Brown Girl In the Ring Read Online Free Page B

began to get big. She’d gone back to her grandmother and refused to see or speak with him. Let him think she’d been cheating on him and was ashamed. Something had made her want to keep the little person she was growing all to herself. It would be the one human being who was totally dependent on her and would never leave her.
    To her surprise, Tony had barely seemed to consider the possibility that she might have been horning him with another man. He was more concerned about getting her back. He had braved her grandmother’s cutting eyes and hard-set mouth to visit Ti-Jeanne at the balm-yard. He sent little notes via her grandmother, written with a dull pencil on torn, crumpled paper. Mami would thrust them sullenly at her. In the notes, Tony apologized for anything he might have done to hurt her. He told her that he was going to leave the posse, going to get a straight job. He told her all the old things that used to set her to dreaming about the cozy life they’d have together. But he’d never done any of them. She told herself she couldn’t believe him any more, that she had done the right thing to go back to her grandmother to bear her child. Whenever Tony appeared at their door, Ti-Jeanne would send her grandmother to answer it, and finally he would no longer face Mami Gros-Jeanne’s implacable glare.
    The last time he had tried to visit had been early in the summer. Ti-Jeanne had been watching from the cottage window. Mami had been in the herb garden in front of the old Simpson farmhouse that they’d made into their home. She was safe within the magic circle of stakes that she had shoved into the ground, surrounding the farmhouse. Each stake had a deep blue Milk of Magnesia bottle jammed upside-down onto it, protection against duppies, dead people’s spirits. Tied on below the Magnesia bottles, triangles of coloured cloth fluttered from the stakes.
    Hunched over the basil plants in her worn black dress, Mami had been picking snails off the leaves and popping them with a crunch between thumb and forefinger. Sun on the duppy bottles made blue lights dance over her face and hands, so that she looked like a duppy herself. Mami knew which plants could kill as well as cure. She had moved on to inspect the spiky aloe plants in their clay pots and plastic margarine tubs. The sticky sap from the leaves soothed burns and healed blemishes. It was Ti-Jeanne’s job to move the plants inside for the warmth every fall. Mami said that her baby would come before then, by midsummer.
    Ti-Jeanne’s breath had caught in her throat as she saw Tony come striding along the path to the cottage. At the same time, the baby in Ti-Jeanne’s belly writhed, as if in anger. Ti-Jeanne moved one hand in soothing circles around her distended navel. She yearned for Tony so badly, but he was no good for her.
    Tony had opened the garden gate. Mami looked up at the creak it made. Tony had looked at her, then hesitated, waiting for permission to enter. Mami had straightened from her weeding. Somehow, her tiny, fierce body had seemed to tower over Tony’s six-foot frame. She had stared at him for long seconds and then muttered, “If you don’t stop coming here, I goin’ to put mal ’jo upon you, you know.” Evil eye. Tony was terrified of the small-boned seer woman. Ti-Jeanne knew that for all his medical training and his Canadian upbringing, he’d learned the fear of Caribbean obeah at his mother’s knee. His face went grey. He swallowed, stepped back, then turned and hastened away. After that, he hadn’t tried again.
    Baby had been born a few weeks later, and then Ti-Jeanne had had no time for thoughts of Tony. Learning to look after her sickly newborn had kept her busy.
    • • • •
    Tony took a deep breath for calm as Crack Monkey beckoned him into Rudy’s office. The elevator ride up one hundred and thirteen floors had increased his nervousness. The door shut with a hollow thud, like a coffin lid slamming down.
    Rudy was sitting