Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; African American Women's Fiction; Coming of Age; Cultural Heritage; Women's Fiction; Science Fiction; Dystopian

Synopsis

"Deeply satisfying...succeeds on a grand scale...best of all is the language....Hopkinson's narrative voice has a way of getting under the skin." -- The New York Times Book Review "Caribbean patois adorns this novel with graceful rhythms...Beneath it lie complex, clearly evoked characters, haunting descriptions of exotic planets, and a stirring story...[This book] ought to elevate Hopkinson to star status." - -Seattle Times It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival--until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life . . . and set her free.

Release date: March 1, 2000

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 336

Sample

Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic Locus Recommended Reading List

“A significant figure and a singular talent… A most impressive work, The New Moon’s Arms has everything a reader could want: a compelling storyline with mysteries at its heart; a firm rooting in myth and history; keen social sense; and, most importantly, a focal character it is impossible not to fall in love with. It is a novel that sweeps the reader into its world: vivid and richly nuanced, utterly realistic yet still somehow touched with magic. Hopkinson’s writing is lush and note-perfect… The dialogue crackles, and Calamity’s narrative voice is direct and winning… one is left with a sense of wonder.”

—Toronto Star

“The New Moon’s Arms is a dance of lost-and-found. Hopkinson knows not to get too sentimental, thanks in large part to her heroine’s unsinkable sense of humor. It let me hear the mermaids singing.”

—Washington Post Book World

“Considerable talent for character, voice, and lushly sensual writing… her most convincing and complex character to date.”

—Locus

“Hopkinson has had a remarkable impact on popular fiction… [Her] work continues to question the very genres she adopts, transforming them from within through her fierce intelligence and her commitment to a radical vision that refuses easy consumption… With sly humor and great tenderness, [she] draws out the hope residing in age and change.”

—Toronto Globe and Mail

“Shows new depths of wisdom, humor, and insight… Like life, Hopkinson’s novel doesn’t resolve every mystery. But Hopkinson has answered the essential questions in The New Moon’s Arms, and she’s wise enough to know we need nothing more.”

—Seattle Times

Nebula Award Final Ballot Shortlisted for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award

“A book of wonder, courage, and magic… an electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers.”

—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Sexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic. A tour de force from one of our most striking new voices in fiction.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Succeeds impressively as a powerful and passionate meditation on myth and survival.”

—Locus

“A brilliant and multilayered tale.”

—Black Issues Book Review

“Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, the latest novel by Hopkinson is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey… The novel has a genuine vitality and generosity. Epic and frenetic, it traces the physical and spiritual ties that bind its characters to each other and to the earth.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Rollicking, sensual… Required reading… [from] one of science fiction’s most inventive and brilliant writers.”

—New York Post

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection New York Times Best Book of the Year

“Vibrant… stunning… Hopkinson puts her lyrical gifts to good use.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Hopkinson’s prose is vivid and immediate.”

—Washington Post Book World

“An important new writer.”

—Dallas Morning News

“A marvelous display of Nalo Hopkinson’s talents, skills, and insights into the human conditions of life… everything is possible in her imagination.”

—Science Fiction Chronicle

“Hopkinson has already captured readers with her unique combination of Caribbean folklore, sensual characters, and rhythmic prose. These stories further illustrate her broad range of subjects.”

—Booklist

“An ideal place for the new reader to discover her fertile imagination, profound empathy and extraordinary voice.”

—Toronto Globe and Mail

Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel Shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award

“Excellent… a bright, original mix of future urban decay and West Indian magic… strongly rooted in character and place.”

—Sunday Denver Post

“A wonderful sense of narrative and a finely tuned ear for dialogue… balances a well-crafted and imaginative story with incisive social critique and a vivid sense of place.”

—Emerge

“An impressive debut precisely because of Hopkinson’s fresh viewpoint.”

—Washington Post

“Hopkinson lives up to her advance billing.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Hopkinson’s writing is smooth and assured, and her characters lively and believable. She has created a vivid world of urban decay and startling, dangerous magic, where the human heart is both a physical and metaphorical key.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Splendid… Superbly plotted and redolent of the rhythms of Afro-Caribbean speech.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Utterly original… the debut of a major talent. Gripping, memorable, and beautiful.”

—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don’t be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anasi story:

It had a woman, you see, a strong, hard-back woman with skin like cocoa-tea. She two foot-them tough from hiking through the diable bush, the devil bush on the prison planet of New Half-Way Tree. When she walk, she foot strike the hard earth bup! like breadfruit dropping to the ground. She two arms hard with muscle from all the years of hacking paths through the diable bush on New Half-Way Tree. Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back. She name Tan-Tan, and New Half-Way Tree was she planet.

Yes, this was a hard woman, oui. The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big, molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would start to beat time boobaloops with every flutter of she long eyelashes. One look in she eyes, and you fall for she already. She had a way to screw them up small-small like if she angry, just so nobody wouldn’t get lost in the melting brown of them, but it never work, you hear? Once this woman eyes hold you, it ain’t have no other woman in the world for you. From Garvey-prime to Douglass sector, from Toussaint through the dimension veils to New Half-Way Tree, she leave a trail of sad, lonely men—and women too, oui?—who would weep for days if you only make the mistake and say the words “brown eyes.”

But wait—you mean you never hear of New Half-Way Tree, the planet of the lost people? You never wonder where them all does go, the drifters, the ragamuffins-them, the ones who think the world must be have something better for them, if them could only find which part it is? You never wonder is where we send the thieves-them, and the murderers? Well master, the Nation Worlds does ship them all to New Half-Way Tree, the mirror planet of Toussaint. Yes, man; on the next side of a dimension veil. New Half-Way Tree, it look a little bit like this Toussaint planet where I living: same clouds in the high, high mountains; same sunny bays; same green, rich valleys. But where Toussaint civilized, New Half-Way Tree does be rough. You know how a thing and the shadow of that thing could be in almost the same place together? You know the way a shadow is a dark version of the real thing, the dub side? Well, New Half-Way Tree is a dub version of Toussaint, hanging like a ripe maami apple in one fold of a dimension veil. New Half-Way Tree is how Toussaint planet did look before the Marryshow Corporation sink them Earth Engine Number 127 down into it like God entering he woman; plunging into the womb of soil to impregnate the planet with the seed of Granny Nanny. New Half-Way Tree is the place for the restless people. On New Half-Way Tree, the mongoose still run wild, the diable bush still got poison thorns, and the mako jumbie bird does still stalk through the bush, head higher than any house. I could tell you, you know; I see both places for myself. How? Well, maybe I find a way to come through the one-way veil to bring you a story, nuh? Maybe I is a master weaver. I spin the threads. I twist warp ’cross weft. I move my shuttle in and out, and smooth smooth, I weaving you my story, oui? And when I done, I shake it out and turn it over swips! and maybe you see it have a next side to the tale. Maybe is same way so I weave my way through the dimensions to land up here. No, don’t ask me how.

New Half-Way Tree is where Tan-Tan end up, and crick-crack, this is she story:

 

Quashee and Ione? For true? His good good friend and his wife? Mayor Antonio of Cockpit County stepped up into the pedicab. “What you staring at?” he growled at the runner. “Is home I going.”

“Yes, Compère,” the runner said through a mouthful of betel nut. She set off, and every slap her two feet-them in their alpagat sandals slapped against the ground, it sounded to Antonio like “Quashee-Ione, Quashee-Ione.” He could feel his mouth pursing up into a scowl. He sat up straight, tapping impatient fingers on one hard thigh. Not there yet? He slumped back against the seat. A trickle of sweat beaded down from the nape of his neck to pool at his dampening collar. Ione, running a fingertip down he head-back and grinning to see how the touch make he shiver. Antonio muttered, “What a thing to love a woman, oui?”

The runner heard him. She glanced back over her shoulder. Corded muscle twisted along her back, stretched on either side from her spine to the wings of her shoulder blades. Grinning, she panted out, “What a great thing for true, Compère. Three z’amie wives I have. Woman so sweet, I tell you.”

Nothing to say to that. Antonio made a sucking sound of impatience between his teeth. He tapped his temple to alert his earbug; started to identify himself out loud to the pedicab’s ancient four-eye, but remembered in time that pedicab runners only used headblind machines. This cab couldn’t transmit to his earbug. He sighed, powered the transmission console on manually and selected a music station. Old-time mento rhythms gambolled noisily in the air round him. He settled back against the soft jumbie leather seat, trying to get into the music. It jangled in his ears like “Quashee-Ione, Quashee-Ione, eh-eh.”

Ione, mother of his one daughter. Ione, that toolum-brown beauty, the most radiant, the loveliest in Cockpit County. When Ione smile, is like the poui trees bloom, filling the skies with bright yellow flowers. A laugh from Ione could thief hearts the way mongoose thief chicken.

Ione and Antonio had grown up neighbours on two wisdom weed farms. Fell in love as children, almost. Time was, Ione used to laugh her poui flower laugh for Antonio alone. Time was, Antonio and Ione were the night cradling the moon.

Maybe all that done now? How it could done?

Antonio tapped the music off. Under his breath, he ordered his earbug to punch up his home. It bleeped a confirmation at him in nannysong, and his eshu appeared in his mind’s eye.

“Hot day, Master,” grumbled the house eshu.

Today the a.i. had chosen to show itself as a dancing skeleton. Its bones clicked together as it jigged, an image the eshu was writing onto Antonio’s optic nerve. It sweated robustly, drops the size of fists rolling down its body to splash praps! on the “ground” then disappear. “What I could do for you?” The eshu made a ridiculously huge black lace fan appear in one hand and waved it at its own death’s head face.

“Where Ione?”

“Mistress taking siesta. You want to leave a message?”

“Backside. No, never mind. Out.” Antonio flicked the music station on again, then nearly went flying from his seat as the pedicab hit a rut in the road.

“Sorry, Compère,” laughed the runner. “But I guess you is big mayor, you could get that hole fill up in no time, ain’t?”

Runners didn’t respect nobody, not even their own mother-rass mayor. “Turn left here so,” Antonio said. “That road will take we to the side entrance.” And it was usually deserted too. He didn’t feel like playing the skin-teeth grinning game today with any of his constituents he might run into: Afternoon, Brer Pompous, how the ugly wife, how the runny-nose little pickney-them? What, Brer Pompous, Brer Boasty, Brer Halitosis? Performance at the Arawak Theatre last night? A disgrace, you say? Community standards? Must surely be some explanation, Brer Prudish, Brer Prune-face. Promise I go look into it, call you back soon. No, Antonio had no patience for none of that today.

Slap-slap of the runner’s feet. Quashee-Ione. Jangling quattro music in the air. Quashee-Ione, eh-eh.

Too many hard feelings between him and Ione, oui? Too much silence. When she had gotten pregnant, it had helped for a little while, stilled some of her restlessness. And his. He had been delighted to know he would have a child soon. Someone who would listen to him, look up to him. Like Ione when she’d been a green young woman. When little Tan-Tan had arrived, she’d been everything Antonio could have wished for.

In a hard-crack voice, the runner broke into a raucous song about a skittish woman and the lizard that had run up her leg. Antonio clenched his teeth into a smile. “Compère!” he shouted. She didn’t reply. Blasted woman heard him easy enough when it suited her. “Compère!”

“Yes, Compère?” Sweety-sweety voice like molasses dripping.

“Please. Keep it quiet, nuh?”

The woman laughed sarcastically.

“Well, at least when we get closer to my home? Uh… my wife sleeping.”

“Of course, Compère. Wouldn’t want she for hear you creeping home so early in the day.”

Bitch. Antonio stared hard at her wide, rippling back, but only said, “Thank you.”

Antonio knew full well that his work as mayor was making him unpopular to certain people in this little town behind God back. Like this pedicab operator right here.

And like she’d read his mind, the blasted woman nuh start for chat? “Compère, me must tell you, it warm my heart to know important man like you does take pedicab.”

“Thank you, Compère,” Antonio said smoothly. He knew where this was going. Let her work up to it, though.

“Pedicab is a conscious way to travel, you see? A good-minded way. All like how the cab open to the air, you could see your neighbours and them could see you. You could greet people, seen?”

“Seen,” Antonio agreed. The runner flashed a puzzled look at him over her shoulder. She made a misstep, but caught herself in the pedicab’s traces. “Careful, Compère,” Antonio said solicitously. “You all right?”

“Yes, man.” She continued running. Antonio leaned forward so she could hear him better.

“A-true what you say. Is exactly that I forever telling Palaver House,” he said in his warmest voice. “In a pedicab, you does be part of your community, not sealed away in a closed car. I tired telling Palaver House allyou is one of the most important services to the town.”

The runner turned right around in her traces and started jogging backwards. She frowned at him. “So if we so important, why the rass you taxing away we livelihood? We have to have license and thing now.” Her betel-red teeth were fascinating. “I working ten more hours a week to pay your new tariff. Sometimes I don’t see my pickney-them for days; sleeping when I leave home, sleeping when I come back. My baby father and my woman-them complaining how I don’t spend time with them no more. Why you do this thing, Antonio?”

Work, he was forever working. And the blasted woman making herself such a freeness with his name, not even a proper “Compère.” Antonio ignored her rudeness, put on his concerned face. “I feel for you and your family, sister, but what you want me do? Higglers paying their share, masque camps paying theirs, pleasure workers and rum shops paying theirs. Why pedicab runners should be any different?”

She had her head turned slightly backwards; one eye on him, one on the road. He saw the impatient eye-roll on the half of her face that she presented. “Them does only pay a pittance compared to we. Let we stop with the party line, all right?”

“But…”

“Hold on.” She wasn’t listening, was jogging smartly backwards to the road’s median to avoid a boulderstone. Her feet slapped: Quashee-Ione. Quashee-Ione? She pulled the pedicab back into the lane, turned her back to him, picked up speed. Over her shoulder: “Truth to tell, we come to understand allyou. The taxes is because of the pedicabs, ain’t?”

Antonio noted how businesslike her voice had become, how “me” had multiplied into “we.” Guardedly he asked her, “How you mean, sister?”

“Is because we don’t use a.i.’s in the pedicabs.”

An autocar passed in the opposite direction. The woman reclining inside it looked up from her book long enough to acknowledge Antonio with a dip of her head. He gave a gracious wave back. Took a breath. Said to the runner, “Is a labour tax. For the way allyou insist on using people when a a.i. could run a cab like this. You know how it does bother citizens to see allyou doing manual labor so. Back-break ain’t for people.” Blasted luddites.

“Honest work is for people. Work you could see, could measure. Pedicab runners, we know how much weight we could pull, how many kilometres we done travel.”

“Then…” Antonio shrugged his shoulders. What for do? A-so them want it, a-so it going to stay.

The woman ran a few more steps, feet slip-slapping Ione? Ione? An autocar zoomed past them. The four people inside it had their seats turned to face one another over a table set for afternoon tea. Antonio briefly smelt cocoa, and roast breadfruit. He barely had time to notice the runner give a little hop in the traces. Then with a jolt and a shudder the pedicab clattered through another pothole. Antonio grabbed for the armrests. “What the rass…?”

“Sorry, Compère, so sorry.”

“You deliberately…”

“You all right, Compère? Let me just climb up and see.”

“No…” But the woman was already in the cab beside him. She smelt strongly of sweat. She hummed something that sounded like nannysong, but fast, so fast, a snatch of notes that hemidemisemiquavered into tones he couldn’t distinguish. Then Antonio heard static in his ear. It faded to an almost inaudible crackle. He tapped his earbug. Dead. He chirped a query to his eshu. No answer. He’d been taken offline? How the rass had she done that? So many times he’d wished he could.

The woman was big, her arms muscled as thighs, her thighs bellied with muscle. Antonio stood to give himself some height over her. “What you do that for?” he demanded.

“No harm, Antonio; me just want to tell you something, seen? While nanny ear everywhere can’t hear we.”

“Tell me what?”

She indicated that he should sit again. She planted her behind in the seat next to him. Antonio edged away from her rankness. “The co-operative had a meeting,” she said.

“Co-operative?”

“Membership meeting of the Sou-Sou Co-operative: all the pedicab runners in Cockpit County; Board of Directors, everybody.”

Why hadn’t he known they were organized? Damned people even lived in headblind houses, no way for the ’Nansi Web to gather complete data on them. “So you have a communication from your co-operative for me?” he asked irritably.

“A proposal, yes. A discreet, unlinked courier service. Special government rate for you and the whole Palaver House. We offering to bring and carry your private messages.”

Private messages! Privacy! The most precious commodity of any Marryshevite. The tools, the machines, the buildings; even the earth itself on Toussaint and all the Nation Worlds had been seeded with nanomites—Granny Nanny’s hands and her body. Nanomites had run the nation ships. The Nation Worlds were one enormous data-gathering system that exchanged information constantly through the Grande Nanotech Sentient Interface: Granny Nansi’s Web. They kept the Nation Worlds protected, guided and guarded its people. But a Marryshevite couldn’t even self take a piss without the toilet analyzing the chemical composition of the urine and logging the data in the health records. Except in pedicab runner communities. They were a new sect, about fifty years old. They lived in group households and claimed that it was their religious right to use only headblind tools. People laughed at them, called them a ridiculous pappyshow. Why do hard labour when Marryshow had made that forever unnecessary? But the Grande ’Nansi Web had said let them be. It had been designed to be flexible, to tolerate a variety of human expression, even dissension, so long as it didn’t upset the balance of the whole.

But what the runners were offering now was precious beyond description: an information exchange system of which the ’Nansi Web would be ignorant. The possibilities multiplied in Antonio’s mind. “The whole Palaver House?” he asked.

“Seen, brother. Some of we did want to extend the offer to you one, oui? But then we start to think; if we putting we trust in only you, what kind of guarantee that go give we? Not to say that you is anything but a honest man, Compère, but this way we have some, how you call it, checks and balances in the deal, right?”

“And what guarantees you offering we?” asked Antonio petulantly.

“Contract between we and you. On handmade paper, not datastock.”

“Headblind paper too? How?”

“We make it from wood pulp.”

Like very thin composition board, Antonio imagined. Koo ya, how these people were crafty. “And what your terms would be?”

“Some little payment for we services, and reduction of we taxes to the same level as the pleasure workers and them.”

Crafty, oui. Turn right away round from paying the government to having the government pay you. Palaver House would have to mask the activity as something else, probably a government-dedicated taxi service. Only the Inner Palaver House could be privy to it, but it ain’t have nothing unusual in something like that. Antonio found himself whispering, “We could do it…”

“Me know so. You going to come to terms with we?”

“Maybe. You have ahm, a private place where me and some next people could meet with your board?”

“Yes, man.” They set a meeting time. She told him the place. “One of we go come and get you. Look smart, partner. You coming online again.” She warbled again in impossibly intricate nannysong. Antonio’s ear popped. In a voice schooled to convey worry the runner said: “Sorry man, too sorry. It working again?”

“Yes.” He was still marvelling at the few minutes he’d been dead to the web. Never before since birth. He chirruped in nannysong for his house eshu.

“Master,” said the eshu, “you want me?” No visuals this time. It was capricious sometimes.

“Yes. Something… malfunction in the blasted headblind four-eye in this pedicab, and I was only getting static for a second. I just making sure you still getting through.”

On the screen, the eshu appeared, spat. “Cho. Dead metal.” It winked out.

“I name Beata,” the woman said. She stuck out a paw. He shook it. Her palm was rough. From work, Antonio realised. How strange.

“Seen.” They had an agreement. Silently, she leapt onto the roadway, stepped into the traces and set off again.

They were at the entrance to Antonio’s house in minutes. “Here you go, Compère. Safe and sound and ready to ferret out your woman business.”

Quashee and Ione? Antonio felt jealousy turning like a worm in his belly. He didn’t like the weight of the cuckold’s horns settling on his brow. His mind was so worked up, he barely remembered to pay Beata. He got down from the cab and would have walked away, but she hauled it into his road and stood there sweaty and grimy, blocking his path. She poked a bit of betel out from between two teeth with a black-rimed nail. Flicked it away. Smiled redly at him. He threw some cash at her. She caught it, inspected the coin insolently and tucked it into her bubby-band. “Walk good, Compère. Remember what I say.”

He was sure he could still smell the sweat of her even though she had jogged off. He opened the white picket gates and walked up the long path towards the mayor house.

This day, Antonio couldn’t take no pleasure in his big, stoosh home, oui? He didn’t even self notice the tasteful mandala of rock that his Garden had built around the flag pole near the entrance when he first took office. The pale pink rockstone quarried from Shak-Shak Bay didn’t give him no joy. The sound of the Cockpit County flag cracking in the light breeze didn’t satisfy him. His eye passed right over the spouting fountain with the lilies floating in it and the statue of Mami Wata in the middle, arching her proud back to hold her split fishtail in her own two hands. The trinkling sound of the fountain didn’t soothe his soul. Is the first time he didn’t notice the perfection of his grounds: every tree healthy, every blade of grass green and fat and juicy. He didn’t remark on the snowcone colours of the high bougainvillaea hedge. He didn’t feel his chest swell with pride to see the marble walls of the mayor house gleaming white in the sun.

Quashee and Ione? For true?

On the way, Antonio found Tan-Tan playing all by herself up in the julie-mango tree in the front yard. Her minder was only scurrying round the tree, chicle body vibrating for anxious; its topmost green crystal eyes tracking, tracking, as it tried to make sure Tan-Tan was all right. “Mistress,” it was whining, “you don’t want to come down? You know Nursie say you mustn’t climb trees. You might fall, you know. Fall, yes, and Nursie go be vex with me. Come down, nuh? Come down, and I go tell you the story of Granny Nanny, Queen of the Maroons.”

Tan-Tan shouted back, “Later, all right? I busy now.”

Antonio felt liquid with love all over again for his doux-doux darling girl, his one pureness. Just so Ione had been as a young thing, climbing trees her parents had banned her from. Antonio loved his Tan-Tan more than songs could sing. When she was first born, he was forever going to watch at her sleeping in her bassinet. With the back of his hand he used to stroke the little face with the cocoa-butter skin soft like fowl breast feathers, and plant gentle butterfly kisses on the two closed-up eyes. Even in her sleep, little Tan-Tan would smile to feel her daddy near. And Antonio’s heart would swell with joy for the beautiful thing he had made, this one daughter, this chocolate girl. “My Tan-Tan. Sweet Tan-Tan. Pretty just like your mother.” When she woke she would yawn big, opening her tiny fists to flash little palms at him, pink like the shrimp in Shak-Shak Bay. Then she would see him, and smile at him with her mother’s smile. He could never hold her long enough, never touch her too much.

Antonio called out to his child in the tree: “Don’t tease the minder, doux-doux. What you doing up there?”

Tan-Tan screwed up her eyes and shaded them with one hand. Then: “It ain’t have no doux-doux here,” the pickney-girl answered back, flashing a big smile at her daddy. Sweet, facety child. “Me is Robber Queen, yes? This foliage is my subject, and nobody could object to my rule.” Tan-Tan had become fascinated with the Midnight Robber. Her favourite game was to play Carnival Robber King. She had a talent for the patter. “Why you home so early, Daddy?”

In spite of his worries, Antonio smiled to see his daughter looking so pretty. His sweetness, his doux-doux darling could give him any kinda back-talk, oui? “I just come to see your mother. You know is where she is?”

“She and uncle taking tea in the parlour, Daddy. Them tell me I musn’t come inside till they call me. I could go in now?”

“Not right now, darling. You stay up there; I go come and get you soon.”

Antonio dragged his feet towards the parlour, the way a condemned man might walk to a hanging tree. As he reached inside the detection field, the house eshu clicked on quiet-quiet inside his ear. “You reach, Master,” it said. “Straighten your shirt. Your collar get rumple. You want me announce you?”

“No. Is a surprise. Silence.”

“Yes, Master Antonio.” The eshu’s voice sounded like it had a mocking smile in it. Like even self Antonio’s house was laughing at him? Where Ione?

When Antonio stood outside the door, he could hear his wife inside laughing, laughing bright like the yellow poui flower, and the sound of a deep, low voice intertwined with the laugh. Antonio opened the parlour door.

Years after, Antonio still wouldn’t tell nobody what he saw in the parlour that day. “Rasscloth!” he would swear. “Some things, a man can’t stand to describe!”

Mayor Antonio, the most powerful man in the whole county, opened up his own parlour door that afternoon to behold his wife lounging off on the settee with her petticoat hitched up round her hips, and both feet wrapped round Quashee’s waist.

Antonio stood there for a while, his eyes burning. He knew then that whenever he shut them from now on, he would see that pretty white lace petticoat spread out all over the settee; Quashee’s porkpie hat on Ione’s head; the teasing, happy smile on her face; and Quashee’s bare behind pushing and pushing between Ione’s sprawled-opened knees.

Antonio never noticed that Tan-Tan had followed him to the parlour door. She stood there beside him, eyes staring, mouth hanging open. She must have cried out or something, because all of a sudden, Ione looked over Quashee’s shoulder to see the two of them in the doorway. She s