Dry Bone smile. The tightness in she chest ease up little bit. “All right, Tan-Tan. You getting to know how to treat me good. Take me outside. But you have to watch out after me. No make no open sky catch me. Remember, when you pick me up, you pick up trouble! If you ain’t protect me, you go be sorry.”
“Yes, Dry Bone.” She pick he up. He heavy like a heart attack from all the food he done eat already. She carry he out onto the verandah and put he in the wicker chair with two pillow at he back.
Dry Bone lean he dead-looking self back in the chair with a peaceful smile on he face. “Yes, I like this. Maybe I go get you to bring me my food out here from now on.”
Tan-Tan give he some cool sorrel drink in a cup to tide he over till she finish cook, then she go back inside the hut to make the next meal. And as she cooking, she singing soft-soft,
And she only watching at the sky through the one little window in the hut. Suppose Master Johncrow ain’t come?
“Woman, the food ready yet?” Dry Bone call out.
“Nearly ready, Dry Bone.” Is a black shadow that she see in the sky? It moving? It flying their way? No. Just a leaf blowing in the wind. “The chicken done stew!” she called out to the verandah. “I making the dumpling now!” And she hum she tune, willing Master Johncrow to hear.
A-what that? Him come? No, only one baby raincloud scudding by. “Dumpling done! I frying the banana!”
“What a way you taking long today,” grumbled Dry Bone.
Yes! Coasting in quiet-quiet on wings the span of a big man, Master Johncrow the corbeau-bird float through the sky. From her window Tan-Tan see him land on the banister rail right beside Dry Bone, so soft that the duppy man ain’t even self hear he. She heart start dancing in she chest, light and airy like a masque band flag. Tan-Tan tiptoe out to the front door to watch the drama.
Dry Bone still have he eyes closed. Master Johncrow stretch he long, picky-picky wattle neck and look right into Dry Bone face, tender as a lover. He black tongue snake out to lick one side of he pointy beak, to clean out the corner of one eye. “Ah, Dry Bone,” he say, and he voice was the wind in dry season, “so long I been waiting for this day.”
Dry Bone open up he eye. Him two eyes make four with Master Johncrow own. He scream and try to scramble out the chair, but he belly get too heavy for he skin-and-bone limbs. “Don’t touch me!” he shout. “When you pick me up, you pick up trouble! Tan-Tan, come and chase this buzzard away!” But Tan-Tan ain’t move.
Striking like a serpent, Master Johncrow trap one of Dry Bone arm in he beak. Tan-Tan hear the arm snap like twig, and Dry Bone scream again. “You can’t pick me up! You picking up trouble!” But Master Johncrow haul Dry Bone out into the yard by he break arm, then he fasten onto the nape of Dry Bone neck with he claws. He leap into the air, dragging Dry Bone up with him. The skin-and-bone man fall into the sky in truth.
As Master Johncrow flap away over the trees with he prize, Tan-Tan hear he chuckle. “Ah, Dry Bone, you dead thing, you! Trouble sweet to me like the yolk that did sustain me. Is trouble you swallow to make that belly so fat? Ripe like a watermelon. I want you to try to give me plenty, plenty trouble. I want you to make it last a long time.”
Tan-Tan sit down in the wicker chair on the verandah and watch them flying away till she couldn’t hear Dry Bone screaming no more and Master Johncrow was only a black speck in the sky. She whisper to sheself:
Tan-Tan went inside and look at she little home. It wouldn’t be plenty trouble to make another window to let in more light. Nothing would be trouble after living with the trouble of Dry Bone. She go make the window tomorrow, and the day after that, she go re-cane the break-seat chair.
Tan-Tan pick up she kerosene lamp and went outside to look in the bush for some scraper grass to polish the rust off it. That would give she something to do while she think about what Master Johncrow had tell she. Maybe she would even go find this Papa Bois, oui?
Tan-Tan’s first day in the daddy tree, her birthday, her first day as an adult, the douen family realised that something in her urine was poison to the food grubs. After she’d pissed in the pot all the grubs-them had floated up to the top of the effluvia and died, bloated and discoloured. Like them hadn’t been nasty-looking enough already. Benta contemplated the mess. Tan-Tan felt to die from shame.
*From now on,* Benta said, *I go take you down to the ground to do your business.*
“Nanny bless, Benta; ain’t that is plenty trouble?”
*Trouble yes; me and Chichibud know is trouble we would get for picking you up. Don’t pay it no mind.*
That night, Benta gave her a pallet stuffed with dead leaves to sleep on. It was comfortable, but sometime in the night Tan-Tan felt something in her hair. Half asleep, she put her hand up to brush it away. She woke up one time when she felt a tiny body wriggling out from between her fingers. Her screams brought the whole nest to see is what do her.
“Is only a house cousin, child,” Chichibud told her. “Them like to sleep warm against we bodies.”
House cousin. Flying lizard. Vermin. Tan-Tan asked Benta for a piece of cloth. She wrapped up her hair tight-tight, and that is the only way she got any more sleep that night. But the dreams, the dreams. Antonio beating her, flailing at her legs with the buckle end of the belt. She grabbing the belt to hit him back, only the belt had become a cutlass as she swung down with it. She slashed off his pissle with one stroke. He hadn’t been naked before. The bloody tube of meat dropped to the ground and turned into one of the maggots from the douen pisshole; a big one. “Eat it,” Antonio ordered her in a voice like the dead. “It good for you, you just like your mother.” She felt his hand on the back of her neck, pressing her head closer and closer to the writhing pissle on the ground.