Brown Girl In the Ring Read Free Page A

the eleven years since the Riots, she’d had to get used to people talking out loud about her grandmother’s homemade medicines. Among Caribbean people, bush medicine used to be something private, but living in the Burn changed all the rules.
    Ti-Jeanne walked past Church Row. An old woman bundled into two threadbare coats sat shivering on the steps of the Catholic church; maybe from the icy fall air, maybe a buff-trance. The heavy oaken door opened and Pastor Maisonneuve stepped out. His black shirt and dog collar gave him a formal air, despite his patched jeans.
    “Hello, Pamela,” he said to the old woman. “Some lunch for you today?”
    She turned her head slowly, seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes. “R-Reverend, I’m hungry.”
    As Ti-Jeanne walked by, she heard Pastor Maisonneuve say, “All right, dear, but you know the rules. Give me that knife first, then a bath, then you eat.”
    The next place Ti-Jeanne had to pass was Roopsingh’s Roti Parlour: Caribbean and Canadian Food. Nervously she eyed the twitchy huddle of men hanging out in front of the roti shop. Crapaud, Jay, and Crack Monkey, hustlers all, liming till the next job, looking for trouble. She knew them well from her days with Tony. She had always managed to be very busy in Tony’s rooming house kitchen when they came to visit. And, of course, there was Tony, liming with them. She would have to bump into him on her first excursion since Baby had been born. Ti-Jeanne sped up slightly. Tony looked at her. Did she hear him softly say her name? No. He and Crack had put their heads together, whispering about something. Tony didn’t look too pleased at what Crack was telling him.
    Tony was trying to catch her eye. She could feel the pull of his gaze. She risked another glance at him. His features were as fine as she remembered: skin smooth as hot cocoa; square jaw; full, well-defined lips; deep brown eyes. Baby’s eyes looked just like that.
    She should be ignoring Tony, not staring at him like this. She sidestepped a flock of gulls that were fighting loudly as they picked at a near frozen, orange bolus on the ground, probably the sour remains of last night’s meal that someone had vomited onto the sidewalk. Pulse thumping, she began to edge past him and his friends, trying to seem very interested in picking her way through the garbage on the sidewalk.
    As Ti-Jeanne walked past the men, Crack Monkey called out to her, “Hey, sister, is time we get to know one another better, you know!” Big joke. They all laughed, though Tony’s voice sounded nervous.
    “Ah say,” Crack hollered, “is time I get to know you better!”
    The men’s mocking laughter spurred Ti-Jeanne to move faster. She hugged Baby closer to her and scowled at Crack. Tony glared at him, too, but she knew Tony wouldn’t say anything to his boss’s right-hand man.
    Abruptly, the visions were there again. Ti-Jeanne froze, not trusting her eyes any longer to pick reality from fantasy. She was seeing:
    Crack Monkey, a wasted thing, falling to the ground and gasping his last. No one around him would care enough to try to help. (Crick-crack, monkey break he back in a ham sack);
    Crapaud, the old souse, in a run-down privatized hospital, finding the strength to scratch fitfully once more at his bedsores before his final, rattly exhalation. His sphincters would make a wet, bubbly noise as they released their load into his diaper. Cause of death? Metabolic acidosis. Cirrhosis of the liver. Rum. (Down by the river, down by the sea, Johnny break a bottle and blame it on me);
    Jay, killed by love; running to the aid of his sweetheart, a transvestite hooker who would be attacked when her john realised she was actually a man and pulled a knife. Jay’s death would come from a belly wound. Ti-Jeanne was sure that no one in the posse suspected that Jay was anything but arrow-straight. (Riddle me ree, riddle me ree, guess me this riddle; or perhaps not).
    Ti-Jeanne couldn’t see her