“No, answer me, bitch,” yelled Janisette, climbing out onto the running board of the vehicle. She leaned and spat the words into the face of this body the Queen was wearing: “A who-for pickney that a big-up your belly?”
Oh, and fury made the Brigand Queen flare:
Like you ain’t know, steplady?
Is she father who fuck she.
The restless crowd went still. Even from where she was, the Queen could see shock at her crudeness on some of the revellers’ faces. This was too nasty to be a Carnival mako. She didn’t care.
Yes, he inject Tan-Tan with he child,
She sister or brother.
And you one
Come to accuse she? Of what then, nuh?
Tears started from Janisette’s eyes. “I accuse you of looseness,” she said. “Of sluttery. Is you tempt Antonio with your leggobeast ways.”
Oh, Mama Nanny, the woman was lies incarnate, and right in the face of royalty!
Is that you believe, Antonio wife?
Is she tempt he?
Then why for her birthday you give her one knife?
The Midnight Robber pulled Tan-Tan’s blade from its sheath, turned it so that it winked in the light. She held knife and cutlass at the ready, daring Janisette to rush her.
Someone moved forward from out of the crowd. Short legs, knobby knees, a head too big for its body. “You recognise that, Janisette? Why you give your stepdaughter a blade, if not to protect sheself from she own daddy?”
The Robber Queen’s heart danced in her breast to hear Tan-Tan’s friend speak up for her. But this story had to sing as her own soul, oui? Knife still in hand, she held up her arm to shush Melonhead.
People, oonuh must understand. The Robber Queen father was a slick, sick man.
The first time she did making baby for he, she was fourteen.
He uses to beat she too, and
this Janisette, who he woo at first with sweet words,
Then give she the back of he hand.
Janisette put a trembling hand to her face, where Aislin’s stitches traced a scar from cheekbone to chin.
Tan-Tan couldn’t take it. When she turn sixteen, she and allyou tailor make a plan
To leave and come to Sweet Pone,
To love each other on their own,
Away from Antonio.
Janisette pushed out her bottom lip. The look she flashed Melonhead was pained, unreadable.
Could the Robber tell the rest? Rough with emotion, her cracked voice came out in two registers simultaneously. Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the good and the bad, regarded Janisette with a regal gaze and spoke:
That plan for love never come to transaction.
When Antonio find out, he rape she, beat she, nearly kill she.
Lying under he pounding body she see the knife.
And for she life she grab it and perform an execution.
She kill she daddy dead. The guilt come down ’pon she head,
The Robber Queen get born that day, out of excruciation.
Hanging on her every word the crowd was frozen, most in attitudes of horror, but a few just looked wary, their faces clearly saying what if them catch me? She couldn’t cipher that there one, though. Brer Mongoose does look watchful, seen, but Brer Fowl does do so too.
Janisette was shaking with tears, with fury. She made to climb back into the cab of the tank.
“I defend myself,” said the Robber Queen, dropping out of the free rhyme and back into herself. “For the first time, I defend myself, Janisette.”
Her stepmother turned at the sound of her name, one foot suspended in the air.
Tan-Tan said, “Is you give me the knife to do it with. Don’t tell me you never used to hear what Antonio was doing to me. Is you see my trial and never have courage to speak up. So why you hunting me now, woman, when I only do what you give me tools to do?”
Then Tan-Tan knew her body to be hers again, felt her own mouth stretching, stretching open in amazement at the words that had come out of it. Is she, speaking truth; is truth! “Sans humanité!” she spat at Janisette—“no mercy!”—the traditional final phrase of the calypsonian who’d won the battle of wits and words. Tan-Tan gasped, put a hand up to her magical mouth.
Her song had echoed out over the square. All were there to hear her sing the story true. She’d said them, spoke the words. Admitted to the murder. Let the people-them witness. She dropped her eyes to the ground, waited for the sound of Janisette’s machine springing. Nanny, strike me dead now.
But nothing happened.
She looked up.
The sorrow and love on Melonhead’s face was like healing balm. He nodded at her, a grim smile on his face. Janisette was standing on the running board, arms limp at her sides, a woman listening to her own condemnation. Her face had crumpled like a passion fruit that get suck dry.
The crowd erupted in cheers. Carnival pounds and pennies rained on Tan-Tan’s head. She re-sheathed her blades. Stood in the rain of money, just being Tan-Tan, sometimes good, sometimes bad, mostly just getting by like everybody else. She felt the Robber Queen relaxing into a grateful slumber. Daddy was dead, her baby was alive. Now was time to put away guilt.
Melonhead came and held on to her, his eyes glistening. He was holding the guns she’d dropped. “You all right?”
“Yes,” she said, meaning it.
Janisette clambered down from the tank, heavily and awkwardly. Her face was a mask of grief. She approached Tan-Tan, threw the handcuff key at her, spat on the ground at her feet. “You give me bitter gall to eat,” she said. “I hope sorrow consume you like it consuming me.”
“Sorrow was my father, my mother. I know sorrow good.”
The band was back on the stage again, taking up their instruments. The crowd flowed back into the square. People looked at Tan-Tan uncertainly. Some smiled. Many scowled. Somebody asked a friend, “So is Masque that was, or real?”
Melonhead picked up the key, used it to free Tan-Tan’s wrist.
A man approached Tan-Tan with her sack. “Lady, good kaiso that. I done pick up all your change I could find and put in it.”
Melonhead took it and thanked him. “Come home with me, Tan-Tan.” The music started again. As they left the square, Tan-Tan heard the thrum of the tank starting up, turned to see it moving despondently through the crowd, going away.
They were almost at Melonhead’s door when a sudden pain wrung out her insides. She gasped, took a deep breath. “Melonhead, I have to go home.”
“What home? Where?”
“I have to go back in the bush to Abitefa.”
“You mad or what? You turn bassourdie? You need to lie down and rest.”
“I will lie down when I reach back in the bush. I have to go right now.” Holding her belly protectively, she turned on her heel and started walking, with or without him. “Soon,” she whispered to her tummy. “I take one life, and I just save two.”
Oh, sweetness; this is the hardest part, the last part of labour. I right here with you, don’t fret. I know it feel like your mamee trying to crush you dead, but is only she body pushing you out into the world. No, she can’t hear you yet, only I could hear you. Yes, that was a big one. Rest little bit; another one coming.