Brown Girl In the Ring (16 page)

Give the Devil a child for dinner!
One!

—Derek Walcott,
Ti-Jean and His Brothers

T
he soup bubbled fragrantly on the stove. Mami knew that Ti-Jeanne hadn’t eaten since the night before. She would make some bitter melon, fried up and served on the side; that would strengthen her blood. Ti-Jeanne loved bitter melon. Mami pulled a few leaves of sage and rosemary from the bunches drying at the kitchen window and added them to the soup. She missed the tropical herbs she could no longer get in Toronto, both for healing and for cooking, but no help for that. Romni Jenny and Frank Greyeyes were teaching her about northern herbs. In time, she’d have a more complete arsenal.

She looked sidelong at Ti-Jeanne. She was sitting at the kitchen table, clutching Baby resentfully, like a boulderstone that someone had given her to hold, and drumming with her free fingers on the table. Ti-Jeanne was pretending obedience, pretending she was dutifully learning all that Mami had to pass on to her, but Mami knew that look. It masked resentment. Mami kissed her teeth in frustration, too late realising that Ti-Jeanne would just hear more scolding implied in the noise. Why was the girl child so sensitive?

“Stupidness,” Mami muttered. Ti-Jeanne scowled at her. Mami didn’t know what to say. Silently she pursed her lips and busied herself making Ti-Jeanne’s favourite cornmeal dumplings, cooking in the love she couldn’t express.

Silence sat thickly between them.

There was a loud knocking at the door. It was beginning, the thing Mami had been dreading. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but it would change her and her grandchild’s lives forever.

“Go and see who that is, Ti-Jeanne. Here, give me the baby.”

Mami dusted the cornmeal from her hands so she could take Baby. She rocked him a little in her arms as Ti-Jeanne went to get the door. Things were moving fast now, too fast for her to control them. She feared for Ti-Jeanne. She hadn’t given her granddaughter all the knowledge she would need to be able to do as the spirits had commanded them.

Ti-Jeanne was back, looking nervous and frightened. “Mami? Is Crazy Betty out there. I think she asking for you. She just standing out there, saying, ‘Mami, Mami, Mami,’ over and over.”

All these years Ti-Jeanne had been telling her about Crazy Betty, Mami Gros-Jeanne had never encountered the street woman. She began to have a horrible suspicion. Oh, spirits. It couldn’t be, say it couldn’t be. Wordlessly Mami took her granddaughter’s hand. They both went to the front door. Gros-Jeanne opened it and looked full into the face of the shrunken woman standing there, muttering softly to herself.

It was Mi-Jeanne. Oh God, it was her daughter. Gros-Jeanne cried Mi-Jeanne’s name, started forward, but the baby in her arms prevented her from hugging Mi-Jeanne. “Here, Ti-Jeanne, take he. Don’t you see is your mother?”

“My…?” Gaping at Crazy Betty, Ti-Jeanne took Baby.

Mami Gros-Jeanne felt her tears spring hot as she gathered her daughter into her arms after so many years. “Mi-Jeanne, you come home at last?”

Mi-Jeanne started at her touch, then stood still. She was whispering to herself: “It have hearth in this home? Or it heartless? Worthless. Worthless girl child. No sense nor manners! Stupidness!”

Gros-Jeanne held her tightly as she dared. She didn’t want to let go. She could feel Mi-Jeanne’s bones through the thin rags she wore, smell the sour sweat of her. Mi-Jeanne pulled her arms out of her mother’s embrace, batted awkwardly at her own face, as though trying to banish voices whispering in her ears.

Mami took Mi-Jeanne’s hands in her own. “No, doux-doux, no. Don’t hurt yourself. You ain’t worthless.” Then she said the words she’d welled up inside herself all these years. “I do wrong to ever tell you so. You hear me? I do wrong.”

Ti-Jeanne asked quietly, “Mami? Is she in truth? Is Mummy?”

“Yes, doux-doux.” Gros-Jeanne led Mi-Jeanne into the parlour, sat her in a chair at the warm fireplace. Mi-Jeanne kept muttering, batting at her ear with her free hand.

“But, Mami,” Ti-Jeanne continued, “why she never come home before? All this time? Why she been living in the street like that? And what happen to she eyes?”

What
had
happened to her out there? Mi-Jeanne looked older than her years, about the same age as Gros-Jeanne herself, but nowhere near as healthy. Her body was stooped and frail, her hair dull, matted into clumps. The sockets where her eyes had been were sunken holes. Her pretty Mi-Jeanne, a mad, blind street woman, living off filth.

“She wanted to go and live with she daddy,” Gros-Jeanne admitted. “He was living in some little break-down room in town, stoned out of he mind all the time. She tell me he wouldn’t have leave if I had been taking care of he.”

“Take care of he,” muttered Mi-Jeanne. “Watch out for he.”

“I did have a new man by then. Dunston. She ain’t like he. She tell me I horning she father. She call me all kinda names. She own mother, imagine! I tell she to go then, if she love she worthless daddy so bad. Go, but don’t come back.”

“Go,” said Mi-Jeanne distractedly. “Go, and don’t come back.”

Someone else was pounding at the door. Ti-Jeanne just stood there, looking stunned.

“You best had go see who it is, doux-doux,” Gros-Jeanne told her.

At this, Mi-Jeanne blindly grabbed at her mother’s arm, held on tight. “No! Sly mongoose! He stealing the chicken, you don’t see? He name full of shame!”

Gently Gros-Jeanne took Mi-Jeanne’s face in her hands. “Is all right, my darling. Is probably just someone who need some medicine.” She mouthed the words “Get the door” at Ti-Jeanne and took the baby from her.

Mami Gros-Jeanne sat down beside her daughter. “Mi-Jeanne, you know you have a grandchild? A boy, Mi-Jeanne!” She took Mi-Jeanne’s hand and led it to Baby’s face, holding on tightly in case her mad daughter tried to hurt the child. Instead Mi-Jeanne’s face went soft and gentle as she felt the baby’s face. That was almost a smile on her lips. Baby blinked at her touch but didn’t seem to object.

“Dort, dort, petit popo,” Mi-Jeanne sang in a cracking voice, running a hand over his fat cheek.
Sleep, little baby, or the tiger go come and eat you up.

Ti-Jeanne came back into the kitchen, Tony behind her, looming above her with his greater height. Ti-Jeanne’s face was trembling between smiles and tears. “Look, Tony come back,” she said. “He come back for me!” Trustingly she reached her hand behind her, groping for Tony’s.

Tony looked scared to death. He took Ti-Jeanne’s hand just long enough for her to pull him into the room. Mami noticed that he let go almost immediately. “Crazy Betty?” he said. “How’d she get here?”

“She is my mother, Tony. She just tell me. She is Mi-Jeanne.”

“What? What nonsense you talking?”

“Never mind that,” Mami Gros-Jeanne snapped at him. This masquerade was making her vex now. “Is what you come back for? I thought you reach Scarborough by now.”

“I, ah, Rudy said I could stay. They got the donor they need. Some woman head-shot in a fight last night.”

Ti-Jeanne’s face could have lit the sky like the sun. “But Tony, that good! Everything all right now, ain’t?”

He looked at her, glanced at Mami, then lowered his eyes to the ground. “Yeah, everything’s great.” Mami could see his hands shaking. Lying brute. He was up to something.

She asked, “What happen to the three men what Rudy send for you?”

Tony flicked guilty eyes at her, then at Ti-Jeanne. “Ti-Jeanne, you told her about that?”

“Of course I tell she, how you mean?”

“Well,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I don’t know what you did to them, but Rudy had to have an Angel of Mercy ambulance pick them up. They don’t know if Crapaud’s going to live.”

“He go live,” Ti-Jeanne replied. “Is booze go kill that one.”

“What? How d’you know that?” The fear on Tony’s face was obvious.

“Is one of the things I see, Tony. I does see things sometimes.” Tony seemed to accept the explanation, distractedly. Gros-Jeanne could hear the fatigue in Ti-Jeanne’s voice. So much her granddaughter had had to face in these past few hours.

Suddenly Mi-Jeanne flew at Tony, mad hands scrabbling like claws for his face. “Sly mongoose! Slying, lying mongoose!”

“Hey!” He grabbed the crazy woman’s wrists, immobilized them effortlessly. “Ti-Jeanne, call she off, nuh?”

Mami just watched, noticing how easily her daughter had found her way over to Tony. Blind she might be, but obviously she hadn’t lost all of her Sight.

Hesitantly Ti-Jeanne touched her mother’s shoulder. “Mummy? You go come with me and sit down?”

Something in Ti-Jeanne’s voice seemed to reach Mi-Jeanne. Her scrabbling hands relaxed. She turned to the sound of Ti-Jeanne’s voice. “Ti-Jeanne? My baby?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Brown skin gal stay home and mind baby?”

“Yes, Mummy. Come and sit with me and I go let you hold the baby.”

Ti-Jeanne led Mi-Jeanne back to the chair where she’d been sitting. She took the chair next to her mother, signalled for Mami to give Baby back to her. She murmured to her mother, let her pat Baby’s small body for a while. Crazy Mi-Jeanne’s twitching became less as she felt the baby under her hands. “Dort, dort, petit popo,” she sang again in her fading voice. Mami noticed that Ti-Jeanne was biting her lips. She always did that when she was nervous. Ti-Jeanne put Baby into her mother’s arms but didn’t let him go. Mi-Jeanne’s cracked, trembling hands moved automatically to support Baby’s head and his back. She had been, after all, a mother. Mami watched the two women cradling the baby and managed a small smile. Her granddaughter was learning, learning how to reach out a healing hand to others, despite her own cares. She would make a good seer woman.

“You think it’s a good idea to let her get so close to the baby?” Tony’s voice reminded Mami that this drama hadn’t played out all the way yet. Rudy never let people off so easily. Probably he’d sent Tony back here to spy on them. Mami stared at him in disgust. He couldn’t hold her eyes. “Why’re looking at me like that?” he asked.

“I think I looking at a tool, not a man,” she replied. “And I think I know is who hand on the handle.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His hand moved nervously to the pocket of his jacket, patted at it.

Then Mami felt something change in the air around them. She thought she could just barely detect the difference, a misty redness that seemed to centre around Mi-Jeanne. Used to seeing into the spirit world, Mami briefly glimpsed something that might have been eyes burning with longing and loss, clutching hands. The mistiness faded, seeming to melt into Mi-Jeanne’s flesh. Was it real, Mami wondered, or had she imagined it?

Mi-Jeanne released Baby back into Ti-Jeanne’s arms. She clasped her hands to her head, groaned as though she were in pain. Ti-Jeanne touched her shoulder. “Mummy? You all right?”

Mi-Jeanne collapsed from the chair onto the floor. Ti-Jeanne jumped to her feet with a little scream. “Oh God, Mami, what wrong with she? Mummy!”

What now, Osain? Quickly Mami moved to kneel at her daughter’s side. Mi-Jeanne’s pulse was fast, faint, and irregular. Her breathing was shallow.
What it is I see?
Mami wondered. “Tony, quick. Carry she into the examining room for me.”

“No!” Ti-Jeanne said. “Put she in my bed.”

“Doux-doux, she might have something catching…” Silently Mami cursed herself for not having thought of it sooner.

“She’s my mother. Put she in my bed, I say.”

Too late to worry about spreading disease now. Mami nodded at Tony. He bent and picked up the sick woman. Mami and Ti-Jeanne followed him up the stairs to the little bedroom.
Osain, pray you,
Mami thought to herself,
don’t make she have passed anything on to the baby.

Tony laid Mi-Jeanne down on the bed. She lay like the dead, barely breathing.

“Tony,” said Mami, “go back downstairs and bring me some smelling salts. They in a bottle in the big cupboard in the examining room.” Maybe that would revive her.

Ti-Jeanne put Baby in his cot, then came and knelt at her mother’s side. She put a hand to Mi-Jeanne’s neck. “She ain’t have no fever, Mami. So what wrong with she?”

“I ain’t know, child.” Mi-Jeanne’s skin looked bluish. Her hands were cold. She was muttering something under her breath. What was keeping Tony? “I soon come, Ti-Jeanne.” As Mami went down the stairs, she heard Baby start wailing, wailing. Poor little soul. She hoped he wasn’t becoming colicky again.

She found Tony in the examining room, pacing back and forth, patting and patting at his jacket pocket. He still looked frightened. Mami pursed her lips in irritation. Why had he gone into the healing profession? He obviously didn’t have the stomach for it. From the open door Mami said, “Like you can’t find the smelling salts?”

Tony started at the sound of her voice. “Um, no, Mistress Hunter. I don’t see the bottle.” His eyes were big in his head, like a spooked sheep.

“Boy, is what do you? Like duppy riding you, or what? The smelling salts in the cupboard just by you left hand there.”

Tony leaned into the cupboard, rummaged around. Irritated, Gros-Jeanne kissed her teeth. She knew the bottle was right in front. “Here, let me get it.” She bustled into the room. Tony stood back to let her into the cupboard. There was the bottle, just where she’d told him. “Stupidness,” she sneered. She reached for the bottle. She never saw Tony pull the hammer out of his pocket and slam it into the top of her head.

• • • •

Give the Devil a child for dinner!
One, two little children!

—Derek Walcott,
Ti-Jean and His Brothers

Baby screamed, then started sobbing as though his heart were broken. Ti-Jeanne rushed to pick him up, but all her rocking and shushing didn’t help. His clenched fists punched at the air. The sorrow on his pudgy face made him look older than his years.

The noise had no effect on Crazy Betty. With Baby cradled in one arm, Ti-Jeanne sat on the edge of her bed and stroked Crazy Betty’s forehead. The woman moaned a little. Was this really her mother? Ti-Jeanne stared at the ruined face, trying to see some resemblance to the beautiful, vibrant woman who had left her twelve years before. Funny how eyes defined a face. With them gone, the rest of her features seemed to have lost their definition, too. The nose looked a little like she remembered her mother’s. Maybe. The mouth, too, but it was hard to tell. Some of Crazy Betty’s… Mi-Jeanne’s teeth were missing, and her lips caved in around the spaces, shrinking her face.