Her inner voice, that of mocking Bad Tan-Tan, continually rides her for her faults, taking all her discomfort as just punishment for killing her father. Tan-Tan is frustrated by her dependence upon the douen, and tries to make herself less of a nuisance, despite Chichibud’s reassurances:
“I can’t eat the way allyou does eat, I can’t move about the daddy tree the way allyou does do it, I can’t even take a piss without it causing somebody some botheration!”
Chichibud said, “We don’t mind. You is guest. You need to give your body and your mind time to heal after what Antonio do to you.”
No, not that. Talk about something else. “But none of the other douen want me here.”
Tan-Tan struggles for some control over her life, something she’s never had before. Her attempts at self-sufficiency in an alien society bring out her stubborn side. As she attempts her first solo climb down the daddy tree, she is infuriated by the stares and taunts from the douen and hinte who come out to watch her. One douen even confirms her worst fears, by telling her she has brought misfortune upon their heads by being there. Finally, the Robber Queen rises within her, and Tan-Tan gives a speech:
“Morning, sir, morning, ma’am, howdy lizard pickney. Ooonuh keeping well this fine hot day? The maggots growing good in the shit? Eh? It have plenty lizards climbing in your food? Good. I glad.”
It is this self-sufficiency that eventually causes Tan-Tan to bring misfortune down upon the douen. She is sent to live on the forest floor with Abitefa, the daughter of Chichibud and Benta, who will soon be coming into her own womanhood. Abitefa is resentful at first of Tan-Tan’s accompaniment, but accedes to her parent’s wishes. The two become friends, living together on the forest floor, sharing girlish adolescent camaraderie. But Tan-Tan is hungry for her own people, and as soon as she discovers a nearby human settlement she begins to sneak into it. At first she thinks she just wants to see “tallpeople going about their business,” but she soon finds herself stepping in as the Robber Queen and defending the poor, downtrodden people in the towns. These good deeds quiet the “Bad Tan-Tan” voice inside her that is always dragging her down, confirming her uselessness. Tan-Tan becomes addicted to this freedom from her personal demons.
During one of these exploits as the Robber Queen, Tan-Tan saves a young man from a brutal beating by his mother. Tan-Tan grabs the lash and begins lashing the woman, asking her how she likes the beating she’d been giving her son. When the son steps in and tries to save his mother, Tan-Tan is bewildered:
How could he stand to touch that woman? How could he love her when she hurt him like that?
Her bewilderment gives us a glimpse into the hurt done to Tan-Tan by her father. She still loved him so much that when he hurt her she had to split her personality to deal with it, yet she cannot recognize this phenomenon in others. Tan-Tan does not stop to self-examine, but attempts direct intervention instead: she tells the woman not to hurt her son anymore, claiming that she, Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, would know if she did and come punish her for it.
Tan-Tan is soon plagued by another, more tangible memory of her father: she discovers she is pregnant from his final rape. (This situation is reminiscent of Octavia Butler’s work, particuarly the Patternmaster series.) Unable to find a settlement with a doctor to help her abort the baby, she is forced to learn to live in the bush with an unborn child dragging her down, both physically and emotionally:
Is the baby, the monster baby that was round and hard now like potato in her belly…. Resentfully Tan-Tan dug her fingers into her stomach. The defiant thing inhabiting her didn’t yield. Her head pounded with anger. She could only drink what it let her, eat what it permitted.
Tan-Tan finds herself subject to someone else’s needs once again, but this time it is something literally internal, something she cannot rid herself of. Her need to be her own person, to follow her own rules, has become such a necessity to her that she continues to ignore the douens’ request that she not go into human settlements. And indeed it is not long until Janisette, Antonio’s wife at the time of his death, comes seeking vengeance on Tan-Tan at the settlement where she’s been playing Robber Queen.
Tan-Tan escapes, but Janisette easily follows her trail into the bush, and the daddy tree is no longer a secret to humans. It is a painful decision, but the douen have little choice but to destroy their home and move to other daddy trees farther away. Tan-Tan has to sit by, the guilt of what she’s done weighing her down as she watches the home of the people who had saved her destroyed by their own hands.
Tan-Tan has lost her home for the third time, and a father figure for the second. In her need for independence, for the freedom from the ghost of her father she only obtains by taking on the persona of the Robber Queen, she has caused the death of the daddy tree, and this time the fault is truly hers.
The douen replant the tree immediately, using biological means to help it grow very quickly at first. The morning after the destruction of the daddy tree, there is an adolescent tree growing where the huge daddy tree once stood. It is not yet ready for douen inhabitation—indeed, it is a long way off—but the possibility of a new home in the future gives us a brief glimpse of hope. This kind of replanting in the face of a father’s death echoes Tan-Tan’s unborn child, a “reseeding” by her father that seems at first a curse, but later turns out to be something else entirely.
Accompanied by Abitefa, who was exiled from her people because of Tan-Tan’s mistakes at the same time Tan-Tan was cast out, she makes her home in the bush, stealing into human settlements and performing as many Robber Queen good deeds as she dares with Janisette still on her trail. She is now without a home, truly on her own without adult interference or supervision for the first time in her life.
During this time in the bush, Tan-Tan comes to know herself, and discovers what she’s made of. When she stumbles on a settlement that has indentured servants locked in the fields by ball and chain, she turns and runs away. She is ashamed that when confronted with true evil, she flees from it, and she doubts her role as Robber Queen. Instead, she is learning judgement, learning the difference between situations she can influence and those she’s better off avoiding. Slowly Bad Tan-Tan and Good Tan-Tan are merging, learning to work together. She is paying for her “sins” in the hard life of the bush.
Finally, Tan-Tan stumbles upon Sweet Pone, the settlement that she had been planning on running off to with her friend Melonhead before her sixteenth birthday. She finds Melonhead living here, and he does not let her escape back into the bush, but comes after her, happy to see her well and alive. Her pregnancy, well advanced by now, is hidden by a large cape, but it doesn’t take long for Melonhead to notice and ask her if it’s Antonio’s child. Tan-Tan is unable to answer him, and he lets the question go.
Tan-Tan is unable to stay away from the settlement, and she soon realizes that her feelings for Melonhead are growing. She has spent enough time with herself that she is nearly ready to let someone get close to her again, and this time she discovers more about human interaction than she’d ever known was possible:
Touching Melonhead made her feel good, an unalloyed pleasure untainted by fear or anger. So different than she’d ever felt before.
The climax of the book comes during the Carnival celebration in Sweet Pone, when Janisette catches Tan-Tan, who is too pregnant to escape this time. Tan-Tan, strengthened by her relationship with Melonhead, fired up by her Robber Queen costume, finally gives a speech that is not a made-up story, but the truth of what happened between her and Antonio.
In this beautifully written scene Tan-Tan finally integrates Bad Tan-Tan and Good Tan-Tan; she finds her voice and shames Janisette for not helping her as a child. She proclaims to the entire town the story of what happened to her, and whose baby she is carrying. She is the opposite of the quiet, ignored Tan-Tan who was taken by her father to New Half-Way Tree. She has grown from the frightened fugitive running from her father’s murder into a brave young woman facing her history and allowing herself to justify her act of self-defense. There is shock, some disgust and a great deal of admiration showered down on Tan-Tan by the end of the speech, and even Janisette is swayed by the speech and leaves her for the last time. And, just as Tan-Tan has started facing her demons, she goes into labor.