Brown Girl In the Ring (10 page)

“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.

Duppy know who to frighten.

—Traditional saying

I
t 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.

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.”