Brown Girl In the Ring Read Online Free

benefit, Tony switched into the creole his parents had spoken to him when he was a child. Tony had been raised in Toronto by Caribbean parents; his speech wavered between creole and Canadian. “You ain’t have anything more tasteful? How many years I coming in here, and all I could hear is some so-so road march?”
    Ti-Jeanne felt the gears slipping between the two worlds.
    Roopsingh’s face crinkled into a grin as he looked up from stirring the huge pot of curry chicken. This game with Tony was an old one. Roopsingh’s response never varied. “You don’t like it, you could take you skinny black ass down the road, you hear? You could always catch a burger and fries from the cookstand Lenny have on the corner. I don’t know where he gettin’ his meat, oui? You might be eatin’ rat burger and thing. But if you don’ like my music, I sure cookstand food good enough for you.”
    “Nah, nah, nah, man, is all right. God, Roopsingh, you know is only joke I joking. You know I would walk any distance, listen to any old bruk-down kaiso, just to taste your roti!”
    Ti-Jeanne couldn’t spare the time for the teasing game both men always played. She had to figure out what to do about the waking dreams. Squeezing past a woman hollering for “two patty and a ginger beer,” she headed for the door.
    Maybe it was just the stress of learning how to cope with a newborn baby. Maybe if she ignored the second sight, it would go away. She dared not tell her grandmother. Lord knew how Mami would react. Ti-Jeanne’s own mother had had a vision one day, back when the Riots were just starting. She’d told Mami about it, and they had quarrelled. Ti-Jeanne’s mother had seemed to go mad in the days after that, complaining that she was hearing voices in her head. Maybe it was hereditary? Ti-Jeanne didn’t want to go mad, too. Her mother had disappeared soon after the voices had started, run away into the craziness that Toronto had become. She had never come back.
    It was just turning dusk; the loungers outside the roti shop had left. The temperature had dropped. A light early snow was falling. Crazy Betty must have crawled away to the abandoned car where she spent her nights. No one in the Burn could figure out how the madwoman knew where she was going. Caught up in her thoughts, Ti-Jeanne was well on her way back to the balm-yard before she realised that Tony was loping after her, leaping the garbage piled up in the gutters to catch up with her.
    “Hey, Ti-Jeanne! Wait for me, nuh? Why’d you run off like that?”
    She turned to glare at him, when what she really wanted to do was smile, brush away the melting snow that was twinkling in his hair. His soft brown eyes had a hurt look to them. Returning his gaze, she felt like that snow, melting.
    “So what’s up?” he asked. “Why haven’t I seen you in so long?” He glanced shyly at the baby.
    “What you want, Tony? I have to get home and feed this child.”
    “I only…the baby okay?”
    “What that is to you? Baby okay, baby-mother okay, and we both going home.”
    “I just want to tell you… I want you to know… I mean, don’t tell anyone, all right, but maybe I’ll be going away soon.” He hesitated, then, “Come with me?”
    Startled, Ti-Jeanne said, “Come with you where? But you can’t just…where you going, Tony?”
    “Just away. Can’t tell you yet.”
    Same old Tony, loving drama too bad. Ti-Jeanne heard her irritated voice swinging into her old harangue: “Why you can’t ever just settle down and live good, eh, Tony? What happen to the work Bruk-Foot Sam say he would give you, helping he fix up bicycles?”
    He sucked air through his teeth, making a “steups” sound of disgust. “And what good would that do me? Eh? Penny here, penny there, never enough to really live on, never have anything nice? Is a good way to die poor, Ti-Jeanne! Anyway. I don’t have time for that now. I might have to leave.”
    “Leave and go where!”
    He pursed his lips,