Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  She pursed her lips. The Guinea Land fog made it hard to see into the distance, so they stopped at the corner of Bayview to make sure it was clear. “What you going to do when you reach East York?” No one coming.

  He smiled a little as he stuck his feet back in the toeclips and mounted up again. “Catch a bus. No, really. Into North York. Remember when you could just jump on a bus down here? Find a rooming house. I have a little money. Then look for work. I hear they’re building an extension to the subway station out in North York there. Maybe there’s some job there I could do.”

  The thought of the ’burbs scared Ti-Jeanne. She knew it was safer. She knew that there were hospitals and corner stores and movie theatres, but all she could imagine were broad streets with cars zipping by too fast to see who was in them, and people huddled in their houses except for jumping into their cars to drive to and from work. It had been years since she’d seen any cars actually running, except for Mercy Hospital ambulances and Rudy’s elegant grey Bentley.

  “It’ll be great,” said Tony.

  And what you going to do for buff? she thought, but she knew better than to ask. He’d say that he took the drug for pleasure; that he wasn’t addicted.

  There were three figures milling around the turnoff to the highway. They had lit a small fire on the gravel verge. Two crouched in front of it, hands held out for warmth. The third sat on the low aluminum railing that marked the beginning of the long, narrow turnoff that dipped down onto the Parkway. Seen in the dark through the Guinea Land fog, their faces appeared smudged. One of them spoke, his words indistinct. The other two laughed. Ti-Jeanne and Tony were closer now. The men were Jay, Crapaud, and Crack Monkey. “Shit,” Tony muttered. “What’re they doing here?” Ti-Jeanne and Tony stopped their bicycles.

  “. . . duppy bowl, my ass,” Crapaud was saying to the other two. “That blasted thing he have in there only stinking up the place.”

  The exit ramp was only the width of one car. Trees and thick undergrowth lined it. Tony would have to pass the men; there was no way around. “We have to go to another exit,” he told Ti-Jeanne. “Queen, maybe.”

  Crapaud continued, “One day I leaving here, you hear me? Going out to the ’burbs to find a rich White woman to keep me. Rudy and he posse shit get to be too weird sometimes.”

  Jay said, “True, man. You see the woman Rudy holding now: Melba? Man, the things that man does have she doing does turn my stomach sometimes.”

  Ti-Jeanne whispered, “No time, Tony. Sun coming up soon.”

  “Shit, yeah. Maybe I’ll try to go through the bush, then,” Tony said uncertainly.

  “No, them would see the trees shaking.”

  Crapaud shook his head. “I tell allyou, that man mad. Him and he obeah shit. Every time I see Crazy Betty, my skin does crawl.”

  Tony muttered, “But to just walk past them, bold-face like that? Why are they even here!”

  “Is all right,” Ti-Jeanne reassured him. “You know them can’t see we. Go on,” she urged, although it was breaking her heart. “Just go now.”

  He took a step toward the men, stopped, looked at her.

  Crack Monkey drawled, “All me know say is since me hook up with Rudy, me got food in my belly and money in my pocket.” Tony reached for her hand. She hung on to it hard, trying to remember why she was sending this man away. Tony said softly, “Will you come? If I send for you later, I mean. When I get a job, and stuff.”

  Leave the Burn, leave her grandmother’s home and the people she knew, to live in the barren ’burbs with a man who’d rather slash buff than work. Would she do it? “When you get settled,” she said, “send word for me.”

  “And you’ll come?”

  “I ain’t know, Tony, and you don’t have time for this! Go, nuh!”

  Hanging on to the seat of his bicycle, Tony leaned forward and kissed her. She inhaled his scent deeply for the last time then pulled away, wiping tears from her eyes. Tony was blinking, blinking. His eyes were red. He didn’t say anything more, just turned away and began to wheel his bicycle carefully past the three men.

  A phone rang. Crack slid his palmbook out of a back pocket, flipped it open, pressed the microphone function. “Yes, boss.”

  Deep as a death-watch bell, Rudy’s voice issued from the palmbook. “Duppy say them there right now, in front of oonuh. Do it.”

  The three men actually turned and briskly walked away, Crack and Crapaud on one side of the on ramp, Jay on the other. Tony frowned. “What . . . ?”

  It went too fast. In a split second, each of the three had pulled a baseball-sized lump of what looked like modelling clay out of their pockets and slammed it down hard onto the ground. Impact sent a stake sprouting a good eight feet high from each lump of clay. Synapse cordon. There was a zapping sound. “Run, Tony!”

  Too late. Eyeblink fast, clear, branchlike filaments exploded from the triangle of stakes, intertwining to form a net that trapped them both inside it.

  “Oh God oh God,” Tony was saying under his breath. He stepped clear of the bike. “Them coming to get we now, we go dead now.” He was going to let the bike go. That was a mistake.

  “Tony!” Ti-Jeanne said quickly, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible. “Hold on to the bicycle. Don’t let it go, or them will see it.”

  He was listening to her, barely. He kept his hold on one of the handlebars, turned to her, eyes wide in shock. “What the fuck difference does that make?”

  The three men were peering in through the branches of the cordon. Jay asked doubtfully, “You think them in here for real?”

  “You see? Them still can’t see or hear we,” Ti-Jeanne repeated urgently. “And them can’t hold the thought of we in them heads for long. Just keep quiet, nuh? It might give we chance to get away when them release the cordon. Get ready to run.”

  Then came the doomsday tolling of Rudy’s voice through the palmbook phone again. “Yes, she say oonuh have them. Knock them out.”

  Now, even Crack looked uncertain. He shrugged. “We have them? Well, all right, boss.” He kicked at the cordon, activating the synapse surge of current across the gap where Ti-Jeanne and Tony stood. Ti-Jeanne’s bonesshiveredteethchattered as the daze charge surged through the cordon, short-circuiting her neuromuscular system. She couldn’t take her hands off the juddering steel frame of the bicycle, couldn’t unlock her arms or her knees. The same thing was happening to Tony. The cordon shrank back down into three lumps of clay. The cessation of the shock was sweet release, and even then they might have made it, for they were still standing, still holding the bicycles, still hidden, and the sun wasn’t completely risen yet, except for Ti-Jeanne feeling the soft impact on her feet of the rose that had worked its way loose as she shook. The rose landed right in front of an astonished Crapaud. The Guinea Land fog cleared instantly, and Crapaud shouted in surprise. They were fully back in reality. He could see them.

  • • • •

  Crack Monkey grabbed Tony’s arm. He pulled out a dazer, the portable equivalent to the synapse cordon, and put it to Tony’s chest. “Stand right there so, brother. Nah move.”

  Fuck, they were all wearing black rubber gloves, not leather ones as he’d thought. Tony obeyed. He wouldn’t risk being dazeshot. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I’m dead now. Rudy’s got me. I’m dead. He was dimly aware of Jay pulling Ti-Jeanne away from his side. Crapaud, a sickly shade of grey, kept his dazer against her neck. His hands were shaking.

  “Don’t let she go, Jay, don’t let she go,” Crapaud said. “Oh God, look at how them just appear so out of nowhere. Hold she right there, Jay; you ain’t see she is a obeah woman?”

  “Crapaud, man, have some sense. Between you, me, and the dazer, how this one puny woman going to get away from we?”

  “You just don’t let she go, or I go zap the both of allyou one time.”

  “Huh.”

  Tony stayed still, looking right into Crack’s eyes with the intensity of a lover, pleading with the man not to pull the trigger. Cra
ck gazed back coldly, calmly. Without looking away he said, “The two of oonuh just stop oonuh arguing. Rudy only tell we to bring Tony, and look we have he good. Put the charge to maximum and just shoot the damn bitch one time, and get she out of the way.”

  I should help her. I have to help her, but God, the dazer! Tony heard Ti-Jeanne whimper, risked looking out of the corners of his eyes. Jay was frog-marching Ti-Jeanne over to the bushes, Crapaud scuttling alongside, gun still held nervously on her.

  And then Ti-Jeanne chuckled in a deep, rumbling voice, the same unearthly sound that she’d made in the chapel. “Brothers, brothers, don’t fight! It have plenty of me to go around.” She suddenly seemed much taller than Jay. She broke his hold with ease, reached to her own neck with long, long arms, and grasped the head of Crapaud’s dazer. He fired. She shivered, apparently in ecstasy, as the power surged through her. She smiled lovingly at Crapaud. “Ah, me brother; you know how pain could be sweet, ain’t? You want to go first?”

  Crapaud released the dazer, took a step back. Ti-Jeanne/Prince of Cemetery took a daddy-long-legs step over to him, put a hand on his shoulder. The man did the crazy dance of the dazeshot and fell twitching to the ground. Jay rushed Prince of Cemetery, who picked him up like a baby and cradled him to its bony chest. “Jason Egbert Petrey, what you in such a hurry for? Eh? You will come to me in time, but not yet. You must ask my horse about that. She know your life story. Sleep, brother.” Gently Prince of Cemetery lowered the now unconscious man to the ground. The spirit picked up the fallen rose, kissed its petals. They withered instantly to brown. It dropped the dead rose on Jay’s chest, then straightened up, up, up to its full height and turned its gaze on Tony and Crack Monkey. Crack stepped behind Tony, using him as a shield.

  “Go ’long, woman, or I shoot he dead right here so.”

  “Crick Crack Monkey,” came Prince of Cemetery’s voice like rattling bones, “left the man and gone. Tell Rudy is me say so.”

  “And who the rass is you to be giving Rudy orders, woman?”

  “Woman, man, child? Is all one when them come to me in the end.” The spirit was at their sides in an instant. It put two fingers under Crack’s chin, tilting the man’s head upward so they were eye to eye. Crack’s body went limp, but he remained upright, supported by Prince of Cemetery’s two fingers under his chin. Tony’s gorge rose at the smell of rotting flesh that the spirit exhaled from its mouth. He slid out of the way.

  “Tell Rudy him know me,” the spirit said to Crack, “the one him call so long now and never send away. Tell him this horse is my daughter. Him not to harm she. You go remember my name.” It didn’t sound like a question. “Legbara. The Eshu da Capa Preta.”

  Ti-Jeanne is as mixed up in this shit as Rudy is! Tony didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He turned tail and ran.

  • • • •

  Ti-Jeanne came back to herself as her arm gave way from the weight it was supporting: Crack Monkey’s body. He crashed to the ground, and Ti-Jeanne jumped back with a little scream, but he didn’t move. His eyes were open and he was breathing, but he didn’t seem aware of her. He just lay there. Crapaud and Jay were slumped nearby. Crapaud looked really bad. His face was spasming. He’d wet himself. Where was Tony? She looked around for a few seconds, called his name. She didn’t see his body anywhere. Maybe he’d got away, headed up the highway already? But his bike was still there where he’d dropped it. What had happened? Tears began to cloud Ti-Jeanne’s vision, but she knew she couldn’t stay where she was. She picked up her bicycle and rode away.

  • • • •

  Hiding in the bushes, Tony watched her go. He didn’t dare let her see him. She was as dangerous as Rudy. Better if he just got on his bike and rode out of this city.

  He was picking up his bike when he heard the car engine. He fled back into the undergrowth. He heard the car pull up, the sound of a door slamming, then footsteps moving around the scene. A man’s voice called out, “Crack? Jay? Oh God, look at Crapaud! Boss, come and see this!”

  “What happen, Barry?” The voice was Rudy’s. Tony heard the car door slam again, the sound of the posse boss cursing. Fear made his entrails curl tighter around eachother. No way he could get away right now. He stood trembling in the bushes, hoping that Rudy would leave soon. He heard Rudy say, “Load them in the back of the car. And put something under Crapaud nuh, so me good car seat leather nah get spoil.”

  The sound of heavy footsteps came closer and closer to where Tony was hiding. “Tony boy, you best had come out, for otherwise I just send some people in there to get you.”

  • • • •

  Ti-Jeanne dropped the bike at the foot of the Simpson House front stairs and ran sobbing through the front door. “Mami! Mami!”

  Mami Gros-Jeanne came out onto the upstairs landing, cradling Baby in one arm and feeding him from a bottle with the other. “Is what do you, child?”

  “Oh God, Mami, Tony gone, I ain’t know where, and I black out again, and when I wake up, it had Crack and Jay and Crapaud lying on the ground, and the rose dead, and Crapaud . . . Crapaud . . . Mami, everything go wrong.” Ti-Jeanne sat hard on the floor and wept.

  Mami was down the stairs in an instant. Ti-Jeanne felt her grandmother’s arm encircle her. Mami still held Baby in the other arm. Ti-Jeanne reached out and hugged them both, rocking. “Mami, I don’t know if Tony gone, or them kill him. I don’t know what happen to me out there. Is what I is, Mami? Is me do that to them three men?”

  “Sshh, Ti-Jeanne, hush, doux-doux.” Mami kept up the soothing noises and the rocking until Ti-Jeanne’s sobs subsided.

  By and by, Ti-Jeanne felt a little more in control of herself. She took Baby from his grandmother, picked up his bottle from where Mami had dropped it on the floor. But Baby didn’t want any more milk. He was wide awake and alert, watching the two women intently.

  Mami said, “You feeling better now?”

  “Little bit.”

  “All right. I want you to tell me everything that happen after you and Tony left here this morning. Don’t leave nothing out, you hear?”

  Ti-Jeanne looked into Baby’s eyes, focused on the child’s calm, steady gaze, and told her grandmother the story of how she and Tony had reached the highway safely, only to be trapped. The old woman’s eyes got hard as stone when she heard how Rudy had seemed to know where they were. “That mean another life gone,” she said in a harsh voice. “Deathblood is the price you pay to get the duppy to spy into Guinea Land for you.”

  “What is that, Mami? That duppy everybody keep talking about?”

  An ancient pain hollowed out her grandmother’s features. “Doux-doux, Rudy is a shadow-catcher. He got the spirit of someone dead in that calabash, that does do he work for he. Rudy does work the dead to control the living. Is that he probably use to track you and Tony.”

  Ti-Jeanne’s skin crawled at the words. She remembered the men at the highway talking about how Rudy controlled some woman named Melba, made her do horrible things. Ti-Jeanne remembered what Osain had said to them in the chapel: Tell Gros-Jeanne is past time for she do my work. “Mami,” she said softly, “what Osain mean when he say you ain’t take care of Rudy like he tell you?”

  To Ti-Jeanne’s surprise, stern Gros-Jeanne looked down at the floor, refusing to meet her eyes.

  “Mami,” Ti-Jeanne persisted, “what business you have with Rudy?”

  Gros-Jeanne refused to meet her eyes, for all the world like a child being scolded. “Is me teach he how to serve the spirits, but he take the knowledge and twist it.” Mami’s eyes finally met hers, sorrow and regret brimming in them. “Rudy is my husband. Your grandfather.”

  Shock leached heat from Ti-Jeanne’s skin. “What? But how . . . Mami, Rudy is a young man!”

  The old woman shook her head sadly. “Rudy fourteen years older than me. That is other people youth he wearing, youth he steal from them when he catch their shadows to put in he duppy pot.”

  Suddenly Baby screamed, twisting and fighting in
Ti-Jeanne’s arms. Had a pin from his diaper stuck him? No. Baby howled as though he’d lost everything in the world he’d ever loved. Ti-Jeanne rocked him and rocked him, trying to soothe him, but he was inconsolable.

  “Give he to me,” Mami said. Ti-Jeanne gratefully handed him over.

  Mami cradled Baby, looking right into his eyes. “Little soul, little soul, is what vex you so? Like you need a healing bath to soothe your spirit, child. Eh? Is what do you?”

  Baby sobbed and sobbed. It sounded as though he were crying, “Bolom! Bolom!” over and over. He looked so lost and miserable. A bolom was an unborn child. It was Ti-Jeanne’s private name for Baby, the one she’d started calling him while he was still in her belly. Past time to give him his own name now. She leaned over her baby, ran a hand over his head. Mami’s eyes on his little face were worried. “Ti-Jeanne,” she said, “when this child learn to talk, I feel he go have plenty to tell we.”

  “How you mean?”

  “Like I tell you, is not just you Legbara did ride last night. He visit your baby, too, just for a second. Baby talk to we while Legbara did riding he.”

  Ti-Jeanne’s heart sank. She had hoped that she had imagined coming back to her senses in time to hear Baby talking in an adult’s voice. Them spirits following he and all? She had to leave this place as soon as she could, get away from the balm-yard and Mami and Rudy and all these beings she couldn’t see who were trying to control her life. “What he make Baby say, Mami? What words he put into the child mouth?”

  Gros-Jeanne relayed the odd message to her. Ti-Jeanne just found it confusing. Death and life? What did any of it have to do with her?

  “Don’t worry about Baby, doux-doux. Maybe Legbara just come to he because Legbara love all children, and they love him back.”

  “No, Mami! That skull-and-bone thing?”

  “Oh, yes. Remember what he say: he does watch over the crossroads between death and life, too. Dead people precious to he because he does shepherd them across one way, but children precious to he because he does shepherd them across the other way.”