Abitefa had never tasted pimiento liqueur before, just the salty, fermented grogs that douens made. She got herself good and drunk. She ended up running round in the bush, holding up her kerosene lamp and flapping her free arm, trying to fly. Tan-Tan nearly perish with laugh at the sight. Giggling, she led Abitefa deeper into the bush so the Chigger Bite people wouldn’t hear her. Nanny witness, that night was joke for true! Tan-Tan laughing as she guided Abitefa into the bush, one hand on the hinte’s neck, the next hand holding her kerosene lamp up high to keep away the mako jumbies. Abitefa only whistling and warbling the whole time in douen talk mixed up with creole. Then every so often Abitefa would stop and say, *Story, Tan-Tan! Tell me again how you frighten them in Chigger Bite.*
And Tan-Tan would tell it all over again. The hectoring inner voice didn’t plague her once. That there night was sweet, seen.
She got too confident. She had started sneaking into Chigger Bite all hours of the day and night, doing a deed here, a deed there. By now people were recognising her, but so long as they weren’t the butt of her crusadering, her appearance was cause for a fête and a merriment. She was beginning to hear whispers: how she was a duppy, the avenging spirit of a woman who’d been beaten and left in the bush for dead; how she was a hero like Nanny and Anacaona of old, come to succour the massive-them, the masses that the Nation Worlds had dumped out here behind God’s back; how she was a witch who sucked the blood of sleeping pickneys. She could scarce recognise herself in the stories. She wasn’t paying none of it no mind. She was working off her curse, keeping her nightmares at bay.
But she took on too much that night, three men who had chivvied an old man into an alleyway to rob him. Addled with fear, the old man had forgotten his earbug was dead to Nanny, and was yelling for his eshu to help him. He must have been a newcomer. Tan-Tan surprised the three nasties good, got them backed into the dead end and was holding them at bay with her machète. Their victim recovered his wits, snuck away as soon as his road was clear. Good. But when Tan-Tan launched into her Robber Queen speech, waving the machète round, she got mesmerised by her own elocution. She never even self saw the fourth man who had been their lookout until he dropped down on her from a rooftop. She let go her weapon. All four of them were on her one time. Somebody boxed her in her head so hard she felt consciousness fading. They were holding her down, they were hitting her, hitting her. It come in like her sixteenth birthday again, like she was back under Antonio’s body, fighting for her life.
Then it stopped. One of them shouted, “Rasscloth! A-what that? Run, allyou, run!”
Tan-Tan was still too bassourdie to make out is what going on. One mako claw closed round her upper arm. She tore weakly at it. Another supported her head. Abitefa!
*Stand up, Tan-Tan!* the hinte screeched. *Arms round my neck!* Somehow they managed, Tan-Tan muttering punch-drunkenly all the while into Abitefa’s ear, “My gros bonange, sweet guardian angel.” They made their exit fast from Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan hanging on to Abitefa’s neck and the hinte running hopping dropping, for her body hadn’t changed enough yet to allow her to fly off proper with Tan-Tan. Abitefa ’buse she off good for that little escapade, oui?
Lying in the cornfield outside Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan was barely listening to Abitefa’s rant. Her head was still spinning from how the man had lashed her. She half-heard Tefa, noticed how the young woman’s words getting to sound more like when Benta spoke. Abitefa nearly turn woman already, oui?
Tan-Tan poked at her calabash belly with the demon inside. Three months. Maybe the fight had knocked it loose? She lay back again, listening to Abitefa carry on. She prayed for the cramps to start that would miscarry the demon. But nothing. When she woke up next morning, Antonio’s child was still with her.
She’d lost her machète over that one. She crept back into Chigger Bite next night to thief another one, even though Abitefa was frantic over her going.
Daylean was when she went, the prettiest time of day on New Half-Way Tree. The dying sun had turned all the light lavender. The evening air felt cool on her skin as she emerged from the bush into the field of high corn. The waving leaves drew against her face as she went by; the same way so Antonio would pass his dry, papery fingers across her cheeks, like he was trying to remember when his flesh felt young like that. Tan-Tan shuddered and put a hand out in front of her to ward off the corn leaves. The corn swayed and rustled in the breeze. Sneaking through it in the puss boots Chichibud had brought her, Tan-Tan heard her feet landing quiet-quiet like lovers whispering secrets to one another. With her big shawl and her boots on, she felt like Tan-Tan the Robber Queen for true.
She lifted a machète easily from the barn. She could have gone back then, but from where she was she could see the flickering oil lamps in Chigger Bite. Her heart started to pump faster. She went creeping round the village, just to see what was doing. Seemed she couldn’t fill up her eyes enough with the sight of tallpeople going about their business. The stories she heard people whispering about her round the kerosene lamps in the rum shop nearly made her dead with laugh. She hurried back and told Abitefa about it round the fire they had built:
“If you could only imagine: them say how Tan-Tan the Robber Queen have eyes like fire, how she ain’t even human! I supposed to have ratbat wings like Shaitan out of Hell heself, and two heads, one in front and one in back. Somebody have it to say how they see me spit green poison and fly off into the night! God girl, that too sweet.”
She grinned at Abitefa. She took a bite of the manicou haunch that she’d roasted on the fire. The hot fat oozed into her mouth and ran down her chin. She tried to imagine what tallpeople saw when they looked at her, that they would describe her as duppy and ratbat and ravener. Was she? Mad? A scary thing from a anansi story? Or just herself? She ain’t know. For now, food hot in she belly and friend strong by she side. For a little while at least, life was good.
Tan-Tan knew she had to wait couple-three weeks before making a next excursion to Chigger Bite. Give the village people time to relax and stop looking out for her. But the waiting got her to feeling so restless she couldn’t stand it. Benta tried to show her how to weave, but she was only snarling up the loom. What weaving had to do with her any at all? Chichibud took her from level to level in the daddy tree to introduce her to their neighbours, but she didn’t pay plenty mind to who was who. She was barely polite. Douen people didn’t want her among them anyway. Days in the daddy tree didn’t suit her, and she was frightened of the nights too bad. She would lie in the darkness with her head wrapped up from the house cousins, holding her eyes open wide-wide against sleep, trying to stay awake until dayclean. But all she do, her eyelids-them would lock eventually, and then, Antonio would be there waiting for her.
“Soon, doux-doux,” he would whisper, running his hands over her body. She couldn’t squirm out of his grasp, he was too strong. “I go be with you again soon. Four months gone. Just a few more. Soon, Ione.”
Every morning Tan-Tan would wake up in a cold sweat, her belly churning. She was going to go mad in this place. She passed the time by weaving herself a hut down on the bush floor from pliant green withies she cut from the trees. She really didn’t know much about it, but she was learning as she went, occupying her mind and body. The hard work soothed her spirit. One day she swung at a young sapling with her machète, and something moved inside her belly. She dropped the machète and put her palms to her stomach. She felt the baby roll under her hands, once.