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  I wait a few minutes before I come out of my hiding place. I replay everything until it all blurs into a dream. I want to tell Manman what I just saw and tell her that we have to go back. This corner where Matant Jo lives is no different from some of the streets in Delmas. I need to light her candles and hope that I can reach her.

  Upstairs, I find a near-empty shelf in Chantal’s room, move the books aside, and start taking my mother’s things out of her carry-on bag: a small statue of La Sainte Vierge, two tea candles, the beaded asson gourd, a small brass bell, a white enamel mug, a cross, and a piece of white fabric. I bring the cloth up to my face and inhale the fragrance. I washed it by hand and soaked it in Florida water before we left. It smells of Manman’s magic—our lwas, our songs, our prayers.

  I move the magic things aside to dust off the shelf with my hand. I place the cloth down first, the cross in the center, then the other items around it. I add water from the bathroom sink into the mug. I’m now only missing a potted plant for the libation. I light a candle. It hisses in the dark. Chantal turns over, but a pillow covers her face.

  I call my spirit guides to bend the time and space between where I’m standing and wherever my mother is. Maybe everything is happening for a reason. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do. Maybe we should go back. What would Manman say? I need to know.

  Cher Manman,

  For all my life, you’ve taught me so much about how there is power and magic in our lwas, in our songs, and in our prayers. Now, for the first time in my life, I get to test the truth of your words. This is the first night I’ve spent away from you and I can’t even conjure an image in my mind of where you must be.

  Remember that trip to Jacmel last year when we stayed at a friend’s house and you insisted that we share a mattress made for a crib? You pulled me in close and reminded me that even with my almost-woman body, I am still your one and only baby. Both our feet hung off the edge of the mattress and touched the cool concrete floor, and we prayed that a little mouse or a big spider would not eat our toes. I’m sleeping on an air mattress now and there’s plush beige carpeting underneath.

  When I stared into the tiny flickering flame of the tea candle tonight, an image of you and where you are finally surfaced in my mind. You told me to trust every vision, every tingling of my skin, every ringing in my ear, every itch in my palms. They’re all signs. They’re all the language of the lwas.

  But I’ve heard no whispers since the moment you were pulled away from me. How could the lwas not have given us a sign that this would happen, Manman? Were we too blinded and distracted by the excitement? This vision of you now is the only thing I have to hold.

  I can see you. You’re on a bed on top of another bed. And a thin layer of itchy fabric is barely enough to cover your body. It’s your first night, but you’ve made some friends—two men and one woman. And they are black, black like you—black as if they’ve sat in the hot midday sun for most of their lives selling any- and everything they could find just to make enough money to buy a plane ticket out of that hot sun. They’re from Senegal, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire, because they speak a broken French just like you.

  Matant Jo doesn’t let me speak French or Creole. When you come to this side, Manman, we will speak nothing but Creole. It will help me hold on to a piece of home.

  Kenbe fem, Manman. Hold tight.

  Fabiola

  FOUR

  I TURN ON the bathroom-sink faucet and let the cold water wash over my hand. In Port-au-Prince, we had a well in the front yard. By this time, I would’ve had to wash and rinse out the bucket from the bathroom to bring it outside and pull clean water up from the well. Then I’d have to carry it back into the house and pour the well water into the tub for my bath. I can balance a bucket on top of my head, too. But I won’t let my cousins see that.

  “Why’d you spin around like that with the white mug in your hands?” Chantal asks when I step back into her bedroom as she makes her bed.

  “You saw that? I thought you were asleep,” I say. I’m already dressed, wearing one of Donna’s uniforms: a gray skirt, a plain button-down white shirt, and a navy V-neck sweater. I want to go see my mother at the detention center in New Jersey. But I’m going to school. School in America. Finally. Manman had insisted that we arrive on a weekend so that I could start school the following Monday. She didn’t want me to miss a day of this real American education.

  “You woke me up whispering to that statue and cross. Then I saw you take the mug and spin around. What were you doing?”

  “Saluting the four directions—east, west, north, and south. It’s for Papa Legba. Are we going to New Jersey after school?”

  “Fabiola, I’m sorry. New Jersey’s ten hours away.” She pulls a thick sweater down over her head. “My mother is handling it right now, and you don’t even know it. And who is Papa Legba?”

  “He is the lwa of crossroads. When there’s no way, Papa Legba will make a way. He opens doors and unlocks gates,” I say. “I have to pray to him so he can help my mother come to this side.”

  Donna barges into the bedroom. “Chant, you got an extra pair of tights?” Her black lace bra pushes her breasts up so high that they almost touch her chin.

  I search her eyes for any hint of what happened last night, but they’re bright, as if she’s had a good night’s sleep. But I know for sure that she just about fell out of that white car.

  Pri comes in behind her. “Yo, Fab? You know how to braid?”

  I nod and try hard not to stare at the white fabric wrapped around Pri’s chest. It presses her breasts down against her rib cage until she looks like a box. The François and Toussaint women are busty. It should force us to only straighten our backs and walk with our heads held high. But one twin wears her breasts like a trophy, while the other tries to make them disappear.

  “Donna, I’ve never seen those clothes before. You’re seriously gonna wear lace thongs and a push-up bra to school?” Chantal steps closer to her. “Did you just buy those with money that you don’t have?” she says through clenched teeth.

  “Chant, chill. There’s plenty of money to go around—we’ll make it work,” Donna says, tightening the straps of her new bra.

  “If she went shopping, then I’m going shopping,” Pri says.

  “Y’all are out of control. For real. As far as I’m concerned, there is no money. Fab needs clothes and school supplies,” Chantal says, pointing to me, then at her sisters. “And you already know what’s happening to the rest of it.”

  “Why are you the only one who gets to decide how we spend our money?” Pri whines.

  “’Cause I’m responsible, that’s why,” Chantal says. “And we have a deal.”

  Both Pri and Donna start arguing with Chantal. They yell and put their hands in her face. Chantal does the same; she doesn’t back down. I can’t make out the words, their reasons or logic. All I know is that there is enough money in this house for three sisters to fight over it.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” I ask, trying to stop the fight. But they don’t listen to me.

  Quietly, I head downstairs.

  There are only eggs and sliced bread. There are no plantains and avocados to make a complete Haitian breakfast. My first meal in America is one that I make for myself and eat by myself. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.

  There are footsteps upstairs. A door slams. A toilet flushes. A faucet runs. A door slams again. Then, nothing.

  After washing the dishes, I fidget with the remote in the living room. Then I hear voices and cars outside. I pull back the curtains and this little slice of Detroit opens up to me—an empty paved road and small houses with only a narrow space separating one from the other.

  On the opposite corner, at the edge of the lot, is a wide and short building whose graffiti-covered wall faces our house. Above it is a sign that reads LIQUOR BEER WINE PIZZA CHECK CASHING. At the other corner is a smaller building with a sign that reads HOUSE OF GOD. I stare at the liquor place, the
n the God place, and back.

  I see the signpost at the corner, right in front of our house: American Street and Joy Road.

  At the other end of the block is a house that has wooden slats for windows. It reminds me of the abandoned new houses in Port-au-Prince, where the owner had enough money to build them but not enough money to put in windows and doors. It looks like a tomb made for djab—angry spirits that haunt the night.

  Farther to the right are vacant spaces where houses should be. They make gaping holes on the block, like missing teeth.

  A few more cars start to drive down the block. The world here is awake. Manman is awake, too, for sure.

  Finally, someone comes down the stairs. Pri. “Can you please braid my hair?” she asks, wearing a pair of baggy khaki pants. Her white shirt is buttoned all the way up to her neck and hangs loose over her shoulders.

  I sit on the couch and she sits on a floor pillow in front of me while the news is on the TV. Donna walks by with her hair even longer than before. Her lips are redder and her eyelashes are longer, too. I contemplate asking to switch uniform skirts with her since hers is too short and mine is so long. “Is she going to a club after school?” I ask Pri.

  “No. She just dresses like a ho. And I’m the only one who can call her that, you hear?”

  I nod but she can’t see me.

  Chantal comes down the stairs while looking at her phone. “Y’all got ten minutes, ’cause first class is at eight. Whoever’s not done, I’m leaving behind. Fabiola gets a pass ’cause I have to get her registered. But the two of you are just gonna have to take the bus.”

  “For real, Chant?” Pri says. “You gonna make your little sisters take the Livernois bus when that new ride is supposed to be for everybody? And by the time that shitty bus comes, school will be over.”

  “If y’all don’t hurry up!” Chantal calls back.

  I wonder how Matant Jo gets to work since Chantal’s car is the only car I’ve seen parked in front of the house. So I ask, “When is Aunt Jo going to work?”

  “Work?” they both say together.

  “Ma is working right now,” Pri says.

  “Yep. She’s working on getting your mother out of that detention center,” Chantal adds. “And she certainly worked to get you over here from Haiti, didn’t she?”

  I nod again and promise myself not to ask about Matant Jo’s work again, unless it is the work of getting my mother home.

  Pri pulls away from me when I’m done braiding her hair. She stands up to check it out in a nearby mirror. “Nah. Do that shit over again. I just need six regular braids going back,” she says, taking out the two I braided on each side of her head.

  “But they look nice,” I say.

  “Don’t make them look nice—just make them look . . . regular.”

  She comes back to sit on the floor in front of me.

  “I hope y’all are ready,” Chantal calls out.

  “We are going to be late if I braid your hair again,” I say.

  “Just hurry up. Don’t make them all puffy. I need them tight.”

  Donna examines Princess’s braids from afar. “In other words, she needs them to look like a dude’s,” she says.

  “Shut up, D,” Pri says.

  “Is that true? Make them look like a boy’s?” I ask.

  “Just make them tight, Fabiola, and hurry up.”

  “Why do you want to look like a boy?” I start by pulling the soft hairs at her scalp very tight.

  “Are you serious right now? I’m not trying to look like nobody but Pri. Feel me?”

  I glance down at her khaki pants. “You don’t have to wear a uniform skirt to school like me and Donna?”

  “It’s cold as fuck outside. If y’all wanna wear them short-ass skirts, then that’s on y’all,” she says.

  Pri’s mouth is so dirty. Since my mother isn’t here, I want to grab her little lips and twist them myself. I take my time with each braid even though Chantal has come down and is ready to leave. I want Pri to like them. I need her to like me. I’m happy to have been helpful after being here for only a few hours.

  Pri leans her head on my knee and it feels like I’ve been here for years instead of hours—as if I’d never left in the first place. Whenever my aunt and cousins would call Haiti, I’d imagine my life as an American—living in a house full of family, going to school, having a car and a boyfriend. I shake the memory of last night from my mind—the singing man, the punching man, the saving blue-cap man, and Donna.

  “I remember when we were little, you used to be the most talkative one on the phone,” I say to Pri. “You would always ask to speak to me and you would tell me all about school and your friends. Remember when you said you didn’t want Donna to be your twin, you wanted me to be your twin instead, and you said you were going to take the bus to Haiti?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m all grown-up now, and so are you” is all she says. Then she lifts up her head and turns toward the TV.

  Chantal is by the front door and starts to put on her coat, but the noise from the TV makes her stop. She glances in our direction, and Pri slowly pulls away from me. Donna comes over to stand near the TV. Pri reaches for the remote on the carpet and turns up the volume.

  “. . . A seventeen year-old University Liggett High School student died last week of an alleged lethal cocktail of designer drugs. Locals are now saying there have been a string of parties over the last few months where the synthetic designer drugs were made available to partygoers as young as thirteen. Police have been in contact with members of the community and have opened an investigation.”

  Chantal, Donna, and Pri exchange deep, quiet stares as if aiming sharp knives at one another.

  Pri inhales and rubs her chin. “The fuck? They still going with this story?” she says. “One white chick OD’s and there’s an investigation? She did that shit to herself.”

  “Sandra McNeil actually got killed last month and it didn’t even make the news,” Chantal says.

  “Did you know that white girl, Chant?” Donna asks.

  “She would’ve been a freshman when I was a senior. I definitely don’t think we were in the same circles.”

  The news then shifts to a report on drug cocktails and what they do to you when you take them. I’m glued to this bit of interesting information but Chantal shuts off the TV. “We’re running late. Don’t pay attention to that shit, Fabiola.”

  “I’m not done with my hair!” Pri whines.

  She wants six braids and I’m only on the second.

  “Fuck it,” she says, and gets up from the floor. In a few minutes we’re all out of the house and in the car. Matant Jo has not come out of her room.

  I’m wearing a coat that used to belong to Chantal. I can’t figure out the zipper and all the buttons, but Pri helps me. She then takes off her hat, leans in closer to me, and hands me a comb. I still have to finish her braids.

  “I hope you’re not trying to make her your little slave,” Donna says. She’s in the mirror again. “Fabiola, you don’t have to do what Pri says. This ain’t Haiti.”

  “Hold up. It’s on her if she wants to cook and braid hair. Ain’t nobody forcing her to do shit. Right, cuzz?” Pri says.

  I laugh a little. “Even in Haiti, I didn’t do everything that people told me to do.”

  “Didn’t Ma and Aunt Val work as slaves when they were in Haiti?” Pri asks.

  “No, dumb-ass. No one can work as a slave,” Chantal says.

  I remember those stories from Manman, too. “Restavec,” I say. “They were not slaves, really.”

  “Well, did they work?” Pri asks.

  “Yes, they worked.”

  “Did they get paid?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “So they worked as slaves.”

  Both Chantal and Donna start arguing with Pri while laughing at the same time. This isn’t like the argument about money—there are more jokes and light insults. I laugh a little, too, because this moment reminds me of bei
ng with my friends back in Haiti. I can’t make a straight part in Pri’s hair because she and the car are moving so much. I pull her in closer and I can feel the weight of her upper body leaning on me completely. She trusts me.

  I don’t get to stare out into the daytime Detroit streets as I finish braiding Pri’s hair. And maybe it is the feel of my hands on her scalp that makes her open up to me, so she is the first to tell her story. With each braid, with each touch, I begin to know and understand my dear cousins, my sisters from another mother.

  PRINCESS’S STORY

  Ma named us Primadonna and Princess ’cause she thought being born in America to a father with a good-paying job at a car factory and a house and a bright future meant that we would be royalty. But when our father got killed, that’s when shit fell apart. We don’t remember too much of that ’cause we were little. But by the time we got to middle school, Ma had the newest car on the block—a minivan with leather seats. Then later, we had the first flat-screen, the first laptops, the first cell phones out of everybody we knew. Yeah, there were dudes always rolling up to the house with stacks, and other dudes standing on our front steps keeping watch and shit. But we did all right. We did better than all right.

  You’d think bitches would respect us for having a mother who did whatever it takes to keep her daughters fed, dressed, and safe. But no. In the second grade, this little bitch stole my Dora the Explorer book bag. That’s when I learned how to fight. Chantal got it the worst because she was actually born in Haiti and she still spoke Creole. And Ma did our hair in these big, dookie braids with rainbow barrettes and bows and shit. They thought just ’cause we were Haitian, we didn’t bathe, we wore mismatched colors, and we did voodoo. The nice ones just kept asking us if we spoke French. Even though Chantal kept telling them that “Sak pase? Map boule!” is not French. It’s Creole, bitch.

  Donna and her fast ass was the first one to get a boyfriend, and she always liked to tell people that she was French. Like from Paris, France, for real. This one time, a crew of girls from the east side challenged Donna on her Frenchness. They jumped her, but we all know that’s not why they beat her up. Donna was tall and pretty and had all the guys from here to the east side wanting to holla at her. Now, I didn’t give a fuck if other girls called me fat, but I swear, anybody lay a hand on my sister . . . So, yeah. I beat the shit out of that girl. And her friends, too.