They were trapped in a confining space, being taken away from home like the long time ago Africans. Tan-Tan’s nightmare had come to life. “Daddy,” she started to bawl, “I don’t like this. I want to stop. Let we get off, nuh?”
“I can’t do that, sweetheart. Now I activate it, I can’t control it from the inside, you understand? This is the half-way tree, this is exile! When you go through the shift, we is new people, not Marryshevites no more. We never going to belong in Toussaint again.”
Click came the eshu into Tan-Tan’s ear. Antonio got the listening look that let her know eshu was talking to him too. “Young Mistress, is what a-go on?” It was her eshu, the one from their house.
“Is all right, eshu,” Daddy lied before Tan-Tan could say anything. “She eat some pepper mango is all. It making she sick little bit.” He chuckled weakly. “She could never stand pepper, oui?”
Eshu was responding, but his voice was crackly. She couldn’t understand him. Antonio was shaking his head like a dog with fleas in its ear. “We losing the connection to the web,” he muttered. “Oh, God, like this is it, oui.”
Another veil. The light inside the pod turned pink. The air got hot. Very faintly both her eshu and the building eshu said together, “Hold on, young Mistress, shift aborting.”
“No!” shouted Antonio.
Tan-Tan felt a little pop! inside her ears. She felt dizzy. “Abort fail…” whispered eshu.
There was an itch at the back of her throat. Her ears popped painfully; once, twice. There was a ringing in them. Antonio moaned in fear. He took Tan-Tan in his arms and held her close. “Whatever happen, you is my little girl, you hear? My doux-doux darling, come in just like Ione when she was a sweet little thing. Don’t care where we go, you is always my little Ione.” Antonio buried his head against Tan-Tan’s shoulder, a heavy weight.
Another veil washed over them. It was hot, fire hot. The ringing in Tan-Tan’s ears was so loud, it was pain. She cried. The tears running down her face felt too cold, like ice water. They were leaving Marryshow’s paradise, shifting to a new world, her and her daddy.
Little by little, the ringing and itching went away. The pod door clicked open. Antonio picked Tan-Tan up and reached for the hatch, but his hand went right through it. The image of the pod faded away, leaving the two of them standing in the bush.
Tan-Tan looked at Antonio to see if he’d changed plenty now that he was no longer a Marryshevite. He was crouching down beside her. His face was the same, and his body, but in his eyes was a look like the fear in Quashee’s eyes when he had felt Antonio’s machète at he neck. Is so a man face does stay after he look at he own death, and he could never be the same again. Tan-Tan felt say she must have changed too.
Antonio stroked Tan-Tan’s cheek and looked deep into her eyes. “You is all that leave to me now. You dear to me like daughter, like sister, like wife self.”
Tan-Tan didn’t like the way Antonio was talking. She tried to act normal, to make everything be normal again: “Eh-eh! Where the pod gone, Daddy?”
But the crazy look wouldn’t leave her daddy’s eyes. “It was never here, Tan-Tan. It just push we here from Toussaint.”
Antonio ran his hands over his body. “Safe…” He looked around. “Ahm, let we take a look at we new home, all right?”
“This? This bush?” All around them it had some big knotted-up trees-them, with twisted-up roots digging into the ground like old men’s fingers. The air was too cold, and it had a funny smell, like old bones. The light coming through the trees was red, not yellow. Even the trees-them looked wrong; the bark was more purple than brown. Some beast was making noise in one of the trees over her head; a grunting noise like Quashee made when Antonio hit him yesterday. This wasn’t her home. This ugly place couldn’t be anybody’s home.
“Where we going to live, Daddy? What we going to eat? Where the people?”
“I ain’t know, doux-doux. We just going to have to fend for weself.” Antonio shrugged his shoulders.
No more Nursie with her ’nansi stories; no more Ione and her pretty dresses-them. No more eshu. Daddy gone stupidee, like he ain’t know the answer to nothing any more. She and Antonio didn’t look no different, but Tan-Tan could feel the change the shift tower had made inside her, feel her heart begin to harden against her daddy who couldn’t tell her where they were, who couldn’t make everything all right again. She felt she didn’t know him any more. He was right. Once you climb the half-way tree, everything change-up.
How Tan-Tan Learn to Thief
Try and stretch out your spine straight. It go ease some of the pressure. Cho. I forget, you don’t really understand what I talking about. Oh, but you doing it anyway. Yes, like so.
Well. The first time Tan-Tan hear anybody tell a ’nansi story about she, she was a big woman living in exile on New Half-Way Tree.
’Nansi story? Another time I go tell you about Brer Anansi, the spider man, the trickster. So much you have to learn! But me go teach you.
So anyway, Tan-Tan had was to stop off for a while in one of the prison colonies to trade smoked tree frog for a good knife. Come evening time, she was sitting on a box carton in a beat-up marketplace, eating two boiled gully hen eggs with some salt, when she hear the local griot spinning a tale for the pickney-them. And this is what she say:
Gather round, gather round, pickney! Come around, come around, pickney! Night come and work done; time for story now!
Come Patrick, my doux-doux, Mamee nice child. You is the littlest one; sit down right here beside Granny. Jocelyn and Sita, come! Oonuh not too old for listen to story, you know! Yes, all of you, sit.
Well, pickney, what story I must tell allyou today? Tan-Tan, you say? You want a story about Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen; the Midnight Thief with the heart of gold; the woman who had was to save two life for every one she take; the exile on New Half-Way Tree, this prison planet? All right; I go tell oonuh a Tan-Tan story: this one name “How Tan-Tan Learn to Thief.”
Long time before, Tan-Tan was queen of the Taino people, and she live on the moon with she father, the king Antonio.
Each day Queen Tan-Tan and King Antonio stand outside the palace doors and call upon all the Tainos to sing praises of Kabo Tano, the Ancient One who give to them light and dark and all good things. For the moon where they living was a wondrous place, a magical place. It shine like silver and gold all over, and the Taino people-them was rich and prosperous, oui? Kabo Tano give them food to eat, and make them strong: star apple, and guavas yellow and round like the moon it own self, and mamee apples, big and sweet and sun-orange inside. Now, Kabo Tano had make his people this way; as long as them eat what he gift them with, him could hear them when them call out to he. In them there days, Taino people ain’t learn yet to kill animals for food. Is only plants and roots and fruits and vegetables them eat.
Tan-Tan and Antonio had everything them want. Them live in a castle with plenty servants and thing. The walls of the castle could talk.
The two of them would travel through streets paved with marble, in a cloud carriage that didn’t even self touch the ground, oui? It float through the air. You don’t believe me? But is the simple truth I telling you, oui?
Tan-Tan had a maid to bring she nice things, name of Ione, though sometimes people would call she Janisette. Tan-Tan had beautiful silk clothes for she body, and somebody to comb she hair. She spend she days playing jacks in the palace. Toss up the balclass="underline" Whee! Thief the jacks out from under it: Swips! The ball bounce: Bap! She catch it in she hand: Wap! Then she do it all over again. Tan-Tan could thief eight jacks out from under the ball before it bounce, and never miss a catch. And if the ball ever make fast and roll away, Tan-Tan and she maid would run to chase it, laughing as them search under the mahogany settee and the four-poster bed and thing in Tan-Tan bedroom.