No Telephone to Heaven

Harriet and Clare venture through town to Chai Chang’s shop for a snack of “bullah-cakes” and flavored water. A sign outside the shop suggests the poverty of the region, listing: “GOODS WE DO NOT HAVE AT THE MOMENT” (185). At the shop, Clare sees an old acquaintance: Miss Cherry, the post-mistress. They chat about how much the area has fallen into disrepair—“People do dem best, yes. But, gal, dem is up against it […] T’ings slip from week to week” (186)—and they speak of Clare’s mother. Miss Cherry reflects that Clare’s mother “never forget her origin” (186).

Harriet later tells Clare that the people of this area are so poor they eat lizards for sustenance. Harriet describes an occasion where—after visiting the locals—she was offered a stew made from an iguana. Harriet saw the animal’s “bright green skin” and ridged skull in a trash bin and fought the urge to vomit, hearing a woman apologize, “Is the best we can do, doctress” (188). Meanwhile, the news reports stories of people breaking into the zoo to steal rare lizards for food: “What does it mean,” Harriet asks Clare, “when we people have to break into a zoo to steal lizard fe nyam [to eat]?” (188).

After revealing the state of affairs in Jamaica, Harriet urges Clare to join a resistance movement. The rest of the chapter details an interview between Clare and one of the resistance leaders. The interviewer questions Clare’s localities, which draws Clare back to memories of her mother. When the leader asks whether Clare would kill for her people, her reflections overcome her: “Thoughts of missed motherhood [flood] her; facts, myths she had heard. Weren’t women supposed to accomplish superhuman feats when their own children were endangered? Would she? Had her own mother?” (191).

Clare tells the leader, “My mother told me to help my people. At the moment this is the closest I can come” (196). Thereupon, she and the leader shake hands, and the group members accept her into their fold.

The last chapter begins with a short scene at Clare’s grandmother’s home wherein the resistance group prepares for “a new plan” (200). This scene precedes a direct quotation from an article on Jamaican tourism in the New York Times. The tourism article extols Jamaica’s “abundance of Spanish and British colonial buildings dating back to the 1500s” and mixture of “elegant suburban homes, ramshackle slums and villages with thatched huts” (200). It also remarks that “the national language is English, and you can drink the water” (200).

The chapter then cuts to a conversation between a white British man and a white American man at a rum shop. They are rude to the bartender, and they speak of Jamaica in colonial terms (as a subject they can use for personal gain). Over the course of the conversation, the novel reveals that ironically, these men are making a film about the Maroons: escaped slaves who ran away from their Spanish-owned plantations when the British took over the island in 1655. One of the white men ask the bartender about “De Watchman”—a man he has scouted to play the legendary Jamaican figure Sasabonsam—and the narrative reveals that this man is Christopher.

The novel transitions to a scene wherein the film is in production. The filmmakers have grossly distorted Jamaican history with their interpretation of the Maroons’ story:

Two figures stood out in the costumed group. Once, a woman, the actress called in whenever someone was needed to play a Black heroine, any Black heroine, whether Sojourner Truth or Bessie Smith, this woman wore a pair of leather breeches and a silk shirt—designer’s notion of the clothes Nanny wore. Dear nanny, the Coromantee warrior, leader of the Windward Maroons, whom one book described as an old woman naked except for a necklace made from the teeth of whitemen—sent by the Orishas to deliver her people. Wild Nanny, spotting furies through the Blue Mountains. Old. Dark. Small. But such detail was out of the question, given these people even knew the truth. Or cared. Facing the elegant actress was a strapping man, former heavyweight or running back, dressed as Cudjoe, tiny humpbacked soul (206).

The filmmakers direct Christopher to howl as loud as he can: “Remember, you’re not human” (207). He howls loudly, in genuine anguish, as members of the resistance movement crouch in the bushes, ready for attack. The attack fails, however, as someone has betrayed them to a counter-terrorism operation, suggested by the fact that cast and crew members retreat into their trailers, having “been warned” (207). Bullets fly from helicopters marked “MADE IN USA” (202). Clare and the rest of the militants perish, just as Christopher dies in the crossfire.