Brown Girl In the Ring Read Online Free Page A

frowned. “Maybe out to one of the ’burbs.”
    “Why, Tony?”
    “Not telling you more than that. Either you come with me, or when you don’t see me, I gone.” He sighed, hesitated, then said quietly, “This posse shit get to be too much for me, Ti-Jeanne. Selling buff here and there is one thing, but man, them posse raggas crazy can’t done, oui? Crack just told me that Rudy’s asking for me.”
    Ti-Jeanne blurted out in dismay: “Posse? Lord, Tony; I thought you tell me you done with that stupidness!”
    “Soon done now, girl. I don’t know what Rudy wants me for, and I don’t want to know. I’m going to get out of here while I still can.”
    “Man, why you can’t use the sense God give you? Is what you gone and mix up with now?”
    “Woman, don’t give me none of that! You don’t understand any of it. Once you’re hooked up with the posse, it’s not so easy to ‘done with that stupidness,’” he mocked her. “Posse come in like Mafia nowadays. I can’t make them think I turn Babylon on them. If I don’t do what them tell me to, next thing you know, you go be bawling over a box with my body in it.”
    “Tony, don’t—”
    “Besides, I thought you done with me…you don’t business any more with what I mix up in, right?”
    She opened her mouth to contradict him, to say…what? Tell him that she did care about him? Tell him she would stand beside him against the posse, follow him no matter what trouble she’d be going into? Baby squirmed in her arms, clasping at her coat buttons with his tiny mittened hands. Mami Gros-Jeanne had shown her how to knit those mittens. Living with her grandmother, she could give her child a secure life. Ti-Jeanne shook her head at Tony, deliberately made her words harsh, repellent. “Well,” she said acidly, “you lie down with dog, you get up with fleas. Is you get yourself into this, oui? You have to deal with it by yourself, too.”
    But Tony’s face got so sad, Ti-Jeanne couldn’t bear it. She softened a little. “All right, all right. You go on where you going, and when you get settle, send word and let me know. Maybe I come and visit you.”
    “You will?” His smile was like the springtime sun. If she didn’t watch herself, Ti-Jeanne knew she would do any kind of foolishness just to see more of that smile. Trying to change the subject, she asked him, “How you going to get out of the city?” It had been years since she had seen a working car, except for the Angel of Mercy ambulances—the Vulture Vans, people called them—and Rudy’s elegant, predatory Bentley. Who could afford gas, batteries, tires? Most people only travelled as far as a bicycle could take them. Sometimes it was hard to believe that there was even still a world outside.
    “I don’t really know, love.” (Ti-Jeanne’s heart leapt at the sound of that last word.) “And it’s better if I don’t tell you too much, all right? Can’t take the risk. So you really going to make me go away all alone, Ti-Jeanne?” Tony’s eyes looked so lonely. But she said:
    “Yes, Tony. You go be on the run. Suppose I come with you, and the posse catch the two of we? I can’t put this child in danger like that. Send and tell me when you have a job and a place to live, and I go think about it.”
    She touched his arm, then quickly stepped back before the touch could turn into a hug. “I going home now. Go good, Tony.” She blinked hard two or three times and marched away. She imagined Tony staring after her through the dark.
    Tony could give sweet, sweet talk. Words so nice, they would charm the money from your pocket, the caution from your heart, the clothes from your body. Words so sweet and soothing, they sounded like love, like let me hold you the way your mama never held you, like come and be my only special one, my doux-doux darling. Words that promised heaven.
    Ti-Jeanne had not told Tony that Baby was his child. She had left him and his room in the rooming house when her belly