Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  “Ti-Jeanne . . .” He sighed. “Is that where you want me to go? Into the bush there?”

  The “bush” was nothing more than a straggly clump of trees. Ti-Jeanne sucked her teeth in mock disgust at him. He smiled. “You going to show me the way?”

  “Come.” She beckoned.

  He reached for the beckoning hand, held it in his. She made to pull her hand away but knew she couldn’t do it if her life depended on it. They entered the clump of trees. Trying to act casual, she pulled him toward a sapling that seemed a likely one. “Chop that one.”

  Still holding her hand, he pulled his arm in against his chest, compelling her to come closer to him.

  “Tony, let me go.”

  “What, dry-dry so?” he asked, a laugh in his voice. “A man going off into the bush to do dangerous work with a machète, and you can’t even give he a kiss for good luck?”

  Ti-Jeanne couldn’t help herself. She giggled. She looked up into Tony’s eyes and saw the pleading there that his merry tone masked. She put her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoe, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  He let the machète fall behind him, took her face in his hands. “You call that a kiss?”

  The taste of his lips and tongue against her was sweet, sweet as she’d remembered. She relaxed into the kiss, put her arms around him. A sound came to her, blown on a stray breeze. Was that Baby she heard crying? Ti-Jeanne pushed Tony away.

  He frowned. “Now what?”

  “Just leave me alone, all right? Cut two crutches out from the blasted tree, and leave me to go about my business.” Not waiting to see what he would do, Ti-Jeanne quickly climbed the hill back up to the house. Mami was waiting for her on the porch. She scowled as she saw the rose. Ti-Jeanne thrust her chin out defiantly. She held on to the flower, ignoring the bite of its thorns.

  “Go and see to your child,” Mami said. “He hungry.”

  • • • •

  Gal, hug and kiss your partner, tra-la-la-la-la,

  For you look like a sugar and a plum (plum, plum).

  —Ring game

  It felt like a lifetime before night finally fell. As soon as little Susie was awake from the anaesthetic, Josée had herded her brood away, even though Mami had said they were welcome to stay overnight in the old Meeting House.

  “Naw, lady,” Josée had said. “You make them nervous already, eh? Some of ’em still think you’re a witch. Come nighttime, they’ll go squirrelly on me. Kids.” And they’d trooped off through the dusk, groggy Susie manoeuvring shakily on her handmade crutches.

  Ti-Jeanne felt as though she’d been doing a dance all day, swerving one way to avoid her grandmother, then swinging around another way to stay out of Tony’s hands when they grasped for her. A few times he’d caught her, though. And she hadn’t pulled away immediately. They’d exchanged a few more sweet, sweet kisses. Ti-Jeanne felt sticky and feverish, her skin sensitized by Tony’s touch. She was sure that Mami noticed. The old woman became more and more sullen and short with her as the day wore on. And Baby had been driving Ti-Jeanne to distraction. He was colicky and cranky. Whenever she was gone from his side for more than a few minutes, he would start screaming. Once, Tony went into his room to try to comfort him. The baby’s screech had held so much outrage that Tony had had a hard time persuading her and Mami that he hadn’t pinched the child or something. Ti-Jeanne was almost thankful when the sun went down. Now Mami would do whatever it was she had in mind, and Tony would be on his way.

  But to Ti-Jeanne’s dismay, Mami told them that she wouldn’t do the ritual until well into the night.

  “’Bout two o’ clock or so,” she said.

  “Why so late, Mami?” Ti-Jeanne asked.

  “I ain’t know if . . . how Osain go hide he from the posse.” Mami jerked her head in Tony’s direction. At some point during the day, she’d stopped addressing him directly. Ti-Jeanne guessed that it was because her grandmother could see the flirting that was going on between them. “Is best if he leave while it still dark, and most people gone to bed. Fewer people to see what going on.”

  That was eight hours away! “Mami, what we go do in the meantime?”

  “All of we should get some sleep. It go be a long, hard night.”

  Mami didn’t put up with any arguments. They had a cold supper, then Mami gave Tony a blanket and a pillow and told him he could curl up on the living room couch. Tony looked at the love seat that was too short to allow him to stretch out his six-foot frame, but he said nothing. Mami bustled Ti-Jeanne upstairs and sat with her while she gave Baby his nighttime feeding. Mami said nothing, just sat, staring at the flickering candle on the windowsill. Her face was set hard as stone. She clutched her arms around her and rocked her tiny body back and forth.

  When Ti-Jeanne couldn’t stand the silence any more, she said, “Mami, I want to thank you for helping Tony for me.”

  The old woman kissed her teeth, a sound of exasperation. “I ain’t doing it for you, you know? I want his good-for-nothing Black ass out of here. Nothing but trouble.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. “Yes, Mami,” she said meekly.

  “Doux-doux, I have to tell you right now: I ain’t know if this going to work.”

  Ti-Jeanne felt fear threading itself ice cold through her veins. “Mami, you is Tony last chance. It have to work!”

  “It ain’t Tony I ’fraid for,” she said absentmindedly. “I ain’t really business with what happen to he, oui. But is so long Papa ain’t come to me. To tell the truth, doux-doux, I ain’t call he, either. He and me had a falling-out. If I ain’t call he and he ain’t come, that not too bad. But suppose I call he tonight, and he refuse me? What I go do then, Ti-Jeanne? What I go do without Papa?”

  Ti-Jeanne had no idea what her grandmother was talking about, but the lost loneliness in Mami’s voice was plain enough. Ti-Jeanne pitied her for whatever it was that caused her to sound so. She reached out and patted Mami’s shoulder. “Sshh, Mami, sshh. I sure things go work out.”

  But she wasn’t sure at all.

  After they had all gone to bed, Ti-Jeanne lay in her narrow bed, staring into the dark. Her mind was a storm, her skin on fire. All her senses focused on where she knew Tony was, curled up just downstairs on the couch in the parlour. Was he asleep yet? Was he thinking about her? She tossed and turned, imagining his lips softly kissing the back of her neck the way he used to do, moving down her back to the hollow of her spine, that place where the lightest touch could make her shiver. She could almost feel his hands on her breasts, gently tugging at her nipples until they stiffened, the areolas crinkling with pleasure. Her body flushed with warmth. She sat up in bed, pulled the flannel nightgown off over her head. The cool night air on her skin was like the exhaled breath of a lover. She ran her hands over her body, arching her back at the sensation.

  What was she doing? Her baby was in his cot in this very room, and this was how she was carrying on? Shamed, Ti-Jeanne got up and tiptoed over to where Baby lay, fast asleep, his thumb in his mouth. It would be another two hours before he demanded to be fed again.

  Her skin was burning with its own heat. She went and knelt on her cot, opened the window just above it, and leaned out into the cool night air, feeling it slide like a tongue down the front of her body. A full moon rode the clouds, bucking. Was that a noise she heard from downstairs where Tony was, a foot treading on a creaky floorboard? Ti-Jeanne closed the window so Baby wouldn’t catch a chill. She pulled her nightgown back on and left the bedroom, tiptoeing down the stairs. At the bottom, Tony stepped out from the shadows. Ti-Jeanne gasped, giggled, looked at him full on for the first time in months. Moonlight traced his body, his arms strong enough to wrap her round, his chest broad enough to rock her on. His waist, nearly as narrow as her own. The devil! He was naked as God had made him, erect and ready for her. Ti-Jeanne smiled and stepped into his embrace. It was like coming home. She put her arms around him, slid her hands down over his ass, feeling the hollows that muscle made in the
sides of his buttocks. Tony tried to kiss her, but she put a finger to his lips instead. Taking his hand, she quietly led them both out the front door and headed for the Francey barn. “It warm in there,” she whispered. “And Mami can’t hear we.”

  He smiled.

  Mami’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. Standing at Ti-Jeanne’s window, she could just make out the white of Ti-Jeanne’s nightgown, practically dancing along the path to the barn. At moments, the dark blot of Tony’s body hid the sight of her grandchild from her. When they reached the barn door, the nightgown was suddenly ruched up into a ball. It went sailing out over the grass to land in a heap on a fence post. The barn door creaked open. Then shut. Mami thought she heard a faint giggle on the wind.

  “Eshu,” the old woman muttered to the night, “the crossroads is you own. Help my granddaughter safe across this one, nuh?”

  • • • •

  Ti-Jeanne woke up, absently brushing something away from her face that was tickling her. Straw. In the dark, she inhaled the warm, rich smells of hay and dung and remembered where she was. She could hear the snuffling of the sheep and goats. Tony’s arm was thrown around her neck. She’d fallen asleep with her head pillowed against his hand. For a second or two, she relaxed into the hollow between his arm and his body, her remembered place. What time was it? Had they slept too late? Ti-Jeanne leapt to her feet, creaked open the barn door. It was still dark in the house.

  Tony’s voice came softly out of the dark: “Ti-Jeanne?”

  “We should go back in, Tony. Don’t want Mami to find we out here.”

  She heard him getting to his feet. She stepped outside, found her nightgown where she’d thrown it. A rush of guilt swept over her: how could she have done something so stupid? She pulled the nightgown over her head, looked backward to where she could hear Tony coming toward her. “Hurry up, nuh?” she said impatiently. “Come on.”

  Something moving past the front of the house caught her eye. She stiffened in surprise as she saw a tall figure outside in the park, heading up the pathway that led to the cemetery. Its long legs stalked eerily. She hissed, “Tony! Tony! Come fast! The posse people reach!”

  “Fuck!” Tony was at her side in a second. With a trembling hand, Ti-Jeanne pointed the man out to him.

  “Where, Ti-Jeanne? I don’t see anyone.”

  “How you mean? Look, he right there, walking bold face towards the Necropolis!” The man stopped, slowly looked over to where she and Tony stood. Terror made gooseflesh rise on Ti-Jeanne’s arms. The man’s face was a skull. It grinned at her. The thing tipped its top hat to her and kept walking. As it crossed in front of the house, she could no longer see it. Another vision. Ti-Jeanne swallowed hard on a cold lump of fear.

  Tony shook her shoulder. “Where are they?”

  “Never mind, Tony. I make a mistake. Was a branch blowing in the wind, or something.”

  Quietly as they could, they walked back up the path and into the house. “You stay here on the couch and pretend as if you sleeping,” Ti-Jeanne instructed Tony in a whisper. “Mami go probably come and get we soon.” She kissed him once more.

  She took the stairs up to her own room, remembering at the last instant to step over the creaky one, third from the top. When she reached her room, Baby was just beginning to stir, ready to be fed again. He yawned, knuckled his eyes with a little fist, began to whimper. At the sound, her milk started to come. The let-down reflex made her breasts ache. She remembered Tony’s mouth on them earlier, the game he’d made of licking the drops of milk that arousal had squeezed from her nipples. She sighed and picked Baby up, took him over to the bed, and sat down, shrugging off one shoulder of her nightgown so that Baby could suck.

  Mami found her like that a few minutes later. “Is time,” the old woman said. “When he done eating, it have a bucket of water in the kitchen for the two of you to bathe. Have to be clean to meet the spirits.”

  “Mami,” Ti-Jeanne asked, “it go be all right to take the baby with we?”

  “Yes; it ain’t have nothing in what I do to hurt he, doux-doux.”

  Ti-Jeanne wasn’t much comforted by her grandmother’s response. The one time Mami had persuaded her to attend a ritual in the palais, she had fled screaming from the sight of Bruk-Foot Sam writhing purposefully along the floor, tongue flickering in and out like a snake’s.

  Mami sat down beside her, just looking. The old woman’s face was sad, resigned. Without saying a word, she reached over and removed a piece of straw from Ti-Jeanne’s hair, then patted the hair back into place. Her hand was gentle. Ti-Jeanne felt her face flaring hot with embarrassment.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Duppy know who to frighten.

  —Traditional saying

  It was finally time for the ritual that Mami had promised Tony. Ti-Jeanne had Baby cradled against her chest in a Snugli. Mami had changed into a brown dress and tied her hair into a bright red headwrap. The colours she was wearing were the same as those on the necklace that was always around her neck, except when she bathed: tiny brown and red beads.

  Mami took Ti-Jeanne and Tony into the kitchen, where she filled a basket with all kinds of odd things: three bunches of dried herbs that had been hanging in the kitchen window; two white potatoes—those were hard to come by, and Mami usually hoarded them; a margarine tub into which she had poured cornmeal; some of her homemade hard candy; her sharpest kitchen knife; a pack of matches; and a cigar, which she took from a cookie tin on the topmost shelf.

  Tony asked, “What’s all that for, Mistress Hunter?”

  “You go find out.”

  Mami gave the basket to Tony to carry, then lit kerosene lamps for herself and Ti-Jeanne.

  Tony said, “I could carry a lamp, too.”

  “No. In a little bit, both your hands going to be full.”

  Tony looked nervously at Ti-Jeanne, but what could she do? She gave him a tentative smile, tying to reassure him.

  Mami led Ti-Jeanne and Tony out of the house, down the back steps, and into another barn, the one that held the chicken runs and the pig pens. Their upheld lanterns threw swaying circles of light. The animals stirred, blinking their eyes at the brightness. The chickens clucked irritably at being awoken.

  Mami peered through the wire mesh of the doors of the chicken run.

  “That one, Tony. The white sensé fowl with the curly-curly feathers. Go in there and catch it. We go bring it with we.”

  “C-catch it, Mami?” Tony stuttered. Ti-Jeanne knew that he was a city boy, had been born in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s bustling capital, and had come to Toronto when he was five. He’d probably never handled a farm animal. She said:

  “I could do it, Mami.”

  “No, it have to be Tony. Is he asking the favour; he have to do some of the work. Quick now, Tony. Just dash inside and grab the hen by it two feet before it could get away. But mind the rooster, you hear?” She pointed out the feisty little bantam rooster, red and green plumage gleaming. He had his jaunty tail feathers held high and was cocking a belligerent eye at these intruders to his domain. “If you don’t move fast, he going to try and rip you with he back claw-them.” Mami chuckled. The own-way old woman was probably enjoying putting Tony through this. She stepped away from the coop, then held up the lantern so Tony could see.

  With his foot, Tony cleared the straw from a patch of ground and put down the basket. He looked hesitantly into the coop, marked where the sensé fowl was, then quickly snatched open the coop door and stepped inside. His shadow blocked Ti-Jeanne’s view. There was a flurrying sound, a squawk, feathers flying. The hens screeched and chided, scurrying around inside the coop. Tony made a desperate leap for the bird. He missed and cracked his head on the lantern that swung above the coop. Mami chuckled. Tony made another rush and this time grabbed the screeching sensé fowl, holding her tightly by her feet. The rooster crowed a challenge and flew at him, its claws scratching, its beak striking.

  “Fuck!” Tony swore, trying to shake the rooster off his
arm. “The bastard bit me.” Before he could get outside the coop, the enraged bird made another swipe at him. “Ai!” Tony leapt out, slamming the coop door behind him. Just like one of her own chickens, Mami cackled at the sight of him.

  Ti-Jeanne could see blood running from a gouge in his forearm. “Oh, God, Tony, you get hurt! You want me get a bandage for you?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, I’ll be all right.” He brought his arm up, sucked at the gash. Ti-Jeanne felt a flare of anger. She wished she could give the old woman a good slap, wipe that grin off her face.

  “Mami, all of this best help Tony for true, oui!”

  “Lord, don’t give me no umbrage here tonight, Ti-Jeanne. Is because of you I helping he at all. Stupidness.” Mami knelt so that her face was level with the screeching, flapping hen that was trying to twist out of Tony’s hands. She soothed the distressed bird, closed its wings, stroked her hands along its body. “Shh, darling, shh. I realise it ain’t your time yet, but we need great. Pardon what we go do to you tonight.”

  Ti-Jeanne’s skin crawled at her grandmother’s words. The bird stopped fighting and simply hung in Tony’s hand, making anguished croaking noises. Frightened and uncertain, Ti-Jeanne followed Mami as the old woman led her and Tony out of the barn, across the street to the little chapel and crematorium that stood at the entrance to the Necropolis, the old cemetery.

  The Toronto Crematorium Chapel crouched sullen as a toad in front of the gates to the Necropolis. As Mami shone her lamp on its heavy oak doors, Ti-Jeanne could see the ornate cement mouldings that decorated the chapel and the gleam of the brass plaque dedicated to Henry Langley, the architect who had designed it in 1872. When Langley died, he’d been buried in the Necropolis. Mami still put flowers on his grave, in thanks for the use of the chapel. She called it the “palais.”

  Mami swung open the curlicued black iron gate, then the heavy oaken doors. Ti-Jeanne hovered at the entrance. She hated the place. She didn’t take part in Mami’s rituals, but many was the morning that Mami had set her to cleaning up the blood-and-rum-soaked cornmeal from the floor.