No Woman No Cry by Rita Marley

customs—another ordeal with three children—we sat down in the terminal, waiting to be picked up. Moments later, Ziggy, who was still nursing, wanted to be fed. So I took out my breast and started to feed him. Bob had gone somewhere and was on his way back to us when he saw me doing this—and he got so upset! “Why are you doing that?” he said. “Cover up yourself—you don’t do that in America!”
    Now it was my turn to be upset! I said, “What are you talking about?”
    â€œHow could you do that?” he said. “You know, if my mother saw you doing that she would never … In America you can’t feed the baby like that! You go one side or maybe go in the toilet!”
    I couldn’t believe it. That seemed absurd—to feed your baby in the toilet! I said, “Come on now, Bob, that’s nothing. My baby’s hungry, and when my baby’s hungry I’ll feed my baby anywhere!” A few years later women in the States actually had to demonstrate for the right to nurse their babies in public.
    When Cedella and Eddie Booker arrived, they couldn’t imagine how we’d managed, with the children and the baggage and everything else, because in addition to all that I’d brought all the Jamaican foods I knew Mrs. Booker had been craving—roast breadfruit, ackee, mango, tea bush, every little thing. She kept saying, “How did you do it? How did you do this?” And she couldn’t believe her eyes when she took a good look at me, she said, because I looked exactly like her when she was young! Later, when we put our faces together, people said to her, “Is Rita your child or is Nesta?” (Like the rest of Bob’s family, she called him Nesta.) And I began to understand why he might have loved me so. Maybe he was really looking for a replacement after she left him and went to America, and when he saw me, resembling her so much yet as ambitious as he himself was, he might have thought, ooh , this is what I need, this is my girl.
    That was Bob’s favorite song when he was trying to catch my attention: “My girl, my girl/ She used to be my girl …” He would sing it whenever he came in: “She used to be my girl, she used to be my girl …” Hearing it, I’d know he had something up his sleeve. We had a normal lifestyle, with our secret little ways of communicating like any other young couple. The only difference was the chance that music gave us. It was a treasure to us, a gift, but we didn’t expect things, we didn’t have any great plans or fantasies about what we’d do if we got rich and famous. Superstardom was far from our minds; we were simply trying to establish ourselves and to become independent in the only way that seemed open to us.
    After a short time in Wilmington, we left the children with Eddie and Moms (as I eventually called Cedella Booker) and took the train to New York. I have to admit I was scared. When we got off the train in New York and headed for Johnny and Margaret Nash’s apartment, where we were staying, I was almost afraid to walk along the street. I kept saying, “I don’t like those buildings, they look like they’re going to fall over anytime! They’re too tall! I won’t look up—that’s Babylon and it’s going to crumble!” But everyone said, no man, it’s okay. Still, after I got over my fear, I was so impressed that it was hard for me to believe what I was seeing. This was America . Everything seemed so perfect, from the sidewalks to the storefronts to the clothing people wore. And the guest room in Johnny and Margaret ’s place—that first night, when Bob and I had sex, we didn’t want to mess up the bed, so we did it on the table in the kitchen!
    In Jamaica, when Margaret had found out that we would be coming to New York, she’d been all excited at the prospect. “Girl, when I get my hands on