Brown Girl In the Ring (7 page)

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 find 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.”

Moonlight tonight,
Come make we dance and sing.

—Traditional song

M
ami 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.

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.