No Woman No Cry Read Free Page A

Extension)—meaning that the government would pay half and the rest was up to the family—and I had just Aunty and my brother Wesley to support me. We had problems after a while keeping up with lunch money, books, and all the fees for this and that, until Wesley, who at the time was going to Walgrove College, decided to get a day job and pick up his own lessons in the evening. What a brother. He and Aunty were always behind me, convinced that I was to be someone, that there was something in me that promised this (even though Aunty doubted it more than once when my math grades were not what she wanted).
    Wesley was the kind of guy who was always in school, but by the time I was seventeen I wanted to be able to get a job as fast as I could, so that I could take care of myself and stop depending on his income. And I felt I couldn’t continue to just live off Aunty. I didn’t have anything in mind about being a singer—in Jamaica you have to be realistic if you want to have any kind of a life. So when I left high school I went straight to the Bethesda School of Practical Nursing. And because the best recommendation for striving young girls was to get a secretarial job, I enrolled in night school at Papine to learn shorthand and typing. I had a boyfriend by this time, one of a pair of twins, who also liked to sing and with his brother was trying to create a Jamaican version of Sam and Dave. Evenings, after he left his job, he’d come for me at school and we would slowly, lovingly, make our way home.
    And so, like many other girls of that age, I got sidetracked. I was waiting to start work in one of the big hospitals in Kingston, where you had to be at least eighteen, when I got pregnant. Teenage sex was such a shame when I was growing up, at least in Aunty’s opinion. I didn’t dare tell her, but morning sickness exposed me. “Why you spittin’?” she demanded. And eventually I had to confess.
    This was one of the greatest sins I could have committed while under Aunty’s watchful eye. Everyone was disappointed in me. “Let’s take her to the doctor and get rid of it,” was the general recommendation. “Oh no, you can’t have it,” said the boy’s mother. “He’s too young, and you’re too young. You would never make it, you both need to go back to school.” She sent him to England, although he went unwillingly, because we were in love and he had been looking forward to being a father. After he left I decided to have the baby anyway, even though Aunty insisted that if anyone came to the house I was to get under the bed or stay behind the door.
    I was frightened but brave when I gave birth at Jubilee Hospital to my first child, a girl I named Sharon. And it didn’t surprise me that after she was born she became Aunty’s child, the belle of the ball. As for me, my nineteenth birthday found me out of school and still waiting for that nursing job in the hospital.
    Sharon’s birth didn’t change our home life much. Dream and I continued to get together to practice songs we’d heard on the radio; evenings we sang under the plum tree in the yard. Often he and I were joined by Marlene “Precious” Gifford, a girlfriend of mine who was still in high school, who would come by to play with the baby and fill me in on the latest gossip and keep me up to date on what was happening. She had a good voice, and with Dream we made a fine trio. One day, while we were rehearsing for one of our yard shows, I said to them, “You know, we could form a group.” It seemed as if everybody in Trench Town tried to sing or play an instrument or get a vocal group together.
    At that time, the mid-sixties, everybody I knew was excited about a new Jamaican music known as “rock steady.” Our favorite stars were Toots and the Maytals, Delroy Wilson, the Paragons, Ken Booth, Marcia Griffiths, and particularly a group who called