“Piss does burn the cane roots,” the woman said. Tearing awkwardly with one side of her mouth, she took a bite of her lunch, chewed it cautiously. She made a small noise of pain, stopped chewing. “Can’t eat too good now since Boss lick me in my mouth that time.” She resumed eating. “Me know one-one dead cane not plenty, but me does do it too. Me figure every one me kill is one less me have to cut, seen?” Her conspiratorial grin was warming, her face beautiful, even deformed round the lump of bammy she was trying to consume. Her look appraised, approved what it saw. Tan-Tan grinned back, dashing away a fleeting image of bandy legs in khaki shorts, a head too big for the strong, wiry body it topped.
“Cane, you call this? Why oonuh want it to dead?”
A triple whistle blast echoed out over the cane field. The woman turned to look over her shoulder, never moving from the spot where she’d chosen to stand. “Time to get back to work. Me will have to finish eat this as me chop.” She stuffed the bammy into a pouch at her waist. “From I get send to this New Half-Way Tree, me never could learn all you have to do to survive without Nanny, oui? This way, me chop little piece of cane, and mind what Boss say, and me get shelter for me head and food for me body. Some of we saving up we earnings until we could do better, but me ain’t able fight up myself more than so. Where you from, that you don’t know what it is to be indentured?”
Indentured. A word from her history lessons. “Is what; somebody making allyou work like this?”
A deep, rumbling woman’s voice was ordering people back to work, calling them lazy, willful. The young woman took Tan-Tan’s two hands urgently, held them hard. The warm touch was startling. Tan-Tan gripped the human hands that held hers. The woman looked earnestly into Tan-Tan’s face. “Prettiness, me nah know where you come from, but if you have it better there, best you get your fine behind out of this Begorrat Town. For me, this place is my best chance for a stable life.”
Tan-Tan was only half-listening. The woman’s mouth was plump, shiny with bammy grease.
Over her shoulder the woman yelled, “Coming, Boss, I coming!” She turned and shambled away. She was dragging one leg; it was hampered by a ball and chain. It had been hidden in the short grass. Gooseflesh rose on the back of Tan-Tan’s neck. She pelted back through the long cane, oblivious of it nicking her skin, to the freedom of the bush.
All night as she shivered in the chill and dark next to Abitefa her inner voice berated her. What kind of Robber Queen was she, that she just turned tail and ran from real evil?
In Corbeau she traded her mother’s ring for three lanterns, oil, matches, grain alcohol, an axe, five kilos of flour and two chickens. She watched the last evidence of Ione’s existence disappear into the shopkeeper’s apron. She gave half the flour and one of the chickens to a wizened family living in a shanty beside the trash heap; it was too much to carry, anyway. “Make soup and dumplings,” she told them. “It will stretch for all six of allyou.” The father asked her her name. “Robber Queen,” she told him, before heading back into the bush. Tefa hissed at the way the alcohol burned her toe, but her sore dried up overnight.
In Babylon A-Fall Tan-Tan stayed a week, having two specially thick blankets woven in return for some manicou she trapped, killed and smoked. She cursed herself for having given away Ione’s ring when she could have used her survival skills to produce goods like smoked manicou to trade.
She liked Babylon A-Fall. They had no tin box torture. She would go back and tell Abitefa she would stay here. On the day her blankets were ready, she collected them and was going to speak with a woman who had a room she would let. She saw a new headblind exile about to step into the town well. She shoved him out of danger, and got an earful of obscenity for her trouble. And one of her blankets fell into the water. As she was dragging it out of the well, she heard a familiar phut-phut-phut. Open road, nowhere else to hide. She jumped into the well, hung on by her fingers to its edge. Her blanket landed soundlessly again in the water below.
The sound came closer, moved past her. Tan-Tan poked her head out of the well. Janisette had found her. Her stepmother was alone. She was driving a jeep this time, obviously made of parts that Gladys and Michael had stripped from the autocar. The jeep was heavier, rode smoother. There was no bleating from its engine.
There came a screech of brakes, the sound of Janisette cursing. Then to Tan-Tan’s dismay, she heard the jeep returning. Biceps burning, she lowered herself into the well to the extent of her arms. The weight of the baby pulled at her, made the tendons in her groin cramp. Her feet paddled in the ice-cold water. The jeep stopped. Tan-Tan could feel the rough brick of the well’s edge scraping the pads of her fingers. Her boots were filling with frigid water, making her shiver. How deep was the well? Her arms screamed for her to let go, just let go. She could swim, ain’t? She would be all right? But she held on. She could see the muscles of her arms twitching involuntarily. Her feet were blessedly numb now, but the weight of the water in her boots was an extra drag. Her fingers were beginning to slip. The babyweight was dragging her down. Soon only her fingertips held her.
Janisette made an impatient noise. “Cho. After is here them tell me I could find she.” The jeep started up again, phut-phut-phutted its way away.
Gasping with the pain in her abused arms, Tan-Tan scrabbled with her feet against the sides of the well until she found purchase on its uneven bricks. She worked her thighs apart to make room for her bellybulge, braced her feet and her back against the sides of the well. Slowly, by pushing with her thighs and arching her back, she levered herself up. Eventually she was able to roll out onto the ground, much to the shock of two little girls who had come with their bucket for water. They stood wide-eyed and watched her. “Careful there,” she told them. “Mind you fall in.”
Her arms wouldn’t work to push her upright. They trembled and ached. Tan-Tan rocked to her knees, then her feet, wept with the effort of tossing the remaining blanket over her shoulders. She smiled her brightest smile at the little girls. They stared solemnly. She hiked back to Abitefa and the safety of the bush. She couldn’t make a home in tallpeople lands. Janisette would follow the trail that gossip about her laid, hunt her out wherever she was. She should stay away from settlements altogether, but sometimes she just longed for tallpeople faces.
In Poor Man Pork she had the remaining blanket made into a cape to hide her seven-month belly. Hard living in the bush had made her so lean, the bulge didn’t show if she wore bulky clothes. But it was getting bigger.
The seamstress tried to substitute a cheaper fabric for the one Tan-Tan had given her. So Tan-Tan stood over her while she sewed. She pilfered every single candle the woman had in the place, tucked them into her carry pouch. When her cape was done she paid for it and took it away. She had supper in a rum shop, etched “Tan-Tan the Robber Queen” with her knife point into the longest candle. She made sure to leave just as the sun was beginning to think about going down. She meandered through town until she found a house that was in darkness. She put the candles down on the front step, rapped smartly on the door, and ran away, cape flaring behind her.
She began to notice little girls playing at Robber Queen in the settlements.
You feeling pressure, eh doux-doux? Don’t worry, that normal. Not too much longer, promise you. Then a whole new life going to start for you.