Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber

In spite of his worries, Antonio smiled to see his daughter looking so pretty. His sweetness, his doux-doux darling could give him any kinda back-talk, oui? “I just come to see your mother. You know is where she is?”

“She and uncle taking tea in the parlour, Daddy. Them tell me I musn’t come inside till they call me. I could go in now?”

“Not right now, darling. You stay up there; I go come and get you soon.”

Antonio dragged his feet towards the parlour, the way a condemned man might walk to a hanging tree. As he reached inside the detection field, the house eshu clicked on quiet-quiet inside his ear. “You reach, Master,” it said. “Straighten your shirt. Your collar get rumple. You want me announce you?”

“No. Is a surprise. Silence.”

“Yes, Master Antonio.” The eshu’s voice sounded like it had a mocking smile in it. Like even self Antonio’s house was laughing at him? Where Ione?

When Antonio stood outside the door, he could hear his wife inside laughing, laughing bright like the yellow poui flower, and the sound of a deep, low voice intertwined with the laugh. Antonio opened the parlour door.

Years after, Antonio still wouldn’t tell nobody what he saw in the parlour that day. “Rasscloth!” he would swear. “Some things, a man can’t stand to describe!”

Mayor Antonio, the most powerful man in the whole county, opened up his own parlour door that afternoon to behold his wife lounging off on the settee with her petticoat hitched up round her hips, and both feet wrapped round Quashee’s waist.

Antonio stood there for a while, his eyes burning. He knew then that whenever he shut them from now on, he would see that pretty white lace petticoat spread out all over the settee; Quashee’s porkpie hat on Ione’s head; the teasing, happy smile on her face; and Quashee’s bare behind pushing and pushing between Ione’s sprawled-opened knees.

Antonio never noticed that Tan-Tan had followed him to the parlour door. She stood there beside him, eyes staring, mouth hanging open. She must have cried out or something, because all of a sudden, Ione looked over Quashee’s shoulder to see the two of them in the doorway. She screamed: “Oh, God, Antonio; is you?”

Soft-soft, Antonio closed the parlour door back. He turned and walked out his yard. Tan-Tan ran after him, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Come back!” but he never even self said goodbye to his one daughter.

Little after Antonio had left, Ione came running alone out the house, her hair flying loose and her dress buttoned up wrong. She found Tan-Tan by the gate, crying for her daddy. Ione gave Tan-Tan a slap for making so much noise and attracting the attention of bad-minded neighbours. She bustled Tan-Tan inside the house, and the two of them settled down to wait for Antonio to come back.

But is like Antonio had taken up permanent residence in his office. Ione took Tan-Tan out of the pickney crêche where she went in the mornings to be schooled: said she wanted some company in the house, the eshu would give Tan-Tan her lessons. So Antonio couldn’t come and visit Tan-Tan during siesta like he used to. He had to call home on the four-eye to talk to her. He would ask her how her lessons with the eshu were going. He would tell her to mind not to give Nursie or the minder any trouble, but he never asked after Ione. And when Tan-Tan asked when he was coming back, he’d get quiet for a second then say, “Me nah know, darling.”

Well, darling, you know Cockpit County tongues start to wag. Kaiso, Mama; tell the tale! This one whisper to that one how he hear from a woman down Lagahoo way who is the offside sister of Nursie living in the mayor house how Ione send Quashee away, how she spend every day and night weeping for Antonio, and she won’t even self get out of bed and change out of she nightgown come morning. Another one tell a next one how he pass by Old Man Warren house one afternoon, and see he and Antonio sitting out on the porch in the hot hot sun, old-talking and making plans over a big pitcher of rum and coconut water. In the middle of the day, oui, when sensible people taking siesta!

All the way in Liguanea Town, people hear the story. They have it to say how even the calypsonian Mama Choonks hear what happen, and she writing a rapso about it, and boasting that she going to come in Road March Queen again this year, when she bust some style ’pon the crowd with she new tune “Workee in the Parlour.” And Sylvia the engineer tell she daughter husband that somebody else whisper to she how he see Quashee in the fight yard every day, practising cut and jab with he machète. But eh-eh! If Antonio going to call Quashee out to duel come Jour Ouvert morning, ain’t Antonio shoulda been practising too?

What you say, doux-doux? You thought this was Tan-Tan story?

You right. My mind get so work up with all that Antonio had to suffer, that I forget about poor Tan-Tan.

In fact it seemed like nobody wanted to pay any mind to Tan-Tan no more. People in her house would stop talking when Tan-Tan went into a room, even old Nursie. Ione was spending all her days locked up in her room in conference with Obi Mami-Bé, the witch woman. It looked like Antonio wasn’t coming back at all at all.

But truth to tell, Tan-Tan wasn’t so lonely, oui. She was used to staying out of Ione’s way, and playing Robber Queen and jacks with just the fretful minder for company. She liked leaning against the minder’s yielding chicle, humming along with the nursery rhymes it would sing to her. She had nearly outgrown the minder now, yes, but it did its level best to keep up with her. Tan-Tan used to play so hard, it come in like work:

“Minder, you see where my jacks gone? I could find the ball, but not the jacks. You think I left them under the settee yesterday?”

“Maybe, Mistress. Make I look.” And the old construct would flatten its body as best it could and squeeze itself into tight places to retrieve the jacks Tan-Tan was always losing.

Or, “Minder, let we play some old-time story, nuh? I go be Granny Nanny, Queen of the Maroons, and you have to be the planter boss.”

So the minder would access the Nanny history from the web and try to adapt it to Tan-Tan’s notions of how the story went.

Tan-Tan had a way to make up tales to pass the time, and like how time was hanging heavy on her hands nowadays, she started to imagine to herself how sweet it would be when her daddy would come to take her away from this boring old place where everybody was sad all the time, their faces hanging down like jackass when he sick. She was going to go and live with Daddy in the mayor office, and them would play Robber King and Queen in the evenings when Daddy finish work, and Daddy would tickle her and rub her tummy and tell how she come in pretty, just like her mother. And come Carnival time, them would ride down to town together in the big black limousine to see the Big Parade with masqueraders-them in their duppy and mako jumbie costumes, dancing in the streets.

Finally, it was Jonkanoo Season; the year-end time when all of Toussaint would celebrate the landing of the Marryshow Corporation nation ships that had brought their ancestors to this planet two centuries before. Time to give thanks to Granny Nanny for the Leaving Times, for her care, for life in this land, free from downpression and botheration. Time to remember the way their forefathers had toiled and sweated together: Taino Carib and Arawak; African; Asian; Indian; even the Euro, though some wasn’t too happy to acknowledge that-there bloodline. All the bloods flowing into one river, making a new home on a new planet. Come Jonkanoo Week, tout monde would find themselves home with family to drink red sorrel and eat black cake and read from Marryshow’s Mythic Revelations of a New Garveyite: Sing Freedom Come.