No Telephone to Heaven

The second chapter opens with an explanation of the motto painted on the side of the revolutionaries’ truck: “NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN.” The truck’s former owner, a man who made his livelihood “transporting women to the market every Saturday and to church revivals every six months” (15), added the words. After the revolutionaries traded him a load of ganja for his vehicle, the man sold it and moved to England. The narrator illuminates how the motto—“NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN. No voice to God. […] No way of reaching up or out” (16)—suits the Jamaican people’s disillusionment with higher powers.

The narrator explains that many of the revolutionaries in the truck participated in Kingston political riots during the 70s, and therefore, “[g]uns were not strangers to them” (17). This chapter juxtaposes a scene from the life of a Jamaican house servant in the US—notably watching coverage of Jamaican violence on CBS and CBC—with a scene from the life of a dark-skinned Jamaican servant who warns his light-skinned employers, “[W]hen we get de power, de power fe de people, things not wan be easy fe de white shady of Jamaica dem” (20).

The narrative then transitions to a Christmas party, and the attendees include the wealthy Paul H.