Brown Girl In the Ring (9 page)

When she turned her back, Tony gestured for Ti-Jeanne to follow him. Baby was in his crib, having finally cried himself to sleep. Ti-Jeanne caught herself thinking that he couldn’t see them and alert Mami with his squalling. It was odd to think of the helpless child doing something so deliberate, but that’s how it felt. She pushed the thought away. Feeling guilt and excitement in equal parts, she went quietly with Tony.

They walked along the Upper Road, saying nothing at first. The wind swept fall maple leaves across their path in splashes of purple, deep red, and yellow-orange. Ti-Jeanne caught Tony looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She glanced shyly away and pointed out the downhill trail to the Lower Road. “Down so,” she said. “It have a stand of young trees there. Probably some of them could cut into good crutches.” They went that way, but when they got there, Tony just stood on the pathway, looking at her. His glance warmed her, despite the cold wind.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone with you, Ti-Jeanne. You been avoiding me.”

“Just go and cut the crutches, Tony.”

Instead he walked back up the path to where a wild rosebush was making its last windblown stand against the cold. Its branches were covered in fat rosehips, but there was one blossom left. Tony wadded up one of his gloves and used it to pick the prickly rose. Seriously he presented it to Ti-Jeanne, glove and all. Blushing, she took it from him. She dared not put her nose to it; like everything that Tony had ever given her, this gift had thorns.

Tony made as if to reach for her free hand. Ti-Jeanne felt herself leaning closer to him. But he lowered his hand and said, “Why’d you leave me?”

There it was. She’d finally given him the opportunity to ask the question. “What else I was to do, Tony?” She was about to tell him all the fears that had plagued her, all her worries about whether Tony would have been able to help her provide for the child. He interrupted her:

“I would have let you keep the baby, no matter whose it is. I love you, Ti-Jeanne.”

Ti-Jeanne blinked in shock. He would have “let” her keep the baby? The moment had passed. She gave Tony the glare that always threw him off balance. “Don’t talk foolishness. You going to cut the damned crutch, or you want me to do it for you?”

“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.”