Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  “Lord have mercy,” said Mami quietly. “Wait right there. I go tell you what this mean.”

  She stood and went into her own bedroom. Ti-Jeanne could hear her rummaging about in the old wooden press in which she kept her valuables.

  As he suckled, Baby’s hands found one of Ti-Jeanne’s plaits and gave it a good pull. Irritably Ti-Jeanne pulled the plait away from him and was about to slap the mischievous hand when Mami came back into the room. “Lord, Ti-Jeanne; just let the child play a little, nuh? Don’t be rough with he so.”

  Ti-Jeanne frowned up at her grandmother. Mami continued, “Ti-Jeanne, I know you did never want no baby. Sometimes you almost feel to just get rid of he, don’t it?”

  Shamed, Ti-Jeanne nodded.

  “Don’t feel no way, darling; children does catch you like that sometimes. It ain’t easy, minding babies, but if you don’t make the time to know you child, you and he will never live good together. I know.”

  “Yes, Mami; sorry, Mami; I go do better.”

  Ti-Jeanne wasn’t really listening. She stared at the deck of brightly coloured cards in Mami’s hand. She’d never seen anything like them. Mami’s eyes followed her gaze. The old woman sat on the bed and fanned the cards out.

  “You know Romni Jenny, who does live in the old Carlton Hotel? She people is Romany people, and she teach me how to read with the tarot cards, way back before you born. This deck is my own. Jenny paint the cards for me, after I tell she what pictures I want.”

  “How come I never see you using them before, Mami?”

  “I used to hide it from you when I was seeing with them. I don’t really know why, doux-doux. From since slavery days, we people get in the habit of hiding we business from we own children even, in case a child open he mouth and tell somebody story and get them in trouble. Secrecy was survival, oui? Is a hard habit to break. Besides, remember I try to teach about what I does do, and you run away?”

  “But Mami, obeah . . .”

  Mami stamped her foot. “Is not obeah! You don’t understand, and you won’t let me teach you, so don’t go putting your bad mouth ’pon me!”

  Ti-Jeanne pouted, but she held her tongue. It felt good to be unburdening her problems to Mami. If she pushed the old woman too far, she would only retreat into silence again.

  The cards were like none Ti-Jeanne had ever seen. Larger than playing cards, they were pictures of men and women dancing in colourful, oversized Carnival costumes.

  The words “Masque Queen” were on one card. The Masque Queen’s costume was a gown of blue and silver sequins with a cloak that dragged behind. Jutting up from the dragging fabric was a city with castles and towers, also in blue and silver. The cloak formed a float that loomed high over the Masque Queen’s head. She clutched a large book in one hand and a wand in the other. She seemed to be performing a graceful pavanne, despite the bulky float she was pulling behind her.

  Ti-Jeanne reached out to touch the cards, then looked at Mami. Her grandmother nodded in encouragement. Ti-Jeanne turned up one card after another. The Five of Cane, five men dancing the Stick Fight; the Jab-Jab; a prancing, nearly naked man, his body completely covered with red paint, horns stuck to his head, and a snaky, rude-looking tail tied on to his body. But thing I see was some kinda animal, thought Ti-Jeanne, not a man in costume.

  Mami took the cards from Ti-Jeanne and began to shuffle them with an economical ease. “These will tell me what your dream is about. Here. Cut the deck.”

  Ti-Jeanne cut. Mami took the pack back from her and laid the cards out on the bed between them. Baby chortled and reached toward the bright colours, but Ti-Jeanne held him out of reach. He had to be content to suck on his own thumb. The cards lay in a cross on the bed. Mami muttered over them, divining the pattern. “Cowrie King reverse, the La-Basse, Ten of Cutlass, and look; see La Diablesse there so? The Devil Woman? Somebody you know in trouble, Ti-Jeanne; somebody mixing up heself in some business he can’t handle.”

  Tony; I did feel so, thought the younger woman. “What kind of trouble, Mami?”

  “I don’t know, darling, but wherever La Diablesse go, she leave death behind she.”

  The two women stared somberly at the image on the card, a tall, arrogant-looking mulatto woman in traditional plantation dress and head-tie. Her smile was sinister, revealing sharpened fangs. Behind her ran a river, red like blood.

  Mami resumed, “When the Cowrie King card come in upside-down, it mean a man in trouble, a dark man, maybe a Black man. And the trouble have to do with money. Is that Tony, ain’t it?” She stared accusingly at Ti-Jeanne. “You still seein’ that sweet-talking sagaboy?”

  Ti-Jeanne felt her face heat up with embarrassment. Mami always seemed to know her secrets. “No, Mami, I ain’t seein’ he, really. I just bump into he on the street last night.” No need to tell her grandmother about the conversation she had had with Tony.

  “Ti-Jeanne, I want you to leave that boy alone. I don’t want you to mix up with he and the posse.”

  Ti-Jeanne stared down at the baby asleep in her arms. He frowned in his sleep, just like Tony did. She took a deep breath for courage. “I know Tony is nothing but trouble, Mami, but he is my baby-father. He have a right to get to know the baby, ain’t?” She had no idea why she was fighting for Tony like this. She hadn’t even planned to tell him that Baby was his child, much less allow Tony to visit him. She wondered if Tony would want to come to know the child he’d fathered. Mami opened her mouth, probably to protest, but Ti-Jeanne interrupted her:

  “Mami, you ain’t want to know the rest of my dream? The little boy come running down the alleyway, and La Diablesse jump on he and fasten she teeth in he throat. I could see blood running down he neck and he screaming, screaming.”

  Mami looked horrified. Satisfied that her grandmother hadn’t noticed the change of subject, Ti-Jeanne continued, “And is me who stop La Diablesse. I grab she, and wrestle she down to the ground, and break a bottle over she head. A blue bottle. She lie down there and turn to ashes.” She’d kept telling the story only to distract Mami from talking about Tony, but now Ti-Jeanne felt herself pulled back into the dread of the dream that had been haunting her for weeks. She whispered, “You know what, Mami? I ’fraid. I ain’t know what it is I seeing, but I ’fraid too bad.”

  Baby began to cry, twisting his tiny body and wailing in despair.

  Someone was knocking at the door.

  “Ti-Jeanne, go and see who that is, coming here so early in the morning. It might be Pavel; Paula baby due any day now.”

  But it wasn’t Pavel. Tony stood in the doorway, looking back nervously over one shoulder. Ti-Jeanne put her hand on her hip and stared a challenge at him.

  He licked his lips nervously. “I could come in, doux-doux? I have to talk to you and your grandmother.” As he spoke, he plucked nervously at the shoulder straps of a knapsack he was wearing. Its design was odd—a broad, flattish square.

  Tony hadn’t braved her doorway in a long time. Ti-Jeanne felt her face get hot at her second encounter with him in two days. Not trusting herself to speak to him, she hoisted Baby into a more comfortable position on her hip and simply stood back to let him in. He closed the door quickly behind him.

  “Is Tony, Mami,” she shouted to the upper level of the cottage.

  A loud kiss-teeth sound came from inside. “Speak of the devil,” Mami said as she clumped down the stairs to confront Tony. “What trouble you bringing for we now?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mistress Gros-Jeanne, but you and Ti-Jeanne are the only two people I have to turn to. I really need help.” Tony looked imploringly at Ti-Jeanne. In his nervousness, he had taken the woolen tam off his head and was twisting it into a rag between his hands.

  Mami’s mouth set hard. “The only help you getting is to help yourself out from my front door, oui. Stupidness.”

  “Mami, let we hear what he have to say, nuh?”

  “No! Ti-Jeanne, you have to break good with this good-for-nothing boy, or you go fi
nd yourself mix up in he story again. You see it in the cards for yourself; whatever Tony get into with he posse this time, he ain’t getting out of just so.” Mami hissed at Tony, “Get your worthless self out of my house now, before I put mal ’jo upon you!” She advanced on him, eyes narrowed, one hand held up above and behind her head—to slap or to conjure, Ti-Jeanne didn’t know.

  Tony blanched. He turned for the door. The words came bubbling out of Ti-Jeanne before she knew what she was saying. “Tony, you stay right here. This is my home, and you is a guest. Mami, stop frightening the man. You know your heart too soft to put evil eye on anybody.”

  For some reason, Baby chortled out loud just then.

  “Child,” Mami spat at Ti-Jeanne, “I used to change your diapers. Don’t give me this back talk in my own house!” Mami Gros-Jeanne’s bottom lip was quivering with anger.

  Ti-Jeanne remembered how the back of Mami’s hand used to feel when it connected with her face. But I is a big woman now, she thought. She ain’t beat me for years. She gathered her courage around her and stood up to the old woman again.

  “I ain’t mean to be rude to you, Mami, but I want to hear what Tony have to say. Let we sit down and listen to he, nuh? Just listening can’t hurt.”

  Mami cut her eyes at Ti-Jeanne and sucked her teeth, but she said no more. She went and sat stiff-backed in one of the wooden chairs in the front room. Ti-Jeanne felt her heart leap in triumph. Mami had given in!

  Ti-Jeanne sat on the couch, pointing out another chair to Tony as she did so. “Take a seat, Tony.” Act normal, girl. “Ah, you want some mint tea?”

  Mami looked daggers at Ti-Jeanne, said nothing.

  I think I enjoying this, Ti-Jeanne thought.

  Tony shook his head in response to her question and refused the chair she indicated. “I don’t have time for that now. I have to do this quickly. Don’t want to make Crack suspicious.”

  Ti-Jeanne made a face, thinking of Crack Monkey with his mean, ferret-like eyes.

  “All right, then, ask we what you have to ask we.”

  Tony closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and briefly told them the story.

  “Jesus, Tony!”

  “That man wants me to kill somebody for him, and I can’t do it. I tried. . . .”

  “What!” Ti-Jeanne exclaimed. “You try to do what?”

  “God, Ti-Jeanne, you don’t understand—I went out with Crack tonight. That was the agreement. We went on a prowl, looking for likely donors, you know, people who looked healthy, but maybe like no one would miss them? Street people, shit like that. He, he cold-cocked a couple of them so I could check their blood types. In alleyways and stuff, where no one would see us.”

  Outraged, Ti-Jeanne just gaped at him. She clutched Baby closer to her.

  “Don’t look at me so! I couldn’t do it, you don’t understand? The first two weren’t the right blood type. The third one, it wouldn’t have mattered if she was. Hepatitis eating her up. When Crack started stalking the fourth one, I told him I couldn’t do any more that night, that I was feeling sick. He laughed at me. Said I’d better find the stomach to do the job, or Rudy would set him on me. I thought he was my friend. He smiled at me. No humour in that smile. Is like my soul just shrivelled up and died inside me to see that smile. I’ve seen Crack do some things I don’t want to think about. On the street, they say that Crack would follow the Devil himself into hell to fetch him back for Rudy.”

  “Yes,” Mami said bitterly. “Rudy have a way to get what he want, oui?”

  Tony looked at her with frightened eyes. “Mistress Gros-Jeanne, I’m begging you. You could work a obeah for me? You could hide me from them people?”

  Mami just sneered at him. “For why? Far as I concern, if them do for you, is nothing but good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “Mami!”

  “Good riddance, I say! Ti-Jeanne, what this mamapoule man ever do for you? You don’t see he is a fool?”

  Baby chortled, cooing and pulling at Ti-Jeanne’s hair. Probably he was enjoying all the noise and carrying on. Mami turned on Tony again. “Any idiot could have tell you this is the kind of thing that does happen when you mess up in that Rudy business! Playing big man, saying you running with posse, selling dope. You know how many patients I get because of people like you? You know how many of them draw them last breath in my hands? Is best the posse kill you, yes; one less murderer on the streets!”

  “Mami!” Ti-Jeanne was almost glad for the flush of indignation she felt. It kept her from thinking too much about the enormity of what Tony had done. “Tony begging your help. Is so you talk to people? He is my guest!” Ti-Jeanne’s heart was pounding, her hands sweating. She’d never crossed Mami in anything before; what had gotten into her tonight?

  The old woman leaned toward Ti-Jeanne, shook a cold-chapped finger in her face. “Guest? What make you turn big woman and have any ‘guest’? This is my house! If I say go, both of allyou go have to leave!”

  And there it was. Out in the open. Mami expected Ti-Jeanne to dance to her tune or find somewhere else to live. A cold anger washed over Ti-Jeanne. “All right, then, Mami. We go do that. Come, Tony. Let we go talk somewhere private.”

  She stood up and marched toward the front door, Baby on her hip, Tony following uncertainly after her. She had one foot through the door before Mami said quietly, “Wait, Ti-Jeanne. Come back, doux-doux.”

  Ti-Jeanne couldn’t believe her ears. From stubborn, closemouthed Mami, that simple request was a plea. She turned back and stared at her grandmother. “What you say?”

  Mami Gros-Jeanne stood in the living room, her eyes brimming with tears. “Don’t go. Don’t get vex and leave. Is just so your mother did leave me, in anger. I ain’t see she from that day to this. Stay nuh, Ti-Jeanne?”

  The loneliness in the old woman’s eyes tore at Ti-Jeanne. But she wasn’t going to give in so easily, not the first time that Mami had ever acknowledged that she was an adult in her own right. “If I stay, Mami, you have to talk to Tony.”

  Her grandmother scowled. Her lips worked in frustration. Then, “All right,” she growled, almost too softly to hear.

  “And you go try to help he?”

  Mami glared at Tony. “That ain’t for me to say. Suppose the spirits don’t want to help he?”

  “Don’t beat around the bush, Mami. You go try?”

  “Yes.”

  Trying to hide her smile of triumph, Ti-Jeanne took Tony’s hand boldly in hers (the rough, warm feel of it, the way it completely covered her own hand, the granulated line of the scar where he’d taken a knife cut in the Riots) and came back into the parlour, her baby in her arms and his father at her side.

  “I can’t stay,” Tony muttered uncertainly, “I have to leave tonight—”

  “I ain’t promising nothing, you understand,” Mami interrupted him, “but maybe I could help you get out of town, past the eyes of the posse. I could try and make it so them can’t see you or hear you.”

  “Oh God, thank you, Mistress Gros-Jeanne.”

  Defiantly she straightened her shoulders. “But allyou have to stop calling the thing ‘obeah.’ I don’t work the dead, I serve the spirits and I heal the living.”

  “Yes, Mami.”

  “And I have one more condition. You have to leave Ti-Jeanne here with me.”

  Ti-Jeanne began to protest. Mami held out her hands pleadingly. “Just for a while, doux-doux, just until you learn about your seer gift.”

  “I don’t want to know ’bout it, Mami!”

  “Child, is not just me being selfish, trying to keep you with me. If you don’t learn to use the gift, things going to go hard with you. You want to come like the crazy people it have wandering the streets? Eh? Not knowing if you have clothes on your back or what day it is, just walking, walking and seeing all kinda thing that ain’t there, not knowing what real and what is vision? Is that you want, Ti-Jeanne? That is just stupidness!”

  Ti-Jeanne thought of Crazy Betty and how the mad, blind woman
had frightened her that afternoon. She swallowed. “Okay, Mami. I go stay for now.” She took a deep breath. “But when Tony leave here tonight, I want to go with he, only as far as the highway. I want to see that he get away safe. Then I go come back.”

  Mami pursed her lips and scowled at Tony again. She frowned. “All right, doux-doux. I go make it so the posse people wouldn’t be able to see neither you nor Tony.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Moonlight tonight,

  Come make we dance and sing.

  —Traditional song

  Mami said they had to wait until nighttime to do the ritual. Throughout that day, Mami kept Ti-Jeanne busy, one eye on her at all times. Ti-Jeanne made the cornmeal porridge and fried dumplings they had for breakfast, Mami right beside her to make sure that she sprinkled some brown sugar into the dumpling batter and that the porridge didn’t burn. Like she didn’t know how, after all these years. But it was good to see some of the life come back into Tony’s face as he ate. God knew how he was eating, now that he was living by himself again. He smiled a thanks at Ti-Jeanne, and she felt her face get hot. She had scarcely finished eating her own meal when Mami decided she needed help bringing in the washing from the line they had strung between the house and the small barn. Mami didn’t usually let her bring in the wash, claimed that she didn’t know how to fold the clothes properly and always put wrinkles in them. But today Ti-Jeanne was corralled into carrying the laundry basket as Mami dropped the clean, dry clothing into it. Mami was giving her a lecture on the best way to fold sleeves. Ti-Jeanne wondered what Tony was doing. Her grandmother was obviously trying to keep her from being alone with him. She needn’t have worried; Ti-Jeanne was trying to avoid him, too. It made her uncomfortable to have him so near. She felt confused and unhappy, the same way she’d felt when she had left Tony’s rooming house to come back to her grandmother’s to have her baby. In her head, she kept going over the litany of Tony’s faults: he drank too much, he was lazy, he ran drugs for Rudy. But his smile made her feel like she was flying.