Marcia Douglas

A prophet is never recognized in his own country, especially when that country has fallen into the mouths of dragons. Bob waves to a woman in a BMW across the street. It’s his lawyer, Christine. “Is me, Bob!” She closes the tinted windows and weaves through traffic. There was a time when BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers. He thinks of the foolishness of that now.

            He returns to the park, searching for the boy from the night before. He wants to shine his shoes again, to see the light in his eyes from Africa reflected there. In the daylight, the park is different from how he remembered it, but the boy’s tree still leans, and there’s a man selling peanuts and asham.

            “You see the little youth that sleep inna the park?"

            "Which one?"

            “The one with the play-play guitar."

            “Oh, me remember him. Him in juvenile detention! Is a bad youth.”

            “No. Me see him last night.”

            “Him kill a Chinie man in August town. Man-slaughter."

            It doesn’t make sense. Bob has a feeling that he has stepped into the middle of someone’s dream. The fall-down skin itches and there is a dull pain behind his eyes. An idea comes to him.

            “You know Bob Marley?”

            “Yeah?”

            “What if me tell you him come back?”

            — I have three stones and if I don’t smash the clock face, I smash his own. 
            But then the man say, I want to sing for you. And I know I not to answer no madman, but something in his voice sound kinda different, like him come from somewhere, not from foreign, but from somewhere don’t have no name; so I say, What? And him say, I going to sing for you and when I sing, you going to see your face. 
            His locs tie up in a red scarf and he have two brass ears-ring that go ting-&-ting.
             And him stand up straight and sing with a voice sound like it come out an ole-time radio, all scratch-up and far away. And I forget all about the clock and three stones in my hand, the man voice so — I don’t know how to say it! His voice so dream-and-ting, like I in a soft-breeze place full of fireflies — no, like my grandmoddah standing up in church in the spirit with her arms spread out, only is not church song the man singing — no, is Rasta song him singing, Rasta spirit tings, Rasta firefly, spirit tings. And I find myself start move to the bass, and his ears-rings shape-like-Africa justa move with me. And is the first time anybody sing me a song; nobody never sing for me-one.

They say each year the blue-green sea rises higher, pulled by the music of the people. Bass riddim moves underground and the sea lurches, dragging flotsam, broken shells, and ground hipbones. “Walk on the sand with reverence, hear?” These are the words I say to Anjahla. For the bones of our kin are in the waters — the grainy debris of slave cargo — fierce babymothers who jumped off the ships and into the ocean. They swallowed seawater but stayed strong inside. 
            “Are you a fierce babymother?” Anjahla asks. 
            “Yes,” I say. “I am fierce.” 
            “Mama,” she says. And I like the way her lips make “m.” “When I tell this story to my children, I am going to give it another ending. I am going to send the mothers a rescue ship to take them home.” 
            “And what you will call your ship, Anjahla?” 
            She smiles and looks off in the distance.