No Telephone to Heaven

“NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN. No voice to God. A waste to try. Cut off. No way of reaching out or up. Maybe only one way. Not God’s way. No matter if him is Jesus or if him is Jah. Him not gwan like dis one pickle bit. NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN.” 

Chapter 2 explains that the revolutionaries bought their truck from a man who transported women to-and-from the market and church. The motto painted on the side—“NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN”—is both a reference to the vehicle’s original use and to the revolutionary group’s frustration with colonialism. This early development of religious imagery also hints toward the significance of alternative iconography (as per Brother Josephus’s black Jesus).

“‘You tell me, missis, tell me where it say in de Bible Jesus white.’ Oh, Lickle Jesus, why dem cyan see you like I see you?” 

In this moment, Brother Josephus defends his preachings that Jesus is black, poor, and otherwise reflective of Kingston’s destitute “Dungle” residents. He offers his image of Jesus as a radical alternative to the colonial image of a white, blonde, and blue-eyed savior, subtly suggesting that imperialists use this white-washed image to oppress Jamaicans. Brother Josephus then tells young Christopher that he resembles Jesus, empowering him to gradually revise his self-image—to the point that Christopher later preaches, “I am Neger Jesus. I am Never Chris” (179). 

“She began a rosary. That was all. They didn’t ask to be spared. They didn’t beg the fire-carrier to save them. The hard god. The lord of the cutting edge. Christopher severed their ties to this life and left them to find their way into the next. Even now their duppies must be spinning through the room in confusion. No rest for them. No peace a-tall, a-tall.”

In this moment, Christopher murders his employers for their refusal to provide him with a bit of land to bury his grandmother in. He believes that because they have denied her ghost the right to rest in peace, their own ghosts—“duppies”—should be forced to wander “in confusion” (48). This idea of supernatural wandering reflects Christopher’s previous state of insecurity, such as when his employer’s wife cast him out of the home. No longer able to live in the master’s house or return to the Dungle (as it has been demolished), Christopher existed in a tenuous in-between state, a state of “no rest” (48). 

“In the Spanish colonies, there were 128 categories to be memorized. The class of multicolored boys rose and recited in unison. […] No matter that at least one of the Jesuit’s categories applied to him—no matter. He was streamlining himself for America. A new man.” 

This passage—which recalls Boy Savage’s schoolboy experience in Jamaica—suggests points of difference and overlap between 1960s Caribbean and American racism. While Boy encounters racial prejudice in both nations, the narrative presents American prejudice as more overtly hateful, including elements such as the Jim Crow laws and groups such as the KKK. Because American racism is less defined than the 128 Caribbean groupings, however, Boy is able to pass as white, effectively “streamlining himself for America” (57). 

“‘Pass if you can, man. This not a country for us. […] Dem have dem own rules. The Black people here not from us. The white people here not from us.’” 

When the Savage family arrives in New York, Kitty’s dark-skinned relatives (themselves Jamaican immigrants) offer these words of advice. These lines further suggest differences between Jamaican and American racial prejudice, the latter which follows its “own rules” (61) divorced from the 128 categories Boy learned as a child. 

“These were small, crammed, glass-fronted shops, but they smelled so strongly of home that any other difference became superficial, in response to a changed climate, and not substantial. […] In these shops she broke her silence, here she felt most the loss of home, of voice.” 

As Kitty searches for spaces where she belongs in America (and discovers very few), she finds that this Jamaican store in Bed-Stuy is her only respite, the only place that feels like home. In the course of breaking “her silence” (65)—and beginning to pursue her own needs—Kitty takes significant steps toward discovering her own voice in her marriage with Boy. She subsequently liberates herself from his pressure to pass as white. 

“Unable to speak to them, she took her place between them, her feelings lit by a dim fury, sticking Mrs. White’s messages methodically, automatically, almost instinctively by now, into the shirts and in between the sheets. […] Why had she maintained silence, calling it dignity, through all the other interviews in which her musical voice, her golden skin, had become the center of conversation and the reason for refusal? Coward!” 

This passage alludes to Kitty’s numerous job interviews in which potential employers subtly reject her based on her race. Upon returning to her menial work as Mr. B.’s assistant (wherein she must pass along “messages” from the racist and sexist character of Mrs. White), Kitty realizes that she has internalized the messages of her oppressors, embodying them “methodically, automatically, almost instinctively” (78). Kitty decides that she must break her silence in a broader-reaching way than she has at the Bed-Stuy store. She commits herself to writing alternative messages in the voice of Mrs. White (and thus reclaiming her own voice). 

“She was taken in by the magic of television, and of her ability to conjure images by a switch, to change the images as she wished. Jamaica had not this sort of magic, this curious and wondrous choice; all man-made images were channeled into the cinemas, whose programs changed once a week, and over whose selections there was no control. The island took what it was sent, not so different from the little black box catching waves in the Brooklyn apartment.” 

In this passage, Cliff begins to develop television—and media images—as a stand-in for Clare’s grieving process. In the absence of her mother, Clare fills her loneliness with TV images, reveling in the illusory control she feels “chang[ing] the images as she wishe[s]” (93). However, in both Jamaica and America, these images exude a dubious power over the viewer. This idea of media influence is later addressed with a flashback to Clare’s white history teacher, Miss Peterkin (who believed that Gone with the Wind was a documentary), the prevalent problematic tourist advertisements, and the inaccurate depiction of Jamaican history in an American and British-directed film about the Maroons. 

“‘He would call you white chocolate … I mean, have you ever seen a child’s expression when he finds a white chocolate bunny in his Easter basket? He simply doesn’t understand … he thinks it strange. I do not want to be cruel, Mr. Savage, but we have no room for lies in our system. No place for in-betweens.’” 

These lines are spoken by Clare’s high school principal when her father enrolls her. Accustomed to passing, Boy Savage initially responds that he is white when the principal questions his race. The principal, however, does not believe him, as she has visited the Caribbean with her husband and is familiar with their racial taxonomy system. She declares that the school’s system has “no place for in-betweens” (99), essentially insisting that the Savages are black. Her comment resonates with Clare, who feels deeply divided because of her mixed-race heritage (in light of her mother’s move to Jamaica with her darker-skinned sister). 

“He slid the picture from the celluloid, casually folding it in his shirt pocket. ‘This is for the best,’ he told her, in a softer voice. ‘You must not ponder these things. We are not to judge this country … they give us a home. Your mother could never understand that … she blamed the whole place for a few ignorant people … that’s why we lost her.’ […] It did not matter that the picture was gone—it was in her mind. Connecting her with her absent mother.” 

After hearing about the 6th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, from her American teacher, Clare trims a photo of one of the young girls from the newspaper. She keeps the photo with her in her wallet, constantly looking at it. When Boy takes the photo away, his repressive language—dismissing racial tension and the validity of Kitty’s feelings—echoes back to the arguments he had with Kitty just before she left. Furthermore, Clare’s symbolic connection to the photo—and her anger toward racial injustice—only becomes stronger with its absence, just like Clare’s feelings for her absent mother. 

“‘One time she say she feel you would prosper here. She say is because you favor backra, and fe you Daddy. Don’t feel bad, man.’” 

After Clare’s mother dies, her darker-skinned sister, Jennie, returns to the United States. When Clare speaks with Jennie about their mother—asking why she didn’t bring her along to Jamaica—Jennie responds thusly. The idea that her mother believes Clare “favor[s] backra” (105), a Jamaican term for white people that is usually applied to colonists (and thus linked to the oppression of people of color), deeply hurts Clare. She also envies her sister’s connection with their mother and their homeland, looking upon her as an image of who she might have become (if her mother had brought her back to Jamaica). 

“No, she could not be Jane. Small and pale. English. No, she paused. No, my girl, try Bertha. Wild-maned Bertha.” 

Clare moves to England for graduate school after her mother’s death. Cliff notes that Clare’s move is a metaphorical pursuit of her “mother-country” (109) and an attempt to decipher her connection to it. While in England, Clare initially attempts to blend into her surroundings, hoping to “pass” as a quiet, unobtrusive intellectual (much like the eponymous character Jane Eyre in the book by Charlotte Bronte, which she reads repeatedly). Gradually, however, Clare comes to realize that she has more in common with Bertha Mason—the dark-skinned, wild-haired, Caribbean first wife of Jane’s love interest—than she has with “small and pale” and “English” (116) Jane. 

“‘But we are of the past here. So much of the past that we punish people by flogging them with cat-o’-nine-tails. We expect people to live on cornmeal and dried fish, which was the diet of slaves. We name hotels Plantation Inn and Sans Souci. … A peculiar past. For we have taken the master’s past as our own. That is the danger.’” 

In this passage, Harry/Harriet begins to speak to Clare’s growing political consciousness, illustrating the extent to which Jamaicans have internalized their own oppression (by white colonists).

“‘Hyacinth took care of me. She hid what happened from my family, who were at their house in the North Coast for a few days. Lucky. She said she was afraid for me, afraid if they found out I would be ‘ruined’ and turned from son to servant. ‘Wunna is on sufferance here,’ she told me more than once.’”

Harry/Harriet explains that as a child, a white British colonist raped them. Their adopted mother, Hyacinth, took care of Harry/Harriet, afraid that if their family found out about the incident, the family would neglect them in the interest of maintaining respectability. The tenuousness of respectability—the idea of being “on sufferance” (129) in Jamaica—becomes a theme throughout the novel, gesturing also to Christopher’s wandering instability and Clare’s sensation of “in-between” identity. 

“He smiled. Did it really matter, he asked her, when his imagination had given up; did it matter that much, all that much, to know how the wound was made? Wasn’t the only important thing that it would always be his—something he must learn to live with?” (

Bobby, a black Vietnam veteran with whom Clare has a romantic relationship, speaks these words to her. Herein, he refers to a wound on his ankle that will not heal (despite Clare’s persistent attempts to treat it). This wound can be read as a stand-in for painful experiences that can neither be erased nor separated from one’s identity.

“‘You are so lucky, Bobby. So lucky … to be one and not both.’” 

In comparing American racism and Jamaican racism, Clare speaks these lines to Bobby. She thus expresses her frustration with living “in-between” and feeling that she cannot fully identify as “black” or “white.” Clare’s inability to acknowledge her own white privilege dismays Bobby. 

“‘Yes, baby girl, I’m a deserter. I didn’t tell you that before. I didn’t know if I could trust you. Can I trust you?’”

After Clare reveals that she is pregnant, Bobby becomes increasingly paranoid, and his mental health deteriorates. Before he deserts Clare, he reveals that he is a deserter of the war. This abandonment echoes Kitty abandoning Clare. 

“‘The choice is mine, man, is made. Harriet live and Harry be no more.’” 

When Clare returns to Jamaica, she learns that Harriet has decided to move beyond her “in-between” state (of “Harry/Harriet”) and align herself fully with a female identity. This decision, in turn, inspires Clare to choose a side and join the revolutionary movement Harriet introduces her to. 

“Had they suspected, what would they have been reduced to? For her people, but a very few, did not suffer freaks gladly—unless the freaks became characters for entertainment. Mad, unclean diversions.” 

Cliff again reflects on the tenuousness of maintaining respectability in Jamaica. Even though Harriet has chosen a female identity, she must still navigate numerous in-betweens, hiding the male aspects from the villagers. Even as she nurses her people to health, she is conscious that she remains “on sufferance” (129). 

“‘I am Neger Jesus. I am Never Christ. Shadow-catcher. Duppy-conqueror. I am the beginning and the end. The bright and morning star.’” 

Christopher, who has wandered the streets of Kingston after murdering his employer’s family, speaks these lines. While wandering, he takes on the identity of black Jesus: a Jesus in the image of Brother Josephus’s preachings. Some people on the streets of Kingston respond poorly to Christopher, chasing him away and accusing him of madness. Others begin to revere him, offering food and ganja as tribute. A few even write songs about him, extolling him as the “watchman” of Kingston’s poor. 

“Thoughts of missed motherhood flooded 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?” 

Harriet brings Clare to meet with the leader of a revolutionary movement. Clare then undergoes an intensive interview with the movement’s leader, who needs to understand Clare’s motivations for joining. In their conversation, both women continually refer to motherhood and the question of whether Clare would kill for her people (her metaphorical “children”). Although Clare never fully commits to the idea of killing on behalf of the movement, she decides that her own mother would want her to help her people, and that this movement feels like the best way to do so. 

“‘Jamaicans will do anything for a buck. … Look around you … the hotels … the private resorts where you have to get an invite … the reggae festivals for white kids … Jesus! The cancer spas for rich people. Everyone from the hookers to the prime minister, babe. These people are used to selling themselves.’” 

A white British man speaks these lines to a white American man in a rum bar. Both men are preparing to make a grossly inaccurate film about the Jamaican Maroons. Herein, the British man represents Jamaica in a very imperialistic manner: as a territory filled with resources that they can claim for their own. This dialogue is a metaphor for British and American colonization and the related stealing of Jamaican resources, history, and identity. His words also echo the earlier reflections of Harriet: “We name hotels Plantation Inn and Sans Souci. … A peculiar past. For we have taken the master’s past as our own” (127).

“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.” 

In this passage, Cliff describes just how profoundly this British and American-produced film distorts Jamaican history. The passage subtly suggests that the Jamaican revolutionary group plans to attack the makers of this film. The group members hope to prevent the foreigners from stealing and revising their stories, their cultural legacy.