Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber

Tan-Tan had finally come to understand why her daddy wasn’t coming back: Ione had been bad, and Tan-Tan had been bad, and he didn’t want to be with them no more. He was disgusted at them. Sometimes Ione would get sad and drink too much red rum. Then she would bawl, and tell Tan-Tan how Antonio was a thoughtless, ungrateful man; look how he bring down all this scandal on he wife head! Sometimes Ione would say through tears, “But I miss he, child. Even with all he slackness and he plenty plenty women, I miss he too bad.”

Tan-Tan heard Ben telling Cookie that “A man have him pride, you know! How you could expect him to live with a woman who horning he steady? And he the mayor too besides! You don’t see the man have to have some respect in he own house?”

Tan-Tan didn’t understand all of that, it was big people story; all she knew was she wasn’t going to cry or complain, she was going to try to be real, real good so Daddy would come home again.

Come Carnival time, Antonio called to tell her he would take her to the Children’s Masquerade, as he had every year now since she was four. She opened her mouth to say, yes Daddy, thank you, Daddy. So why was her mouth saying politely, “No thank you, Daddy. Mummy go take me”? Pride. Nursie was always telling she she too prideful. Daddy’s face fell.

“All right, doux-doux,” he said sadly. “If is so you want it.”

The words chilled Tan-Tan’s heart to a ball of ice in her chest. But she set her lips together and nodded solemnly at her daddy. When he had signed off, Tan-Tan whispered to the air, “Eshu? Come and play with me.” That day, whispering directions through her earbug, eshu directed Tan-Tan out to the fountain to examine the pale pink rockstones from Shak-Shak Bay. It showed her how to see the fossils trapped in some of the stones. It told her about the animals that used to live on Toussaint before human people came and made it their own.

“You mean chicken and cow and so?”

“No, Mistress. Them is from Earth. I mean the indigenous fauna: the mako jumbie-them, the douen. The jumbie bird allyou does farm for meat and leather is a genesculpt. Allyou grow it from the original stock. It didn’t used to be small so.”

“Small! Eshu, jumbie bird does be big like cow, ain’t?”

“The mako jumbie could eat a cow for breakfast and be hungry again come noon.” The eshu must have heard the small noise Tan-Tan made in her throat, for it said; “Don’t frighten, young Mistress. It ain’t have no more mako jumbie on Toussaint no more. You safe.”

“And the douen? You said it had douen.”

“Searching…” the eshu whispered quietly. Usually it could get information instantly from the web data banks. “I don’t know plenty about them, young Mistress,” it said finally. “Indigenous fauna, now extinct.”

“Extinct?”

“No longer in this existence.”

“Why, eshu?”

“To make Toussaint safe for people from the nation ships.”

“Oh.”

Tan-Tan saw Antonio on the broadcasts, opening Carnival season for another year. Watching him on the screen she felt a little sad and vex. At him, at herself. But eshu always knew how to help her feel better. And Ione was trying to be nice to Tan-Tan, in a kind of a way. She was forever buying her new toys, even though she wouldn’t play Robber Queen or any old-time story, for she didn’t like to “bother up sheself with stupidness.”

Nursie was throwing word steady behind Ione’s back, whispering to Cookie and Ben that the mayor wife had bring all of this on she own head. Nursie took care that Ione never heard her, though. The eshu could hear, but it would only reveal private conversation if it judged the speakers meant harm to anyone. Simple badmouth didn’t warrant its attention.

One day before the big Carnival parade, the eshu told Nursie that Ione wanted to see Tan-Tan. When they reached Ione’s dressing room, they found Ione with a seamstress lacing her tight into her riding leathers. Tan-Tan could never understand why her mother had riding leathers, when she didn’t even self have a horse. But she looked pretty in them.

“Nursie,” Ione said, “ain’t the eshu tell you to get Tan-Tan ready?”

“No, Compère. You know it does make mischief sometimes.”

“Cho. Well, take she back and dress she up nice. I taking she to the fight yard to watch the practice.”

Tan-Tan could scarcely believe it. “For true, Mummy?” She had never seen the practice, just heard about it from Ben.

Mummy looked down at her, smiling. “You would like that, eh doux-doux?”

“Yes!”

Ione held out her arms, gleaming strong and firm through the translucent white linen of her best pirate blouse. The seamstress looked appraisingly at the blouse. “I think is soon time you stop wearing that style, Compère,” she said. “’Nuff people see you inna this shirt plenty times already.”

“Well, is you have the eye for these things, Annie,” replied Ione. “Tell me what you think.”

“A new blouse. I go make you something pretty in lace.” She fastened the cuffs of the blouse.

“I would be honoured to wear your creation, Compère.” Ione looked down at Tan-Tan.

“I know you been asking your daddy to take you to the fight yard from since, and he never pay you no mind. Well he not here now. I going take you. Go and get dressed, doux-doux.”

The fight yard! The place where challengers trained to fight in the Jour Ouvert morning duels on the first day of the Carnival parade. On Jour Ouvert morning, besides the street dancing, anybody who had a quarrel with someone could call their enemy out to fight. “Young Mistress,” said the eshu in her ear, “you understand the word ‘archaic’?”

“No, what it mean?”

“Old. Very old. When people does fight in a Jour Ouvert duel, them does fight in the old ways, with machète and bull pissle and stick and thing. All to remind them of their history, of times back on Earth. Them does even fight with hand and foot.”

Nursie bustled Tan-Tan back to her room, chatting the whole time about the training at the fight yard:

“Tan-Tan, if you see it! When me was young me did train to be a fighter, you know? Well, a dancer. Stick fight dance. The yard big so like a sugar cane field, but pack down flat all over; just dirt, no pavement. The chicle fetches does sweep the yard flat every morning. And the practice! Lord, it sweet for so! It have three kinds: stick fight, bare hand and machète. Your own labour, you understand? Body and mind working together to defeat an enemy, like old-time days. Woi, Nanny. A laying on of hands. Don’t mind people who tell you labour nasty. Some kinds is a blessing for true, a sacrament.” Nursie’s eyes got big-big, and she was waving her hands round in the air, trying to describe how the fighters-them looked.

“Stick fight pretty to watch, you see? When the fighters and them does practice, and the stick fight marshall call out the steps, it come in just like a dance. Man and woman, everybody know they place, and even though you might think say them will lash each other by mistake, them does scarcely do it, you know?”

“Bare hand is the type I really like; is that I used to play when I was young. Capoeira.”

Click in Tan-Tan’s ear. “When you come back, young Mistress, I go tell you about capoeira.”

Nursie said, “You know is fight you fighting when you could feel your opponent muscles sweaty beneath you hand. Mama, that is fight! It take skill! The bare hand marshall we got now does only train with two-three people at once, and she don’t make fun to make example of them. One time, I see she haul one big, hard-back man over she shoulder, and drop him boops! on the ground like a sack of cornmeal, just because she catch he giving a kidney blow. She don’t make joke, oui?”