Dedicated to Irie Carrie
Early one Saturday afternoon in the Springtime I had, as usual, several friends over visiting my home in Orange Bay. Suzy was in the kitchen, cooking rice and chicken. My friends and I were on the verandah drinking rum, smoking, reasoning, and watching my daughters play in the yard. That would be Sapphira and my “adopted” daughter, Angelique, whose tragic story you all know. My older daughter Calypso, then 11, was much too cool to “play” in front of my friends. She and Terri, Suzy’s son, were over at “Marble’s Unicorn Lawn,” my bar/restaurant a few yards away, minding shop and playing dominoes.
Quite unexpectedly, my strange estranged husband pulled up in his silver Toyota truck with his posse inside and in the bed, and came blustering into my yard. At the time I had been, for a few months, monogamously dating a cool likkle dread named Harry, a bikeman from country, and a grower of some of the finest yard sense around. He was one of my suppliers in the day, who did no mix up mix up in Negril or with Negril vives. I had met him in Sav through the Cat, who had been a partner in one or two “joint ventures” I’d been involved in previously. Harry was on my verandah that day, as well as a friend from Green Island, Basil, and Jr. that minded the bar at DeBus then (his father was a Green Island Babylon). Also there was my girlfriend Sonja from Kingston and, like I said, Suzy was back and forth between the kitchen and verandah.
When "Baretta" and his posse came up to the house all loud and demanding-like, things looked to get ugly but, knowing he was a sucker for sweet talk almost any time I used it on him, even when he was really mad, I managed to take him aside to the back and find out what his problem was.
Okay, you’re going to love this. He had decided that he was taking my little motorcycle, my little red Honda 50, in payment for “bail” (a bribe to the cops to lose the evidence) he’d spent on me to get me out of #13 . . . . . THREE YEARS EARLIER! That’s Barnett Street in MoBay, of course.
To understand the humor you have to realize this occurred before we were married, before we were lovers, before we had a child, before….everything! But three plus years later, after I leave him and make it, standing on my own two feet, he decides to collect! This was hysterically funny, but I had to keep a straight face.
Well, of course the bike was worth triple what he’d spent on the bribe but I had been thinking about a new one anyway and something came over me at that moment, as I looked at him standing there, such a sad (without knowing it) caricature of the manly lion in his camo and flashing his locks. There, in front of everyone, I saw how much I’d hurt him and how important his manhood and all the rest of the societal roles he was expected to play were to him.
He’d done his best for us in the beginning, using what he’d had (his body not mind-he was practically illiterate) and I was overcome with compassion, not logic, and maybe the overproof Wray & Nephew too, and I wanted to make it up to him in some small way. I flashed for a few seconds on the years that had passed, his little shop in the old downtown craft market where I’d met him, the house in the Orange Bay Housing Scheme where we’d made our start, and the life in Negril, and how his whoring had paid for it. It was so sad to see him standing there demanding my little bike, with a chain around his neck that was more valuable. Though it is so easy to sit in judgment when your place of birth and upbringing never force you to face that life and those choices, I judged him not at that moment, just felt really sad for him.
So I decided to make it up to him in a small way. Well, not so small, the bike was less than a year old….but in the words of the immortal Jimmy Buffet, “I’ve done some smuggling, one step ahead of the jailer, and I’ve run my share of grass. I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast…never meant to last….never meant to last.” It was the easy come easy go life and hell, what’s one more bike give or take? So it was take. And he took.
My visitors, friends all, were ready to start a quarrel; a couple had already wrapped their hands around their machetes, but I chilled the vibes and let him take the bike. Not only did I let him take it, I put on a good show for his posse and all present. I cried, and said I was sorry. I asked him if there was ever going to be a time we’d clear up our differences and try again. He softened, the victor at last, and hugged me, and eventually left, with the bike, feeling the manly man, Lord and Master. I knew I’d done a good thing.
Of course, within minutes I was laughing with my friends about the whole thing, then after a late lunch of white rice, brown stew chicken and gungo peas, we jumped into Sonja’s car and drove to Sav, where I laid down some cash and bought a bright blue Yamaha 90.
Oh, it was soooo much fun riding it back to Negril from Sav! I was at full throttle, past Landilo, across the stinky river, over Likkle London hill, and down into Negril. Sonja was a fast driver too, most Jamaicans are, but the car couldn’t keep up with me, I was CRUISING. Even Harry on his bigger bike was waaaay behind that day. I LOVED my new bike! Let him keep the 50-that thing chugged along at 70kmph top speed.
One of the things from my younger, wilder days I haven’t outgrown is a love of speed. Just the other day here in Florida, a coworker thought I was crazy because I made it to the URoy show in Fort Lauderdale in just over two hours from the West Coast. He said it takes him over three to get across Florida to Ft Lauderdale. But cruising along that Sawgrass Express, under the stars, breeze blowing your hair….ummmm, speed is better than a drum-cooked smoked lobster on the West End Road!
Well, it was lucky we’d all agreed beforehand to meet at Alfred’s Ocean Palace because by the time they finally arrived I’d already had a drink, rolled a fattie and was halfway through a game of backgammon there at the bar. We all laughed and swam a little and played some more backgammon, until just after sunset, when WHO should stroll in, with the same old posse in tow?
He eyed me angrily, wondering how the hell I was in town, knowing the later it got the harder buses are to find out to Orange Bay. He’d made a big issue of “grounding me” putting me “on foot” when he took the bike, thinking I’d have to “keep me ras at home” (he hoped). But within a few minutes of him arriving, he was chatting with some dreads and looking over at me and suddenly shouted , “BLOOD CLAT!!!”
I knew someone had told him that I’d arrived on the shiny new bike parked out by the showers. He looked over at me, looked at the bike, looked back at me, REALLY mad nuh ras for a minute, but then he surprised me by bursting out laughing. He laughed his ass off!
“Marble oono hard!” he shouted across the beach at me. “You nuh easy at all!” One thing I always loved about him, he had a sense of humor, in the end.
