A small crowd of people had gathered to hear the speech. A few of them flipped coins of copper and brass into her sack. Finally the old man tossed her two coppers too. A good first take. They honoured her as they should. The Midnight Robber bowed graciously, accepting their beneficence. Her small audience clapped, dispersed. Tan-Tan blinked to find herself just a woman in a costume once more.
She went on a little farther, performed her piece a few more times, gathered more coin and gifts. Was going to be hard taking all this back to Abitefa, and her back was hurting her today. Maybe Melonhead would help. She danced some more, but the underlying hum it seemed only she could hear was throwing her off. She wasn’t going to let it get in the way of her first fête in years. She worked her way to the front, right up close to where the band was playing. Music so loud it danced in her blood like her very own heartbeat. Yes, like so. She put her hands on the stage, her behind in the air, and gyrated to the rhythm. “Put your hand in the air!” she shouted with the chorus. Yes, allyou; watch the Robber Queen dance.
A loud tone blatted out over the square. The tenor pans stopped first. People in the crowd started to complain. Then the bass pans fell quiet. The trumpet cut out with a rude noise. What wrong with them? Tan-Tan looked up at the stage. All the musicians were staring open-mouthed behind her. The crowd was silent. There was a controlled purring noise coming from behind her back, a slight hiss. Tan-Tan turned round.
The bullet-shaped tank was sleek as a cat. Its metal body had been buffed to a reflective shine. Rivets made a stylish punctuation along its sides. Nothing on all of New Half-Way Tree looked like it. It advanced slowly on her, thrumming low in its belly, oiled treads whispering over the dust of the town square. Sunlight bounced needles of light off its mirrored hide. Its headlights tracked back and forth as they searched, searched for her. Its horn brayed again. Her fate had found her. Petrified, Tan-Tan could only watch it come.
The crowd backed away. Tan-Tan could hear the band members abandoning the stage. She dropped her sack. The tank stopped inches away from her in a menacing crouch. Its top opened.
Janisette jumped out, sleek in a tight red one-piece with black boots, her hair slicked back from her forehead and confined in a black bandana. “Oho! Koo the two-faced devil there, the woman that kill my husband.”
“It was self-defense . . .” Tan-Tan whispered. Her voice had no strength. Her belly was dragging her to the ground.
Janisette stalked over to her. “You come from Junjuh, is Junjuh justice you must face. You coming back with me.” She reached for Tan-Tan’s wrist, snapped one half of a pair of handcuffs shut over it. The ring of metal had the strength of Antonio’s fingers. Yes, is this you good for. You must get punished.
Numbly, she reached out her other wrist for the cuffs. “Yes,” cooed Janisette, fingers stretching for her. “Is the right thing to do. Tin box for you.”
A movement caught Tan-Tan’s eye. She looked up to see her reflection in the tank’s grinning face. A bedraggled woman in a jokey, wilting hat and a silly cape of motley. The image made her short and made her middle bulge. Tan-Tan remembered the baby-to-be hidden under her cape. Not just one life, but two.
She jerked her chained wrist out of Janisette’s hand, flicked the handcuffs. Janisette had to duck. “Fucking bitch!” she spat at Tan-Tan.
“Mind your mouth!” Tan-Tan hollered. She twisted free of Janisette’s grasp, kept dancing backwards away from her clutching hands. She opened her mouth again, and Bad Tan-Tan let the harangue tumble from them: “You not shame, you reddened trollop, to stanch this fête and jubilation with your scurrilous calumniation?”
“When I catch you, you leggobeast!”
Power coursed through Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen’s power—the power of words: “I you will never catch, for I is more than a match; I will duck your base canards; I will flee and fly to flee again.” Nanny, sweet Nanny, yes. Tan-Tan bad inna Robber Queen stylee.
“You going to come with me, woman!” Janisette lunged for her, caught the brim of her hat. Tan-Tan zigzagged out of reach.
“Not wo-man; I name Tan-Tan, a ‘T’ and a ‘AN’; I is the AN-acaona, Taino redeemer; the AN-nie Christmas, keel boat steamer; the Yaa As-AN-tewa; Ashanti warrior queen; the N-AN-ny, Maroon Granny; meaning Nana, mother, caretaker to a nation. You won’t confound these people with your massive fib-ulation!” And Tan-Tan the Midnight Robber stood tall, guns crossed at her chest. Let her opponent match that.
Someone in the crowd blew a whistle in approval. “Kaiso! Tell it make we hear, Tan-Tan!”
Tell it? The Robber Queen opened her mouth to gift the populace with more word science. A man’s voice shouted, “Is pappyshow! Tan-Tan is old-time story, not real!”
No, not real. He right. Just a pregnant bitch in a costume. The glamour faded like a dream. She was only Tan-Tan. “I real as you,” she croaked. Her voice shredded in the air. She was trying, trying to tell the real story, but she was tiring, Janisette was only steps away. Too much baby, too much guilt weighing her down. Janisette leapt. Missed. Tan-Tan flipped away, dropped the guns, launched into a heavy jog round the square that felt as though it would tear her groin tendons loose. The handcuffs clanked at her wrist. No way to get through the press of people. Where would she run to, anyway?
Janisette kissed her teeth, ran and clambered up into the tank. It roared to life, headed straight for Tan-Tan. She going to run me down! Tan-Tan took two desperate steps, stumbled to her knees. Death rushed to crush her.
The tank was upon her. She rolled in the dirt, feeling her weapons in their scabbards scrape against her flesh. Her cape snagged under the tank’s treads. It dragged her for a few agonizing metres before the button at her neck gave way, leaving her gasping, her side scraped raw. Janisette was turning for another pass. The baby in Tan-Tan pounded to get out. When you take one, you must give back two. She had two lives to save; hers and the pickney’s. She struggled to her feet, belly pushing out big for all to see. Someone screamed, “Nanny save us, she making baby!” The tank was bearing down on her again, its headlights full on her. Nothing to do. She stroked her belly, waited. The headlights blinded her.
The tank’s brakes screeched. Janisette stopped centimetres from Tan-Tan’s navel. Tan-Tan concentrated on sucking in air sweet as life could sometimes be. Her side burned. Her lower back pulsed with pain. She waited, calm as a queen.
Janisette opened the hatch to the tank, stuck her upper body outside. “Is who pickney that filling up your belly, murderess?”
Whose? She’d carried the monster all this way. The damned pickney was hers. Tan-Tan took another breath, rubbed her belly again. “Is love that get the Robber Queen born,” someone said softly out of her mouth, “love so sweet it hot.” Janisette frowned. The crowd pulled in closer to hear. Someone in Tan-Tan’s body took a breath, filled Tan-Tan’s lungs with singing air, spoke in her voice:
Her beauteous mother,
Was another,
Not this Janisette with she fury-wet lips and she vengeance.
Tan-Tan Mamee Ione, the lovely; Tan-Tan woulda do anything to please she,
But she wasn’t easy.
Her pappy,
Was never happy with all he had, oui?
He kill a man on Toussaint, leave he family to wail,
Then he grab his little girl and flee through plenty dimension veil
And bring her here, to this bitter backawall nowhere.
People, she was seven.
Them say the Robber Queen climb the everliving tree.
I tell you, that little girl was me.
“What the rass?” cried someone in the crowd. “Is what kind of paipsey robber talk this is any at all? Look, best make we get on with we jump-up, oui?”
Cho, the populace and them trying to get rowdy. How dare the bold-face man not believe her story? Regally she pulled her machète, brandished it at the heckler. She was the Brigand à Miduit; they were going to hear her! She roared:
Is me, I tell you! Tan-Tan the
Robber Queen! The one and the same,
She warm the poor with candle flame
And spirit the lame from harm.
“Oho!” the heckler said. “I know you now. You is Charlie crazy girlfriend. Doux-doux darling, you might be name Tan-Tan, but that don’t make you a legend.”
To rass it didn’t.
You nah believe is majesty you talking to?
Me won’t blame that on you;
From your face it plain you
Ignorant. What for do?
Somebody sniggered. “A-true, Dambudzo, you know sun don’t always shine as bright for you as for the rest of we.” People laughed. “Lewwe hear she story little bit.” Dambudzo frowned. Janisette revved the engine of the death car. Her Majesty the Midnight Thief stepped prudently back a step or two.
Wait! Me ain’t done relate
to you the full monstrosity of this man, Tan-Tan pappy.
She ain’t come here by choice,
He never give she any voice
in she fate.
He use he wiles to trick she, a seven-year-old pickney,
Into exile, oui?
Now even her supporter had lost interest. “Cho man, we ain’t business! Everybody life hard here. You coulda come up with a nicer speech than that, girl. Come Selector: start up the music again.”
“No, answer me, bitch,” yelled Janisette, climbing out onto the running board of the vehicle. She leaned and spat the words into the face of this body the Queen was wearing: “A who-for pickney that a big-up your belly?”
Oh, and fury made the Brigand Queen flare:
Like you ain’t know, steplady?
Is she father who fuck she.
The restless crowd went still. Even from where she was, the Queen could see shock at her crudeness on some of the revellers’ faces. This was too nasty to be a Carnival mako. She didn’t care.
Yes, he inject Tan-Tan with he child,
She sister or brother.
And you one
Come to accuse she? Of what then, nuh?
Tears started from Janisette’s eyes. “I accuse you of looseness,” she said. “Of sluttery. Is you tempt Antonio with your leggobeast ways.”
Oh, Mama Nanny, the woman was lies incarnate, and right in the face of royalty!
Is that you believe, Antonio wife?
Is she tempt he?
Then why for her birthday you give her one knife?
The Midnight Robber pulled Tan-Tan’s blade from its sheath, turned it so that it winked in the light. She held knife and cutlass at the ready, daring Janisette to rush her.
Someone moved forward from out of the crowd. Short legs, knobby knees, a head too big for its body. “You recognise that, Janisette? Why you give your stepdaughter a blade, if not to protect sheself from she own daddy?”
The Robber Queen’s heart danced in her breast to hear Tan-Tan’s friend speak up for her. But this story had to sing as her own soul, oui? Knife still in hand, she held up her arm to shush Melonhead.
People, oonuh must understand. The Robber Queen father was a slick, sick man.
The first time she did making baby for he, she was fourteen.
He uses to beat she too, and
this Janisette, who he woo at first with sweet words,
Then give she the back of he hand.
Janisette put a trembling hand to her face, where Aislin’s stitches traced a scar from cheekbone to chin.
Tan-Tan couldn’t take it. When she turn sixteen, she and allyou tailor make a plan
To leave and come to Sweet Pone,
To love each other on their own,
Away from Antonio.
Janisette pushed out her bottom lip. The look she flashed Melonhead was pained, unreadable.
Could the Robber tell the rest? Rough with emotion, her cracked voice came out in two registers simultaneously. Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the good and the bad, regarded Janisette with a regal gaze and spoke:
That plan for love never come to transaction.
When Antonio find out, he rape she, beat she, nearly kill she.
Lying under he pounding body she see the knife.
And for she life she grab it and perform an execution.
She kill she daddy dead. The guilt come down ’pon she head,
The Robber Queen get born that day, out of excruciation.
Hanging on her every word the crowd was frozen, most in attitudes of horror, but a few just looked wary, their faces clearly saying what if them catch me? She couldn’t cipher that there one, though. Brer Mongoose does look watchful, seen, but Brer Fowl does do so too.
Janisette was shaking with tears, with fury. She made to climb back into the cab of the tank.
“I defend myself,” said the Robber Queen, dropping out of the free rhyme and back into herself. “For the first time, I defend myself, Janisette.”
Her stepmother turned at the sound of her name, one foot suspended in the air.
Tan-Tan said, “Is you give me the knife to do it with. Don’t tell me you never used to hear what Antonio was doing to me. Is you see my trial and never have courage to speak up. So why you hunting me now, woman, when I only do what you give me tools to do?”
Then Tan-Tan knew her body to be hers again, felt her own mouth stretching, stretching open in amazement at the words that had come out of it. Is she, speaking truth; is truth! “Sans humanité!” she spat at Janisette—“no mercy!”—the traditional final phrase of the calypsonian who’d won the battle of wits and words. Tan-Tan gasped, put a hand up to her magical mouth.
Her song had echoed out over the square. All were there to hear her sing the story true. She’d said them, spoke the words. Admitted to the murder. Let the people-them witness. She dropped her eyes to the ground, waited for the sound of Janisette’s machine springing. Nanny, strike me dead now.
But nothing happened.
She looked up.
The sorrow and love on Melonhead’s face was like healing balm. He nodded at her, a grim smile on his face. Janisette was standing on the running board, arms limp at her sides, a woman listening to her own condemnation. Her face had crumpled like a passion fruit that get suck dry.
The crowd erupted in cheers. Carnival pounds and pennies rained on Tan-Tan’s head. She re-sheathed her blades. Stood in the rain of money, just being Tan-Tan, sometimes good, sometimes bad, mostly just getting by like everybody else. She felt the Robber Queen relaxing into a grateful slumber. Daddy was dead, her baby was alive. Now was time to put away guilt.
Melonhead came and held on to her, his eyes glistening. He was holding the guns she’d dropped. “You all right?”
“Yes,” she said, meaning it.
Janisette clambered down from the tank, heavily and awkwardly. Her face was a mask of grief. She approached Tan-Tan, threw the handcuff key at her, spat on the ground at her feet. “You give me bitter gall to eat,” she said. “I hope sorrow consume you like it consuming me.”
“Sorrow was my father, my mother. I know sorrow good.”
The band was back on the stage again, taking up their instruments. The crowd flowed back into the square. People looked at Tan-Tan uncertainly. Some smiled. Many scowled. Somebody asked a friend, “So is Masque that was, or real?”
Melonhead picked up the key, used it to free Tan-Tan’s wrist.
A man approached Tan-Tan with her sack. “Lady, good kaiso that. I done pick up all your change I could find and put in it.”
Melonhead took it and thanked him. “Come home with me, Tan-Tan.” The music started again. As they left the square, Tan-Tan heard the thrum of the tank starting up, turned to see it moving despondently through the crowd, going away.
They were almost at Melonhead’s door when a sudden pain wrung out her insides. She gasped, took a deep breath. “Melonhead, I have to go home.”
“What home? Where?”
“I have to go back in the bush to Abitefa.”
“You mad or what? You turn bassourdie? You need to lie down and rest.”
• • •
Oh, sweetness; this is the hardest part, the last part of labour. I right here with you, don’t fret. I know it feel like your mamee trying to crush you dead, but is only she body pushing you out into the world. No, she can’t hear you yet, only I could hear you. Yes, that was a big one. Rest little bit; another one coming.
Is really your mamee we should be talking to, me and the Grande ’Nansi Web. When Granny Nanny realise how Antonio kidnap Tan-Tan, she hunt he through the dimension veils, with me riding she back like Dry Bone. Only a quantum computer coulda trace she through infinite dimensions like that, only Granny Nanny and me, a house eshu. And only because Tan-Tan’s earbug never dead yet. A fearsome journey, little one; nearly as fearsome as the one you on now. Ai, ai; this push strong! I know, doux-doux. Try not to frighten. See? It stop now. Only a few more.
We try to contact your mamee when we find she nine years ago, but the nanomites growing she earbug did calibrate wrong for Nanny to talk to them across dimensions. Eight years it take Granny Nanny to figure it out, and then was too late. Tan-Tan reach maturity, the earbug harden, and Nanny couldn’t talk to she again. Another contraction sweetheart, hold on.
Antonio was a sick, needy man, but in he own way, is he provide the method for we to contact Tan-Tan. By the time she get pregnant with you, Nanny had figure out the calibration. She instruct the nanomites in your mamee blood to migrate into your growing tissue, to alter you as you grow so all of you could feel nannysong at this calibration. You could hear me because your whole body is one living connection with the Grande Anansi Nanotech Interface. Your little bodystring will sing to Nanny tune, doux-doux. You will be a weave in she web. Flesh people talk say how earbugs give them a sixth sense, but really is only a crutch, oui? Not a fully functional perception. You now; you really have that extra limb.
Midnight Robber Page 32
