Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “One-Eye tell he if these shelves fall down, is the box for he! Cudjoe taking he real serious.” Aislin laughed, holding the weight of her belly with two hands. “I swear, I never see nail long so in my life! It have more nails than wood in them cupboards there.”

  “But suppose them break in truth?” Tan-Tan asked. “You should have ask one of the douen-them to build them for you, Auntie Aislin. You know how them good with them hands.”

  “Is all right. I does only keep towel and gauze bandage in there, and some little small things. The medicines-them in the back room, where I could keep my eye on them.”

  Tan-Tan knew Aislin’s back room well, with its neat rows of bottles and jars with labels, all lined-up on the shelves along the walls. The back room was where Aislin performed what operations she could manage with the tools she had. It was where Aislin had taken seven-year-old Tan-Tan that first night on New Half-Way Tree when her earbug nanomites had become infected. Aislin had had to fight to keep the fever down. Tan-Tan had lain in recovery there for days, reading the labels on the shelves: “Disinfectants”; “Anti-inflammatories.”

  “Melonhead give you he present yet?” Aislin asked teasingly.

  “No.” Aislin seemed to have forgiven Melonhead finally. Tan-Tan had lain in her back room again two years ago, staring at one label in particular: “Abortifacients.” The memory of the rending pain was still strong in Tan-Tan’s mind. Is only because the cramps and bleeding had her so sick after the abortion that Janisette hadn’t striped her backside with blows over that one.

  “Is Melonhead, ain’t it? Say is he!” Tan-Tan hadn’t answered.

  “You little slut! You been hot for that that mamapoule boy from since, you know is true! You think because you get bubby now and your blood start to flow, you is big woman!”

  Melonhead. Tan-Tan could have almost laughed out loud at the idea of making boobaloops with her friend Melonhead. He was her only agemate; tailor Ramkissoon’s son who had chosen to come into exile with him when his daddy had been sent up the half-way tree. Melonhead was Tan-Tan’s dearest friend next to Quamina, but he was about as sexy as a clod of dirt. He wasn’t like some of the older men who were already casting their eyes at her then fourteen-year-old body; not like One-Eye’s deputy Kenneth, or like Rick. Tan-Tan had smiled, thinking of how she could make them stare. And Janisette had shaken her finger in Tan-Tan’s face, spraying her with rum-scented spittle as she hissed: “I thought so! Barely old enough to smell yourself, and you carrying on with Melonhead. You leggobeast you!”

  “Is not Melonhead,” Tan-Tan had mumbled. But Janisette hadn’t believed. She’d gone to Ramkissoon. He’d kept his son away from Tan-Tan while she was healing, but when she met Melonhead a few weeks later under the acerola cherry tree in the middle bush around Junjuh, Melonhead had told her that Ramkissoon was only doing what Janisette had asked because she was his neighbour.

  “He ain’t believe Janisette,” he said, the bobbin of raw fibre he always had with him dropping from his fingers to spin, spin thread just centimetres from the ground. “Daddy believe me. But he say Janisette crazy like dog in the sun hot, he ain’t want to cross she. He say you and me must be careful and stay out from under she eye.”

  Melonhead had never asked her who she’d been making baby for. That’s why she liked him. When she didn’t want to talk, he didn’t press her. People gave Melonhead static for making Tan-Tan pregnant, but he never defended himself, just let them think it had been him. He was a good friend.

  Tan-Tan dragged her mind back to the present. “Aislin, Daddy send me. Is that same arm what he did break so long ago. He say it paining him again.”

  Aislin waddled over to one of Cudjoe’s cupboards. She took a small woven basket out of it and shut the cupboard door, which promptly swung wide again, nearly catching her in the face. “Cho.” The door closed the second time. Aislin pulled the cover off the basket. She took out two papyrus-wrapped packets and held them out to Tan-Tan. Antonio had had this medicine before; an infusion of particular twigs and leaves. The tea reduced inflammation. Aislin said, “Mix two pinch of this in with some z’avocat leaf tea for Antonio, three times a day. It go ease up some of the pain, and the tea good for he pressure. And tell he, he must work he joints so them wouldn’t stiffen up. Now he stop working in the fields, he should be digging in the garden with Chichibud, or making something with he hands. It go do he good.”

  “Thanks, Doctor Lin. I go tell he, but you know how he does stay.”

  “Yes, sweetness, I know. Antonio have a little bit of arthritis but he only carrying on so Janisette wouldn’t make he wash no more dishes.”

  Tan-Tan laughed. “For true! You should hear how he does go on: ‘What kind of thing that is for a man to be doing; washing dish and feeding chicken? You and Tan-Tan more accustomed to manual labour than me. Oonuh could do that.’”

  Aislin chuckled. “It have anything in that house that Antonio does do?”

  Things for send he to the tin box, cackled the silent bad voice, like an insane eshu. Tan-Tan set her mouth hard. “I just pass Quamina swinging on the almond tree swing,” she said. “She do some nice cutwork embroidery on she new dress.”

  “Yes. She show it to you? She getting real good with a needle, ain’t? Ramkissoon training she to be his assistant. Glorianna and Janisette does trade she for basket and leather shoes and thing.”

  “I know. I think every chair in we house have a piece of Quamina cutwork decorating the back. She keeping Chichibud wife busy busy weaving more cloth.”

  “Quamina doing good for true. When she did born bassourdie so, I never think say one day she would be able to help sheself. I thank Nanny every day for that bush medicine that Asje give me. It working slow, but it growing she up little-little. She does act more like ten years now than only six.”

  Tan-Tan had outgrown her half sister. More often now, she was the one babysitting Quamina.

  She chatted a little more with Aislin, left her the bread Janisette had baked in return for Antonio’s medicine, then said goodbye.

  It was drizzling outside, a light rain from a passing cloud. Tan-Tan stopped on Aislin’s verandah for a minute to wait for the rain to pass. It gave her an excuse to enjoy a little bit of freedom before she had to go back home again. There was someone in the tin box today, Tan-Tan had heard him groaning as she passed. The rain would cool the box, ease the torture a little.

  Asje and two-three other douens were working Aislin’s garden in the rain. They didn’t mind getting wet. They were chattering and twittering happily to each other. From the way their eyes were cloudy, Tan-Tan knew they had their second eyelids drawn down to keep the rain out. They greeted her and went back to their hoeing and weeding. One of them caught a worm as long as Tan-Tan’s forearm and sucked it up like a noodle.

  Tan-Tan went and sat in the old creaky rocking chair. She liked the ice-cream sweet scent of the frangipani trees Aislin had growing all around her home now. They used to be just some little fine-fine twigs jooking up into the air.

  New Half-Way Tree had changed Aislin and all. The angry, bitter woman Tan-Tan had met nine years ago seemed content now, for all that hard labour had toughened her hands and wrinkled up her face. Whenever Claude came into the room Aislin lit up like is somebody turn on the sun. He was always bringing she and Quamina some nice thing: a jar of wet sugar he’d boiled down himself from tree sap; a new doll he’d carved for Quamina. Sometimes it was hard to believe this was the same Claude who would happily crack heads in the wine shop when things got too raucous.

  It had stopped raining, the sun was out. A splinter in the weave of the rocking chair seat was jooking her. Time to go home, after she’d picked up her birthday present from Gladys and Michael’s forgery.

  Tan-Tan stepped off Aislin’s verandah into the pink of noonday. The red light of New Half-Way Tree used to seem strange to her. But she and all had changed-up too. Just like Antonio.

  Eh-eh. She’d been feeling happy before. Not any more, for so
me reason.

  Antonio hadn’t said anything at first when Aislin and Quamina had brought Tan-Tan home after the abortion. Janisette had still been scolding her when Antonio showed up in the doorway. Fear had jumped in Tan-Tan’s belly at the sight of him. Her womb had shuddered through another cramp, thanks Nanny a small one this time. Antonio had been carrying a steaming pail in one hand and folded-up rags in the other. Compresses. He’d boiled water. He, who left all the work round the house to her and Janisette. “She tired,” he’d said to Janisette. “Let she sleep little bit.”

  Janisette had made a suck-teeth sound of irritation and left.

  Tan-Tan wouldn’t let Antonio hold the hot compresses to her aching back. “Leave them on the table,” she’d told him, then turned her face to the wall.

  She’d thought he’d left, but then she’d heard him whisper, “Doux-doux, I sorry this happen.”

  “I tired.”

  “I sorry too bad. I sorry you sick.”

  He didn’t dare say it plain, what he’d done. She didn’t answer, didn’t trust herself to.

  “I sad and I lonely and sometimes you is my only comfort, the only thing that come with me from back home. You know I love you, sweetness. I never want you to hurt.”

  Was this good Daddy or bad Daddy talking? Confused and angry, good Tan-Tan and bad Tan-Tan just lay silent. Finally they’d heard the sound of Antonio walking away. The rags stayed in the cooling water in the pail. Eventually the cramping had gotten less and Tan-Tan had fallen asleep.

  She healed. Antonio still stroked the bad Tan-Tan from time to time with too-familiar touches, but no more of the thing in the night that had sent her to Aislin. He never spoke about it again. Bad Tan-Tan knew that he’d stopped loving her because she’d gotten pregnant. Good Tan-Tan got increasingly jumpy with fright that the thing in the night would start again. Neither of them slept well, ever.

  Never mind. Tomorrow she would be old enough to set out on her own. She was going to live in Sweet Pone Town, her and Melonhead. No hanging tree there, no tin box. Sweet Pone had running water. And no sullen, skulking Antonio. Melonhead could have left two years before, but they were friends. He had waited for her. The two of them had been pestering the douens, pumping them for news from Sweet Pone and for advice on how to get there.

  Old Pappy was coming back from the riverside with his three goats-them. “Evening, Pappy. Walk good.”

  “Seen, sweetheart. Getting so pretty! You almost old enough to give this old man a kiss now, ain’t?” He cackled and reached out to tap her under her chin.

  Tan-Tan scowled and stepped back from his long, bony fingers. “Old enough to push you my own self through the door of the box,” she threatened. Pappy glared at her. He spat to one side. The spittle landed in the mane of one of his goats. The animal shook its rank, smelly head. Pappy took his stick to them angrily, walked on without saying a word more to Tan-Tan.

  Is messing with young girls why Pappy had climbed the half-way tree in the first place. Aislin had long ago warned Tan-Tan and Quamina to stay away from Pappy’s wandering hands. Pappy had nearly died the time that One-Eye put him in the box for sticking his hand up Quamina’s skirt. Three hours of that heat and they’d had to pump his chest to get his heart started again.

  Round the corner, Tan-Tan bucked up Rick doing his deputy rounds. His eyes slid slowly over her body, down to her crotch, back up to her chest. “Evening, Tan-Tan.”

  Tan-Tan smiled slyly at him and walked away, twitching her hips. She could almost feel his eyes on her retreating behind. Rick, Pappy, Antonio; you could rule man easy, with just one thing. Sometimes she wished for something more, wished that they wouldn’t make it so easy. She’d get vex at all the stupidee men in stupidee Junjuh. Then she’d go and talk to Melonhead whose eyes met hers and who talked to her face, not her bubbies.

  She took the riverside path to Gladys and Michael’s iron shop to avoid passing the hanging tree. The woman’s body was beginning to smell in the hot sun. One-Eye would have to cut Patty down soon before the maggots came. He kept bodies up on the hanging tree two-three days so everybody could see and learn. Patty had beaten her baby boy to death after she’d been up three days and nights from his crying. The child had been colicky from birth. One-Eye said he was sorry but in Junjuh, murder must always get repaid with murder. “Them is the rules,” he’d said, then brought out his rope.

  Tan-Tan had only gone once to see a hanging. She’d vomited out her lunch by the side of the road.

  She had a brief vision of Antonio hanging from a rope, his swollen tongue protruding from his mouth.

  What would she wear for her fête tomorrow? Oh yes; the new sarong and blouse that Chichibud’s wife had sent for her. They were yellow, her favourite colour. Little black figures were woven all along the hem of the skirt. Some were dancing, some were climbing trees. One had a knife in its hand. Chichibud had said that as his wife wove the cloth for the sarong and blouse specially for Tan-Tan, she’d breathed on it and with her breath, Bois Papa had sent her the story she’d woven into it. “Is the story of your life, doux-doux. You go have plenty adventures.”

  It was loud at the iron shop today. Tan-Tan had always liked the clang of the hammer on the anvil, the red clouds of steam that would billow from the shop when Gladys or Michael quenched the metal. Husband and wife been running the smithy five years now, trading with the other human settlements for scrap iron and melting it down to make new things. They were in fierce competition with the douens, oui; many of the things they could make from iron, the douen people made better from wood. Douens were masters at that craft. Plenty prison settlement people preferred to trade with them for bowls and pot spoons and baby bassinets and so, rather than chance human iron, which had a way to rust. The few runner people on New Half-Way Tree were reviving hard labour crafts as fast as they could, but they hadn’t yet perfected making steel with the primitive resources on New Half-Way Tree. Too besides, douen work pretty, seen. The douens etched indelible designs on the inside of their bowls: vine patterns; ratbats flying; douens leaping. They made baby bassinets from a lattice-work of smooth peeled twigs that they had trained to grow into a bowl shape. Every one had a different lattice design. The pliant wood that made them grew deep in the bush where only douens could go. On the days that Chichibud appeared in Junjuh Town with his cow-sized packbird Benta, people would mob him to see what douen woodwork he was carrying. When Tan-Tan was little Chichibud had told her that tallpeople couldn’t help but like douen makings; it was because the douens had worked obeah magic upon the wood.

  “Douen man grow them, douen woman paint them,” he would say with pride. “The woman-them does work obeah into them as they painting them. Is for so the patterns come in like they alive. You don’t think so?” He would hold up a beautiful bowl for her to admire, perhaps one that had a favourite douen symbol on its inside, a spreading banyan tree design. “Men make things and women magic them. Is so the world does go, ain’t, doux-doux?” Then he’d laugh shu-shu.

  Old trickster! For years, Tan-Tan had believed him about douen magic, but now she knew he’d only been making mako ’pon her. It wasn’t magic, it was craft and cunning. And it was vexing Gladys too bad. When she and Michael had come to New Half-Way Tree, the douens-them were still using bone-chip knives. Now every douen had at least one iron blade to call his own. There was good trade with the douens for sculpting tools; the tools the douens used to compete with Gladys and Michael. Gladys was always complaining about how ungrateful douens were. Chichibud laughed in private with Tan-Tan about it. “Yes, oonuh tallpeople show we plenty of new ways, and we does learn fast. Why you think we always right there to meet new exiles when them climb the half-way tree?”

  Wouldn’t have been Tan-Tan crossing Gladys. Gladys was big and beefy. Her tree-branch thick arms came from slamming that hammer down onto the anvil plenty times each day. Her temper was sour and too besides she ain’t too like Tan-Tan already.

  The tall, thick metal door to the iron sh
op was closed. Strange. It got too hot in there to do that. Tan-Tan turned the handle and pulled. It was bolted from the inside. Gladys and Michael must be burning up with heat. Were they all right in there? She leaned closer to the door. She could hear the roar of the flames, the ringing of metal on metal, then a mechanical noise, a kind of cough: “Kuh-hunh! Kuh-hunh!” Is what that? The sound reminded Tan-Tan of something, something from long time ago, back on Toussaint . . .

  No matter. She slapped the door with the flat of her hand and shouted, “Inside! Allyou in there? Gladys? Michael?”

  The coughing noise stopped one time. After a few seconds, the handle of the door turned in Tan-Tan’s hands. Michael opened the door one little crack to peer out at her. A cloud of black, greasy smoke with the stench of burning oil floated out the iron shop and escaped on the breeze. Tan-Tan coughed and waved her hands to dispel the smoke, but she had to smile at the sight of Michael’s soot-covered face, his reddened eyes glistening like guinèpe fruit. “Mister Michael,” she said teasingly, “like one of your creations blow up in your face, or what?”

  Michael tried to wipe away some of the soot, but all like how his hands were black with it too, he only smeared his face worse. “What you want, Tan-Tan? We busy.”

  Tan-Tan frowned at his tone. “Ain’t you remember, Michael? You tell me was to come and get my birthday present today,” she said in her sweetest voice. “It not ready yet?” She gave him a disappointed look, biting her bottom lip to make it fuller and riper. What were they doing in there that they wouldn’t make her see?