Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  Ti-Jeanne didn’t place too much stock in Mami’s bush doctor remedies. Sometimes herbs lost their potency, stored through Toronto’s long, bitter winters. And they had to guess at dosages. For instance, willow bark made a good painkiller, but too much of it caused internal bleeding. Ti-Jeanne would have preferred to rely on commercial drugs. They could still get them, and Mami’s nursing training had taught her how to dispense them. People brought stuff to her nearly every day, loot hoarded from drugstores during the Riots that had happened after the bankrupt city had disbanded its police force. People often had no idea what the Latin names on the packages meant; they just hoped it would be something Mami would consider to be fair payment to treat whatever ailed them. She had built up quite a stockpile of antibiotics and painkillers, so Ti-Jeanne didn’t understand why Mami insisted on trying to teach her all that old-time nonsense. If Mami didn’t know how to cure something, she could look it up in one of the growing piles of medical books lining the walls of the cottage.

  Only half listening to the old lady’s muttering, Ti-Jeanne fretted silently about Tony. Suppose the posse boss realised that he was trying to make a break for it?

  • • • •

  When horse dead, cow get fat.

  —Traditional saying

  Fretfully, Uttley shifted a little under the thin blue sheets, glancing over at the telemetry readout beside her bed as she did so. Even that slight movement sent the three green lines of the readout careening into a crazy S-curve before it settled back down into the irregular, thready rhythm of her failing heart. Catherine Uttley lay back in her hospital bed and brooded. Anything more strenuous than that exhausted her alarmingly quickly. Cool it, girl, she told herself. Stick this one out, and you’ll sail right into another five-year term.

  The Ontario premier had never been physically strong, but she’d always kept in the best shape that she could: healthy diet, as much exercise as her work and her body, weakened by meningitis as a child, would allow. She’d refused to accept the fact that her health would eventually fail her. But of course it had. When the doctors first confirmed that she was going into heart failure, she’d been furious, so much so that they’d hospitalized her immediately, fearing that her soaring blood pressure would bring on a full-blown heart attack. She’d been livid. Damn it, there were senators twenty years her senior still hale and hearty!

  It was Constantine’s visit that had put her on an even keel again. Good man. A lot of people underestimated her soft-spoken policy advisor with his smooth, nothing features and his smooth, nothing body. She’d laughed with him about it often, called him her spin doctor. Doctor Shark. He’d shown up that day while she was sulking in her hospital room. It seemed like he’d just materialised, so nondescript that it was hard to remember just when he’d entered a room. He’d sat down quietly on one of the standard hospital-issue green plastic chairs.

  She’d greeted him gloomily. “Come to get me to transfer the reins?”

  “Premier, you understand that this is an opportunity for you, not a setback?”

  “Fuck you. I don’t understand anything of the sort. Election in seven months, and I’ve hit rock bottom in the polls. They’re going to vote for Brunner, damn his tanned, muscled hide. Or Lewis, God forbid, with her smarmy make-work programs.”

  “Madam Premier,” Constantine had said then in his lecturing voice, “your voter pop’s been down ever since the Temagami thing. Brunner’s been a shoe-in for months.”

  “Constantine, you know I had to give the blasted Indians their blasted stewardship. I practically had orders from the feds, what with Amnesty International breathing down our necks. Their international sanctions had been starving the Canadian economy for years. We needed to be able to export Temagami pine and water again.”

  Her telemetry’d gone sailing off the scale. A nurse stuck her head in the door. “I’m all right,” Uttley said irritably, waving her away. “I’ll be good.”

  “Seriously, Premier,” Constantine continued. “Fact of the matter is, once you get a new heart, you’ll be back on your feet in two, three months. And when you go on air before the operation and announce that you won’t have it unless it’s a human heart—”

  “What?!”

  “Calm down, calm down. Here, lie back. Let me get you a glass of water.”

  “Constantine, sit the hell down and tell me what you’ve got up that greasy sleeve of yours.”

  Constantine took his palmbook out of his attaché case, tapped in a code, and held it out for her. “The latest polls. Support for porcine organ farms since VE made its appearance.”

  The disease that had jumped from pigs to humans through the an-antigenic porcine organ farms was so new that the scientists had only named it “Virus Epsilon.” The acronym had stuck. Uttley glanced at the graph. “Yes?”

  Constantine tapped in some more data. “Twenty-three percent of those polled are voters. Look at what happens to your chances of reelection when we sway them to your side by having you bring back voluntary human organ donation.” He keyed in a new chart. Uttley felt her eyebrows rise at the result: 62 percent voter support in her favour.

  “Nice,” she said. “And we get them to vote for me by telling them I’m going to die because I insist on a medical procedure that no longer exists?”

  “You’ll make it exist again. Introduce a bill to the House. Use VE to justify the need for the bill. Make a statement to the press that you’re convinced that this is the safe, moral way to go: ‘People Helping People,’ you’re going to call it. Tell them you’re so determined that you’ll back your words with your life; you’ve demanded the medical system find you a compatible human heart, and you’re imploring the public to sign the voluntary organ donor cards you’re going to distribute in all the local papers. Tell them you’ll refuse the operation unless it’s a human heart. Voters’ll eat it up.”

  Uttley smiled. “You son of a bitch. I’m going to dazzle them with my moral courage!”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what happens if I don’t find a human heart in time? I don’t suppose any of the hospitals follow voluntary organ donor protocols any longer.”

  “Oh,” Constantine replied mildly, “I’ve got some leads. Besides, if it comes down to the wire and they have to operate before finding one, just put in a pig heart. We’ll make up some story to cover.”

  It was a brilliant plan, and it was working beautifully. Polls showed her support at 58 percent and rising. Only one problem—no donor yet. Very few people were completing the donor cards. Seemed people weren’t prepared to signs parts of themselves over after all, even if they were never going to use them again. Human heart or no, her doctor was determined to operate within the next few days. “I don’t care what you tell the media we put into your chest, Premier, but by next week, I’m going to have a healthy heart beating in there.”

  Uttley tapped at the remote in her hand to raise the head of the bed a little higher. Yes, that was better: she could breathe a little more easily now. Slowly she slid over to the side of the bed, got her palmbook from the bedside drawer. She lay back again, gasping as though she’d just run a marathon. When she could find the energy, she punched in the number. “Constantine? Found a donor yet?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bluebird, bluebird, through my window,

  Oh, Mummy! I’m tired.

  —Ring game

  Ti-Jeanne was having the usual nightmare. This night, as every night, it startled her awake. She opened her eyes into the dark of the tiny bedroom. Nothing there. The weeping echoing in her ears was only Baby, crying for his four A.M. feed.

  “Lord, keep quiet, nuh? I coming!” Ti-Jeanne stumbled over to the narrow crib, changed the fussing child, then brought him back to her bed to feed him. Sitting up against the headboard, Baby in her arms, she drowsed, lulled by his rhythmic sucking. She started to think about Tony again.

  It hadn’t been Ti-Jeanne’s decision to leave Tony; it was Baby’s. Three months into her pregnancy, the
bolom inside her had begun to move. It would kick, making Ti-Jeanne think of the shoes those kicking feet would soon need. And clothes, too. And food for its growing body. Those things had to be bartered or paid for. When she was with Mami, she could at least earn her keep by preparing poultices and wrapping bandages. Grateful customers would give her goods and sometimes money. Mami said anything she got was her own, so she lived well by helping her grandmother.

  When she’d gone to live with Tony, though, they survived mostly on what he could bring in by running errands for the posse. Roopsingh kept asking her if she didn’t want to work in his nightclub. The back of Roopsingh’s restaurant was actually a club that opened late in the evening hours and went until cockcrow. Roopsingh hand-picked the attractive waiters and waitresses who danced in the floor shows and hooked on the side. They made good money, but it wasn’t for her. In any case, Tony wouldn’t have let her do it. So even though she hated his involvement with the posse, hated him selling drugs, she put up with it, believing he would find honest work soon.

  When she became pregnant, she had known it almost immediately. She’d worked too long for Mami not to know the signs. As she fought down the nausea every morning, she began to worry about how she’d look after the baby. Tony wouldn’t be much help. He was too flighty to make a good father.

  Ti-Jeanne had tried to ignore the thoughts fighting in her head; she wanted to think only of Tony. Tony’s hands on her body, making her skin tingle. Tony’s lips, whispering honey, following where his hands had been. She resented being forced to think about the future, about anything but Tony. Resentment battled with the urge to care for the baby growing inside her. The two feelings fought and grew, swelling as her belly swelled. Love and resentment scrabbled, punched, kicked inside her till she had thought she was carrying triplets and her belly would burst with the weight. Finally she went back to her grandmother, who had simply made a kiss-teeth noise of disgust, then brought her fresh sheets for the bed in her old room.

  • • • •

  Ti-Jeanne opened her eyes. Baby had drunk his fill and gone back to sleep, one tiny fist still clutching absently at her breast. She sighed; went and settled him in the crib; turned as she heard a step behind her. Mami?

  The back of Ti-Jeanne’s neck prickled at what she saw:

  A fireball whirl in through the window glass like if the glass ain’t even there. It settle down on the floor and turn into a old, old woman, body twist-up and dry like a chew-up piece a sugar cane. She flesh red and wet and oozing all over, like she ain’t have no skin. Blue flames running over she body, up she arms, down the two cleft hooves she have for legs, but it look like she ain’t even self feeling the fire. She ol’-lady dugs dripping blood instead of milk. She looking at me and laughing kya-kya like Mami does do when something sweet she, but I ain’t want to know what could sweet a Soucouyant so. The thing movin’ towards me now, klonk-klonk with it goat feet. It saying something, and I could see the pointy teeth in she mouth, and the drool running down them:

  “Move aside, sweetheart, move aside.” She voice licking like flame inside my head. “Is the baby I want. You don’t want he, ain’t it? So give him to me, nuh, doux-doux? I hungry. I want to suck he eyeballs from he head like chennette fruit. I want to drink the blood from out he veins, sweet like red sorrel drink. Stand aside, Ti-Jeanne.”

  Terrified as she was, Ti-Jeanne stood firm beside the crib, planting her body between Baby and the hag. She would not let it have her child! The Soucouyant tried to get around her, but Ti-Jeanne blocked its way. Lord help me! she thought.

  Another figure ran in through the doorway on jokey backward legs. Oh God, not the Jab-Jab!

  The Jab-Jab stopped behind the Soucouyant and with a bamboo-clack of a voice called out, “Old lady! Like you don’t know me?”

  The Soucouyant forgot Baby and turned to spit fire at the Jab-Jab, but the flames didn’t reach him. Brandishing his stick to block her way, the Jab-Jab threw something to the ground from the other hand—rice grains? They scattered all over the floor. The Soucouyant stiffened up when she saw the rice, then dropped to her knees. Ti-Jeanne didn’t understand. Why was the creature picking up the rice grains and counting them? Why wasn’t she fighting back?

  Now the Jab-Jab was dancing around the Soucouyant, hitting her with the stick, and shouting, “Yes, you old witch, you!” (Whap! with the stick.) “Bloodsucker!” (Whap!) “Is my spell on you now: count the rice!” (Whap!) “I bet you don’t finish before sunup! Is where you hide you skin? Eh?” (Whap!) “You not gettin’ back inside it tonight, I tell you!” (Whap!) “Baby blood not for you! You must leave little children alone!” (Whap!)

  With her back against the crib, Ti-Jeanne watched the bizarre battle. Crouched on the floor, the Soucouyant tried to scuttle away from the Jab-Jab’s rain of blows and struggled to count the grains of rice, picking them up one by one with her wrinkled fingers, trying to keep them cupped in one shaking hand. But with each blow that connected with her oozing, skinless back, the grains of rice flew from her hand and she had to start all over again. The Jab-Jab danced around her, taunting, striking. The Soucouyant shrieked in terror and frustration and spat flame at the wooden creature.

  It seemed as if the battle had been going on for hours. Then the Jab-Jab yelled, “Ti-Jeanne! Draw back the curtain!” Baffled, terrified, Ti-Jeanne edged over to the window and pulled the curtains open. The first light of the morning sun shone full on the Soucouyant. She screamed, threw her hands up to ward off the killing light, and dissolved into smoking ash. The Jab-Jab grinned at Ti-Jeanne. It said, “Soucouyant can’t stand the sun, you know.”

  And vanished.

  They were really gone. Sobbing, Ti-Jeanne checked on Baby, who was still sleeping soundly.

  “Ti-Jeanne! What you crying for, child? What happen to Baby?” Never asleep for long, Mami came bustling officiously into the room.

  “No, Mami—watch out for the rice!” Ti-Jeanne rushed to prevent her grandmother from tripping, grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked down. The floor was bare. Mami frowned at the clean linoleum, met Ti-Jeanne’s eyes: “Doux-doux, why you think it have rice on the floor in front of the baby bed?”

  Ti-Jeanne threw herself into Mami’s arms, sobbing as she tried to explain. Mami walked her over to the single bed, sat down with her, and listened while Ti-Jeanne gulped out the story of what she’d seen. “Mami, this ain’t the first time I see something like this. I going mad like Mummy, ain’t it?”

  At that, Mami’s gentle air vanished. She pulled back and frowned at Ti-Jeanne. “This happen to you before?”

  Ti-Jeanne shrank back into herself. “Two-three times now, Mami,” she mumbled, looking down at the floor.

  Mami grabbed her wrist and held on tight, forcing Ti-Jeanne to make eye contact with her. “Two-three time? Child, why you never tell me what was goin’ on with you?”

  Sullenly Ti-Jeanne replied, “What I was to tell you, Mami? I don’t want to know nothing ’bout obeah, oui.”

  Mami shook a finger in front of Ti-Jeanne’s face. “Girl child, you know better than to call it obeah. Stupidness. Is a gift from God Father. Is a good thing, not a evil thing. But child, if you don’t learn how to use it, it will use you, just like it take your mother.”

  Frightened, Ti-Jeanne could only stare at her grandmother. She remembered that night so many years ago. She had been only nine years old, living with her mother and grandmother in a cramped, run-down apartment in Saint James’ Town. The city was still being governed but was gradually collapsing economically as transfer payments from the province dwindled, taxes rose, and money, businesses, and jobs fled outward to the ’burbs. Young Ti-Jeanne didn’t really understand what was going on, but she could sense people’s resentment and apprehension wherever she went. She and her mother, Mi-Jeanne, used to share a bedroom. That particular night, Mi-Jeanne had woken up screaming. She’d dreamt of people trapped in some sort of box, drowning as water rushed in through its windows. She’d dreamt of angry fights in t
he streets, heavy blows breaking glass, of heads being blown apart like melons. Mami had tried to calm her, but Mi-Jeanne had become hysterical. The Riots had started a week later. For Ti-Jeanne, they were mixed up in her mind with memories of her mother lying helpless in her bed, besieged with images of the worst of the rioting before it happened. Mi-Jeanne refused her mother’s help. She spat out all of Mami’s potions and screamed at her to stop her prayers. And the power of the visions had driven her mad.

  Mami’s voice broke into Ti-Jeanne’s reverie. “It look like you turn seer woman like Mi-Jeanne, doux-doux. I could help you. No time to waste. Your education start now. Tell me about your visions, nuh?”

  So Ti-Jeanne began describing her visions to the old woman: the Jab-Jab, the Soucouyant, the nightmare she had had every night now for three weeks. As she spoke, Baby woke, crying for his morning feeding. Ti-Jeanne gave him the breast and continued to talk:

  “And in this dream I have now, I does see a tall, tall woman in a old-fashioned dress, long all the way down to the floor. She head tie-up in a scarf, and Mami, she teeth pointy like shark teeth!”

  “What her feet them look like?”

  “She have one good foot and one hoof like a goat.”

  “Jeezam Peace, child! La Diablesse visitin’ you! What she does do in your dream?”

  “I does see creeping through the streets at night. She have a glow around she, like she cover up in fire, but nobody ain’t seeing she. She does be hiding in alleyways and thing, just waiting, waiting. And then a street kid does come walking down the alleyway, whistling to heself, not looking around. And I could see the woman getting ready to spring out at the little boy. And all I screaming and crying at the boy to turn back, to run away, he don’ hear me; he just keep coming closer and closer.”