Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  Mami must have sent Tony to fetch water from the lower pond at the bottom of the hill. Ti-Jeanne could see him struggling back up the pathway with two full buckets. His strength and grace were obvious, even dressed as he was in a bulky windbreaker. He stopped for a rest and looked her way. Ti-Jeanne glanced down at her feet. Tony had been fired from the hospital for using buff; he was irresponsible. Still, she found herself wondering if his windbreaker was warm enough. Maybe she would knit him a pair of gloves for the winter. Jenny spun wool from their sheep into yarn. . . .

  Mami dumped a pile of clothing into her basket with such force that she almost dropped it.

  “Keep your mind on your work, Ti-Jeanne!” she scolded. “Nothing in your head but man.”

  “Mami, you know that ain’t fair.”

  Mami kissed her teeth in disgust but said nothing more. Since Ti-Jeanne had successfully stood up to her grandmother this morning, she was feeling more self-assured. Something had changed between them. They were two women now, no longer an adult and a child.

  Tony carried the buckets into the kitchen and came out a few minutes later with Baby in his arms. To Ti-Jeanne’s surprise, he had thought to dress the child warmly against the fall air. Too warmly. Baby was probably sweaty and uncomfortable in the heavy winter bunting that Tony had put him in, but at least he wouldn’t catch a chill. Tony sat on the porch steps and tried to play with Baby, chucking him under the chin and making silly noises at him. The child squirmed in his arms and whimpered for his mother.

  “Mami,” Ti-Jeanne said, “I should go and get Baby. He ain’t take to Tony.”

  “Hmph. Child got some sense, then. More than some I could name. But leave he there. He have to learn that he can’t always have what he want.”

  Two of the cows in the paddock started lowing mournfully. Their udders were full.

  “Mami, I have to go and milk the cow-them.”

  It looked as though the old woman were going to protest, but just then there was a knocking at the front gate. A gaggle of street kids stood there. Mami hurried over to let them in. There were about five of them, carrying a sixth in a sling made of their dirty hands clasped together. It was a little girl, her leg swollen and bruised and twisted at a strange angle. Her mouth was open wide, eyes squinched shut tight as she tried not to cry from the pain. Street kids learned early not to make too much noise.

  “Come. Bring her inside,” Mami said, switching to the more standard English she used when she was speaking to non-Caribbean people.

  The little girl whimpered, clutched at her friends. “No, no! She’s a witch! She’s going to eat me! Don’t make me go in there!”

  “Just shut up, Susie!” said the eldest of the children, a young woman of about fifteen with matted hair and torn clothing. “If you don’t behave, I’ll let her eat you, too. I told you not to go jumping off things.” Despite her fierceness, the young woman looked worried for the little girl.

  “Is all right,” Mami told her. She knelt, bringing herself eye level with Susie, who cringed to have her so close.

  “Susie,” Mami said gently, “my name is Mistress Hunter, and you know what I like to eat?”

  Susie’s eyes opened wide. “B-bones?”

  Mami shook her head. “Apples,” she replied. “Apples, and pears, and chestnuts, and strawberries, and raspberries. But I don’t eat bones. And I don’t eat children. See,” she said, pointing to Ti-Jeanne, “this is my granddaughter. I didn’t eat her, did I? She lived with me, and grew up with me, from a little girl into a big woman. And you see she’s fine?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Susie.

  “Well, then. So that proves I don’t eat children.”

  Susie still looked doubtful. Mami said, “Does your leg hurt, doux-doux?”

  “Yes. We was playin’ on the old rusty cars over by the orange building there? We was jumping down into the leaves, you know, the way the wind piles the leaves up? It’s real soft and everything. Only I landed on a big rock inside one of the piles.”

  “Made a big crack, like a old tree branch breaking,” volunteered a little boy of about seven. He reached for Susie’s hand.

  Susie’s lip began to quiver. “It hurts so bad. Is it broken? Is my leg broken?”

  “I think so, darling. If you let your friends bring you inside, I can look at it, and give you something to make the pain go away.”

  “No,” quavered the little girl, shaking her head from side to side, eyes wide. She put her hand to her mouth, started chewing on a knuckle. “You’re gonna eat me.”

  “I tell you what, Susie. Your friends can watch me the whole time I’m examining you. They’ll make sure I don’t hurt you.”

  “Can Clem hold my hand?”

  “Until you’re ready to let go, sweetheart.” Mami smiled at Susie. The little girl looked at her, then looked at the young woman who’d brought her.

  “’S okay, Susie,” she said. We’ll watch out for you.”

  “Well, okay, then.”

  Mami reached out a palm to Susie, who hesitated for a second, then tentatively put her free hand in Mami’s. She held tight to Mami’s and Clem’s hands while the human train carried her into the cottage. Ti-Jeanne had seen her grandmother do this many times: soothe wild things, get their trust. The turtles in the lower pond would take food from her hand. Harold, the irritable goat who always tried to butt Ti-Jeanne, followed Mami like a dog and would nuzzle his head against her leg. In return, Mami ate almost no meat. At most, the animals that were old or sick. She would ask them if they were ready to go, and Ti-Jeanne could swear that she had seen egg-bound hens and lame horses stagger gratefully toward the knife. Ti-Jeanne had once jokingly complained to Tony that the only meat she got at Mami’s was old and tough. Mami and Roopsingh had even fallen out over it, because Mami refused to sell him any goats for his curry.

  The children took Susie into the room Mami used to treat patients. Ti-Jeanne and Tony followed her in. Ti-Jeanne took Baby and soothed his fussing. Mami helped the children to gently lay the little girl down on the examining table.

  “Now,” she said to Susie, “I’m going to have to feel your leg to see if it’s broken.”

  “W-will it hurt?”

  “Yes, it’ll probably hurt, but not for long. And if I have to put it in a cast, I’ll give you something to sleep so that you don’t feel anything. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, but she didn’t release Clem’s hand for an instant.

  “Mistress Hunter,” Tony said shyly, “I could help. Mix the plaster and like that. If you want.”

  Mami looked at him suspiciously. “You sure you remember any nursing at all?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then. You stay, too. But you don’t touch nothing until I tell you, then you do exactly what I say.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Susie,” Mami said, “I want to put a good meal in everyone’s belly. You mind if the other children go into the kitchen and eat? Clem will be here with you the whole time.”

  Susie looked doubtful.

  “Don’t worry ’bout it, Suze,” said Clem. “I’ll be right here. Old lady tries anything, I’ll pop her one and yell for the others.”

  The harsh words sounded strange in his high child’s voice. Mami simply raised an eyebrow at him. Resentment twinged in Ti-Jeanne’s breast. If she had ever said anything so disrespectful to Mami, her grandmother would have clouted her behind.

  Susie agreed to let the others go and be fed.

  “Make them some porridge,” Mami told Ti-Jeanne absentmindedly, already concentrating on Susie.

  Feeling somehow left out, Ti-Jeanne sullenly herded the smelly children to the kitchen in the back of the cottage. She wished she could make them all bathe before touching anything. She wondered if any of them were the ones who’d tried to pick her pocket the day before.

  In the kitchen, the eldest girl said to Ti-Jeanne, “I’m Josée.” Josée’s voice was harsh from smoking cigarettes. Ti-Jeanne could smell t
he jungle breath and see the yellow nicotine stains on the young woman’s teeth. “I look after them. I’m, like, their mum.”

  “Why? It must be hard enough to survive alone on the street. Why take on the responsibility for other lives, too?”

  “B’cause somebody did it for me. Old Gavin. So I show them. We stick together, we can watch out for each other, Old Gavin says. We have rules. Anybody gets out of line, they’re out.” She spoke louder to get the children’s attention:

  “Hey! Listen up! This lady’s going to give us food. You remember the rule?”

  The gritty gaggle just looked at her, shuffling its feet. She prompted them, “If somebody helps us . . .”

  “We don’t steal their stuff,” they chorused glumly.

  “Nothing?” whined a charmer with too many teeth missing. “Not even one little thing?” Ti-Jeanne couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.

  “No, and whatever it is, you put it back right now.”

  The child grimaced, produced Mami’s good kitchen knife from out of its shirtsleeve, and tossed the knife back into the sink. He or she handled it with the ease of long practice. Ti-Jeanne tried not to think about it. The sooner she got them fed, the sooner they’d be gone.

  “Allyou sit at the table.” She went to the cold storage and hauled back a basket of apples. That would hold them while she fixed them a meal. The children dove at the apples, chattering excitedly, crunching them down as fast as they could chew and slinging the apple cores at each other. Josée growled at them. They stopped the game but kept eating.

  Ti-Jeanne had a look through their stores. There was plenty of cornmeal.

  “Josée, you know how to cook?”

  “Some things. Do it for these kids. On a fire, you know? With a strip of sheet metal over it?”

  So Ti-Jeanne set Josée to stirring up a big pot of cornmeal mush. A little girl with dead straight black hair reached up and tickled Baby’s leg. Baby chuckled, kicking his legs and pumping his arms. Ti-Jeanne moved Baby to her other hip, out of the urchin’s reach. Dirty child probably had fleas.

  The little girl asked, “Can’t I hold him?” She was about eight. She had one wandering eye. There was a black line of dirt under each of her fingernails. She smelled of rotten teeth and sour milk. But Baby was playing peek-a-boo with her across the bulk of Ti-Jeanne’s body. He chortled with glee.

  Ti-Jeanne decided. “Go and wash your hands in the sink,” she told the girl. She dipped a bowlful of water from the bucket and gave it to her. “Use the carbolic soap. And wash your face, too.”

  The little girl obeyed. Ti-Jeanne pursed her mouth in a grimace as she watched the water in the bowl darken with filth. She caught Josée looking appraisingly at her and smoothed her expression over. The little girl came back, presenting rough pink hands to show that they were clean. “Now can I hold him?”

  Reminding herself to bathe Baby again later and check him for lice, Ti-Jeanne put him carefully into the child’s arms. “Hold him good, but not tight-tight, you hear?”

  The little girl nodded and started humming a half-remembered lullabye at Baby. The language sounded like Chinese. Baby often fussed when strangers held him, but to Ti-Jeanne’s surprise, he seemed content to stay where he was. She took the pair out to the paddock with her while she milked the long-suffering cows. Baby and the girl rolled about happily on the straw-covered ground. She did a so-so job of preventing him from manoeuvring handfuls of dirt into his mouth.

  When Ti-Jeanne brought the full buckets of milk into the kitchen, Tony had taken over stirring the porridge. Baby took one look at him and started wailing.

  Ti-Jeanne sucked her teeth in exasperation. “Lord, child. Is what do you today?” She put down the milk, took Baby from the little girl, and carried him, screeching, upstairs to their room. She put him in his crib. He kept crying. She rapped on the side of the crib to startle him into silence. Instead his cries became screams, his little tongue curled and quivering in his open mouth, tears squeezing themselves out from his screwed-shut eyes. Feeling helpless, Ti-Jeanne patted and stroked his chest for a few moments. “Ssh. Ssh. Is only your daddy. You don’t need to ’fraid he.”

  It didn’t help much. Finally she just pulled the blanket up to his chin. Under her hands, his small body was stiff with indignation. She patted his chest once more, then went downstairs, hoping he would tire and stop eventually.

  Tony was grating a whole stick of Mami’s precious cinnamon into the porridge. “Susie’s leg was broken all right,” he told her. “Greenstick fracture. She’s sleeping now.”

  Josée had her hands full, trying to keep the pack of kids from investigating every corner of the house, playing tag around the kitchen tables, jumping up and down on the sofa. She looked apologetically at Ti-Jeanne.

  “They don’t get to be in houses much,” she said.

  Ti-Jeanne scowled. “Call them into the kitchen.”

  She and Josée organised the washing of many dirty pairs of hands, then she gave everyone a job: cutting up apples to be stirred into the cornmeal; sprinkling in handfuls of raisins (Josée had to explain to young Clem what they were); spooning in maple syrup (Ti-Jeanne stopped one little boy after the tenth tablespoonful had plopped into the mixture); laying out bowls and spoons for everyone. She stirred the fresh milk right into the cornmeal, trusting the boiling mixture to scald the milk free of bacteria. Her eyes met Tony’s over the steaming pot. His upper lip was beaded with sweat from the heat of the kitchen. It was strange to see him so at ease caring for the children. She’d never seen him at work, never experienced him as the type of person who could tend to another’s needs. She touched his hand.

  “You have to stir it slow,” she said. “Slow enough so it won’t splash over, but fast enough so the heat don’t burn it. Keep it simmering.”

  “You know I could do that,” he said with a grin. In a few minutes it was ready. They served it up at the long picnic table that served as a kitchen table. The children slurped down their porridge, chattering excitedly to each other.

  Mami came out of the examining room. She was holding a bloody scrap of bleached cotton to her finger. “The child resting,” she said to Josée. “She’s going to wake up in two, three hours.”

  Ti-Jeanne asked her, “What happen to your hand, Mami?”

  Gros-Jeanne shook her head. “The scissors slip and cut me.”

  Tony hurried to her side. “Here. Let me wrap that up for you.”

  Mami stared at him a moment, then held out her hand. He carefully took the scrap of cotton off the cut. “This dressing is soaked through. I’ll get another one.” He went into the examining room.

  “Hmph,” Mami muttered. “Just trying to get on my good side.”

  • • • •

  In the examining room, Tony glanced back at the door. No one had followed him. The little girl was fast asleep, curled up under a blanket. He’d taken off his jacket to help Mistress Hunter. It was still hanging behind the door. Quickly he fumbled in the jacket pocket, took out the blood test box that the hospital had given him. He thumbed the wad of bloody cotton into the depression in the box, pressed the button for the display. AB positive. Dismay and excitement washed over him in equal proportions. Ti-Jeanne’s grandmother had the right blood type, the right body dimensions. If her crazy scheme to save his ass didn’t work, he might be forced to an extreme solution to his problem.

  • • • •

  Tony came back out with an alcohol swab and a fresh bandage. He cleaned and dressed the cut. “There. Should be healed in no time.”

  Mami turned and walked into the kitchen without answering him. Ti-Jeanne could see the distress plainly on his face. She gave him an exasperated shrug. Mami was being hard, as usual. Tony was only trying to help. Ti-Jeanne followed Mami into the kitchen. Mami set the children to washing up their dishes, then gave Tony a machète and pointed in the direction of the wild part of the farm. “Go and cut a pair of crutches for Susie.”

  When she turned her back, Tony
gestured for Ti-Jeanne to follow him. Baby was in his crib, having finally cried himself to sleep. Ti-Jeanne caught herself thinking that he couldn’t see them and alert Mami with his squalling. It was odd to think of the helpless child doing something so deliberate, but that’s how it felt. She pushed the thought away. Feeling guilt and excitement in equal parts, she went quietly with Tony.

  They walked along the Upper Road, saying nothing at first. The wind swept fall maple leaves across their path in splashes of purple, deep red, and yellow-orange. Ti-Jeanne caught Tony looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She glanced shyly away and pointed out the downhill trail to the Lower Road. “Down so,” she said. “It have a stand of young trees there. Probably some of them could cut into good crutches.” They went that way, but when they got there, Tony just stood on the pathway, looking at her. His glance warmed her, despite the cold wind.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone with you, Ti-Jeanne. You been avoiding me.”

  “Just go and cut the crutches, Tony.”

  Instead he walked back up the path to where a wild rosebush was making its last windblown stand against the cold. Its branches were covered in fat rosehips, but there was one blossom left. Tony wadded up one of his gloves and used it to pick the prickly rose. Seriously he presented it to Ti-Jeanne, glove and all. Blushing, she took it from him. She dared not put her nose to it; like everything that Tony had ever given her, this gift had thorns.

  Tony made as if to reach for her free hand. Ti-Jeanne felt herself leaning closer to him. But he lowered his hand and said, “Why’d you leave me?”

  There it was. She’d finally given him the opportunity to ask the question. “What else I was to do, Tony?” She was about to tell him all the fears that had plagued her, all her worries about whether Tony would have been able to help her provide for the child. He interrupted her:

  “I would have let you keep the baby, no matter whose it is. I love you, Ti-Jeanne.”

  Ti-Jeanne blinked in shock. He would have “let” her keep the baby? The moment had passed. She gave Tony the glare that always threw him off balance. “Don’t talk foolishness. You going to cut the damned crutch, or you want me to do it for you?”