No Telephone to Heaven

Boy is Clare’s father and the patriarch of her family. A light-skinned man of mixed racial heritage, he is proud of his British blood and seeks to distance himself from dark-skinned Jamaicans. When Kitty’s adoptive mother passes away, he seizes the opportunity to move his family to the United States, where he feels they will have the opportunity to build a new life as white-passing Americans.

In America, Boy strives to disassociate from his heritage: he disconnects from Jamaican relatives and encourages his wife and children to assimilate and “pass” as much as possible. He even forbids his wife from visiting a Jamaican grocery store she is fond of, resenting its symbolic connection to their homeland. When his wife leaves him to return to Jamaica, causing him emotional injury, he refuses to acknowledge their separation until forced to do so in a school interview for Clare. Boy represents those immigrants who shed their identities and heritages to blend into their new environment. Such immigrants tend to favor their colonizers over their native people. After the death of his wife, Boy realizes the cost of severing one’s family in the name of conformity.  

Kitty is Clare’s mother. Darker-skinned than Boy, she initially defers to his authority in their marriage, moving to America and taking a job at the laundry he works for. After living in New York for a few months, however, Kitty notices signs of bigotry and racial tension, and she greatly misses Jamaica. She longs to connect with the two African American women she works with but feels distanced from them because of her light-skinned privilege.

Kitty’s boss at the laundry, Mr. B., asks her to tuck marketing flyers from a fictional “Mrs. White” into the clothing of his customers. These flyers contain depictions of a clean-scrubbed white woman with “gentle gray curls, pink skin” (74). Resentful of the subtly racist implications of these flyers, Kitty begins to quietly rebel by writing her own alternative messages on the flyers, such as: “EVER TRY CLEANSING YOUR MIND OF HATRED? THINK OF IT” (78), “WHITE PEOPLE CAN BE BLACK-HEARTED” (81), and “MARCUS GARVEY WAS RIGHT” (81). Eventually, a customer complains about these messages on the flyers, and Mr. B. fires his two African American employees, believing they are responsible. Kitty subsequently recognizes her own light-skinned privilege and separates from Boy, moving back to Jamaica with her darker-skinned daughter, Jennie.

Jennie is Clare’s younger and darker-skinned sister. When Clare’s mother moves back to Jamaica, she brings Jennie with her and leaves Clare behind. Thus, Jennie becomes a kind of stand-in (in Clare’s imagination) for the kind of person she might have become if her mother had taken her to Jamaica instead. After their mother’s death, Jennie moves back to New York. Unable to adapt to her new life, she falls into drug use and lives on the streets. Jennie’s decline represents one tragic outcome for immigrants who fail to assimilate.

Bobby is a black Vietnam veteran Clare meets while she’s living in Europe. He has a wound on his ankle that refuses to heal, despite Clare’s attempts to care for it. Eventually, Bobby reveals that he is a deserter and expresses distress when she shares that she is pregnant with his child. His mental health deteriorates (possibly because of Clare’s pregnancy), and he suddenly leaves her with no explanation. Bobby represents the black men whom the US military used in Vietnam but later did not provide care for. Like the persistent mental afflictions war caused, Bobby’s physical wound never heals, leaving him a fractured man who abandons his pregnant partner.

Christopher is a servant or “yard boy” to the Paul H.’s wealthy family. He comes from a slum in Kingston known as the Dungle, where he grew up in a makeshift shack with his grandmother. While living in the Dungle, young Christopher met a preacher named Brother Josephus who proclaimed that Christopher resembled the true form of “Lickle Jesus,” whom he depicted as black, malnourished, and hunch-backed.

Drunk and hopeful of the possibility to lay his grandmother’s soul to rest, Christopher confronts his employers in their bedroom during the middle of the night, demanding that they provide a bit of land for him to bury his grandmother in. Bewildered by Christopher’s transgression of his subservient status, Master Charles denies his request. Emboldened by alcohol (and years of built-up rage), Christopher murders the entire household, including the female servant as well as the dog. When Paul H. returns home after a party, Christopher murders him as well.

Following the murders, Christopher begins to embody the image of “Lickle Jesus” (179). Some believe him to be a type of wandering prophet, or “Neger Jesus” (179), and revere him as “De Watchman.” In the last chapter of the novel, white outsiders solicit Christopher to play the part of Sasabonsam—a legendary Jamaican figure—in a film directed by an American man and a British man. Just as his own government destroyed his village as a child, Christopher is again at the whim of colonial-like forces who exploit him and subsequently lead to his demise.