Brown Girl In the Ring Read Online Free PDF

going to find a donor for we. You going to send for the ambulance to come and get it, and while you waiting, you going chill the body down and keep the heart beating. I go give you the equipment to do it. It go be easy.”
    “But Mr. Sheldon, how’m I going to find a donor? Why can’t they use the porcine program? The odds—”
    “Brother, you nah business with none of that. You just going to have to improve the odds, seen? Find somebody the right size, the same blood type, healthy, and arrange for them to be in a condition to donate their heart. You get me?”
    Appalled, Tony could only stare. Rudy was asking him to commit murder.
    The jug fell from Melba’s hands and crashed onto the floor, spraying her with water and broken glass.
    “Fuck!” Rudy shoved himself out of his chair, brushed his pants leg where some of the water had splashed him. He motioned to Crack. “Clean this up. Melba, too.”
    Crack hurried to his side and started picking up shards of glass. Melba just stood, staring at nothing, hands still curled to hold a jug that was no longer there. Goose bumps lifted on Tony’s arms. He had no choice but to do what Rudy told him.

CHAPTER TWO

    Rocking my baby, I know you are sad,
Baby, you were naughty; Baby, you were bad.
I’m sorry to whip you my darling, but true,
My Mama whipped me, so I’m bound to whip you.
    —Lullabye
    L ost in thoughts of Tony, Ti-Jeanne hurried home. Despite her distractedness, she automatically kept a watchful eye about her. You always had to be on the lookout for trouble in the Burn. She crossed the street a number of times to avoid drunken fights or men offering presents in return for “a little time” with her: “You look so healthy, darling, so nice.” Most men only asked, though. She was Mami Gros-Jeanne’s granddaughter, and nobody wanted Mami mad at them. They needed Mami when the winter coughs were racking their lungs or their women were giving birth.
    A knot of street kids whirled around her, a grimy rainbow of all colours, screeching with laughter and nearly knocking her off balance. They chanted as they ran: “Nigger, nigger, come for roti, all the roti done!” As they jostled her, Ti-Jeanne could smell the dirty little bodies, feel small hands quickly patting her body, looking for anything to steal. Someone tugged at the package of books. Ti-Jeanne yanked it out of the child’s grasp.
    “Allyou get away!” she shouted. “I ain’t have nothing for you!”
    Baby, fascinated by all the activity, didn’t know enough to be frightened. He just stared, wide-eyed. Ti-Jeanne held on tightly to Baby and her books until the children were gone to wherever they went for the night.
    Ti-Jeanne kept walking. She couldn’t keep her mind off Tony. She’d lived with him for a year and a half. A year and a half of him making a few dollars from odd jobs, then using it to score a few slashes of buff, spending the night flat on his back on the mouldy futon in his one-room apartment, eyes wandering from the muscle-relaxing effect of the drug. Next day he’d be queasy and weak, unable to work for days. Ti-Jeanne had kept them fed by working in Roopsingh’s restaurant, but it hadn’t been enough for two people to survive on. Tony was good with his hands, talked about opening his own little bicycle repair shop like Bruk-Foot Sam, but never did anything about it. He could even have used his medical training to do what Mami had done: opened a small private practice to treat simple ailments. But it had been easier for him to start running errands for the posse. It took no thought. He just followed orders and saved all his initiative for figuring out where he was going to score the next slash.
    Baby nuzzled hungrily at Ti-Jeanne’s chest, rooting where he knew her breast was. Ti-Jeanne put her finger in his mouth to soothe him until they reached home.
    Tony had sounded serious today. Maybe this time he’d finally break away from the posse, and she and Baby could make a home