No Woman No Cry (27 page)

During all the tears and trials after Bob passed, I would get home from work and find that I was still bugged. I felt as if I were becoming hard as a rock from all the abuse, from being continually accused and chastised, as if darts were being thrown at me. I was losing my natural self, my smile. I remember even doing a song with the lyric “My smile has gone away.” It took a while before I finally woke up to the fact that I was still alive and well. Though the children and I were able to manage without a father at home, there were times we did need a man to
be
there, just to take up some of the responsibility that it takes to make a family. Or just to help
me
—because there were times when I thought nobody was thinking about
me
—it was still all about Bob. And I needed those moments when someone would think about me. And love me!

When I opened my eyes, I didn't have far to look because I had an old friend, Owen Stewart, my good friend Tacky, who still cared for and checked on me. Between us we always had more than just sex, but love and caring. So I was able to open my heart, and we redeveloped our relationship. Because the kids knew him and were familiar with him as “Mommy's friend,” it wasn't as if I were bringing anyone new into their lives. And Tacky, as always, was a real friend, who supported me and gave me encouragement and strength not to pay the backbiters any mind. “Worry less and work less,” he always said, and “take a rest.”

Serita, my last daughter, is Tacky's child, and came almost when everything was about to be over, I thought. So as we say in Jamaica she was the “washbelly,” my final child. And that was it—that
is
it! Serita and I became very close because of my having had her after all the other kids were quite grown—after having five and it seemed as if I surely wasn't going to have any others (although I know if Bob had still been around, we would have had a few more). But Serita came at a time when,
ooh
, I needed this. I needed something to slow me down from the hustle and the hassle, often from 9
A.M.
to 10
P.M.
Those nine months I really had time to relax—it was just me and the baby in my belly. And that was very good for a change, even though I still had to go to work. The other kids cherished those moments of seeing me pregnant and were thrilled at the prospect of a new baby in the family—the house needed that. Still, some asked, “Why?” Like Aunty. When I told her the news, she said, “Oh, no, what people are gonna say?” Even though this was five years after Bob's passing, she said, “Oh, you shouldn't have a baby, because people are gonna say this and say that …”

I said, “Aunty, stop! To hell with other people, this is
my
life! Besides, I didn't do this alone, someone else was involved! And if God wants it so, it makes me happy.”

Even today, Serita is still my “purse,” as I call her, a name she acquired because I had to take her on tour—three months after she was born we had to hit the road. To help with her I took along Minnie's mother, whose name is Rita Mazza and whom we called “Miss Rita.” Serita is Serita Mazza, and I'm Rita, so we had a Triple Rita thing going. As a baby Serita would give Miss Rita trouble sometimes—poor Miss Rita, though she never complained, keeping up with Serita was fun, but on the road it could be hard work!

After my father came back to Jamaica for Bob's funeral, he decided to stay. He was getting older and realized the importance of just being around us. By then Wesley was in Canada with his family, as was my brother Donovan, who had been raised by our mother. Papa's other children, including Miss Alma's Margaret and George and our Swedish sisters, had branched out, too.

So Papa came home, where he graduated to “Pops.” When Pops assessed the responsibilities he might assume in the family business, he decided to make himself available musically for a session every now and then and to take over the maintenance department of Tuff Gong. His carpentry experience proved to be invaluable. He maintained chairs and desks and windows and doors, fixed leaks and anything else that needed attention. And oh, everyone loved Pops, he was a big favorite and very very helpful. He would say, “Rita, I'm watchin' your back, you know.” And sometimes he'd call me in the evenings to fill me in on my staffing problems. He'd say, “Listen man, this guy jokin', he's not doin' a hundred percent, he's jokin'!” That was Pops, watching my back. In his last days, Pops was there for everything.

And Aunty was there for her baby brother. Naturally, as big sister (small as she was), she maintained her usual bossy attitude, and at first there was a little rivalry going. Because Pops thought, why is she still running everything? He was astonished to find when he came back that Aunty continued to be in charge! Even after all these years and responsibilities, and grandchildren and all of that! Pops worried a bit that she still didn't allow me to make my own decisions. But I was grateful to her by then, and knew what to allow and what not to. And I felt that her continuing abilities freed me to do more for myself.

The competition between Pops and Aunty was sorted out when they each got their own apartment and became neighbors on Washington Drive, in the three-sister house where I had once lived. As always, though, Aunty made her daily trips up the hill to be sure everything was okay. She had a car then, and a driver, the same person who took the kids to school. Oh, she had to be in that car to make sure they got to school and make sure they went safely into their classrooms on time. And when school was over, the driver would have to pick her up first to go pick them up—she never gave anybody else a chance!

Dear Aunty. Eventually I made sure that she had everything she had ever wanted, though at one point she was determined to drive. I kept saying, “No—you have a car and a driver, why must you drive?” But she was insistent that she didn't want this person, Mr. Andy, who the hell he thinks he is, she's gonna drive herself! And one day I was amazed to see her, barely visible behind the wheel, coming up the hill! I could not believe my eyes, I went crazy, I almost sacked the driver. I said, “How dare you let her drive!”

And the poor man said, “But Mrs. Marley, I couldn't stop her! Because if Aunty feels she can do it, she's gonna do it!”

And she did fine—she drove herself home down our winding mountain road and subsequently announced to me, “I can take the kids to school now!” She was just irrepressible, yes, that's the word for her. Even though age was coming and she wasn't able to do her dressmaking anymore, she still would advise me about my costumes: not to wear this or that, or how something should be made, and how she would do it in the days when she was sewing. And she always won.

Aunty was the next of my family to pass away, taking another, large piece of me with her. But when she went to rest, she did it gracefully and peacefully. The doctor called us one morning to say that she had gone to sleep the night before and never woke up. She hadn't been feeling well but wasn't particularly sick. I was five months pregnant with Serita, and I remember screaming my heart out till I thought I was going to have the baby right then. We rushed to the hospital, where Aunty was lying in bed as if she were fast asleep; Cedella even tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But that didn't work, so we brushed her hair and told her good-bye. That was very very hard on me, losing my
tootoos
, my Vie Vie. But surely she must rest in peace, because so many people loved her.

Steve had been her pet, and the night before she died she told him how she'd been feeling lately. “Aunty said she don't mind if she die now,” he told us afterward, “because she can't take the politics, the pressures that you are having with people, everybody coming at you, wanting this thing or that thing Daddy left, wanting money …” She thought, Steve said, that if she died she'd look over us better, protect us more, she was getting too old to keep up.

Poor Aunty, I thought. Marley wasn't an easy name to carry or be associated with during those times, though there were always good and bad sides and the situation subsequently improved. When, in the late nineties, I was awarded Jamaica's Order of Distinction, I remember thinking, oh Aunty should be here to see this, this is what she would go crazy over, something is happening where the
government
is involved! But I know she's around in spirit, working her wings off.

She didn't live to see Serita born, but Serita looks a lot like her, and all the others knew her for all their growing-up years. They remember how Aunty and her pal Miss Collins would sit with them evenings and fold their socks. With five kids (it grew to ten sometimes) and each with a few pairs, you can imagine the task. But that was Viola Anderson Britton. They don't come like her every day. She was, as we would say, a sample. And I was lucky to have her for as long as I did.

I guess it was because I felt so lucky to have had Aunty, and was so aware of the importance of family guidance, that I felt I really had to care for Bob, because I thought there was something he lacked when growing up that he was trying to catch up with—that mother time which is so important. The effect a mother has on her son. Plus, when you hear “like father like son,” and you don't have a father around, you try to cling even more to what Mommy or Grandma has to offer. But sometimes Mommy has to leave, and often not because she wants to. Who can blame any mother, stuck there in Trench Town with kids. Bob's mother didn't want to end up a nobody, so as a young striving girl she had to escape. I can imagine her thinking, what am I supposed to do? And there she had her son and a little baby. In this situation poor Bob became a victim, losing that period when he still needed his mother's protection but instead had to be on his own, earning his keep by tying up goats and working for this one and that one. But Mommy was a victim too, had to go fight life to find a life. So if you go back and look into her life, mine is like … the next step.

Not long after Aunty went to rest, my father passed. I was so bereft I kept thinking, where do I turn now? I thought I could never live without Pops and Aunty. How would I make it without their love and support? But I lived through the losses and learned to lean on my friends more and treasure their advice. Dahima, an American, turned out to be one of the best sisters I ever had. Bob had met her in California on one of our tours—she was working for Margaret Nash in Los Angeles—and I think they started out as “friends.” She moved to Jamaica with her children after he invited her to come and work for him, but when she and I were introduced she made it clear that she'd found out it wasn't going to be what she thought it would be. (She hadn't known Bob was married to me until she came to Jamaica and saw my family.) Nevertheless, she stayed in Jamaica and raised her kids for a period of time here, and we became good friends. It was Dahima who got me started wearing lipstick. One day she said, “Girl, you've got those sexy lips, use them!”

I said, “Are you crazy? No, Bob would kill me!”

“No, Rita,” she said, “all you have to do is add a little vitamin E oil. I'll bring you some from America, and you must use it! It'll bring out your beautiful smile!”

I progressed from vitamin E oil to lip gloss to color. And I've really enjoyed it ever since. After Bob's passing, Dahima thought I was being abused and stayed by my side to encourage me and help me to carry on. She was skilled in the publishing aspect of the music business and was especially supportive of my business ability and had a way of making me feel special. “Listen, girl,” she'd say, “you can do it. Let's form a company.” So I believe she, too, took her sour and made lemonade. For a woman, inner strength and self-reliance are all-important: You really have to be the best driver at the wheel, especially when you're steering and changing gears at the same time. Just make sure you don't have a head-on collision!

In Jamaica, where violence can rear up at any time, I've learned to be especially careful. I've had the wackiest things happen. Recently a guy came to my office to say he was the reincarnated Bob and that he needed to see me, and then walked the road several times, watching my vehicle go up and down. I've been stalked by people who have a vision that I belong to them. People sneak! I've had to put up extra security gates because they would lie in wait for me on the road, just to see me driving from the museum back to my house. But Jamaica is a place where you're loved today and hated tomorrow. It's one thing being Rita Marley but another thing being a Rasta. People like me for being Rita, but then they turn around and dislike me for being a Rasta.

These days, everyone tries to copy what we were promoting back then as the Rasta lifestyle—vegetarianism, organic food, exercise. I suppose that does, or doesn't, include the smoking of herb. As we see it, it's a God-made plant, just like all the other herbs in the garden. And there are of course the much-publicized medical uses—for glaucoma and pain relief. As for me, I've always used marijuana as a sacramental food. Whenever I've felt as if I wanted to do the right thing the right way, or say the right thing at the right time, I have a puff or a cup of tea. It's good for my meditation, it has its use, but of course anything that you overdo can be harmful. I prefer to use it as just another plant from the garden that has its good purposes, and go for the good purposes.

When I looked into myself to try to separate needs from wants, to come to terms with the next stage of my life, I realized soon enough that I had enough material stuff, that I could do something besides have more. If at a certain point in your life you have all you need, it's time for you to figure out what's important. What else can you do? If now you're able to give, then it's time to pass on something. As I've said, it was always our way to be giving. This idea has guided me into the next part of my life, by leading me to Africa, where I now spend part of my time in a mountain village, helping the people who live there in whatever way I can. Africa has come like a new life to me, with an ancient background, because it's so black; and because of this I feel at home—that fight you face against your blackness in other places does not exist there. I want the freedom to be what I am, and what I'm supposed to be, without having to fight anybody to be that.