Brown Girl In the Ring (11 page)

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 killed 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!”

“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.

Osain swivelled on his one good heel to look at Tony. “You? I ain’t business with you! Look at you; why you arms cut up like that?”

Tony looked defiant. He rolled down his sleeves over the half-healed buff slashes.

Osain waved his cane in Tony’s direction. “If I had my way, them would catch you and make a end of you, oui? Farmer must know when to grow, and when to prune. You is a branch I woulda chop off one time!” Osain sucked his teeth in disgust. “Healer turn to dealer. What I business with you?”

There was a tremor in Tony’s voice. “But Missis Hunter said you would help me!”

Osain looked at him, made a face, sighed. His badly scarred cheek made him look stern. “Yes, is my daughter ask me this favour. I wouldn’t have grant it, oui? You lucky that Prince of Cemetery decide to help you instead.”

What was he talking about? Ti-Jeanne spoke up timidly. “Papa Osain?”

“Yes, child?”

Ti-Jeanne shuddered as she looked at Mami’s skirt flapping emptily around the space where her leg should be. “I ain’t understand. What we supposed to do to help Tony get out of here?”

The old man didn’t answer at first. He hobbled back to the altar. He picked a few leaves off the bundle of dried mint that Mami had put there, rubbed them between his fingers, sniffed at them, touched them to his tongue. “Somebody dry these good. The taste still fresh, and the leaves ain’t mouldy or damp. Is who do this? Gros-Jeanne?”

“No, Papa,” Ti-Jeanne replied. “Is me. Is spearmint I pick and dry from out of the garden.”

“Ah, child…” He smiled. “You know how to treat the herbs-them. You granny teach you good. It make me wish you was my daughter, instead of Prince of Cemetery own.”

Prince of Cemetery?
Why would the old man give such a horrible name to her father? Ti-Jeanne had never known her real father.

Osain jerked his head in Tony’s direction. “That one give you any presents lately?”

Ti-Jeanne blushed. “Yes, Papa. A rose.”

“Well, do like the Prince say. Carry it on you and lead Tony out of the city. Nobody go see allyou until dayclean. Them will look right through you. But, Mister Healer-Turn-Dealer”—Osain turned baleful eyes on Tony—“once the sun rise, we ain’t go hide you from eyes no more. We want you gone, oui.”

Gone. Tony gone, never to come back.

“Remember now, Ti-Jeanne: tell Gros-Jeanne everything I say. Allyou have to see to Rudy.”

Without any warning, Osain’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground, stick clattering away into the shadows. Ti-Jeanne and Tony rushed over to help. Mami’s eyes were fluttering, her breathing fast. Tony checked the pulse in her wrist, pulled up one eyelid to look at her eye. Ti-Jeanne realised that the old woman had two arms again. She felt through Mami’s long skirt. Yes, both legs were there. Had she imagined what she’d seen? She looked around for Osain’s cane, but it was gone.

Tony helped Mami into a sitting position. She seemed a bit disoriented, but fine otherwise. She grabbed at Ti-Jeanne’s shoulder. “He come? Papa Osain come?”

“Yes, Mami.”

The old woman’s smile lit up the chapel. “Papa come back to me, after so long. What he say? Tell me what he say!”