Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “Tan-Tan!” Antonio shouted, “get away from that mad girl!” He made to pull her away, but he forgot and used his broken arm. He bawled for pain and would have fainted dead away if One-Eye hadn’t supported him and helped him onto the other examining table. Chichibud chewed on a piece of jerky from his pouch, simply watching.

  “Aislin,” One-Eye said, “I know how this must be paining you, but you is we doctor; you have to help this man.”

  Aislin just shook her head. Claude went and held her hand.

  “Choonks, I know now who this man is. I know what he do to you, for ain’t is me who shoulder you bawl on when Quamina did born bassourdie? But you have a job to do, darling.”

  Aislin just stood frozen, her face set hard. Tan-Tan had seen that expression plenty of times before. “Is just so Nursie does do she lip,” she said.

  Aislin’s face softened. “Mamee still alive?” she asked Tan-Tan.

  “Yes,” Antonio muttered. “I taking care of your mother good-good in my house. And she visit she sister all the time. I ain’t leave she lonely with no people to share she life with. She all right.”

  Aislin made a soft noise, like when you standing outside the sweetie shop window but your mummy won’t let you go in.

  “Maybe Tan-Tan should go outside and play with Quamina after all,” Daddy said to her.

  Aislin sighed. “Yes, Quamina; show your sister the swings, all right, sweetness? I have to do some doctor business now.”

  “All right.”

  “You better stay here, Claude; you and One-Eye. I need someone here with me to mind I don’t poison this son of a dog instead of giving he medicine. Stay and watch me, or it might be me allyou putting in that galvanized box tomorrow morning.”

  Chichibud walked with them down the steps to the gravel path. “Trail debt between we done, pickney. You reach safe.”

  “Thank you, Chichibud.”

  Carrying his bounty, he limped back towards the bush.

  Quamina took Tan-Tan to an almond tree in the middle of the village. A rope swing with a plank for a seat hung from one of its low branches. “I go push,” Quamina said shyly. Tan-Tan climbed on, still clutching Quamina’s doll in one hand. She squeezed its arm and the swing’s rope together in one fist. She let the older girl push. “Where you come from?” Quamina asked.

  “From the half-way tree. Yesterday morning.”

  “Mummy say you is my sister.”

  “I ain’t know. Push a little harder, nuh?” Tan-Tan pumped and pumped her legs until she was swinging high over the village. But all she looked out over the bush, she couldn’t see the shift tower. It was daylean; the sun was lowering to dark. The ringing in her ears was back. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

  She pushed Quamina in the swing for a while, then she taught her how to play Midnight Robber. Quamina had to be the Faithful Tonto and just follow what Tan-Tan did. Her mind was too young for anything else. They made up brave deeds for the Midnight Robber: “And then, and then she say, ‘Oh, bad mako jumbie, I going chop your neck for you and send you far away up in the half-way tree!’”

  As it got darker a woman with a ladder came out and climbed the lampposts in the village square. She lit the lamps. The flickering light put Tan-Tan in mind of the nation ship hat she’d worn at Jonkanoo time. Were the tongues of flame singing, or was the sound just in her ears?

  A little after nightfall, Aislin came to look for them, her face set and unsmiling. She hugged Quamina tight, straightened her dress. Quamina chortled and kissed her mother. “Come, Tan-Tan,” Aislin said. “You could have dinner with me and Quamina, and then I go take you to Antonio.”

  “Daddy staying by you in the doctor house?”

  “No, child. I can’t have that man near me. One-Eye and my Claude carry he over to the mash-up hut where old Zora used to live till she pass on last year. The two of you could stay there.”

  “Daddy go get better?”

  “Yes, darling. Your father tough like old boot. In two-twos he go be back on he feet, up to he old tricks. And Granny Nanny help we then.”

  As they got close to the silent doctor house Tan-Tan could smell food cooking. Her tummy started to rumble. They went inside. There wasn’t a lot of light there. Rusty iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling: smelly, smoky candles burned in them. Tan-Tan stroked a wall for light, but nothing happened. The voices in the candle flame were stronger now. She could almost hear what they were singing. Her ears itched, particularly the left one. She tunnelled her little finger into it to scratch it, but it didn’t help.

  “I been busy all day,” Aislin told them. She went to something that looked like a stove, only flames were burning in the top of it. There was a big frying pan on the flames. Aislin reached for a cloth hanging beside the stove and used it to lift the lid off the frying pan. A fry-popping sound came from it, and a delicious smell. Aislin stuck a spoon inside. She tapped something from the spoon onto her hand and tasted it. “I ain’t have time to do nothing fancy. Quamina, put down that dolly, nuh? Show Tan-Tan how to wash she hands, then allyou sit to table.”

  “Yes, Mummy.” There was a big wooden barrel of water beside the wooden sink. A calabash dipper hung from a string on the wall. Quamina dipped water over Tan-Tan’s hands while she washed them. The soap smelt nasty and made her skin dry. The cool water made her shiver. “Dip some for me now,” Quamina told her. She did, awkwardly. “Now come to table.”

  Three rough, uneven chairs stood round a hand-hewed table. Tan-Tan’s chair wobbled. The plates were a blue glaze with red birds painted on them. In the candlelight they seemed to flap their wings. Were they singing? Ah, chi-chi bird, oi. Some of them a-holler, some a-bawl. No, that’s not what they were singing. Tan-Tan couldn’t understand the words.

  Aislin brought the frying pan over to the table and emptied its contents onto the three plates. “You like metamjee, child? Oil-down, some people call it? Chichibud give me some of he mako jumbie meat, and I fry it up with some ground provisions and coconut oil.”

  “What happen to your Cookie?” Tan-Tan asked her.

  Aislin frowned. “Doux-doux darling, nobody here have any artisans to gift them with their skills. You and Antonio going to have to cook your own food that you grow in your own yard, or that you hunt and kill yourself. You going to have to fetch your own water, and take your own clothes down to the river bank to wash. Anything we have here, we make with we own two hand. You understand, Tan-Tan?”

  “Back-break not for people,” Tan-Tan quoted at her scornfully.

  “We not people no more. We is exiles. Is work hard or dead.”

  “I does work hard,” Quamina said proudly. “Is me get the stuffing for my dolly from the feather pod trees it have growing in the bush.”

  Aislin smiled at Quamina.

  Tan-Tan said, “My daddy go take care of me. My daddy could do anything.”

  “Your daddy think he could get away with anything. Is a different thing. And it look like them finally catch him out, oui? Junjuh Town go do for he.” She seemed to shake the thought away. “Well, never mind, sweetness. Let we eat.”

  Tan-Tan thought she’d never tasted any food so good as the plate of oil-down she was eating with a beat-up old spoon at a rickety kitchen table. But after couple-three mouthfuls she lost her appetite for more. She still felt shivery from the cold water. Her head hurt like it had hammers inside. The voices in the candle flames were singing:

  Dodo, petit popo, (Sleep, little one,)

  Petit popo pas v’lez dodo, (But baby ain’t want to sleep,)

  Si vous pas dodo, petit popo, (If you don’t sleep, little baby,)

  Mako chat allez mangez ’o. (Big tiger go come and eat you up.)

  “No!” she yelled at them. “Daddy won’t let you!”

  “Tan-Tan?” Aislin said.

  Eat you up, beat you up, the candles told her. Her head pounded. Brigand a miduit allez mangez ’o. Everything looked blurry. “No,” she whimpered at the candles.

  “T
an-Tan, is what do you?” It was Nursie’s voice, but young. Nursie’s hand touched her forehead. “Me granny! You burning up with fever!”

  “Nursie, I want to go to bed. I don’t feel good.”

  Nursie picked her up. She closed her aching eyes and laid her head against Nursie’s neck. The room was swinging, swinging in circles. Her supper flew up out of her belly and gushed acidic lumps past her lips, splattering Nursie’s shoulder. Then blackness come down.

  • • •

  They never heard word of Maka, the runner who had made the poison that had killed Quashee. He’d promised he would join Daddy by climbing the half-way tree. Tan-Tan sometimes wondered what had happened to him. She had liked his face.

  The year she turned nine, Antonio and his new partner Janisette threw a fête for Tan-Tan:

  My little Tan-Tan get so big! You look just like my lost Ione.

  The fête started when the three of them got home from working the cornfields that flanked Junjuh. They toted extra water, enough to wash their hair and all. When it was her turn to use the big wooden washbasin out back of the cottage, Tan-Tan sat still in the water and inspected her face reflected in it. Yes, Mummy’s eyes had been brown so, had come to tiny turned-up points at the outsides like that. Mummy’s hair had been mixup-mixup like that, some straight, some coiled tight like springs, some wavy. All the bloods flowing into one river. She looked like Mummy for true. Mummy was never coming to see her. Nor eshu, nor Nursie. They had just left her here in this place.

  Janisette shouted through the window, “Pickney-child, make haste and done with that bath!” Tan-Tan looked up to see Daddy gazing at her through the mesh of the wet-sugar tree bark that formed his and Janisette’s bedroom window. He drew his head back fast. Tan-Tan stood and dried herself.

  Quamina came to her birthday, with Claude and Aislin. Aislin scowled the whole time and kept calling Quamina to her. Tan-Tan had asked for Chichibud to come too. “Nanny guard we,” Janisette had said. “What you want that nasty douen in the house for?”

  Tan-Tan had pouted and looked at her feet. “He tell nice stories.”

  “Is true, doux-doux,” Antonio had said to Janisette. “We could have him out in the yard. He could tell ’nansi story and keep the pickney-them entertained.”

  One-Eye dropped in after he had made his rounds of the town for the evening. When Chichibud arrived the whole fête moved to the yard out back. They drank sweet sorrel (Janisette gave Chichibud his in a calabash dipper, not a mug). They ate hot halwa fruit, and Chichibud told them duppy stories by the fire, about all kinda dead spirits and thing. Claude lay across One-Eye’s and Aislin’s laps, reaching up from time to time to kiss one or the other of them. Tan-Tan and Quamina screamed and laughed and held each other as Chichibud told them about the Blackheart man who steals away tallpeople girl-pickneys and chops out their hearts.

  Ah, my little Tan-Tan, so sweet. Don’t ’fraid. I not going to hurt you.

  Quamina gave Tan-Tan a new dolly. “I make she like a Carnival Robber Queen for you, sister.” Quamina had gained even more sense in these years. Aislin had told Tan-Tan that the douen medicine was still working on her, growing her up very slowly. The dolly had on a black jacket and pants like a masquerade Robber, and a big wide-brim hat with tassels hiding its face. Quamina had put a little wooden gun in the doll’s waistband and had tied a tiny wooden knife in a holster round one thigh. “You know is a lady dolly because I give she two bubbies,” Quamina said. And for true, the doll had two bumps of breasts like Quamina’s. Tan-Tan wondered what it would feel like when she got her own.

  Aislin kissed her and gave her some lavender perfume that she had brewed in the doctor house. “Doux-doux, remember the scare you give we the first day you come here? I so glad you here for we to enjoy your birthday.” Aislin glared at Daddy. When adult exiles got punted to New Half-Way Tree, the trip through the warps of the dimension veils caused their earbugs to cease functioning. But Tan-Tan’s earbug had still been growing with her growing body; its nanomites hadn’t yet calcified permanently into a transmitter-receiver. The nanomites had become infected and had nearly killed her.

  Chichibud gave Tan-Tan a plant from the bush. It had heart-shaped leaves and a deep red flower. A simple gift, but Tan-Tan had come to understand over the years that douens were simple people; Aislin had told her so. They did everything with their hands and never thought to advance themselves any further.

  Chichibud held up the flower to show her, and Tan-Tan realised that she had grown taller than the little douen man. She inhaled the perfume of the flower, like roses and grapefruits.

  “We does call it sky-fall-down-to-earth, for is the same colour as the evening sky,” he say. Tan-Tan watched as he transplanted it into the garden.

  “Thank you, Mister Chichibud.”

  “He is only douen. Don’t be calling he mister.” Janisette kissed her teeth. She had given Tan-Tan a pretty new dress in douen yellow, made by Chichibud’s invisible wife. “I hope the bodice fit. You does outgrow everything so fast nowadays.”

  Antonio had given her his gold wedding band strung onto a leather thong to wear round her neck.

  “This is yours, Daddy.”

  “Never mind. Is yours now. I give up everything to come here so we could be together, Tan-Tan; my wife, my home, everything. And look at how big you get. The ring is yours.”

  As Tan-Tan tied the thong round her neck she glimpsed Janisette’s thundercloud-dark face. “You leave one wife and gone, but you have a next one now. And I suppose you ain’t think to gift this one with gold ring.” Janisette spent the rest of the fête knocking back one set of sorrel spiked with strong rum. Antonio had to half-carry her to bed when the fête was done and everybody gone home. Then he walked Tan-Tan to her bedroom.

  Tan-Tan was feeling so happy. She gave Antonio one big hug, pressed against him and held on tight. “Thank you for my party, Daddy.”

  “Nanny bless, doux-doux. You know how much I love you.” He stroked her shoulder, her hair.

  My sweet little girl. You get so big now. Let me comb your hair for you. Let me put on your nightie. I go tuck you into bed, all right?

  He took her face in his two hands and kissed her on the mouth. Let me show you something special.

  Antonio laid her down on the bed. The “special” thing was something more horrible than she’d ever dreamt possible. Why was Daddy doing this to her? Tan-Tan couldn’t get away, couldn’t understand. She must be very bad for Daddy to do her so. Shame filled her, clogged her mouth when she opened to call out to Janisette for help. Daddy’s hands were hurting, even though his mouth smiled at her like the old Daddy, the one from before the shift tower took them. Daddy was two daddies. She felt her own self split in two to try to understand, to accommodate them both. Antonio, good Antonio smiled at her with his face. Good Tan-Tan smiled back. She closed her mind to what bad Antonio was doing to her bad body. She watched at her new dolly on the pillow beside her. Its dress was up around its waist and she could see its thigh holster with the knife in it. She wasn’t Tan-Tan, the bad Tan-Tan. She was Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the terror of all Junjuh, the one who born on a far-away planet, who travel to this place to rob the rich in their idleness and help the poor in their humility. She name Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, and strong men does tremble in their boots when she pass by. Nothing bad does ever happen to Tan-Tan the Robber Queen. Nothing can’t hurt she. Not Blackheart Man, not nothing.

  Oh God, Tan-Tan, oh God, don’t cry. I sorry. I won’t do it again. We won’t even tell Janisette, all right, or she go be mad at we. You wouldn’t want she to send for One-Eye to put me in the tin box, right? That would kill your poor Daddy, Tan-Tan. Is just because I missing your mother, and you look so much like she. You see how I love you, girl? See what you make me do? Just like Ione. Just like your mother.

  Tan-Tan looked at the dolly’s knife holster. It would be nice if the little wooden knife inside it were really sharp steel. Babygreen, she would name the dolly Babygreen to
replace the one she’d left behind.

  The bad thing happened plenty of times after that. Antonio promised every time would be the last. But he couldn’t help himself, is because she was the spitting image of Ione. Daddy said so. One evening she passed by Antonio and Janisette’s room. Janisette was sobbing, “You love she better than me, ain’t?”

  “No, doux-doux,” came Antonio’s appeasing voice.

  “She is your daughter, but I is your wife!”

  “No, doux-doux, no.”

  “Auntie Aislin, you coming tomorrow?” Tan-Tan rested her carry sack on the side table in Aislin’s office and ran to give the woman a hug. She had to lean forward over Aislin’s baby-big belly to put her arms around the doctor.

  “Of course, sweetness! You think me and Quamina could miss your sweet sixteen?” Aislin chuckled and rocked her, singing about the sweet sixteen who’d never been kissed.

  You wish, whispered a silent, mean voice in Tan-Tan’s head. She ignored it. “Eh-eh, Aislin; them is your new shelf and thing?”

  Tan-Tan went to inspect the wood shelves and cupboards Aislin had asked Cudjoe to build for her. The shelves were crookedy. Most of the cupboard doors didn’t quite meet. Tan-Tan looked back at Aislin.

  “Me know, me know,” Aislin said. “One-Eye tell me how I fool-fool to make that man put hammer to nail for me, but I feel sorry for Cudjoe, man! He having a hard time learning how to be headblind.”

  Cudjoe had climbed the half-way tree just two months earlier. He had wanted to be a carpenter on Toussaint. He had learned the trade in a hurry, trying to cash in on the new fad amongst the Shipmate Houracan people from the south. Everyone wanted headblind cottages of real wood with nails, like the runners had. Gazebos and small huts were springing up everywhere beside people’s main, aware homes. One of Cudjoe’s shoddily constructed cottages had collapsed, killing a woman, a man and three small pickney. While the local Mocambo was still trying to decide what to do with Cudjoe, a treehouse he’d built had fallen in on itself. The boy and girl who’d been playing in it had been injured, but would live. Nanny’s guidance to the Mocambo was that Cudjoe should be made to learn his trade properly, but the Mocambo disagreed. They judged that Cudjoe had already endangered too many people. They didn’t even opt for exporting him, just shipped him up the half-way tree.