Brown Girl In the Ring Read Free

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TEMAGAMI NATIVES WIN LAWSUIT : TRADE EMBARGO LIFTED , TOO LATE FOR TORONTO ?
    ARMY OCCUPATION OF TORONTO ENDS : NOW WHAT ?
    “It’s nice,” Ti-Jeanne had said uncertainly, not knowing what else to tell the man. All of that was old-time story. Who cared any more? She’d given him his medicine. In return, he’d dug through his book stacks and come up with an encyclopedia of medical symptoms, two gardening books, and the real find: Caribbean Wild Plants and Their Uses.
    “Tell your grandmother that I can’t give these outright to her,” Mr. Reed had said. “It’s a loan. If anyone else asks for them, I’ll have to send for them.”
    Ti-Jeanne had just smiled at him. Mr. Reed had grinned and shaken his head. “I know, I doubt anyone will ask for them, either.” When Ti-Jeanne left, he was rubbing the ointment luxuriously into his moustache, where the skin was cracked and flaking. Dermatitis: “Seborrheic eczema,” Mami had called it, before cooking up a nasty-smelling paste to treat it, made from herbs grown in their garden. Mami freely mixed her nursing training with her knowledge of herbal cures.
    “Ti-Jeanne, tell he to stop drinking that elderberry wine he does brew. I think is that irritating he lip. And tell he to stop smoking. Tobacco does only aggravate eczema.”
    Ti-Jeanne just hoped the ointment would work. Sometimes the plants Mami used had lost their potency, or perhaps were just a weak strain. Too sometime-ish for Ti-Jeanne’s taste. She’d slipped some vitamin B tablets and a tube of anti-inflammatory cream into Mr. Reed’s package. Mami still had lots of that kind of stuff left in her stockpiles.
    Paula and Pavel had set up their awning at the corner of Carlton and Sherbourne, next to the shack from which Bruk-Foot Sam sold reconditioned bicycles. Braces of skinned, gutted squirrels were strung up under Paula and Pavel’s awning. Ti-Jeanne could smell the rankness of the fresh raw meat as she walked by. It must have been the morning’s kill. The couple had claimed the adjacent Allan Gardens park and its greenhouse, which they farmed. In the winter, Paula and Pavel were the Burn’s source of fresh vegetables for those who lacked the resources to import them from outcity. And the overgrown park hid a surprising amount of wild game; pigeons, squirrels; wild dogs and cats for the not too particular. Paula and Pavel defended their territory fiercely. Both brawny people, they each had a large, blood-smeared butcher knife tucked into one boot: warning and advertisement. Nobody gave them much trouble any more, though. It wasn’t worth the personal damages to try to steal from the well-muscled pair. Rumour had it that those who crossed Paula and Pavel ended up in the cookpot. Besides, vegetables and fresh meat were scarce, so people tried to stay on Paula and Pavel’s good side. Those who lived in the Burn were still city people; most preferred to barter or buy from the couple, rather than learn how to trap for themselves.
    Hugely pregnant, Paula was arguing the price of two scrawny squirrels with two gaunt young women who had their arms wrapped possessively around each other. They’d probably take the meat across the street to Lenny’s cookstand, where for a price he’d throw it onto the barbecue next to the unidentifiable flesh he skewered, cooked, and sold for money or barter.
    “Good evening, Ti-Jeanne,” Pavel called out as she went by. He and his wife, Paula, had been lecturers at the University of Toronto before the Riots changed everything. “We got something for your grandmother; leaves from that tree—soursop, I think she calls it?”
    “Yes,” Ti-Jeanne replied. Mami would like that. Soursop leaf tea made a gentle sedative, and the old greenhouse was the only source of the tropical plant.
    “Good,” Pavel said. “Tell your grandma we’ll be by with them later, eh? We’ll trade her for some cough syrup for our little Sasha.”
    Ti-Jeanne nodded, smiled, looked away. In