Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  TORONTO CITY HALL MOVES TO SUBURBS: SAFER FOR OUR EMPLOYEES, SAYS MAYOR

  HUNDREDS KILLED IN RAPID TRANSIT CAVE-IN: TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION BLAMES FEDERAL CUTBACKS TO ITS MAINTENANCE BUDGET

  CAVE-IN PROTEST SPARKS RIOT: THOUSANDS RIOT: THOUSANDS INJURED, DEAD

  RIOT COPS LAY DOWN ARMS, ARMY CALLED IN: TORONTO IS “WAR ZONE,” SAYS HEAD OF POLICE UNION

  The next two headlines in Mr. Reed’s display were written in smeared, blurry letters on lavender paper.

  “The major Toronto papers jumped ship soon after the army came in,” Mr. Reed had told her.

  The headlines had been taken from the New-Town Rag. Ti-Jeanne knew the newspaper; a mimeographed ’zine that someone named Malini Lewis churned out by hand whenever she could find paper and ink:

  TEMAGAMI NATIVES WIN LAWSUIT: TRADE EMBARGO LIFTED, TOO LATE FOR TORONTO?

  ARMY OCCUPATION OF TORONTO ENDS: NOW WHAT?

  “It’s nice,” Ti-Jeanne had said uncertainly, not knowing what else to tell the man. All of that was old-time story. Who cared any more? She’d given him his medicine. In return, he’d dug through his book stacks and come up with an encyclopedia of medical symptoms, two gardening books, and the real find: Caribbean Wild Plants and Their Uses.

  “Tell your grandmother that I can’t give these outright to her,” Mr. Reed had said. “It’s a loan. If anyone else asks for them, I’ll have to send for them.”

  Ti-Jeanne had just smiled at him. Mr. Reed had grinned and shaken his head. “I know, I doubt anyone will ask for them, either.” When Ti-Jeanne left, he was rubbing the ointment luxuriously into his moustache, where the skin was cracked and flaking. Dermatitis: “Seborrheic eczema,” Mami had called it, before cooking up a nasty-smelling paste to treat it, made from herbs grown in their garden. Mami freely mixed her nursing training with her knowledge of herbal cures.

  “Ti-Jeanne, tell he to stop drinking that elderberry wine he does brew. I think is that irritating he lip. And tell he to stop smoking. Tobacco does only aggravate eczema.”

  Ti-Jeanne just hoped the ointment would work. Sometimes the plants Mami used had lost their potency, or perhaps were just a weak strain. Too sometime-ish for Ti-Jeanne’s taste. She’d slipped some vitamin B tablets and a tube of anti-inflammatory cream into Mr. Reed’s package. Mami still had lots of that kind of stuff left in her stockpiles.

  Paula and Pavel had set up their awning at the corner of Carlton and Sherbourne, next to the shack from which Bruk-Foot Sam sold reconditioned bicycles. Braces of skinned, gutted squirrels were strung up under Paula and Pavel’s awning. Ti-Jeanne could smell the rankness of the fresh raw meat as she walked by. It must have been the morning’s kill. The couple had claimed the adjacent Allan Gardens park and its greenhouse, which they farmed. In the winter, Paula and Pavel were the Burn’s source of fresh vegetables for those who lacked the resources to import them from outcity. And the overgrown park hid a surprising amount of wild game; pigeons, squirrels; wild dogs and cats for the not too particular. Paula and Pavel defended their territory fiercely. Both brawny people, they each had a large, blood-smeared butcher knife tucked into one boot: warning and advertisement. Nobody gave them much trouble any more, though. It wasn’t worth the personal damages to try to steal from the well-muscled pair. Rumour had it that those who crossed Paula and Pavel ended up in the cookpot. Besides, vegetables and fresh meat were scarce, so people tried to stay on Paula and Pavel’s good side. Those who lived in the Burn were still city people; most preferred to barter or buy from the couple, rather than learn how to trap for themselves.

  Hugely pregnant, Paula was arguing the price of two scrawny squirrels with two gaunt young women who had their arms wrapped possessively around each other. They’d probably take the meat across the street to Lenny’s cookstand, where for a price he’d throw it onto the barbecue next to the unidentifiable flesh he skewered, cooked, and sold for money or barter.

  “Good evening, Ti-Jeanne,” Pavel called out as she went by. He and his wife, Paula, had been lecturers at the University of Toronto before the Riots changed everything. “We got something for your grandmother; leaves from that tree—soursop, I think she calls it?”

  “Yes,” Ti-Jeanne replied. Mami would like that. Soursop leaf tea made a gentle sedative, and the old greenhouse was the only source of the tropical plant.

  “Good,” Pavel said. “Tell your grandma we’ll be by with them later, eh? We’ll trade her for some cough syrup for our little Sasha.”

  Ti-Jeanne nodded, smiled, looked away. In the eleven years since the Riots, she’d had to get used to people talking out loud about her grandmother’s homemade medicines. Among Caribbean people, bush medicine used to be something private, but living in the Burn changed all the rules.

  Ti-Jeanne walked past Church Row. An old woman bundled into two threadbare coats sat shivering on the steps of the Catholic church; maybe from the icy fall air, maybe a buff-trance. The heavy oaken door opened and Pastor Maisonneuve stepped out. His black shirt and dog collar gave him a formal air, despite his patched jeans.

  “Hello, Pamela,” he said to the old woman. “Some lunch for you today?”

  She turned her head slowly, seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes. “R-Reverend, I’m hungry.”

  As Ti-Jeanne walked by, she heard Pastor Maisonneuve say, “All right, dear, but you know the rules. Give me that knife first, then a bath, then you eat.”

  The next place Ti-Jeanne had to pass was Roopsingh’s Roti Parlour: Caribbean and Canadian Food. Nervously she eyed the twitchy huddle of men hanging out in front of the roti shop. Crapaud, Jay, and Crack Monkey, hustlers all, liming till the next job, looking for trouble. She knew them well from her days with Tony. She had always managed to be very busy in Tony’s rooming house kitchen when they came to visit. And, of course, there was Tony, liming with them. She would have to bump into him on her first excursion since Baby had been born. Ti-Jeanne sped up slightly. Tony looked at her. Did she hear him softly say her name? No. He and Crack had put their heads together, whispering about something. Tony didn’t look too pleased at what Crack was telling him.

  Tony was trying to catch her eye. She could feel the pull of his gaze. She risked another glance at him. His features were as fine as she remembered: skin smooth as hot cocoa; square jaw; full, well-defined lips; deep brown eyes. Baby’s eyes looked just like that.

  She should be ignoring Tony, not staring at him like this. She sidestepped a flock of gulls that were fighting loudly as they picked at a near frozen, orange bolus on the ground, probably the sour remains of last night’s meal that someone had vomited onto the sidewalk. Pulse thumping, she began to edge past him and his friends, trying to seem very interested in picking her way through the garbage on the sidewalk.

  As Ti-Jeanne walked past the men, Crack Monkey called out to her, “Hey, sister, is time we get to know one another better, you know!” Big joke. They all laughed, though Tony’s voice sounded nervous.

  “Ah say,” Crack hollered, “is time I get to know you better!”

  The men’s mocking laughter spurred Ti-Jeanne to move faster. She hugged Baby closer to her and scowled at Crack. Tony glared at him, too, but she knew Tony wouldn’t say anything to his boss’s right-hand man.

  Abruptly, the visions were there again. Ti-Jeanne froze, not trusting her eyes any longer to pick reality from fantasy. She was seeing:

  Crack Monkey, a wasted thing, falling to the ground and gasping his last. No one around him would care enough to try to help. (Crick-crack, monkey break he back in a ham sack);

  Crapaud, the old souse, in a run-down privatized hospital, finding the strength to scratch fitfully once more at his bedsores before his final, rattly exhalation. His sphincters would make a wet, bubbly noise as they released their load into his diaper. Cause of death? Metabolic acidosis. Cirrhosis of the liver. Rum. (Down by the river, down by the sea, Johnny break a bottle and blame it on me);

  Jay, killed by love; running to the aid of his sweet
heart, a transvestite hooker who would be attacked when her john realised she was actually a man and pulled a knife. Jay’s death would come from a belly wound. Ti-Jeanne was sure that no one in the posse suspected that Jay was anything but arrow-straight. (Riddle me ree, riddle me ree, guess me this riddle; or perhaps not).

  Ti-Jeanne couldn’t see her own death, or Baby’s. She couldn’t see Tony’s death, not anyone close to her. And she didn’t see blind Crazy Betty until the woman was right in front of her, sightless eyes turned toward Baby, who was snuggled in Ti-Jeanne’s arms, happily gumming the mitten on one tiny fist.

  “That is my child! He’s mine!” shouted the bag lady. Her wrinkled arms reached to pluck Baby away. “What you doin’ with my baby? You can’t make a child pretty so! You did never want he! Give he to me!”

  The old fear of madness made Ti-Jeanne go cold. She jerked Baby out of Crazy Betty’s reach. Alarmed, the child began to wail. Madwoman in front of her. Hard-eyed men just behind. But at least the men had something behind their eyes, some spark of humanity. Ti-Jeanne chose. She turned and ran back the way she’d come.

  “Hey, Ti-Jeanne!” Tony reached for her arm. She yanked it away, pushed between Tony and Crapaud. She dragged the door open and ran into the roti shop. The warm, fragrant air on her face was a shock. How come she was outside, and why was it warm? Ti-Jeanne looked around her, then jumped as she felt Tony’s hand on her shoulder. “Ti-Jeanne, what’s up? You all right?”

  She didn’t answer. She appeared to be in a green tropical meadow. A narrow dirt path ran through it, disappearing in the distance as the road curved gently downward. The scent of frangipani blossoms wafted by on a gentle breeze. Baby stopped fussing.

  A figure came over the rise, leaping and dancing up the path.

  Man-like, man-tall, on long, wobbly legs look as if they hitch on backward. Red, red all over: red eyes, red hair, nasty, pointy red tail jooking up into the air. Face like a grinning African mask. Only is not a mask; the lips-them moving, and it have real teeth behind them lips, attached to real gums. He waving a stick, and even the stick self paint-up red, with some pink and crimson rags hanging from the one end. Is dance he dancing on them wobbly legs, flapping he knees in and out like if he drunk, jabbing he stick in the air, and now I could hear the beat he moving to, hear the words of the chant:

  “Diab’-diab’! Diab’-diab’! Diab’-diab’!”

  Ti-Jeanne shrank back, trying to hide Baby’s face from the terrifying sight. But he chortled and stretched baby-fat hands out in the direction of the Jab-Jab. Tony had more sense. Behind her, she could hear him whisper, “God Almighty! What the hell is that?”

  The Jab-Jab turned its appalling grin of living wood in their direction. It hopped right up to the three of them, split its wooden lips wide, and hissed in their faces—a hot, stiff wind.

  • • • •

  Which was exactly how the roti shop felt. As the tune of the Caribana hit “Raise Your Hand in the Air” crashed against her eardrums, Ti-Jeanne opened her eyes again, to find herself in Roopsingh’s roti shop. As always, the roti shop was hot and noisy. The single, rickety ceiling fan only stirred the super-heated air around. The roti shop smelled of curry and frying oil and stew peas with rice. People pushed to get to the counter, yelling out their orders; raucous soca music blared from the grease-splattered ghetto blaster. In disorientation Ti-Jeanne asked Tony, “What happen? Is where we was?”

  Tony frowned at her. “Huh? We were outside, you started running, I followed you inside. You shouldn’t be scared by Crazy Betty, you know.”

  What was he talking about? Slowly, Ti-Jeanne’s surroundings registered on her and she realised: Tony hadn’t seen what she had! Fear was like ice in her chest. Lately the visions had been growing stronger, more vivid. This was the worst one yet.

  Tony didn’t seem to notice how dazed she was. He turned to the shop owner, a slight, middle-aged East Indian man, and said, “God Almighty, Roopsingh; what the hell is that crap you playing on the stereo?” He was speaking to Roopsingh with almost the same words he’d used in her vision. Showing off as always for her benefit, Tony switched into the creole his parents had spoken to him when he was a child. Tony had been raised in Toronto by Caribbean parents; his speech wavered between creole and Canadian. “You ain’t have anything more tasteful? How many years I coming in here, and all I could hear is some so-so road march?”

  Ti-Jeanne felt the gears slipping between the two worlds.

  Roopsingh’s face crinkled into a grin as he looked up from stirring the huge pot of curry chicken. This game with Tony was an old one. Roopsingh’s response never varied. “You don’t like it, you could take you skinny black ass down the road, you hear? You could always catch a burger and fries from the cookstand Lenny have on the corner. I don’t know where he gettin’ his meat, oui? You might be eatin’ rat burger and thing. But if you don’ like my music, I sure cookstand food good enough for you.”

  “Nah, nah, nah, man, is all right. God, Roopsingh, you know is only joke I joking. You know I would walk any distance, listen to any old bruk-down kaiso, just to taste your roti!”

  Ti-Jeanne couldn’t spare the time for the teasing game both men always played. She had to figure out what to do about the waking dreams. Squeezing past a woman hollering for “two patty and a ginger beer,” she headed for the door.

  Maybe it was just the stress of learning how to cope with a newborn baby. Maybe if she ignored the second sight, it would go away. She dared not tell her grandmother. Lord knew how Mami would react. Ti-Jeanne’s own mother had had a vision one day, back when the Riots were just starting. She’d told Mami about it, and they had quarrelled. Ti-Jeanne’s mother had seemed to go mad in the days after that, complaining that she was hearing voices in her head. Maybe it was hereditary? Ti-Jeanne didn’t want to go mad, too. Her mother had disappeared soon after the voices had started, run away into the craziness that Toronto had become. She had never come back.

  It was just turning dusk; the loungers outside the roti shop had left. The temperature had dropped. A light early snow was falling. Crazy Betty must have crawled away to the abandoned car where she spent her nights. No one in the Burn could figure out how the madwoman knew where she was going. Caught up in her thoughts, Ti-Jeanne was well on her way back to the balm-yard before she realised that Tony was loping after her, leaping the garbage piled up in the gutters to catch up with her.

  “Hey, Ti-Jeanne! Wait for me, nuh? Why’d you run off like that?”

  She turned to glare at him, when what she really wanted to do was smile, brush away the melting snow that was twinkling in his hair. His soft brown eyes had a hurt look to them. Returning his gaze, she felt like that snow, melting.

  “So what’s up?” he asked. “Why haven’t I seen you in so long?” He glanced shyly at the baby.

  “What you want, Tony? I have to get home and feed this child.”

  “I only . . . the baby okay?”

  “What that is to you? Baby okay, baby-mother okay, and we both going home.”

  “I just want to tell you . . . I want you to know . . . I mean, don’t tell anyone, all right, but maybe I’ll be going away soon.” He hesitated, then, “Come with me?”

  Startled, Ti-Jeanne said, “Come with you where? But you can’t just . . . where you going, Tony?”

  “Just away. Can’t tell you yet.”

  Same old Tony, loving drama too bad. Ti-Jeanne heard her irritated voice swinging into her old harangue: “Why you can’t ever just settle down and live good, eh, Tony? What happen to the work Bruk-Foot Sam say he would give you, helping he fix up bicycles?”

  He sucked air through his teeth, making a “steups” sound of disgust. “And what good would that do me? Eh? Penny here, penny there, never enough to really live on, never have anything nice? Is a good way to die poor, Ti-Jeanne! Anyway. I don’t have time for that now. I might have to leave.”

  “Leave and go where!”

  He pursed his lips, frowned. “Maybe out
to one of the ’burbs.”

  “Why, Tony?”

  “Not telling you more than that. Either you come with me, or when you don’t see me, I gone.” He sighed, hesitated, then said quietly, “This posse shit get to be too much for me, Ti-Jeanne. Selling buff here and there is one thing, but man, them posse raggas crazy can’t done, oui? Crack just told me that Rudy’s asking for me.”

  Ti-Jeanne blurted out in dismay: “Posse? Lord, Tony; I thought you tell me you done with that stupidness!”

  “Soon done now, girl. I don’t know what Rudy wants me for, and I don’t want to know. I’m going to get out of here while I still can.”

  “Man, why you can’t use the sense God give you? Is what you gone and mix up with now?”

  “Woman, don’t give me none of that! You don’t understand any of it. Once you’re hooked up with the posse, it’s not so easy to ‘done with that stupidness,’” he mocked her. “Posse come in like Mafia nowadays. I can’t make them think I turn Babylon on them. If I don’t do what them tell me to, next thing you know, you go be bawling over a box with my body in it.”

  “Tony, don’t—”

  “Besides, I thought you done with me . . . you don’t business any more with what I mix up in, right?”

  She opened her mouth to contradict him, to say . . . what? Tell him that she did care about him? Tell him she would stand beside him against the posse, follow him no matter what trouble she’d be going into? Baby squirmed in her arms, clasping at her coat buttons with his tiny mittened hands. Mami Gros-Jeanne had shown her how to knit those mittens. Living with her grandmother, she could give her child a secure life. Ti-Jeanne shook her head at Tony, deliberately made her words harsh, repellent. “Well,” she said acidly, “you lie down with dog, you get up with fleas. Is you get yourself into this, oui? You have to deal with it by yourself, too.”

  But Tony’s face got so sad, Ti-Jeanne couldn’t bear it. She softened a little. “All right, all right. You go on where you going, and when you get settle, send word and let me know. Maybe I come and visit you.”