Read Online No Woman No Cry by Rita Marley - Free Book Online Page B

records, to be delivered from orders we’d gotten for Wail’NSoul’M Recordings. I was more embarrassed than frightened, because I was accustomed to this daily three-mile ride from Trench Town to Crossroads, and from Crossroads to Halfway Tree. Sometimes I’d go back to downtown Kingston, too, where all the famous record shops were, like Randy’s and KG’s. Everybody knew me, everybody looked out for me: “Oh Rasta Queenie come! What records you have for us today?” I was a favorite because we were carrying new stuff that was in demand, a little of the Wailers, a little of the Soulettes, so it was very exciting. And I was so young and full of enthusiasm, carefree and happy despite being poor, and loving every moment of my life and thinking, one day we’re gonna be somebody, or one day we’ll have money, or one day, we’re gonna have enough to eat!
    Eating—specifically, what am I gonna cook for our dinner tonight?—was exactly what I’d been thinking about when the car knocked me over. It had never occurred to me that I might stop concentrating on the road, and when it happened I was totally surprised and frightened. Why had this happened to me? By then people on the street were used to seeing me, so all around me I heard “Queenie, your records!” and “Queenie, you all right?” Everyone tried to help me, people gathered in the street. “Queenie, man, you no fear ride the bicycle?” “Queenie, man, you forget you aren’t a car?” And I’m thinking, yeah, that’s true! I’m gonna stop doing this, I’m gonna give this over to one of the guys! I’d hurt myself, too, but I was just glad the accident hadn’t been fatal, and when Bob saw me, and saw what the bicycle looked like, that was the day I stopped riding to sell records!
    I’d been worried about cooking because most of Bob’s friends had started coming to our house, and they had to be fed, that’s how they were. Aunty’s place had become a social scene. They’d stay all day and they would make music, smoke a little (well away from the house), talk, make more music, tell jokes, make more music, play a little football (soccer). A lot of people learned from Bob the discipline and patience required for making music. As Ansel Cridland of the Meditations was to say years later, “Is not like a thing that is just run in there and look at the clock and trying to get it done in … an hour or something. It’s a time. And when you spend time on your work you get better results. Working with Bob Marley was a great experience.”
    Still, I was the one who had to think about practical things, like making sure we had something to eat, and paying for the electricity we used playing records over and over, because even though we weren’t paying Aunty rent, it was only right that we paid for the power. So if I wasn’t thinking about the next meal, or the electric bill, I was worrying about how we’d pay the bill for the bed and dresser we’d bought on credit at Courts Furniture Store in Crossroads.
    Sometimes Aunty would say she didn’t see any life in this; she’d be upset because it didn’t look like there was going to be a better day. I was always under that microscope of hers, and she would make sure I knew it. But then our music began to be played on the radio and the sound systems; the street people were reacting to our music, and after that we started doing a little TV. Aunty liked that, she liked the charisma, she liked the excitement. And now, when people would ask her, “How is Rita?” she’d say with a smile, “Oh she’s not too bad. She turned out—not as we wanted, but you know, t’ank God, she’s not too bad!”
    My brother Wesley, though, was furious when he found out about my Rastafari beliefs. Though Bob and I were already married, as a policeman Wesley felt he had