He stopped and looked her up and down, drinking her in like a thirsty man guzzling water. “Oh, sweetheart, you look too strong and healthy to need medicine. If I was a different man, maybe you and me could be medicine for each other, oui.” He brushed her shoulder with his hand.
Tan-Tan yanked away. She pulled in a breath, hard, then a next one. Antonio tear off she underclothes with one hand. He shove into she with a grunt. She made a noise like the chick seeing the mongoose.
Alyosius looked confused. “Is what do you, doux-doux?”
Tan-Tan snapped back into the world. “Nothing… nothing, Al. I just need to find a—”
“Alyosius? Alyosius Pereira! All this time I calling you, you lazy so-and-so, and you ain’t answer me, ain’t even prekkay ’pon me. Is what possess you to leave the gardening and gone traipsing down the road, eh? I give you permission to go chasing skirt? Eh? Ain’t I tell you to tie up all the bodie bean-them?”
The old woman waddling down the path after them could have doubled as a mountain in her spare time. Her dirty calico dress didn’t quite manage to contain the masses of her breasts. They pushed out of her bodice like dough rising. Her belly rolls swayed from side to side as she hustled towards them. Her jowls wobbled. Someone was keeping this woman well fed, oui. Under a raggedy piece of head wrap, sweat was beading down her forehead, bathing her face in salt. She was waving a switch at Al.
“Mamee!” Alyosius said. He shrank closer to Tan-Tan. All of a sudden, he seemed to her like a small boy. “I wasn’t going far, Mamee, just showing the young lady to she destination.”
Al’s mother glared at Tan-Tan. Her face went dark with anger. “You business with any woman? Eh? Any woman go want you? Sweat-stink, big belly, no-tooth excuse for a man? Who go want you, eh? Just a tramp like this!” The woman slapped her switch down on the ground right by Tan-Tan’s foot. Tan-Tan jumped. The woman cut the switch against Al’s calf. He howled, danced out of range. She followed, slicing at his legs, hissing, “Is woman you want, eh? Tramp? Leggobeast? Bitch in heat? Eh? I go show you heat. I go heat up your behind for you with this switch!”
A crowd of grimy, run-down Chigger Bite people had gathered round to watch the show. Somebody shouted out, “But eh-eh, Alyosius; how you could dance so?”
Antonio unbuckled his heavy leather belt and pulled it out from his pants. He doubled it up in his hand and cracked it against Tan-Tan’s shins. The pain nearly made her faint.
Something in Tan-Tan broke loose, howling. Her skin felt hot. She pushed Alyosius to one side, grabbed the switch from his surprised mother and fetched her one slice swips on her leg.
“You like how that feel? (Swips) Eh? You think he like it any better? (Swips) Eh?”
The woman was only twitching heavily away from the blows, crying, “Have mercy, lady, what you doing! Allyou stop she nuh!” Somebody in the crowd sniggered. Tan-Tan didn’t let it distract her. Is like a spirit take her. A vengeance had come upon her, it was shining out from her eyes strong as justice. Not one of them would dare try and prevent her. She whipped the woman’s legs, she whipped them. She made the bitch prance. She knew how it felt to dance like that. She knew how it felt to cry out so, to beg mercy and get none. So the woman wailed, so Tan-Tan licked her. So she begged, so Tan-Tan cut her. Alyosius was hovering about them, asking her to stop, to have mercy. Nobody had had mercy on her. She yanked the switch out of his reach when he grabbed for it.
The woman bawled out, “Lord Mistress, don’t do me so! Please, don’t hit me no more!”
Please Daddy, don’t hit me no more.
Just so, the anger left Tan-Tan. She lowered the switch and stood there, breathing hard. Alyosius snatched it out of her grasp and threw it out of her reach. He ran to his mother, wrapped his two arms round her. “Is all right, Mamee, is all right. I sorry, Mamee. Come, I go take you home. I go put healing oil on it for you, eh? And it go stop hurting. Don’t cry, Mamee. Come.” The woman leaned on him, whining about the welts that were rising on her legs.
Al cut his eyes at Tan-Tan. “Best find your meddling behind somewhere else, oui? Before my blood rise.”
He left with his mother, cooing soothing noises at her.
How could he stand to touch that woman? How could he love her when she hurt him like that?
“How you could…” She was, somebody was speaking out loud. Words welled up in the somebody’s mouth like water. Somebody spoke her words the way the Carnival Robber Kings wove their tales, talking as much nonsense as sense, fancy words spinning out from their mouths like thread from a spider’s behind: silken shit as strong as story. Somebody’s words uttered forth from Tan-Tan’s tongue:
“Stop and stand forth, O Jack Sprat and his fat, fat, fat mother,” said the Robber Queen.
Alyosius and his mother stopped, turned to hear the Carnival Monarch. People in the crowd started to grin again.
“Woman, what a way your son lean; lean ’pon you, lean because of you, inclined to be a mama-man for love, for lovie-dove. What a way your son love you, like two cooing doves in a cote. I go coat my throat with words of wisdom; come, and pay me heed.”
“But she mad!” Al’s mother whispered loudly. She took Al’s hand and started to pull him away. The Robber Queen leapt in front of them, held up an imperious hand:
“Nay, stay, knaves and pay me mind. I shamed to be of your kind, oui? You treat he worse than dog, yet he love you like hog love mud. My father was a king, and my mother was he queen. Them carry me in chariots that float on air to take me anywhere, from my silken boudoir to my jasmine-circled pagoda. Them give me invisible servants to do my every bidding, and even with all that, I never feel a love like this man just show for this woman he mother. Compère, don’t wear it out.”
A wondering smile was wavering on Al’s face.
“Yes, Compère,” the woman said, backing away like you does do from mad dog. “Sometimes my temper does run away with me, you know? That is all.”
The woman-of-words, the Robber Queen, stared at the woman long. “Me tell you, don’t hurt your son no more. Me will know. Me, Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen.”
Mother and son made haste down the road.
She was back in her body. The somebody had gone. Tan-Tan felt weary. In a small voice she said to the crowd, “Please, it have a doctor in this place?”
They backed away. “No,” somebody muttered.
“Mad like France,” said another.
“No? So is where Al was taking me?”
“For a ride, oui? Me nah know. It ain’t have no doctor. If we sicken, we does dead, that is all.”
No doctor. No-one to take the parasite out of her. Tan-Tan spat on the ground. She turned on her heel and strode away. She could feel their eyes on her.
As she passed the hut of Alyosius and his mother she saw the movement of someone inside drawing back the faded curtains a little to peek at her.
Hiking back through the corn to meet Abitefa, Tan-Tan began to feel proud of herself, so full up of pride she could have burst from it. She remembered the voice that had come from her, it must have been her. She, all by herself; she’d taught that woman a lesson, and she’d spoken her mind with confidence, and she (yes, this is how she would tell it to Abitefa), she had ruled a mob of people who could easy have pelted her with rockstones if they had had a mind to. She didn’t even self feel like the same Tan-Tan.
And for once, Bad Tan-Tan was quiet.
When she reached the tree with the gouge in it she called out, “Abitefa-oi! You still there?”