Aislin kissed her and gave her some lavender perfume that she had brewed in the doctor house. “Doux-doux, remember the scare you give we the first day you come here? I so glad you here for we to enjoy your birthday.” Aislin glared at Daddy. When adult exiles got punted to New Half-Way Tree, the trip through the warps of the dimension veils caused their earbugs to cease functioning. But Tan-Tan’s earbug had still been growing with her growing body; its nanomites hadn’t yet calcified permanently into a transmitter-receiver. The nanomites had become infected and had nearly killed her.
Chichibud gave Tan-Tan a plant from the bush. It had heart-shaped leaves and a deep red flower. A simple gift, but Tan-Tan had come to understand over the years that douens were simple people; Aislin had told her so. They did everything with their hands and never thought to advance themselves any further.
Chichibud held up the flower to show her, and Tan-Tan realised that she had grown taller than the little douen man. She inhaled the perfume of the flower, like roses and grapefruits.
“We does call it sky-fall-down-to-earth, for is the same colour as the evening sky,” he say. Tan-Tan watched as he transplanted it into the garden.
“Thank you, Mister Chichibud.”
“He is only douen. Don’t be calling he mister.” Janisette kissed her teeth. She had given Tan-Tan a pretty new dress in douen yellow, made by Chichibud’s invisible wife. “I hope the bodice fit. You does outgrow everything so fast nowadays.”
Antonio had given her his gold wedding band strung onto a leather thong to wear round her neck.
“This is yours, Daddy.”
“Never mind. Is yours now. I give up everything to come here so we could be together, Tan-Tan; my wife, my home, everything. And look at how big you get. The ring is yours.”
As Tan-Tan tied the thong round her neck she glimpsed Janisette’s thundercloud-dark face. “You leave one wife and gone, but you have a next one now. And I suppose you ain’t think to gift this one with gold ring.” Janisette spent the rest of the fête knocking back one set of sorrel spiked with strong rum. Antonio had to half-carry her to bed when the fête was done and everybody gone home. Then he walked Tan-Tan to her bedroom.
Tan-Tan was feeling so happy. She gave Antonio one big hug, pressed against him and held on tight. “Thank you for my party, Daddy.”
“Nanny bless, doux-doux. You know how much I love you.” He stroked her shoulder, her hair.
My sweet little girl. You get so big now. Let me comb your hair for you. Let me put on your nightie. I go tuck you into bed, all right?
He took her face in his two hands and kissed her on the mouth. Let me show you something special.
Antonio laid her down on the bed. The “special” thing was something more horrible than she’d ever dreamt possible. Why was Daddy doing this to her? Tan-Tan couldn’t get away, couldn’t understand. She must be very bad for Daddy to do her so. Shame filled her, clogged her mouth when she opened to call out to Janisette for help. Daddy’s hands were hurting, even though his mouth smiled at her like the old Daddy, the one from before the shift tower took them. Daddy was two daddies. She felt her own self split in two to try to understand, to accommodate them both. Antonio, good Antonio smiled at her with his face. Good Tan-Tan smiled back. She closed her mind to what bad Antonio was doing to her bad body. She watched at her new dolly on the pillow beside her. Its dress was up around its waist and she could see its thigh holster with the knife in it. She wasn’t Tan-Tan, the bad Tan-Tan. She was Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the terror of all Junjuh, the one who born on a far-away planet, who travel to this place to rob the rich in their idleness and help the poor in their humility. She name Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, and strong men does tremble in their boots when she pass by. Nothing bad does ever happen to Tan-Tan the Robber Queen. Nothing can’t hurt she. Not Blackheart Man, not nothing.
Oh God, Tan-Tan, oh God, don’t cry. I sorry. I won’t do it again. We won’t even tell Janisette, all right, or she go be mad at we. You wouldn’t want she to send for One-Eye to put me in the tin box, right? That would kill your poor Daddy, Tan-Tan. Is just because I missing your mother, and you look so much like she. You see how I love you, girl? See what you make me do? Just like Ione. Just like your mother.
Tan-Tan looked at the dolly’s knife holster. It would be nice if the little wooden knife inside it were really sharp steel. Babygreen, she would name the dolly Babygreen to replace the one she’d left behind.
The bad thing happened plenty of times after that. Antonio promised every time would be the last. But he couldn’t help himself, is because she was the spitting image of Ione. Daddy said so. One evening she passed by Antonio and Janisette’s room. Janisette was sobbing, “You love she better than me, ain’t?”
“No, doux-doux,” came Antonio’s appeasing voice.
“She is your daughter, but I is your wife!”
“No, doux-doux, no.”
“Auntie Aislin, you coming tomorrow?” Tan-Tan rested her carry sack on the side table in Aislin’s office and ran to give the woman a hug. She had to lean forward over Aislin’s baby-big belly to put her arms around the doctor.
“Of course, sweetness! You think me and Quamina could miss your sweet sixteen?” Aislin chuckled and rocked her, singing about the sweet sixteen who’d never been kissed.
You wish, whispered a silent, mean voice in Tan-Tan’s head. She ignored it. “Eh-eh, Aislin; them is your new shelf and thing?”
Tan-Tan went to inspect the wood shelves and cupboards Aislin had asked Cudjoe to build for her. The shelves were crookedy. Most of the cupboard doors didn’t quite meet. Tan-Tan looked back at Aislin.
“Me know, me know,” Aislin said. “One-Eye tell me how I fool-fool to make that man put hammer to nail for me, but I feel sorry for Cudjoe, man! He having a hard time learning how to be headblind.”
Cudjoe had climbed the half-way tree just two months earlier. He had wanted to be a carpenter on Toussaint. He had learned the trade in a hurry, trying to cash in on the new fad amongst the Shipmate Houracan people from the south. Everyone wanted headblind cottages of real wood with nails, like the runners had. Gazebos and small huts were springing up everywhere beside people’s main, aware homes. One of Cudjoe’s shoddily constructed cottages had collapsed, killing a woman, a man and three small pickney. While the local Mocambo was still trying to decide what to do with Cudjoe, a treehouse he’d built had fallen in on itself. The boy and girl who’d been playing in it had been injured, but would live. Nanny’s guidance to the Mocambo was that Cudjoe should be made to learn his trade properly, but the Mocambo disagreed. They judged that Cudjoe had already endangered too many people. They didn’t even opt for exporting him, just shipped him up the half-way tree.
“One-Eye tell he if these shelves fall down, is the box for he! Cudjoe taking he real serious.” Aislin laughed, holding the weight of her belly with two hands. “I swear, I never see nail long so in my life! It have more nails than wood in them cupboards there.”
“But suppose them break in truth?” Tan-Tan asked. “You should have ask one of the douen-them to build them for you, Auntie Aislin. You know how them good with them hands.”
“Is all right. I does only keep towel and gauze bandage in there, and some little small things. The medicines-them in the back room, where I could keep my eye on them.”
Tan-Tan knew Aislin’s back room well, with its neat rows of bottles and jars with labels, all lined-up on the shelves along the walls. The back room was where Aislin performed what operations she could manage with the tools she had. It was where Aislin had taken seven-year-old Tan-Tan that first night on New Half-Way Tree when her earbug nanomites had become infected. Aislin had had to fight to keep the fever down. Tan-Tan had lain in recovery there for days, reading the labels on the shelves: “Disinfectants”; “Anti-inflammatories.”