As she passed the hut of Alyosius and his mother she saw the movement of someone inside drawing back the faded curtains a little to peek at her.
Hiking back through the corn to meet Abitefa, Tan-Tan began to feel proud of herself, so full up of pride she could have burst from it. She remembered the voice that had come from her, it must have been her. She, all by herself; she’d taught that woman a lesson, and she’d spoken her mind with confidence, and she (yes, this is how she would tell it to Abitefa), she had ruled a mob of people who could easy have pelted her with rockstones if they had had a mind to. She didn’t even self feel like the same Tan-Tan.
And for once, Bad Tan-Tan was quiet.
When she reached the tree with the gouge in it she called out, “Abitefa-oi! You still there?”
The hinte poke her head out of the branches and looked round. She did her silent call and seemed satisfied. She climbed down, gave Tan-Tan a hat she’d woved from flexible twigs while she was waiting. *The baby gone now?*
Tan-Tan frowned. “No, man. That is one backward place, you hear? Them ain’t have what I want.” She brightened up again. “But Abitefa, make I tell you what happen to me in Chigger Bite Village. Girl, it sweet can’t done; Tan-Tan the Robber Queen just done make masque ’pon Chigger Bite!”
• • •
That night she lay on her pallet in the dark, staring at the lantern flame. She was jittery for some reason, she couldn’t get restful. What was eating at her so, what? She tried to lull herself to sleep with the pictures leaping in the flickering light: She and Melonhead up in a wet sugar tree, arguing happily about whether it was humane for the Nation Worlds’ to exile their undesirables to a low-tech world where they were stripped of the sixth sense that was Granny Nanny. She and Quamina years younger, undressing their dollies and making them play doctor. The look of amusement on Aislin’s face when she found them. Chichibud on that first day on New Half-Way Tree, showing her how to roast meat on a spit and never saying that he hated it cooked. Her mother, Ione, letting her play with her colourdots, trying on lip colour after lip colour with her and laughing at the effect. The house eshu from Toussaint, singing her lullabies when she’d woken in terror from nightmares.
She missed the eshu. She hadn’t thought of the a.i. in years. She wondered what had happened once people had realised she and Antonio were gone off Toussaint, gone from out of that dimension for good.
She had acid stomach. The parasite baby again. She wriggled on the pallet irritably, trying to get comfortable. Her mind was only running backwards, backwards in time. The lantern flame guttered, flared with another image. Antonio, screening a picture book for her and rocking her to sleep as her eyes closed on the bright images.
The tears were sudden, the flood of them hot down her cheeks. Benta must have heard. She wheeked a question from her part of the nest. “I all right!” Tan-Tan called back. She quieted down, fixed her eyes on the flame, on the heavy-lidded little girl dozing securely in her father’s arms.
Daddy dead. You kill him.
She dropped her head to the bed, put her neckroll over her ears. But she could still hear the evil voice in her ears.
She longed to have the good daddy back. Her mind skittered over his attack the day before her birthday. Could she have prevented it? Stopped him? If she had come back early from running errands and kept him from the liquor-soaked fruit? If she hadn’t lingered with Melonhead out on the verandah? Her daddy was gone. She wept and rocked, despising herself. Bitter silent Tan-Tan howled accusations at her, and they were true, every one. Her doing, all hers.
Not a bit of sleep that night.
The sun was beginning to lay dapples of pink wash on the daddy tree leaves when she realised what she had to do to quiet the inner voice that never ceased. Bad Tan-Tan had given her peace for a while when she’d been saving Al. Chichibud had said, “When you take one, you must give back two.” She had to make up doublefold for what she’d done to Antonio. Helping Al had been the first small step. She had to go back to Chigger Bite.
• • •
Tan-Tan wrinkled up her nose, trying to make it smaller so she might inhale less. The evening air was a little chilly. She pulled the shawl that Benta had given her closer round her shoulders.
The alley behind Chigger Bite’s rum shop ran rank with slops. The door that led into the alleyway opened. Tan-Tan moved farther back in the shadows, trying to ignore the squelching feeling underfoot. Her alpagats would soak through soon.
A young woman with a hard, scarred face was standing in the doorway. She pulled aside her clothing, put a hand inside. A stream of urine jetted outward in a precise curve, guided by the two fingers she would have inserted between her labia. Arcing liquid caught the dying sunlight to glow a soft and glittering tangerine. The woman pulled her hand free and shook it. She put the fingers into her mouth, sucked meditatively. She wiped the hand dry against her overalls and rearranged her clothing. “Cookie!” she yelled into the rum shop, turning from the darkening evening to go back inside. “You motherass so-and-so, bring me a jerk pork and some stew peas there!” She slammed the door behind her, cancelling out the rhomboid of light that had been thrown through the open doorway onto the ground.
Full dark soon. Benta and Chichibud no longer worried when Tan-Tan was out this late, though. She climbed down the daddy tree at all hours now to relieve herself, stayed down on the ground in the bush quiet as long as it suited her. They’d given her a machète as tool and weapon, for she wouldn’t touch the knife that had been Janisette’s birthday present to her. Too besides, she knew how to wield a machète from years of farming corn.
She pulled her feet free of the putrid suction of mud, crept closer to the finely meshed wet sugar tree bark that made the rum shop’s back windowpane. She peered in. The shop owner was cutting slices off a cured haunch of meat, tossing them into a sizzling frying pan. Flames jumped in the brick oven. The man swiped his brow with one hand, took a swig from a mug beside the cutting board.
“Cookie!” a deep voice called from the rum shop’s front room. “Two pimiento liqueur!”
He put down his mug, wiped his mouth with his hand back. “Strong or weak?” he shouted.
“Your behind, I ever take weak yet? Strong!”
“Soon come, Japheth.” Cookie scooped the fried meat onto a plate, spooned a ladleful of stewed peas from a big pot onto the plate. Tan-Tan’s belly rumbled. From an earthenware urn the owner ladled garnet red pimiento liqueur into two mugs. He took the lid off his water bucket and topped up the pimiento liqueur with water. He took the plate and the two mugs into the front room.
Giving them weak but charging for strong. Oho; Tan-Tan had felt she would find something to entertain herself with this night. She go do for he. She tied her shawl around her body like an apron—easy thing to hide her machète in its folds. She tied a knot in a corner of the apron; let the owner think she was carrying money, he would be less suspicious.
The ground was dry where she was standing. She bent, paddled three fingers in the grime of the alleyway and rubbed it into her face. Chigger Bite people never seemed quite clean, oui. She wouldn’t want to stand out.
Her heart was starting to throb with the excitement of what she was about to do. She breathed in deeply for calm, pulled her scarf down low on her forehead to hide her features a little. She hunched her shoulders and cast her eyes meekly down, then put on the exhausted shuffle of someone who did manual labour from dayclean to daylean. She went round the front and limped into the rum shop. A few people glanced up but went right back to their drinking.
Tan-Tan stood for a second, blinking in the flickering lamplight. The woman who’d taken a piss out back was laughing and talking at a table with three other women. One of them had the Toussaint-style clothes and the lost, frightened look of the newly headblind; a recent exile. Singletons or with their compères, people were taking their rough ease from the day’s labour. Wisdom weed smoke choked the air.
The owner was at the bar now
, wiping out some ashtrays. Tan-Tan shuffled over. The owner frowned at the dirty, downpressed woman in front of him. “Compère,” Tan-Tan asked in a trembly voice, “beg you little liqueur, nuh?”
“You mad or what?” the man growled. “It ain’t have nothing for free in here.”
“No, no, Compère, I could pay,” she said, fumbling with the knot in her apron. “I have gold.”
“Real, or gold wash? Make I see,” he ordered, bending over the bar to see better in the gloom.
Yes, just so. Lean just a little closer. She fumbled with the knot a little more, chatting the whole time like she was trying to cover up nervousness. “I ain’t too like coming out in the dark, oui, but my woman tell me say I must bring she pimiento liqueur tonight, only she forget to give me any money, you know, so is a good thing I have this gold ring my mother give me . . .”
She untied the knot and started to open the folds of cloth. The shop owner stretched his neck quite over the edge of the bar trying to see what she had in there. I have you now, you son of a bitch. Tan-Tan grabbed his collar, jammed his head against the bar. Her machète was out and against his neck before he knew what had happened to him. A man cried out and made a move towards her.
“No! Anybody even self blink, I cut he.”
Two people were sneaking up on her. She could hear them. They would never survive in the bush. Tan-Tan said, “This man been cheating oonuh, you know.” The footsteps behind her stopped.
“Cheating? How you mean?”
She chanced a quick look at them. “Is oonuh just order the pimiento liqueur?”
“Seen.”
“Him a-use water to weak it, and a-tell you is the strong he giving you.”
The people in the rum shop started one set of ssu-ssu, whispering to each other. “Cookie,” someone called out, “is true what she say?”
The shop owner started to curse. He surged up towards her and got a shallow slice on his neck back for his trouble. “Ow! Fucking leggobeast!”
Tan-Tan grinned to see the thin line of blood. This was what she needed, this desperate, sharp joy. She had the crowd’s attention now. She sang out to them, “Oonuh want to see if is true what I telling you, or is lie?”
“Yes, lady,” they responded gleefully. The two men behind her came up and held Cookie’s arms.
“Elroy!” he blustered. “Christopher! Is what the rass wrong with allyou? Let me go; hold she instead!”
“Never you mind that,” one of them replied. “Two years I been coming in here. If I find out you been cheating me from since . . .”
Tan-Tan warbled out, “Oonuh want to know the truth?”
“Yes, lady,” the crowd chanted.
“Oonuh want to be sure you getting the right goods for your rupees?”
“Yes, lady.”
“All right. Well, watch me then, nuh?”
At machète point, Tan-Tan walked the shop owner back into his own kitchen. His customers followed, squeezed tight-tight into the kitchen to see sport. Tan-Tan pointed with her chin: “Koo the strong liqueur there.” She turned to the two men who were holding Cookie. “Where the one he give allyou?”
“I go get it!” someone said. The mugs were brought into the kitchen. There were still some dregs in them.
“All right. One of you two; ladle out a taste from the barrel.”
“No!” said Cookie. “If too many mouths touch it, it going sour!”
“Don’t fret,” she said. “More time, it won’t have none left to sour.”
One of the men ladled himself a good taste from the barrel, then took a swig from the mug Cookie had brought him. “Pah!” He spat it right into Cookie’s face. “Piss water.” Unable to use his arms, Cookie blinked and blinked to get the burning alcohol out of his eyes.
“So you really been cheating we, Joseph,” said an old woman. “When I think how I does work hard all day,” she addressed the crowd, “and I come in here nearly every evening and give Joseph my money to ease some of my sorrows, and this is how he do me. Joseph, man, you make my heart hurt too bad.”
The shop owner didn’t reply.
“Too right,” a next somebody say. “What a way the man is a swindler, ee? What you going to do, lady?”
“This.” At machète point, Tan-Tan made shop owner Joseph drink from the bucket of water.
“Drink, you cheating swine, drink it all down. Drink down your swindlement, drink down your defraudation. Swallow, now! And again!” All the customers cheered as they watched him struggling to gulp until he’d drunk all the water. But Tan-Tan ain’t done yet. “Nah, man, like you slowing down. I know you have enough water in this kitchen to last you a full day. Yes, here so.” The barrel stood as high as her hip. “Fill your bucket. Now drink again. Drink, I say.” Looking slightly green, Joseph put the bucket to his head. “Drink a swallow for every one of these populace you defraud. Swallow, don’t spill none! Drink three times more for every member of this fine population who had was to choke down your thin, watery concoction and trade you them hard-earned goods for the favour.”
The barkeep started to cough back up the water, out of his nose and all, but Tan-Tan made him choke down another bucketful, and another. He fell to his knees, vomited copiously onto the floor, gouts of slimy liquid with the thready remnants of his supper floating in it. Few spared the time to laugh at him. They were too busy helping themselves to the pure, sweet stash of pimiento liqueur.
Cookie groaned, glared daggers at Tan-Tan from reddened eyes. She smiled sweetly back. “When them ask you is who bring about your ruination this day, tell them Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the terror of the bad-minded. I come into this life further away from here than your imagination could stretch. I born behind God back, under a next sun. My mother was the queen of queens, and my father was she consort, and he bring me to this place in a mighty engine. The birds of the air raise me. The lizards in the trees feed me. Them teach me how to be invisible, man, so if you start watering your drinks again, you won’t see me, but I go know. Is Tan-Tan telling you.”
She ladled out a half gallon jug of the strong for herself. The rum shop patrons cheered. She turned to breeze out the shop. Al and his mother were standing together in a corner, watching her. Tan-Tan’s heart leapt like firecrackers, but they made no move to stop her. The hatred in Al’s mother’s face could have burned flesh off bone. Tan-Tan didn’t care, she just laughed. She blew Al, clumsy, coward, stink, sweet Al, a kiss. He looked down, but it didn’t hide the bow of the smile forming on his face. Spirit singing, Tan-Tan strode out into the dark. Behind her she could hear the people fêting on Cookie’s good liquor, laughing and singing and making old-talk.
Abitefa was mad to know the story when Tan-Tan reached back to the bush. The two of them sat on the ground and Tan-Tan related the tale by the light of two kerosene lamps. “If you only see the shop owner, Abitefa! I sure he never going to feel thirsty in he life again, oui.”
With a flourish Tan-Tan unscrewed the cap from the liqueur. She put it to her mouth and spat it out again immediately. “Bloodcloth!” The smell, the taste was making her belly roil.
*What?* asked Abitefa.
“It spoil! How it could spoil between there and here?”
*Smell fine to me,* Abitefa said.
“You mad? You try it then.”
They poured the water out of Abitefa’s drinking calabash, replaced it with pimiento liqueur. Abitefa dipped her beak in it, tossed back her head to let the liquid roll down her throat. *Good. Like fruits, but better.*
To rass, what was she talking about? Tan-Tan sniffed the alcohol again, took a small taste of it. Still nasty. But the people in Chigger Bite had been drinking it fine-fine. They didn’t know strong from weak, but for sure they would have known spoiled from fresh, ain’t?
Is the baby, the monster baby that was round and hard now like a potato in her belly. Her two months’ pregnancy had changed her body chemistry so till alcohol tasted and smelled bad. Resentfully Tan-Tan dug her fingers into her stomach.
The defiant thing inhabiting her didn’t yield. Her head pounded with anger. She could only drink what it let her, eat what it permitted. And strong? She was making the climb from the daddy tree in two-twos nowadays. Poopa, this thing inside her was keeping her strong and healthy like horse, a good horse to carry it.
Abitefa had never tasted pimiento liqueur before, just the salty, fermented grogs that douens made. She got herself good and drunk. She ended up running round in the bush, holding up her kerosene lamp and flapping her free arm, trying to fly. Tan-Tan nearly perish with laugh at the sight. Giggling, she led Abitefa deeper into the bush so the Chigger Bite people wouldn’t hear her. Nanny witness, that night was joke for true! Tan-Tan laughing as she guided Abitefa into the bush, one hand on the hinte’s neck, the next hand holding her kerosene lamp up high to keep away the mako jumbies. Abitefa only whistling and warbling the whole time in douen talk mixed up with creole. Then every so often Abitefa would stop and say, *Story, Tan-Tan! Tell me again how you frighten them in Chigger Bite.*
And Tan-Tan would tell it all over again. The hectoring inner voice didn’t plague her once. That there night was sweet, seen.
• • •
She got too confident. She had started sneaking into Chigger Bite all hours of the day and night, doing a deed here, a deed there. By now people were recognising her, but so long as they weren’t the butt of her crusadering, her appearance was cause for a fête and a merriment. She was beginning to hear whispers: how she was a duppy, the avenging spirit of a woman who’d been beaten and left in the bush for dead; how she was a hero like Nanny and Anacaona of old, come to succour the massive-them, the masses that the Nation Worlds had dumped out here behind God’s back; how she was a witch who sucked the blood of sleeping pickneys. She could scarce recognise herself in the stories. She wasn’t paying none of it no mind. She was working off her curse, keeping her nightmares at bay.
But she took on too much that night, three men who had chivvied an old man into an alleyway to rob him. Addled with fear, the old man had forgotten his earbug was dead to Nanny, and was yelling for his eshu to help him. He must have been a newcomer. Tan-Tan surprised the three nasties good, got them backed into the dead end and was holding them at bay with her machète. Their victim recovered his wits, snuck away as soon as his road was clear. Good. But when Tan-Tan launched into her Robber Queen speech, waving the machète round, she got mesmerised by her own elocution. She never even self saw the fourth man who had been their lookout until he dropped down on her from a rooftop. She let go her weapon. All four of them were on her one time. Somebody boxed her in her head so hard she felt consciousness fading. They were holding her down, they were hitting her, hitting her. It come in like her sixteenth birthday again, like she was back under Antonio’s body, fighting for her life.
Midnight Robber Page 25