Brown Girl In the Ring (2 page)

“You do? Who? It needs someone with the right training to put the body on ice.”

“Let we just say, a ex–medical professional. A nurse.” Rudy was pleased that he’d thought of this. Tony was going to be useful to him after all. “The man know him business,” he said unctuously. “Him was a good worker. Just him misfortune that him couldn’t resist the temptation of buff, you know? His employers do right to let he go. He does do one-one little job for we now, helping out, you know? While he try to kick the habit.”

“Well, maybe…yeah, I guess he could do it. We could supply him with a call button that would bring an ambulance on the double. Yeah, that’d work. He could certainly test the blood type.” Baines continued to mutter to himself, ticking items off on his fingers. “And we could give him the fortified Ringer’s Lactate, laser pen to seal off any bleeders, portable CP bypass machine…”

“Good. I glad you agree. For me think say we could help oonuh.”

“Excellent. Let me—”

“But all like how we taking such a risk, me want you to increase that bonus figure,
seen
? Say, another ten percent?”

Baines sighed. “Done.”

So easy! Briefly Rudy wondered if he should have held out for more. Well, that’s how dealing went. Some days you wouldn’t win as much as others.

“Okay,” Baines said, looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth, “don’t forget, we only want the flatliners that are in pretty good condition. Healthy, well, before they died, that is; not too much deep tissue trauma. And tell your man we’re particularly interested in anyone who’s very small framed and has blood type AB positive.”

“Somebody small? Oonuh could use a child? Like a youth, say?”

“Teen or preteen? Well, yes, we could, come to that. None of the street kids, though. Most of them have had buff-addicted mothers.”

Pity. No one would have noticed a few more of the rats going missing.

Baines opened up his palmbook and tapped at the keys. “I’m requisitioning the equipment you people will need.” He scribbled on a business card, swiped the card through the slot in his palmbook, then gave it to Rudy. “Tell your man to bring this when he comes over to the hospital to pick up the equipment. Today, mind. Before four.” Then he stood, shook Rudy’s hand as though he were palping rotting carrion. “We’ll be in touch.”

He picked up his bulletproof from the chair where Melba had draped it. The view off the observation deck caught his eye, and he went over to the window. “God, we’re a long way up, aren’t we?”

“Hmm.”

“You know, I never visited this place back before the Riots. Funny how you can live all your life in a city and never visit its main attractions, eh?”

Rudy didn’t answer. Man needed to leave his office now, let him get on with his business.

Baines blushed, pulled up the hood of the bulletproof, adjusted its clear Shattertite beak so that it jutted out to protect his face. It was the trademark uniform of the Angel of Mercy Hospital. On the street, they were called the Vultures. The price for established medical care was so high that only the desperately ill would call for help. If you saw a Vulture making a house call, it meant that someone was near death.

Rudy escorted Baines to the door, watched Jay go with him to the elevator. He nodded in satisfaction. He wasn’t going to pussyfoot around until they found a compatible donor. He would make sure that Tony got the heart they needed as fast as possible. He turned to the thin, wiry man standing guard outside his office door. “Crack, where Tony? Go and find he. I have a job for he to do for me.”

What can you do, Punchinello, little fellow?
What can you do, Punchinello, little boy?

—Ring game

T
i-Jeanne could see with more than sight. Sometimes she saw how people were going to die. When she closed her eyes, the childhood songs her grandmother had sung to her replayed in her mind, and dancing to their music were images: this one’s body jerking in a spray of gunfire and blood, that one writhing as cramps turned her bowels to liquid. Never the peaceful deaths. Ti-Jeanne hated the visions.

Rocking along in the back of a pedicab, she held Baby, cradling her child’s tiny head in one hand to cushion it from the jolting. Undeterred by the shaking of the pedicab, Baby was trying to find his mouth with his thumb. Ti-Jeanne took his hand away long enough to ease the little blue mitten onto his fist. “Sherbourne Street,” she told the pedicab runner, “corner of Carlton.”

“No prob, lady,” he panted. “Wouldn’t catch me going into the Burn, anyhow.”

The pedicab was at Sherbourne and Carlton in a few minutes. Ti-Jeanne got down, pulled her baby and her package into her arms, and paid the runner. She’d have to walk, carrying Baby the rest of the way to the balm-yard her grandmother had set up on the old Riverdale Farm.

The runner moved off quickly, not even looking around for more customers.
Coward,
Ti-Jeanne thought to herself. It was safe enough in this part of the Burn. The three pastors of the Korean, United, and Catholic churches that flanked the corner had joined forces, taken over most of the buildings from here westward to Ontario Street. They ministered to street people with a firm hand, defending their flock and their turf with baseball bats when necessary.

Ti-Jeanne shivered in the chilly October air and hoisted Baby higher onto her hip. The package in her other hand consisted of four worm-eaten books tied together with string. Her grandmother would be pleased with the trade she had made for the eczema ointment. When she’d shown up to deliver the medicine, she’d found Mr. Reed, self-appointed town librarian, balanced on a stepladder just inside the doors of the old Parkdale Library. He’d been pinning slips of newsprint to the bulletin board. “Hey, Ti-Jeanne; whatcha think of my display?” He’d hopped down and moved the ladder so that she could inspect his project. At the top of the bulletin board was a hand-lettered sign that read
TORONTO
:
THE MAKING OF A DOUGHNUT HOLE
.

He’d cut headlines from newspapers that were twelve, thirteen years old and pinned them up in chronological order.

“How you mean, ‘doughnut hole’?” Ti-Jeanne had asked.

“That’s what they call it when an inner city collapses and people run to the suburbs,” he’d answered. “Just a little bit of history. You like it?”

Ti-Jeanne had read the headlines:

TEMAGAMI INDIANS TAKE ONTARIO TO COURT
:
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FUNDS TEME
-
AUGAMI ANISHNABAI LAND CLAIM

FEDERAL GOVT
.
CUTS TRANSFER PAYMENTS TO PROVINCE BY
30%,
CITES INTERNATIONAL TRADE EMBARGO OF TEMAGAMI PINE

JOBLESS RATE JUMPS
10%:
TEMAGAMI LAWSUIT IS FUELLING ONTARIO RECESSION
,
SAYS LABOUR MINISTER

CRIME AT ALL
-
TIME HIGH BUT BUDGET CUTS FORCE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL POLICE TO DOWNSIZE

TORONTO POLICE THREATEN MASS WALKOUT
:
JOB TOO DANGEROUS
,
NOT ENOUGH BACKUP
,
SAYS UNION

JOBS LEAVE TORONTO
: 7
LARGEST EMPLOYERS RELOCATE
,
SAY TORONTO
’
S NOT SAFE

TORONTO CITY HALL MOVES TO SUBURBS
:
SAFER FOR OUR EMPLOYEES
,
SAYS MAYOR

HUNDREDS KILLED IN RAPID TRANSIT CAVE
-
IN
:
TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION BLAMES FEDERAL CUTBACKS TO ITS MAINTENANCE BUDGET

CAVE
-
IN PROTEST SPARKS RIOT
:
THOUSANDS RIOT
:
THOUSANDS INJURED
,
DEAD

RIOT COPS LAY DOWN ARMS
,
ARMY CALLED IN
:
TORONTO IS
“
WAR ZONE
,”
SAYS HEAD OF POLICE UNION

The next two headlines in Mr. Reed’s display were written in smeared, blurry letters on lavender paper.

“The major Toronto papers jumped ship soon after the army came in,” Mr. Reed had told her.

The headlines had been taken from the
New-Town Rag.
Ti-Jeanne knew the newspaper; a mimeographed ’zine that someone named Malini Lewis churned out by hand whenever she could find paper and ink:

TEMAGAMI NATIVES WIN LAWSUIT
:
TRADE EMBARGO LIFTED
,
TOO LATE FOR TORONTO
?

ARMY OCCUPATION OF TORONTO ENDS
:
NOW WHAT
?

“It’s nice,” Ti-Jeanne had said uncertainly, not knowing what else to tell the man. All of that was old-time story. Who cared any more? She’d given him his medicine. In return, he’d dug through his book stacks and come up with an encyclopedia of medical symptoms, two gardening books, and the real find:
Caribbean Wild Plants and Their Uses.

“Tell your grandmother that I can’t give these outright to her,” Mr. Reed had said. “It’s a loan. If anyone else asks for them, I’ll have to send for them.”

Ti-Jeanne had just smiled at him. Mr. Reed had grinned and shaken his head. “I know, I doubt anyone will ask for them, either.” When Ti-Jeanne left, he was rubbing the ointment luxuriously into his moustache, where the skin was cracked and flaking. Dermatitis: “Seborrheic eczema,” Mami had called it, before cooking up a nasty-smelling paste to treat it, made from herbs grown in their garden. Mami freely mixed her nursing training with her knowledge of herbal cures.

“Ti-Jeanne, tell he to stop drinking that elderberry wine he does brew. I think is that irritating he lip. And tell he to stop smoking. Tobacco does only aggravate eczema.”

Ti-Jeanne just hoped the ointment would work. Sometimes the plants Mami used had lost their potency, or perhaps were just a weak strain. Too sometime-ish for Ti-Jeanne’s taste. She’d slipped some vitamin B tablets and a tube of anti-inflammatory cream into Mr. Reed’s package. Mami still had lots of that kind of stuff left in her stockpiles.

Paula and Pavel had set up their awning at the corner of Carlton and Sherbourne, next to the shack from which Bruk-Foot Sam sold reconditioned bicycles. Braces of skinned, gutted squirrels were strung up under Paula and Pavel’s awning. Ti-Jeanne could smell the rankness of the fresh raw meat as she walked by. It must have been the morning’s kill. The couple had claimed the adjacent Allan Gardens park and its greenhouse, which they farmed. In the winter, Paula and Pavel were the Burn’s source of fresh vegetables for those who lacked the resources to import them from outcity. And the overgrown park hid a surprising amount of wild game; pigeons, squirrels; wild dogs and cats for the not too particular. Paula and Pavel defended their territory fiercely. Both brawny people, they each had a large, blood-smeared butcher knife tucked into one boot: warning and advertisement. Nobody gave them much trouble any more, though. It wasn’t worth the personal damages to try to steal from the well-muscled pair. Rumour had it that those who crossed Paula and Pavel ended up in the cookpot. Besides, vegetables and fresh meat were scarce, so people tried to stay on Paula and Pavel’s good side. Those who lived in the Burn were still city people; most preferred to barter or buy from the couple, rather than learn how to trap for themselves.

Hugely pregnant, Paula was arguing the price of two scrawny squirrels with two gaunt young women who had their arms wrapped possessively around each other. They’d probably take the meat across the street to Lenny’s cookstand, where for a price he’d throw it onto the barbecue next to the unidentifiable flesh he skewered, cooked, and sold for money or barter.

“Good evening, Ti-Jeanne,” Pavel called out as she went by. He and his wife, Paula, had been lecturers at the University of Toronto before the Riots changed everything. “We got something for your grandmother; leaves from that tree—soursop, I think she calls it?”

“Yes,” Ti-Jeanne replied. Mami would like that. Soursop leaf tea made a gentle sedative, and the old greenhouse was the only source of the tropical plant.

“Good,” Pavel said. “Tell your grandma we’ll be by with them later, eh? We’ll trade her for some cough syrup for our little Sasha.”

Ti-Jeanne nodded, smiled, looked away. In the eleven years since the Riots, she’d had to get used to people talking out loud about her grandmother’s homemade medicines. Among Caribbean people, bush medicine used to be something private, but living in the Burn changed all the rules.

Ti-Jeanne walked past Church Row. An old woman bundled into two threadbare coats sat shivering on the steps of the Catholic church; maybe from the icy fall air, maybe a buff-trance. The heavy oaken door opened and Pastor Maisonneuve stepped out. His black shirt and dog collar gave him a formal air, despite his patched jeans.

“Hello, Pamela,” he said to the old woman. “Some lunch for you today?”

She turned her head slowly, seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes. “R-Reverend, I’m hungry.”

As Ti-Jeanne walked by, she heard Pastor Maisonneuve say, “All right, dear, but you know the rules. Give me that knife first, then a bath, then you eat.”