“Nah, nah, is all right, Tan-Tan, I have your present right here.”
Tan-Tan smiled and stepped forward, thinking Michael would open the door for her; instead he said, “Soon come,” and shut it in her face. She heard the bolts slide over. What the rass . . . ?! Tan-Tan kissed her teeth. Nothing she could do about it, she just had to stand there and wait for Michael to come back out. She put her ear to the door. She thought she could hear Gladys’s voice, then Michael’s, but she couldn’t make out the words. It fell quiet inside the iron shop.
In a little minute a clean-face Michael cracked the door again. He stepped outside fast-fast and shut it behind him. A quick blast of heat had followed him out. It dissipated on the breeze. Tan-Tan had only managed a glimpse inside before the bolts locked. There was something big like a donkey cart in there, covered right down to the ground in an oilcloth that had mako rockstones weighting it down. Tan-Tan was mad for curious. “Is a big something that,” she said enquiringly.
Michael only smiled, caramel skin crinkling to cocoa along his forge-weathered face. “Craven puppy does choke, Tan-Tan. When time come for you to know, you will know.”
Oh, yes? She knew how to get what she wanted from him. She grimaced a little, made a small noise of pain, lifted one foot delicately off the ground and perched it on top of the other.
“What happen to you?” he asked.
“Is a long walk over here, you know. I think I must be blister my foot.” She bent over, slowly slipped her alpagat sandal off her slim, brown foot. She spread her toes and inspected them. Michael gave a small intake of breath. She had him now. “You see any blister there, Michael? Between the big toe and the long toe? It paining me right there so.”
Michael pursed his lips. He looked almost frightened. He wiped his hand on the leather apron tied round his waist. His smith’s biceps jumped with the movement. He came closer and bent to look at her foot. The tips of his ears went ruddy with embarrassment. “You don’t think maybe I should go inside and sit down?” Tan-Tan asked him. She nearly felt wicked, teasing him like this. For a big, hard-back man, Michael was shy and gentle so till he wouldn’t even mash ants beneath his foot. For all her mischievousness, Tan-Tan liked him. He was a man who saved his strength for his work, not for brutalising people who didn’t do as he wanted.
“I ain’t see no cut,” he said softly.
Enough. She wasn’t going to torment the poor man any more. “Well, maybe is just a little soreness. You bring the knife?” She slipped her alpagats back on.
He straightened up, held his apron away from his thighs, kept wiping his hands in it as though they were wet. He took a long, chamois-wrapped package out of his apron pocket and held it towards her.
It had been Janisette’s idea; a cooking knife.
“The way people always sweet after you,” she’d told Tan-Tan, “you go have your own partner soon, and you go have to do your share of the cooking. A good cook need a sharp knife.” She’d sent Tan-Tan to the iron shop to order it, so Gladys could measure her grip. But as Tan-Tan had opened up her mouth to tell Gladys to make a cooking knife, the image of the Robber Queen dolly had popped into her head, and for some reason she’d said “hunting knife” instead. She hadn’t made Janisette know. Too besides, it was time she owned her own hunting knife. She and Melonhead were going to have to go through bush to get to Sweet Pone.
Tan-Tan unwrapped the chamois. An oiled leather sheath lay inside it. A shaped wooden handle protruded from it, rivets still new and shiny. Tan-Tan slid the knife out of its sheath. Light winked along the blade edge.
“When you not using it,” Michael said, “you must clean it with the chamois then oil it. And you must always store it in the sheath, you understand me?”
Tan-Tan just watched at the knife. It was gun-metal grey. A dark blue sheen chased itself round the blade. The tip of the blade came to a sharp point. She touched her finger to it, hissed as the point entered her skin.
“Careful!” Michael took the knife from her. “The point is so you could use it for throwing. Gladys make the handle from some Jamaica mahogany Chichibud bring we from Sweet Pone.”
The hardest wood, the most precious. It only had a few Jamaica mahogany trees growing on New Half-Way Tree, from a cutting an exile had brought years back. The way the handle of the knife curved, the way it was just the length of her palm and looked smooth like a baby’s cheek, Tan-Tan’s hand was itching to hold it again. She reached to take it from Michael.
“Mind now, girl. You must treat a knife with respect. You is left handed, yes? Here. Take it.”
The knife fit her hand like she’d been born carrying it. She laughed and swung it through the air. It sang.
“Wait, wait! Not like that. You go hurt somebody, or drop it and cut off your own pretty foot. Let me show you how.”
Michael stood behind her and reached over her shoulder to take her hand. He formed her fingers around the hilt of the knife. Shyly he said, “Like so. Feel the indentations for your fingers, and the one on top for your thumb? When your thumb slide into that space, you know you have the right angle for throwing.”
Tan-Tan turned and made to throw the knife at the trunk of the big halwa tree in the yard.
“No, not like that! You have to cock your arm back like this.” He bent her arm into the right position.
“Thanks, Michael.” She gave him a seductive smile. He looked down at the ground. What a way this man was sweet! Tan-Tan too liked gentle Michael. He was no true exile, had followed Gladys for love. People like him and Melonhead would never try to catch her in a quiet corner and feel her up. Not like . . .
Suddenly angry, she grunted and threw the knife. It went wide of its mark and sliced through a branchlet of the tree before it tumbled to the ground.
Michael laughed. “You get power in that throwing arm, Tan-Tan!” He retrieved the knife and gave it back to her. “The way you stand is the most important thing. You must plant your right foot in front.” He pointed at her foot, looked quickly away.
“Like you giving the girl-pickney a lesson, Michael?”
Michael started at the sound of Gladys’s voice. He took a step away from Tan-Tan.
“Ah-hah. Showing she how to use she new present.”
Gladys was leaning up against the front entrance, toffee-brown face flushed maroon from the heat and the exertion of forging iron.
Tan-Tan had always wondered what Michael saw in Gladys’s fat, round body, sturdy as a mother hen. How did Gladys even see over her own chest and belly to work on the anvil?
Gladys pulled off the scarf from her hair and used it to wipe her face. “I sure plenty of man already been teaching she how knife could jook.” She smirked at Tan-Tan. “How do, sweetheart?”
Bad Tan-Tan was snarling silently. None of Gladys’s blasted business. Tan-Tan skinned her teeth in a fine-fine smile. “Doing good, thank you, Gladys.”
“And your father? How things with the ex-mayor?” Gladys was from Cockpit County. She had been right there in the fight yard when Antonio had poisoned Quashee. She never had a good word for Antonio. Is jealousy fuelled by hard liquor that had brought Gladys to New Half-Way Tree. She’d broken a next woman’s back in a fight over Michael. She and Antonio were alike in that, oui. Maybe that’s why she hated him so. Gladys still had a taste for the bottle. Sometimes when she went on a drunk, Michael had to lock her in the shed and make her sleep off her rage.
“Daddy all right. Arthritis bothering he a little.”
“Too bad,” Gladys replied, looking as regretful as the mongoose that eat the last guinea fowl in the pen. “Anyhow, don’t make we keep you, Tan-Tan. I sure you have plenty to do to get ready for your birthday. Michael, time for we to take a break. My foot-them dusty. I want you to wash them for me. You know only you could do it nice the way I does like it.” She turned and walked into the bungalow that she and Michael had beside the iron shop.
“Yes, doux-doux.” Quick like fowl when it see corn athrow, Michael followed Gladys i
nto the house. As the door closed behind them, Tan-Tan heard Gladys’s rich, throaty laugh, heavy with hard living and hard loving. Tan-Tan cut her eyes at the closed door. Then she crept to the door of the iron shop and quietly tried it. Still locked.
The sheath could be tied round her waist. She knotted it securely, tucked the chamois into her bodice and headed for home. At the turnoff that led to their house she spied their neighbour Cudjoe, the bad carpenter, hoeing up dasheen in his front yard. He was clumsy with the hoe, still accustoming his body to the linear tasks that ate up every waking hour on New Half-Way Tree. He was cursing and working with equal determination. He’d taken off his shirt, leaving only a pair of work pants covering him. Sweat had put a sheen on his black skin. Muscles in his back flexed with each turn of the hoe. Like even bad carpenter can get good body, oui?
Cudjoe saw her. He waved. Tan-Tan waved back; looked down at her feet as though from shyness; looked back at him again, smiling sweetly. Worked smooth like cool breeze. Cudjoe let the hoe fall and came over. He’d failed the first test.
Tan-Tan made shift to toy with a curl of her hair. She was proud of her waist-long plaits. Every morning she undid them and washed her hair good with a soapy piece of cactus plant. Then she oiled it with some shine oil from Chichibud’s cart and plaited it up again.
“Good afternoon, Cudjoe. Like you working hard?”
“Yes, Tan-Tan, but then I see your beautiful self out catching the sun, and I come was to tell you that when I could see such a sight, all hard work get easy.”
An edgy excitement warmed her, shot through with pique. Easy fish. Rise to the hook. “Not all hard work, I hope, Cudjoe.”
Cudjoe quirked his lips into a small smile, stared provocatively into her eyes. “So,” he said, “I hear allyou having big fête and thing tomorrow.”
“Yes, my sixteenth birthday party. You coming?”
“I bet your boyfriend go bring you something real pretty.”
Tan-Tan giggled and gave Cudjoe a delicate tap on his shoulder; a slap light like a kiss. “Get away! You too fast! Where you hear I have any boyfriend?”
“What, nobody to dance with you on your sixteenth birthday? Now, that is a crying shame.”
He kept looking deep into her eyes. She met his glance full on and said, “You go come and dance with me then, Cudjoe?”
“What you going give me for a dance?” he asked playfully.
“Let we go for a short walk round the back and I give you little taste.” She took his hand, led him to the back of his hut where passers-by couldn’t see them. He hesitated, waiting to see what she would do. She put the front of her body up against his, put an arm round his waist. She could smell the man-sweat off him, the complicated scent that she loved and hated at the same time. “Kiss me then, nuh?” He put his mouth to hers. She sucked on his tongue. The silent, wicked Tan-Tan urged her on.
• • •
She heard Janisette shouting before she even self reached the house.
“You blasted motherass piece of shit! Get out here right now and face me, Antonio! Is where the dry fruits I been soaking in liquor for Tan-Tan cake? Eh? You mookoomslav! Don’t tell me booze have you so bassourdie, you drink it out from the soaking fruits and all? Get out here, I say!”
Antonio raged back, “Woman, don’t bother my ass with your stupidness. I been here sick in my bed all day. I ain’t see no fruits in liquor.”
“You liard son of a bitch!”
Tan-Tan ran inside the house, slamming the door as she entered. Sometimes if she did that, Janisette and Antonio would stop fighting and yell at her instead. It didn’t work this time, though. Tan-Tan heard the sharp wap! of a wooden pot spoon connecting with somebody’s flesh. She knew that sound too well. Is who throw the first blow this time? She flew inside the kitchen and grabbed the pot spoon out of Janisette’s hand, just as her stepmother was about to slap it against Antonio’s shoulder again.
“Janisette, stop! Daddy say he sick!”
Janisette turned and shoved Tan-Tan in her chest. Tan-Tan stumbled back against the kitchen wall. “Is only alcohol sick he! Why the rass you fasting yourself in my business? Is your birthday cake I trying to make, you know!”
Antonio flew at Janisette and threw his open hand across her face, crack!
“What you think this is, Janisette, laying a hand on my daughter? Eh?” He cuffed her in the belly. Janisette dropped to the ground, retching. Then she leapt to her feet again and flew at Antonio, screaming and kicking. He tried to trap her hands in his fists, shouted bitch and leggobeast at her.
“Daddy! Janisette!” They ignored her. “Oonuh have to stop, or somebody go send for the sheriff!”
Now Antonio had Janisette’s hair. Her head was twisted at an uncomfortable angle. She was clawing at his crotch. Tan-Tan forced herself in between them. She could smell the heavy sweet staleness on Antonio’s breath. “The sheriff coming!” she hissed desperately.
Antonio let Janisette go and stumbled back towards the bedroom. Janisette crumpled to the ground and lay there, gasping and holding her belly. Tan-Tan crouched down beside her.
“You all right, Janisette?”
She never saw the lash that creased her face.
“Facety girl-child!” Janisette hissed. “How you mean, ‘You all right?’” After you just done take your daddy side against me, like always? You two-face, force-ripe bitch, you no better than he, with your sluttish self! I bet you if I make One-Eye know how you does carry on with half the men in Junjuh, him would have plenty to say about that!”
Tan-Tan’s cheeks burned, from the slap, from shame. You no better than your daddy. She stood and looked down at Janisette. She fingered her mother’s wedding ring hanging from the chain round her neck, the one Antonio had given her for her ninth birthday. She had earned that ring. The words burned her lips. She spat them at her stepmother: “Talk all you like, Janisette. Both of we know is which one Antonio really love.”
Janisette’s face crumpled into tears. Tan-Tan stalked out to the verandah, went round to the back verandah. Power thrummed through her so strong she could scarcely breathe. She had never stood up to Janisette like that before! Is the last time she would let Janisette shame her like that. Oh yes, Tan-Tan thought. I big woman now, sixteen tomorrow. She go have to leave me alone.
She heard the front door slam, and the tinkle of Janisette’s gold ankle bracelets going away up the walk. She must be going to weep on Glorianna neck. Good for she.
She sat there on the back porch, legs swinging through the railings, taking in the afternoon sun and thinking about how she go talk plain around Janisette from now on. Pride? I have every right to be proud. I speak my mind.
Shame? You have every right to be shame. No better than your mother.
She ignored the silent voice.
Someone was coming round to the back house, whistling. It was Melonhead’s favourite tune. Tan-Tan smiled, craned her neck. There he was, wearing as ever a much-mended pair of khaki shorts and a holey singlet. Dust powdered his bare feet to the ankle.
“Girl, is what you do Janisette, eh? I just pass she fleeing up the walk sobbing with she whole head bury in a kerchief.” The dreads on his big round melon head bobbed with his stride. Tendons flexed in his bandy thighs as he walked. His broad smile was full of fun.
Tan-Tan chuckled. “But eh-eh. Ain’t she is big woman and me only pickney? What I could do she?”
He leaned against the banister beside her, picked a windblown leaf out of her hair. “Not no pickney no more. Full adult come tomorrow. You bags pack?”
Tan-Tan got serious. “No. Later.”
Melonhead frowned. “You tell them yet that you leaving?”
“No. Don’t talk so loud, Daddy somewhere round the place.” Tan-Tan rubbed her arms. Sun had gone behind a cloud. “I done tell you already, I just want to leave quiet-quiet tomorrow night. Daddy and Janisette go be bassourdie with liquor and the two of them going to be asleep. Let them wake up next morning and find we gone
, nuh?”
Melonhead sighed, cocked a foot up onto the verandah floor. His legs were really too short to do that gracefully. Tan-Tan absent-mindedly brushed some dust off the knobby knee he presented. Melonhead said, “Girl, talk sense. How we going leave at night, eh? Is bush we go be walking through. You want ground puppy chew up we tail? You want grit fly to suck we eyeball-them dry?”
“It have trails to Sweet Pone.”
“And bush all round. You have a water jug to carry?”
“I can’t share yours?”
“What food you taking? You have dry bouilli beef and buju and congo peas and thing?”
“Some,” she said quietly. “I thief little piece from Janisette.”
“You have pot to cook in, and firestick?”
“I have a knife,” she said, indicating the sheath at her waist.
“And what? You going to catch wild boar with that and your bare hand? How you going eat? How you going sleep? Come to that, you have tent and bedroll?”
“I thought I could share your—”
“Nanny give me strength! Tan-Tan, you is big woman or you is pickney still? These is the same questions I been asking you for two months now, and still you ain’t prepare. Like you ain’t really want to go, or what?”
“Sshh!” Tan-Tan hissed. “Daddy go hear you!” Melonhead scowled at her, ran a hand through his hair. He always did that when he was upset. She tried to explain: “I just want to do this quiet, get away quick before they know.”
“When you going to stop hiding from them?” he asked. Hesitated. Then softly: “I know them does beat you.”
The flurry-fear of panic rose in her throat like wings beating. Hush it, mock it, make it small. She cackled, “Melonhead, is what that big head of yours working overtime on in truth? I get two-three little slap when I was pickney, same like you. Not for years now, man.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, looked away from the hurt in Melonhead’s eyes.
Midnight Robber Page 16
