36 pages • 1 hour read
Brown Girl in the Ring
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Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Ti-Jeanne awakes from a nightmare to find a Soucouyant, a blood-sucking spirit, in her room with “flesh red and wet and oozing all over, like she ain’t have no skin” (44). The Soucouyant tells Ti-Jeanne to move aside so that she can eat Baby. Suddenly, the Jab-Jab from earlier appears and fights the Soucouyant. He scatters rice on the floor, which forces the Soucouyant to compulsively pick up the grains. As she obsesses over the rice, the Jab-Jab hits her repeatedly. He tells Ti-Jeanne to open the curtains, as Soucouyants are afraid of daylight. When Ti-Jeanne opens the window, both the Soucouyant and the Jab-Jab disappear.
Mami enters the room and asks about the rice grains on the floor. Ti-Jeanne tearfully reveals her visions and visitations by spirits and other forces. She tells her about seeing La Diablesse, a woman spirit who foretells death. When Mami reads Ti-Jeanne’s tarot cards, she sees that a black man is in danger and close to death as “wherever La Diablesse go, she leave death behind” (50-51). Mami suspects the man is Tony. Ti-Jeanne is terrified because her own mother has this same seer ability and went mad as a result.
Suddenly, Tony appears at Mami’s door, pleading for their help. He reveals to them that Rudy has tasked him with acquiring a human heart through murder. He, along with Crack Monkey, has prowled the streets looking for transient people to kill for their hearts with no success. Tony feels sick about this task and wants Mami to use her powers to help him leave town undetected by Rudy’s posse. While Mami is initially resistant, Ti-Jeanne’s insistence finally sways the older woman to help Tony under the condition that her granddaughter stays with her to learn about the full extent of her seer ability. Ti-Jeanne pleads with Mami to allow her to accompany Tony to the highway to make sure that he gets there safely. She promises to return to Mami after. Mami agrees to this term and to helping Tony.
Chapter 4 Summary
Mami informs Ti-Jeanne that they will wait until nighttime to perform the ritual to summon Papa Osain, who can help Tony get to safety. During the day, a band of children arrive at Mami’s door, carrying a young child with a broken leg. The children vow to not steal anything so long as Mami is helping heal the injured child, Susie. The children fear that Mami is an evil witch who will eat them, but the older woman assures them that her methods will not harm them. During this time, Tony helps Mami to mix the paste for a cast and build crutches. He also helps with cooking porridge for the children to eat. Tony’s sweetness and persistent flirting move Ti-Jeanne. When Mami accidentally nicks herself, Tony helps her with the bleeding. He tests her blood and discovers that Mami is a match for the organ transplant.
As Mami and Ti-Jeanne prepare for bed, Mami expresses her worry that the plan to summon Papa Osain may not work as it has been a while since she has called to him. She states, “But suppose I call he tonight, and he refuse me? What I go do then, Ti-Jeanne?” (76-77). Ti-Jeanne consoles her but possesses concern as well.
Late in the night, Ti-Jeanne longs for Tony and goes downstairs to where he is sleeping only to find him already sexually aroused. They sneak into a barn to have sex and accidentally fall asleep together. When Ti-Jeanne stirs awake, she panics and rushes them back into the house. She sees a figure by the house and is terrified that it might be one of the posse members seeking Tony. When she notices that the figure has an exposed skull, she knows that the figure is not human.
When everybody wakes up for the ritual, Mami brushes a piece of hay from Ti-Jeanne’s hair, aware that her granddaughter and Tony have spent the night together.
Chapter 5 Summary
On the night of the ritual, Mami tasks Tony with catching a white fowl from the coop as an offering. Mami, Ti-Jeanne, and Tony make their way to the old Necropolis cemetery and enter the Toronto Crematorium Chapel where the ritual will take place. They prepare offerings of herbs and potatoes beside the stone head representing the spirit Eshu. Mami instructs Tony to slice the fowl’s throat and does it for him when he hesitates. Then she instructs Tony and Ti-Jeanne to not interrupt her once she starts drumming to summon Eshu.
Once the drumming starts, Ti-Jeanne has a fit and becomes possessed by the spirit of the Prince of Cemetery, also known as Legbara, an aspect of Eshu. The Prince of Cemetery reveals that Ti-Jeanne is a seer connected to his abilities and that she will “see the whole thing; death” (94). He possesses Baby’s body next. He tells Mami that when Ti-Jeanne helps Tony in his escape that night, she must carry with him the rose that Tony gifted her earlier. He says that he will “hide she halfway in Guinea Land, where flesh people can’t see she” (95). When the Prince of Cemetery leaves, Mami tends to Ti-Jeanne and Baby while Tony is in shock at what he has witnessed.
A few moments later, Papa Osain possesses Mami. Through Papa Osain, Ti-Jeanne learns that the spirit is mad at Mami as she is “past time for she to do [his] work” (98). Papa Osain also clarifies the Prince of Cemetery’s instructions to Ti-Jeanne and a bewildered Tony. She instructs the two to get the bicycles from the barn and ride together with the rose, which has been enchanted to grant safe passageway for Tony and Ti-Jeanne until sunrise. Tony and Ti-Jeanne depart immediately.
Meanwhile, Rudy has been conjuring the spirits to locate Tony’s whereabouts. He slices the throat of a man and makes a blood offering into a duppy bowl to learn that spirits have granted Tony assistance. This is not known to Tony and Ti-Jeanne, who ride through a thickening fog, surprised that the rose has kept them obscured from passersby. They eventually come across Rudy’s posse and attempt to ride past them. However, Rudy has warned the posse that spirits are protecting Tony. The posse collectively releases balls of clay as Tony and Ti-Jeanne near. When the clay hits the ground, stakes emerge from the impact and form a net that traps Tony and Ti-Jeanne in it. The posse cannot see Tony and Ti-Jeanne at first, but once the net turns back into lumps of clay, the rose falls to the ground and reveals the two runaways.
Rudy’s posse threatens to kill Ti-Jeanne and punish Tony for his betrayal. Suddenly, the Prince of Cemetery takes over Ti-Jeanne’s body and injures every member of the posse. He tells Crack Monkey to deliver the following message to Rudy regarding Ti-Jeanne: “Tell him this horse is my daughter. Him not to harm she” (118). Tony, fearing Ti-Jeanne’s possession, runs and hides nearby. When Ti-Jeanne returns to consciousness, she is heartbroken to find that Tony is no longer there. She rushes home to Mami. When Ti-Jeanne leaves, Rudy arrives in his car to retrieve his fallen posse members. He approaches Tony in hiding and tells him to come out.
Ti-Jeanne returns to Mami’s house in distress. Mami reveals to Ti-Jeanne that Rudy is her husband and that he has perverted her spiritual practice by using the souls of the dead to do his bidding. She says that according to Papa Osain, it is up to Ti-Jeanne to bring Rudy to justice for violating the spiritual practice. Ti-Jeanne is frightened of this burden, but Mami insists that her spiritual instruction begin right away. Mami begins by listing the names of the African spirits: Shango, Ogun, Osain, Shakpana, Emanjah, Oshun, Oya, and Eshu.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
While Ti-Jeanne has expressed skepticism throughout her life towards Mami’s spiritual knowledge and healing practices, the threat to Tony’s life fills her with an urgency to learn about a tradition that has been passed down through the matrilineal line of her family. Ti-Jeanne is not aware of the sacredness of this women-centered tradition at first when she implores Mami to help Tony, but as she comes into her abilities as a seer, her connection to her spiritual power grows. Ti-Jeanne’s abilities gain potency when Rudy’s corruption of his spiritual power threatens the natural order of life and death. It is up to Ti-Jeanne to correct this imbalance to a women-centered tradition, which patriarchal violence has perverted. It is Mami’s instruction that has guided Rudy to this stage of power, and it is Ti-Jeanne’s responsibility to interrupt Rudy’s control over the spirits. This responsibility installs a sense of matriarchal power over a patriarchal system of violence.
These chapters also offer a more in-depth look into the Afro-Caribbean folkloric traditions that inform Mami’s spiritual beliefs and practices. The deities that Mami introduce to Ti-Jeanne are African in origin, passed on through the stories and spiritual practices of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and across the world. Mami insists on passing on her spiritual knowledge to Ti-Jeanne because these rites not only connect her granddaughter to her cultural identity and history, but they are also tools for her immediate survival. Ti-Jeanne, like Tony, possesses a secular outlook until these traditions reveal their magical force. While Tony runs away after seeing Ti-Jeanne’s spiritual possession, Ti-Jeanne turns to Mami to better understand her inherited abilities. By seeking Mami’s support, Ti-Jeanne decides to slowly relinquish her skepticism of the beliefs that are part of her familial history and pursue a path of spiritual enrichment.
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