfully to me. Maybe that scene with Esther Anderson taught him something too—that Rita could go crazy if she wanted to. And sometimes he used me as an example of his kind of woman. Once he told one of them that she should see my
legs
—how fit I am, because I train. And she told me! He'd said to her, “You look at Rita's legs because her legs is strong like a lion!”

So when I looked at all these others, I was aware that the respect was always still there for me. He himself still gave me the manners and the respect to a certain level. I didn't think I should disrupt his relationships, though sometimes the situation was painful and I couldn't understand what was going on. But I got tired of standing in the way, and as long as I was respected, given whatever I needed financially, and whatever the kids needed was there, I let him be. If it was just about who he had sex with, he could have sex with the whole world if that was what he wanted!

I was always that type with him. I loved him as much as any of them, or more, and he knew he could count on me and depended on that loyalty, on my being his sister. But he also knew I wasn't there for the glamour, the fantasy, or the fame. That I would bring him up to reality, because I was there from the beginning, from one underpants, and those were my hands, every night, washing them out.

S
OME FOOTAGE OF
me appears in one of the documentaries about Bob that have come out in recent years. You see it right after a shot of him in the back of the bus, surrounded by a group of people laughing and talking. Then there's this cut to me—the sun shining on a small, black woman with a scarf around her hair, alone and leaning against a window. I think I look “cool,” in terms of my mood in an environment. Something must have been going on that I was thinking about, or more likely I was in a meditative, way-out state. I can be very quiet at times, and when you're on the road—Babylon by Bus (that's the name of one album)—sometimes you really need to just hold a meditation for positive guidance and protection, because the work that we had been doing with Bob, I know the Devil didn't like it! It was like musical warfare—good against evil!

For seven years we traveled like that. I sang backup for him because I loved him, and believed in his work and felt that what he was doing was—there's no other word for it but
great
. It must be true, this greatness, that's how I've analyzed it, it was more than the flesh, it was something more like fate. Still, like Marcia and Judy, I was, in a way, invisible. Typically of that time, background vocalists weren't put on the billing, not mentioned in any promotions or publicity anywhere. The billing remained “Bob Marley and the Wailers,” and we were just
there
, although sometimes the publicists might say, “Oh, the voices of the I-Three are so good,” or something equally inconsequential. Though we always performed with Bob and the band, and even were featured later on as an opening act, our group never became “Bob Marley and the I-Three.”

Still, if we didn't go on, Bob wouldn't go on, because we were part of the light for his stage, the icing on the cake for each night's performance. And that had to happen, even though he and I might have quarreled beforehand. (As the song says, “One good thing about music, when it hits you you feel no pain.”) The I-Three were very important where Bob and his music were concerned, because his position was “This is the picture as is, this is what makes it sound this way, this is how we create character.” We were also dancing and creating inspiration for
him
, and he depended on that energy to boost his individuality just as it happened. Whatever we did, we did it naturally and often spontaneously. We didn't rehearse steps, deciding, “We're all gonna do this,” and so on. We might work on something, for example “turn left or right … you in the middle, you can do something there.” But our emphasis was not on dance moves, we focused on singing and making sure the harmonies worked or else we were in big trouble. I was the one in charge of that, always seen as the leader of the group, and if anything went wrong I was expected to know why or who was at fault. When it came to the I-Three it was showtime, and since Bob relied on me to make sure that aspect was taken care of, I was always there for it. Rita the responsible.

So of course he would get on
me
at times when things went wrong. I would always get the blame. He'd say, “You didn't hear? The harmony wasn't right tonight. What happened?”

“I don't know, I sang right; you didn't hear me?”

“You, Rita … You should come to my room for rehearsal after the show, okay?”

And that would start an argument, with the pressure on me. So we always tried to give him our best and work out the problem, and then he'd be satisfied. “Oh, it's right,” or “That's how it mus sound, that's it, now it's happening,” or “Oh you girls is nice …” But he was very keen on his stage work with sound. As I've said, everyone was led by his musical instincts. We all gave him that respect.

Offstage, as time went on, I sometimes felt that Bob had begun to resent me, as if I might be telling him something he didn't want to hear, or acting a certain way, out of revenge. He didn't say things directly, but I could feel what was happening, because these other women came around and they'd stay up to talk or whatever. For a time he had Pascalene, a princess from Gabon, traveling with us. She followed the bus in her limousine, and sometimes he rode with her. And there I'd be in the bus. The things he did in private did less harm, but when everything was out in the open, that was really hurtful. Sometimes Pascalene and her entourage would arrive in Jamaica on her private jet and spend days. And I'd wonder, what is Bob doing with his life? What should I do? What
can
I do? I did what I could.

As for Marcia and Judy, we were sisters, oh yes. Always ready with girlfriend talk, and not always about me, because we all had our problems as young women. As far as my situation went, they were always in sympathy. They were so sweet, they'd say, “Oh no, you don't deserve some of this shit.” And “How you really stand this?” But then I was made for the job, I think.

At the same time, my kids were home trying to understand why Mommy and Daddy had to go to work and leave them with Aunty, who was getting old. We had switched them to Vaz Prep, where Mrs. Ulet, the headmistress, was very helpful; unlike at other schools, it made no difference to her that Bob and the family were Rastas. Still, I'd get letters: “Oh Aunty's getting miserable, Mommy, I can't even watch the TV. Past eight o'clock she shuts it off!”