Brown Girl in the Ring Read online

  When Ti-Jeanne had been a child living with her mother and grandmother in the apartment building on Rose Avenue, Mami Gros-Jeanne would regularly go off in the evenings, dressed all in white and carrying food for some kind of religious celebration. Sometimes she stayed away all night. Ti-Jeanne’s mother, Mi-Jeanne, had never wanted to accompany Mami, and she absolutely refused to let Ti-Jeanne go, so Ti-Jeanne had no idea what happened at these ceremonies. Ti-Jeanne had once asked her mother, who had responded disdainfully, “Is one set of clap hand and beat drum and falling down and getting the spirit, oui. Stupidness!”

  The answer hadn’t explained much. After the Riots, when Mami had moved herself and Ti-Jeanne into the Riverdale Farm buildings, Mami was soon leading regular rituals in the chapel. At nights, people dressed in white would troop past the front door of their house, carrying food and drums. Ti-Jeanne could hear them speaking. Mostly Caribbean English, but some spoke Spanish and others the African-rhythmed French of the French Caribbean islands. One or two were White, and there was Mami’s friend Jenny, who was Romany. Ti-Jeanne had joined them that one time, but after being frightened away, she’d refused to join them for any more ceremonies. Mami tried to explain what went on in the chapel, but Ti-Jeanne had become so agitated that Mami soon stopped talking about her work there altogether. Her grandmother had been hurt but hadn’t tried to command her. Many nights Ti-Jeanne would lie on her little cot, awake and restless from the compelling sound of the drumming and singing coming from the back house. The occasional screams, grunts, and moans frightened her.

  Now she was going to have to witness a complete ritual. She hugged Baby to her for comfort. It had been a long, exhausting day for him. He had dozed off again, even sleeping through the screeching of the indignant chickens. In the moonlight, she could only partially make out his sweet little face, soft and innocent in sleep. This was when she loved Baby best, when he was quiet and she could admire the beauty of the being that had come from her body.

  “Ti-Jeanne, you coming in?”

  Ti-Jeanne took a deep breath for courage and stepped inside. The rows of tall wooden pews ranged on either side of the chapel, facing the raised dais where coffins used to be placed during funeral ceremonies. After the funeral, a mechanism in the dais would lower the coffin and its contents into the high-powered ovens to be burnt to ashes. The walls all around the crematorium were lined with what Ti-Jeanne had once thought were small marble tiles. They were in fact marble boxes, packed tightly in rows against the walls. The face of each box had a different name and dates etched on it: “Maisie Belmore, 1932–1995”; “James Cover, 1896–1942.” Ti-Jeanne looked at the boxes of ashy remains and shivered.

  Mami took both lamps, climbed up onto pews to hang them high on looped wires suspended from the ceiling. The flickering light danced, illuminating the centre pole in the middle of room, running up into the ceiling. The wood of the centre pole was untreated, the axe marks standing out sharply against its grain. Mami had got some strong men from her flock to chop down a poplar and install it in the middle of the chapel. Ti-Jeanne had never been sure exactly what it was for. The ceiling was sound. Her sense of unease deepened.

  She stayed near the door, thinking that she could always dash outside and get away. Tony looked just as frightened as she did. His eyes were wide. Mami was preoccupied, bustling around the room. She pulled a piece of string from one of her pockets, tied the poor sensé fowl’s legs together while Tony held it, then hung the fowl by the string from yet another hook in the ceiling. There were many of them. The hen dangled helplessly, twisting slowly in the air and clucking forlornly to itself. Mami went into a back room, came out with a small, clumsily moulded cement head that just fit between her two hands. It had cowrie shells for eyes and mouth. She put it at the foot of the centre pole. She got the cornmeal out of the basket. Taking a handful at a time, she dribbled it in intricate designs around the centre pole. Ti-Jeanne had seen her do this once before. She marvelled at how quickly and neatly Mami created the filigreed designs. Then Mami opened the flask of rum, took some of it into her mouth, and blew out, spraying it onto the effigy she had put at the foot of the pole. Reverently she laid the cigar and the bowl of candies in front of the effigy. Then she got out the potatoes and the three bundles of herbs and placed them on the ground on top of one of the cornmeal designs. She went back into the room, came out wrestling a stool and a deep drum with a long neck. Tony jumped to help her with the drum, but she shook her head, handed him the stool instead. “Put it over beside Eshu.”

  “What?”

  “Beside the stone head. Eshu.”

  He did so, taking care to avoid smudging the cornmeal patterns. Mami put the drum in front of the stool. The head of the drum was made of stretched leather, held on with wooden pegs all around its barrel.

  Mami straightened up and looked at all she’d done. She nodded to herself, took her kitchen knife and a pack of matches out of the basket, and knelt on the ground, facing the altar she had created. She then turned and bowed down low to the chapel’s images of Saint Francis and Saint Peter. She remained kneeling on the ground. “All right. We ready now. Allyou come and sit beside me.”

  Hesitantly they went over to her. Tony took off his jacket and balled it up into a cushion for Ti-Jeanne to sit on. He took Baby while she did so, then sat cross-legged beside her on the cold ground.

  “What to do now, Mami?”

  “Bow allyou heads to the ground like me.”

  They watched as she made another deep bow, then did the same.

  “Now, from here on, listen and watch. If I start to talk like somebody different, and move different from how I does normally move, I want allyou to ask me what message I bring you.”

  Tony’s voice was almost a croak: “What?”

  “Yes, say it just like so: ‘What message you have to give we tonight?’ And ask who it is you talking to, for allyou ain’t going to know.”

  Ti-Jeanne ventured: “Papa, maybe?”

  “Maybe. Maybe it go be Osain for true,” the old woman said wistfully. “But I don’t really think so, oui? Long time now, Papa Osain ain’t come to me.”

  Osain. That name again. “Who he is really, Mami?” Ti-Jeanne asked.

  “The healing spirit. My father spirit.” She sighed. “Never mind. Allyou just watch, and do what I tell you.”

  And Mami closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. The lamplight danced on her face, filling it with shadows. She looked at the cement head.

  “Eshu, is we here tonight: me, Gros-Jeanne, and my granddaughter, Ti-Jeanne, and she baby with no name, and she baby-father, Tony.”

  Tony started; looked over at Ti-Jeanne, who ignored the surprised question in his eyes. It made Ti-Jeanne mad. What Mami have to go and tell her business for?

  Mami kept talking: “Eshu, we ask you to open the doors for we, let down the gates. Let the spirits come and talk to we. Look, we bring food for you, rum and sweet candy.”

  She took one of the candies out of the bowl, crunched it, and swallowed.

  “We bring a cigar to light for you, Eshu, to sweeten the air with the smoke.”

  She picked up the cigar and put it to her mouth. She lit it, cheeks sucking in to draw it to life. She took a deep drag of the cigar and gently blew the smoke in Eshu’s face.

  “Eshu, we ask you to bring down the doors so the spirits could be here with we tonight. Spirits, please don’t do no harm while you here; is we, your sons and daughters.”

  Mami balanced the still-burning cigar on the candy bowl. She got creakily to her feet, hooked the chicken down from the ceiling. She put the chicken on the floor in front of Eshu and motioned to Tony to hold its wings and body. She stretched its neck out long, so that the pinny neck feathers stood up, revealing the pink pimpled flesh beneath. Then she took her kitchen knife out of the basket and before Ti-Jeanne could warn Tony, sliced clean through the sensé fowl’s neck. Blood spurted in gouts from the headless body. Its legs kicked. It was no worse than the way they k
illed the fowls for their supper table, but Tony made a sick noise in the back of his throat and looked away.

  “Hold it, Tony,” Mami hissed. “Don’t make it run ’way! Here, give it to me.”

  Tony watched the grisly rite, curling his lips away from his teeth in disgust and fear. He seemed quite happy to relinquish the twitching, gushing body into Mami’s hands. Mami directed the blood over the stone head. “We give you life to drink, Eshu, but is Ogun wield the knife, not we.”

  She laid the chicken and its head in front of Eshu. The hen’s body jerked again feebly, once, then was still. The air was heavy with the stench of chicken flesh and blood.

  Mami took her place on the stool, put the drum between her knees. With her fingertips and the heels of her hands, she began to beat out a rhythm. Ti-Jeanne recognised the pattern of sounds. She’d often heard that rhythm in the loud drumming coming from the chapel at nights. She hated it; it tugged at her blood, filled her head with sound until she thought it would burst from within, her skull cracking apart like an overripe pumpkin to reveal the soft, wet interior. Although Mami was rapping out the rhythm softly, the sound beat at Ti-Jeanne as loud as drums. It made her bones vibrate, her teeth ache. The small chapel was saturated with the rhythm, dripping with it. And still Mami kept drumming. Ti-Jeanne felt as though the chapel bell was chiming and gonging in time, her heart pounding to the drum, the shadows in the chapel leaping to it. Mami was rocking from side to side. So was Tony, not even seeming aware that he was doing so. He rolled up his sleeves to his forearms. Yes, it was hot now in the chapel. Ti-Jeanne could see the buff slashes on his arms. Two of them looked hardly healed. She sighed, sadly. Tony was still using. Same thing they fired him from the hospital for.

  In Ti-Jeanne’s arms Baby was wide awake, his eyes alert. He looked as though he were listening, hard, with his whole self. Ti-Jeanne realised that she was swaying to the drumming, too. She tried to stop herself, but her attention would waver and she’d find her body moving again.

  Ti-Jeanne’s focus shrank until all she could perceive was the sound of the drumming, the sight of Mami’s water-chapped fingers beating and beating their rhythm. The cadence caught her mind in a loop, spun it in on itself, smaller and smaller until she was no longer aware of her body, of her arms cradling her child. She barely knew when she stood up.

  • • • •

  Trying not to retch from the thick stench of raw chicken and fresh blood, Tony sat hunched between Ti-Jeanne and her crazy grandmother. He was terrified. He could still feel the warmth of the chicken’s body on his hands. He wanted to run out of there and never come back. But if he did, he’d probably run straight into the arms of the posse. His time was up. And Rudy was even crazier than Mami Gros-Jeanne. If Tony didn’t get out of Toronto, Rudy’s vengeance would probably make Tony wish for a death as quick as that of the throat-slit hen. Mami was his only chance. So he stayed, wrapping his arms around himself. He began rocking, rocking, praying this would be over soon.

  Beside him, Ti-Jeanne giggled, a manic, breathy sound that made Tony’s scalp prickle. She rose smoothly to her feet and began to dance with an eerie, stalking motion that made her legs seem longer than they were, thin and bony. Shadows clung to the hollows of her eyes and cheekbones, turning her face into a cruel mask. She laughed again. Her voice was deep, too deep for her woman’s body. Her lips skinned back from her teeth in a death’s-head grin.

  “Prince of Cemetery!” Mami hissed, her eyes wide. She kept her rhythm going, but even softer.

  “You know so, old lady,” Ti-Jeanne rumbled. She pranced on long legs over to Mami, bent down, down, down; ran a bony forefinger over the old woman’s cheek. “Good and old, yes? Like you nearly ready to come to me soon, daughter!”

  To Tony’s surprise, Mami Gros-Jeanne spoke sternly, drumming all the while, to the spirit that was riding her granddaughter. “I ain’t no daughter of yours. Stop the foolishness and tell me what you doing with Ti-Jeanne. You know she head ain’t ready to hold no spirits yet.”

  Ti-Jeanne/Prince of Cemetery chuckled, a hollow sound like bones falling into a pit. He danced over to Eshu’s stone head and used a long, long finger to scoop up some of the chicken blood thickening there. Slowly he licked and sucked it off his finger, smiling like a child scraping out the batter bowl. Tony’s stomach roiled.

  “But doux-doux,” Prince of Cemetery said, “your granddaughter head full of spirits already; she ain’t tell you? All kind of duppy and thing. When she close she eyes, she does see death. She belong to me. She is my daughter. You should ’fraid of she.”

  The old woman sucked her teeth in disgust. “Man, don’t try to mamaguy me, oui? You only telling half the story. Prince of Cemetery does watch over death, yes, but he control life, too, when he come as Eshu. So why I should be frighten?”

  The spirit grinned wide, did a pirouette. “Well, if you know that, old lady, tell Ti-Jeanne. Tell my horse to open she eyes good and see the whole thing; death . . .” He stopped, seemed for the first time to notice Baby strapped to his chest. Baby stared up at him, no fear in his face. Prince of Cemetery chortled. He pulled open the Velcro, took Baby out of the Snugli, and held him up in the air, grinning and cooing at him. Baby cooed back.

  “And life,” Prince of Cemetery continued. The words were now coming from Baby’s lips. The booming deep man-voice lisped with the effort of forming words through the baby’s underdeveloped vocal apparatus. “Tell she when she go out tonight, she must carry something she man give she. She must conceal it somewhere on she body. I go hide she halfway in Guinea Land, where flesh people can’t see she. So long as she carrying Tony gift on she, nobody go see he, either. But only till sunup. Tell she that,” the baby cooed, then laughed, a sound too deep and knowing for its young body.

  • • • •

  “Tell she that. . . .”

  Ti-Jeanne came back to herself. She was standing, holding Baby up toward the ceiling. He was speaking in a man’s voice. Shocked, she nearly dropped him. He laughed. Gaping, she brought him back down to chest level, but his mouth was closed now. Had she had another vision? But she didn’t remember anything. “Mami? Tony?”

  “Sit down, doux-doux,” her grandmother said. The rhythm she was beating had changed. “You go be feeling tired.”

  She did feel tired. She handed Tony the baby so she could sit. He flinched back from her touch, then all but snatched Baby out of her hands. Why was he looking at her like that? She lowered herself to the ground, feeling her leg muscles tremble.

  Mami’s body started to jerk. Her eyes closed, fluttered. She took in little gasps with each jerk of her body. Eerily, her fingers kept tapping the beat, as though someone else were controlling them.

  “Help she, Tony! She having some kinda fit!”

  Tony handed Baby back to Ti-Jeanne and crawled over to Mami, but as he reached a hand toward her, her eyes snapped open. Her hands stopped moving on the drum. Ti-Jeanne felt as though the rhythm had continued, though, in the very cells of her body. Mami glared at Tony. “Don’t touch me. So long you ain’t use your hands to heal. Don’t touch me. You not my son any more.”

  She seemed even older than her years, one eye scarred shut, her voice raspy. She fumbled a stick from the shadows behind her and began to clamber awkwardly to her feet. The stick was as gnarled as she appeared.

  Where that come from? Ti-Jeanne thought. I ain’t see she bring it out with the other things. Then she gave a little cry as Mami stood up her full length. One sleeve of Mami’s dress flopped empty, and only one foot showed beneath the hem of her dress. One arm was missing and one leg! “Oh, God!” Ti-Jeanne wailed.

  Mami looked at her and answered in the voice of an old, old man. “You calling on God Father, but he ain’t go answer. Me now, I right here. Gros-Jeanne send for me, and I come.” Mami hopped over to the altar, leaned her cane against it. She picked up one of the potatoes, took a bite out of it, chewed, and swallowed with relish.

  Tony nudged Ti-Jeanne, whispered, “Ask he!�
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  “He who? Ask he what?” she hissed back.

  Tony cleared his throat, tried to speak, stuttered, tried again: “I—is who you is, spirit? Who we talking to?”

  Mami looked at him disdainfully. “You used to be one of mine. Me, Osain. But I ain’t come because of you. I come because my daughter Gros-Jeanne ask me.”

  Osain! It was the name Mami had said. Papa Osain. Ti-Jeanne realised that the person she was looking at wasn’t exactly her grandmother. Mami/Osain hobbled forward, using his stick for balance. He leaned down toward Ti-Jeanne, until she thought he would topple. “I mad at Gros-Jeanne, you hear? So many years now I telling she what she have to do to get rid of that Rudy, and she ain’t listening to me.”

  Rudy? What Mami have to do with he? The wrinkled old face looking down into hers was softer in feature than Mami’s, but its glare was even more fierce. Ti-Jeanne swore she could see the bump of an Adam’s apple in its throat. She really was talking to a man, a man far older than anyone living. She remembered Mami’s instructions, found her voice. “What message you have for we, spirit?”

  The old man sighed, as though he’d been waiting years to hear just that question. “Tell Gros-Jeanne is past time for she to do my work. Is too late for she and for the middle one, but maybe the end one go win through. Ti-Jeanne, she have to help you to get Rudy dead bowl and burn it. Is the only way to stop he from catching shadows in it. The spirits vex at he too bad for all the evil he cause. Prince of Cemetery arms getting weary from carrying all Rudy dead across the bitter water to Guinea Land. Tell Gros-Jeanne is time and past time for she to play she part.”

  “And me,” Tony burst out. “What about me? All of this mumbo-jumbo is supposed to help me get out of this damned city!” Baby writhed irritably in Tony’s arms, whimpering. Roughly, Tony handed him back to Ti-Jeanne.