Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Then it stopped. One of them shouted, “Rasscloth! A-what that? Run, allyou, run!”

  Tan-Tan was still too bassourdie to make out is what going on. One mako claw closed round her upper arm. She tore weakly at it. Another supported her head. Abitefa!

  *Stand up, Tan-Tan!* the hinte screeched. *Arms round my neck!* Somehow they managed, Tan-Tan muttering punch-drunkenly all the while into Abitefa’s ear, “My gros bonange, sweet guardian angel.” They made their exit fast from Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan hanging on to Abitefa’s neck and the hinte running hopping dropping, for her body hadn’t changed enough yet to allow her to fly off proper with Tan-Tan. Abitefa ’buse she off good for that little escapade, oui?

  Lying in the cornfield outside Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan was barely listening to Abitefa’s rant. Her head was still spinning from how the man had lashed her. She half-heard Tefa, noticed how the young woman’s words getting to sound more like when Benta spoke. Abitefa nearly turn woman already, oui?

  Tan-Tan poked at her calabash belly with the demon inside. Three months. Maybe the fight had knocked it loose? She lay back again, listening to Abitefa carry on. She prayed for the cramps to start that would miscarry the demon. But nothing. When she woke up next morning, Antonio’s child was still with her.

  She’d lost her machète over that one. She crept back into Chigger Bite next night to thief another one, even though Abitefa was frantic over her going.

  Daylean was when she went, the prettiest time of day on New Half-Way Tree. The dying sun had turned all the light lavender. The evening air felt cool on her skin as she emerged from the bush into the field of high corn. The waving leaves drew against her face as she went by; the same way so Antonio would pass his dry, papery fingers across her cheeks, like he was trying to remember when his flesh felt young like that. Tan-Tan shuddered and put a hand out in front of her to ward off the corn leaves. The corn swayed and rustled in the breeze. Sneaking through it in the puss boots Chichibud had brought her, Tan-Tan heard her feet landing quiet-quiet like lovers whispering secrets to one another. With her big shawl and her boots on, she felt like Tan-Tan the Robber Queen for true.

  She lifted a machète easily from the barn. She could have gone back then, but from where she was she could see the flickering oil lamps in Chigger Bite. Her heart started to pump faster. She went creeping round the village, just to see what was doing. Seemed she couldn’t fill up her eyes enough with the sight of tallpeople going about their business. The stories she heard people whispering about her round the kerosene lamps in the rum shop nearly made her dead with laugh. She hurried back and told Abitefa about it round the fire they had built:

  “If you could only imagine: them say how Tan-Tan the Robber Queen have eyes like fire, how she ain’t even human! I supposed to have ratbat wings like Shaitan out of Hell heself, and two heads, one in front and one in back. Somebody have it to say how they see me spit green poison and fly off into the night! God girl, that too sweet.”

  She grinned at Abitefa. She took a bite of the manicou haunch that she’d roasted on the fire. The hot fat oozed into her mouth and ran down her chin. She tried to imagine what tallpeople saw when they looked at her, that they would describe her as duppy and ratbat and ravener. Was she? Mad? A scary thing from a anansi story? Or just herself? She ain’t know. For now, food hot in she belly and friend strong by she side. For a little while at least, life was good.

  • • •

  Tan-Tan knew she had to wait couple-three weeks before making a next excursion to Chigger Bite. Give the village people time to relax and stop looking out for her. But the waiting got her to feeling so restless she couldn’t stand it. Benta tried to show her how to weave, but she was only snarling up the loom. What weaving had to do with her any at all? Chichibud took her from level to level in the daddy tree to introduce her to their neighbours, but she didn’t pay plenty mind to who was who. She was barely polite. Douen people didn’t want her among them anyway. Days in the daddy tree didn’t suit her, and she was frightened of the nights too bad. She would lie in the darkness with her head wrapped up from the house cousins, holding her eyes open wide-wide against sleep, trying to stay awake until dayclean. But all she do, her eyelids-them would lock eventually, and then, Antonio would be there waiting for her.

  “Soon, doux-doux,” he would whisper, running his hands over her body. She couldn’t squirm out of his grasp, he was too strong. “I go be with you again soon. Four months gone. Just a few more. Soon, Ione.”

  Every morning Tan-Tan would wake up in a cold sweat, her belly churning. She was going to go mad in this place. She passed the time by weaving herself a hut down on the bush floor from pliant green withies she cut from the trees. She really didn’t know much about it, but she was learning as she went, occupying her mind and body. The hard work soothed her spirit. One day she swung at a young sapling with her machète, and something moved inside her belly. She dropped the machète and put her palms to her stomach. She felt the baby roll under her hands, once.

  Anger filled up her mind, buzzing in her head like bees. She picked up the machète again and started to chop, chop, chop like if she could chop down every tree on this motherass planet. Abitefa found her a little later, blowing hard, her sweat-soaked clothes sticking to her like sensé fowl feathers when it rain, but still chopping strong. And cursing! If curse word was machète, Tan-Tan would have chopped down that whole bush by herself with her mouth alone. She glared down Abitefa, but what tallpeople body talk mean to a douen? Damn mangy not-yet-hinte didn’t see the warning in her look. With one claw foot Abitefa calmly took the machète from Tan-Tan’s hand. *You tired. Rest.*

  Tan-Tan felt her mouth start to tremble. She sucked in breath after breath, trying to catch more air. The breaths turned to sobs.

  “He rape me, Abitefa. He put this baby in me, like the one before. He was forever trying to plant me, like I was his soil to harvest.”

  Abitefa scratched her two feet-them a little on the ground. *Why?*

  “How the rass I am to know? Eh? Tell me how! I only wish I could have stop he—kick he with my claw foot-them, jook out he eye-them with my pointy beak!”

  *You not a hinte,* Abitefa pointed out.

  The sobs erupted, harsh as coughs. “Not a hinte, not nothing with value. Better I did dead, oui.”

  Abitefa folded up her backwards knees to plump herself down on the ground beside Tan-Tan. She rocked from side to side, making a humming sound in the back of her throat. Thinking.

  The baby was jooking into Tan-Tan’s side. She put a hand to the place. The baby moved away from it. It really had a living being inside her for true.

  Abitefa cocked her head to look at Tan-Tan. *No need to wish for dead, it will happen soon enough. It does come to all of we.*

  Tefa just couldn’t understand, oui. “Is all right, Abitefa.”

  • • •

  That had been a good lime, a nice piece of entertainment. That poor, tired woman sleeping like the dead in her break-down little hut was going to be so surprised to wake up and find a big pot of curry goat on her kitchen table. Tan-Tan wondered if the people at the cookstand had missed it yet.

  It was early evening. Lights were being lit all over Chigger Bite. Maybe she would go back early up the daddy tree tonight.

  She was nearly to the outskirts of the town when she heard a noise from a side street: Putt-putt-putt. It sounded familiar, and it was coming closer. Frowning, Tan-Tan waited to see what it was.

  Ahead of her, a car turned from the side street onto the one she was standing on. A car! Big and loud and smelly; body made of rusting sheets of iron held together with rivets; and large, lumpy wheels made from tree sap or something. The car’s exhaust pipe was pumping out one set of black smoke, clouds of it rolling up into the clean air. The exhaust is where the explosions were coming from. And look, is bad-minded Gladys she behind the wheel, oui.

  At first Tan-Tan didn’t even self have the presence of mind to be frightened. So is that Gladys and Micha
el was making in them iron shop. Michael was beside Gladys, fanning away smoke from her face with a palm leaf fan.

  And in the back of the car, sitting high on the caboose? Tan-Tan’s stepmother, Janisette.

  “Look she there!” Janisette shouted. Gladys turned the car towards Tan-Tan. Janisette aimed a rifle at her stepdaughter. Tan-Tan jumped behind the corner of a house. Pow! A spray of plaster flew into Tan-Tan’s eyes from the bullet that hit the wall right beside her head.

  Phut-phut-phut. Tan-Tan ran, dipping through people’s kitchen gardens, ducking behind chicken coops and thing. The baby bounced like a watermelon in her belly, slowing her down, like it wanted her to get caught. Antonio’s duppy self, haunting and hunting her from within. Tan-Tan put two fists to her belly bottom to hold it still. She ran, she ran, she ran. “Nanny, Granny Nanny, help me now . . .” She was only sucking in air, but she couldn’t get enough. The autocarriage stalked her, phut-phut-phut. She crashed through somebody’s bambam pumpkin patch. Her foot smashed clomp! right through a ripe pumpkin. She had to stop and shake it off. Through frightened tears she saw a face in the kitchen window, smiling a vampirish soucouyant smile in the guttering candlelight: Al’s mother. She nodded a greeting in the direction of the autocar.

  Phut-phut-phut.

  Tan-Tan ran.

  The car was getting tangled in the ropy pumpkin vines, it didn’t have enough power to tear free. Janisette pulled off another shot, missed. Fire burning in her throat, Tan-Tan headed for the cornfields. She could hear the whine of the carriage straining against the bonds that held it, the coughing of the engine as the wheels spun pumpkin trash up into it. She lost them in the tall corn, escaped into the bush and ran, ran, ran till every breath was like sucking in ground glass and her limbs were whip-striped from branches she had fled past. She collapsed to the ground, chest heaving for air. How, how? Too frightened for words, she couldn’t complete the thought. Were they still following? She tried to still her breath, listened hard. No car sound. On foot, maybe? Sneaking up on her right this minute? Tan-Tan peered back the way she thought she’d come. Outside the bush the sky would be still deepening to oxblood dark, but here in the bush night had already come, solid as a lump of coal. She couldn’t see a rass. Cooling sweat made her shiver. A grit fly nibbled painfully at her eye corner, but she didn’t dare slap it away. Was that a light? The sound of a footstep? No. She waited minutes more. No, they weren’t coming after her.

  Where was she? She hadn’t entered the bush at her usual spot, hadn’t had been able to spare a moment to even think about her lantern, much less collect it from where she’d hidden it.

  The grit flies were gathering, drawn by her heat. She could hear their whining. She was bitten, then again. Dashing furious fingers at her eyes, she fumbled with her other hand in her carry pouch, found the precious matches. It felt like a stinging age of stumbling round in the dark before she put hands on a likely brand of wood. When she moved it she disturbed a ground puppy, which took a good bite out of her arm before it bounced off into the night. Damned things glowed purple in the dark.

  By now the grit flies were worrying so badly at her eyes that she could barely stand to take her hands away to light the brand. It took a long time to catch, nine or ten tries with the matches. By the time it was burning well, her eyes were swollen nearly shut.

  The brand flared, driving away the grit flies. Blessèd, blessèd relief. She heard a sound moving away from her, away from the light; a massive crushing of the undergrowth. Then another. Mako jumbie? Rolling calf? She began to tremble.

  It was hours before she came upon the douen path. She could have wept with relief, but she didn’t dare; she was hardly seeing out of her tortured eyes any more. She careened along the path. When her shins finally crashed into a buttress root of the daddy tree, she thought it was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt. She extinguished the burning branch by stabbing it into the damp loam and, eyes shut, scrambled exhaustedly up until the first douen lights flickered against her eyelashes. She was home. She climbed to Chichibud and Benta’s nest. Chichibud was up, waiting for her. “I thought is you that I could hear crashing through the leaves,” he said. “Why you let grit fly do you so? What happen to your lantern?”

  “I lost it. I put it down somewhere and didn’t mark good where.”

  “I go get you some balm. Go on to bed.”

  The soothing balm worked, as so much douen medicine did. The itching and burning faded quickly and the swelling subsided. Tan-Tan fell into an exhausted sleep. She ran in her dreams all night, chased by a thing she couldn’t see. When she clambered out from sleep, she realised: Janisette and them hadn’t seemed surprised to see her there in Chigger Bite. They must have been asking the settlements round Junjuh for news of her. Had Al’s mother betrayed her?

  Next morning she was helping Benta fold some newly woven cloths. *You could have come to grief last night,* Benta clucked.

  Grief come to me long time. “But nothing happen, I was all right.”

  *No, you prove you is still a bush baby. You my charge and Chichibud’s, we can’t put you in danger. From now on, you must only go down a-bush during the day.*

  And all Tan-Tan protested, she had to obey. The rest of the douens told on her if she tried to escape, and somebody from the nest would come and get her. For a week her curfew made her shamed and furious. She big woman, making baby, and two ratbats telling her what to do!

  She couldn’t stand it. One morning she decided to talk to them about it. They were in the kitchen, Chichibud gouging holes in the daddy tree to transplant new herbs into, and Benta trimming back new daddy tree growth with her sharp beak. Tan-Tan opened up her mouth to talk to them.

  BANG-bang-bang! rang out through the daddy tree. Tan-Tan threw herself prone to the floor. Benta was by her side in two-twos, sweeping Tan-Tan to safety beneath her body. She screeched for Zake and Abitefa, who scrambled up into the kitchen to hide under her too. BANG-bang-bang! It was coming from groundwards. Chichibud yelled that he would see what the racket was. He leapt for the hole in the floor, grabbing at the rope as he did. There came the slap of his feet hitting the floor downstairs, then running outside.

  Zake was only wailing, “Uhu! Uhu!” Benta whistled softly to him. The daddy tree branches were thrumming with the impact of douens running, hurrying down to the bush floor to see is what really going on. Tan-Tan, Zake and Abitefa squatted under Benta’s breast like baby birds in a nest. What strangeness was happening this time? Tan-Tan’s mind skittered in fright.

  The bowl of centipede things had spilled. The nasty yellow-green insects that had been released were scuttling hell-for-leather to freedom. And all the while, all you could hear was: BANG-bang-bang! Splutter-splutter-phut-phut.

  Then the patter of feet running back inside the nest. *Chichibud?* Benta sang out. Chichibud warbled back. His head appeared in the hole in the floor. “Allyou make haste come and see. Down on the forest floor. You too, Tan-Tan; this have to be tallpeople business.”

  No time for the harness once they reached outside the nest. Chichibud climbed up on Benta’s back, grasped her feathered sides with his feet claws. Tan-Tan clambered up behind him and wrapped her arms round his waist. The banging noise was driving out all logic. Chichibud’s nutmeg-and-vinegar smell was strong; he was agitated. Abitefa threw herself down a daddy tree trunk, heading fast for ground level. Benta pumped up her wings and flung herself off the branch. Tan-Tan fought down nausea as the plummet seemed to turn her belly right away round in her body.

  All round them douen people were heading down, quiet like duppy spirits as they reached the lower levels. Benta landed on the lowest branch. It was wide like an avenue. Its edge was crowded with douens four deep, but Benta pushed to the front. Tan-Tan and Chichibud slid off her. A few douens climbed up frantically from ground level to join them; the ones who’d been at the foundry. What were they running from?

  The sound of explosions was coming from off in the bush, from the direction of Chigger Bite. It
was getting closer. Could never happen, say it couldn’t be. Tan-Tan bent and whispered into Chichibud’s ear: “What we looking for?”

  “Wait. It coming into sight now. Keep still.”

  Is like he give the order to everybody. Every man-jack of the douen people became still and invisible. They slid into shadows or put themselves behind big daddy tree leaves. Is as if nobody was there.

  Tan-Tan sank into a crouch and watched at the place where the noise was coming from. Closer. Louder. It broke from the bush into the space beneath the daddy tree. Splutter-splutter-phut-phut-phut. It was the car, limned by the lanterns its occupants were carrying. Tan-Tan squeaked, clapped a hand to her mouth. They had tracked her from Chigger Bite!

  The car rolled to a stop. They had wrapped chains round its wheels. The chains had bitten into the loam and tossed up deep chunks of it, leaving a plowed trail all the way from the daddy tree back to Chigger Bite.

  “What a way the something ugly!” Chichibud whispered.

  Sitting up on the caboose, Janisette was wearing a low-cut black peasant blouse today and tight black dungarees, with a big black straw hat and veil protecting her face and bosom. She favoured La Diablesse, the devil woman. She put her lantern down beside her and rolled the veil up over the hat to look round. For all her widow’s weeds she didn’t look like nobody in mourning, oui? More like a woman on a rampage. Is so thunder cloud does look before the hurricane, so rolling calf does gather heself into a big black ball before he strike. She looked up, up at the height and breadth of the daddy tree.