Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber

But Antonio still wouldn’t come home.

This Jonkanoo Season was the first time that Tan-Tan would get to sing parang with the Cockpit County Jubilante Mummers. She and eshu had practised the soprano line for “Sereno, Sereno” so till she had been singing it in her sleep and all. And she had done so well in rehearsals that the Mummers had decided to let her sing the solo in “Sweet Chariot.” Tan-Tan was so excited, she didn’t know what to do with herself. Daddy was going to be so proud!

Jonkanoo Night, Nursie dressed her up in her lacy frock to go from house to house with the Mummers. Nursie finished locksing Tan-Tan’s hair, and took a step back to admire her. “Nanny bless, doux-doux, you looking nice, you know? You make me think of my Aislin when she was a just a little pickney-girl. Just so she did love fancy frock, and she hair did thick and curly, just like yours.”

“Aislin?” Tan-Tan dragged her eyes from her own face in the mirror eshu had made of the wall. She had been trying to read her daddy’s features there. “You have a daughter, Nursie?”

Nursie frowned sadly. She looked down at her feet and shook her head. “Never mind, doux-doux; is more than twelve years now she climb the half-way tree and gone for good. Let we not speak of the departed.” She sucked her teeth, her face collapsing into an expression of old sorrow and frustration. “Aislin shoulda had more sense than to get mix up in Antonio business. I just grateful your daddy see fit to make this lonely old woman part of he household afterwards.”

And all Tan-Tan could do, Nursie wouldn’t talk about it any more after that. Tan-Tan just shrugged her shoulders. Is so it go; Toussaint people didn’t talk too much about the criminals they had exiled to New Half-Way Tree. Too bedsides, Tan-Tan was too nervous to listen to Old Nursie’s horse-dead-and-cow-fat story tonight. First parang! Nursie had had all the ruffles on Tan-Tan’s frock starched and her aoutchicongs, her tennis shoes-them, whitened till they gleamed.

Tan-Tan’s bedroom door chimed, the one that led outside to the garden. She had a visitor, just like big people! “You answer it, doux-doux,” said Nursie.

“Eshu, is who there?” asked Tan-Tan, as she’d heard her parents do.

“Is Ben, young Mistress,” the eshu said through the wall. “He bring a present for you.”

A present! She looked at Nursie, who smiled and nodded. “Let he in,” said Tan-Tan.

The door opened to admit the artisan who gave her father the benefit of his skill by programming and supervising Garden. As ever, he was barefoot, console touchpen tucked behind one ear and wearing a mud-stained pair of khaki shorts and a grubby shirt-jac whose pockets held shadowy bulges like babies’ diapers. Weeds hung out of the bulgy pockets. He had an enormous bouquet of fresh-cut ginger lilies in one hand. The red blooms stretched on long thumb-thick green stalks. Tan-Tan gasped at the present that Ben was balancing carefully in his other hand.

Nursie chided, “Ben, is why you always wearing such disgraceful clothes, eh? And you can’t even put on a pair of shoes to come into the house?”

But Ben just winked at her and presented her with the lilies. She relented, giggled girlishly and buried her nose in the blossoms. Finally he seemed to notice Tan-Tan gazing at the present. He smiled and held it out to her: a Jonkanoo hat. It was made from rattan, woven in the torus shape of a nation ship. “I design it myself,” Ben told her. “I get Garden to make it for you. Grow it into this shape right on the vine.”

“Oh, what a way it pretty, Ben!” The hat even had little portholes all round it and the words “Marryshow Corporation: Black Star Line II” etched into a flat blade of dried vine in its side.

“Look through the portholes.”

Tan-Tan had to close one eye to see through one of the holes. “I see little people! Sleeping in their bunk beds, and a little crêche with a teacher and some pickney, and I see the bridge with the captain and all the crew!”

“Is so we people reach here on Toussaint, child. And look…” Ben pulled six candles out of a pocket and wedged them into holders woven all along the ring of the ship. “Try it on let me see.”

Careful-careful, Tan-Tan slid the hat onto her head. It fit exactly.

“When you ready to go,” Ben said, “ask Mistress Ione to light the candle-them for you. Then you going to be playing Jonkanoo for real!”

Nursie fretted, “I don’t like this little girl walking round with them open flame ’pon she head like that, you know? You couldn’t use peeny-wallie bulb like everybody else, eh? Suppose the whole thing catch fire?”

“Ain’t Ione go be right there with Tan-Tan?” Ben reassured her. “She could look after she own pickney. This is the right way to play Jonkanoo, the old-time way. Long time, that hat woulda be make in the shape of a sea ship, not a rocket ship, and them black people inside woulda been lying pack-up head to toe in they own shit, with chains round them ankles. Let the child remember how black people make this crossing as free people this time.”

Tan-Tan squinched up her face at the nasty story. Crêche teacher had sung them that same tale. Vashti and Crab-back Joey had gotten scared. Tan-Tan too. For nights after she’d dreamt of being shut up in a tiny space, unable to move. Eshu had had to calm her when she woke bawling.

Nursie shut Ben up quick: “Shush now, don’t frighten the child with your old-time story.”

“All right. Time for me to get dressed, anyway. Fête tonight! Me and Rozena going to dance till ’fore-day morning, oui.” Ben knelt down and smiled into Tan-Tan’s eyes. “When you wear that hat, you carry yourself straight and tall, you hear? You go be Parang Queen–self tonight!”

“Yes, Ben. Thank you!”

When everything was ready, Nursie fetched Tan-Tan to Ione. Nursie carried the Jonkanoo hat in front of her like a wedding cake, candles and all.

Ione was too, too beautiful that night in her madras head wrap and long, pale yellow gown, tight so till Tan-Tan was afraid that Ione wouldn’t be able to catch breath enough to sing the high notes in “Rio Manzanares.” She looked so pretty, though, that Tan-Tan ran to hug her.

“No, Tan-Tan; don’t rampfle up me gown. Behave yourself, nuh? Come let we go. I could hear the parang singers practising in the dining room. Is for you that hat is?”

“From Ben, Mummy.”

Ione nodded approvingly. “A proper Jonkanoo gift. I go give you one from me tomorrow.” She put the nation ship hat on Tan-Tan’s head, and then lit all six candles.

“Candles for remembrance, Tan-Tan. Hold your head high now, you hear? You have to keep the candles-them straight and tall and burning bright.”

“Yes, Mummy.” Tan-Tan remembered Nursie’s posture lessons. Proper-proper, she took Ione’s hand, smoothed her frock down, and walked down the stairs with her mother to join the Cockpit County Jubilante Mummers. The John Canoe dancer in his suit of motley rags was leaping about the living room while the singers clapped out a rhythm.

Tan-Tan was Cockpit County queen that night for true! The Mummers went house to house, singing the old-time parang songs, and in every place, people were only feeding Tan-Tan tamarind balls and black cake and thing—“Candles for remembrance, doux-doux!”—till the ribbon sash round her waist was binding her stuffed belly. Everywhere she went, she could hear people whispering behind their hands: “Mayor little girl… sweet in that pretty frock… really have Ione eyes, don’t? Mayor heart must be hard… girl child alone so with no father!” But she didn’t pay them any mind. Tan-Tan was enjoying herself. All the same, she couldn’t wait to get to the town square to sing the final song of the night. Antonio would be there to greet the Mummers and make his annual Jonkanoo Night speech. For days he had been busy with the celebrations and he hadn’t called to speak to Tan-Tan.