I have two more classes with Imani and then it’s time for lunch. I watch my cousins in the cafeteria. They fold their wild, crazy selves into tiny squares at school—no fighting, no cursing, just royal. Donna walks as if she’s a supermodel—with her done-up face and her flowing hair and her nose in the air. The boys go out of their way just to say hi to her. Pri knows everyone and she’s always telling jokes and laughing. At the end of the day, when Chantal picks us up, she attracts a small crowd who insist on talking to her about everything and nothing. My cousins are indeed royalty here.
Never could I have imagined being in a house full of family and still feeling lonely. Loud music plays upstairs and the TV blares downstairs. No one is cooking in the kitchen even with the nice stove and refrigerator filled with food. I’m sitting at the table eating my dinner out of paper bags—a hamburger, French fries, and soda.
The whole house seems to want to squeeze me in, force a deep wail from out of my body because it’s only been one day and I am losing myself to this new place. This is the opposite of the earthquake, where things were falling apart and the ground was shifting beneath my small feet. Here, the walls, the air, the buildings, the people all seem to have already fallen. And there is nothing else left to do but to shrink and squeeze until everything has turned to dust and disappeared.
But not yet. Not without my mother.
I get up from the table and gently knock on Matant Jo’s bedroom door three times before I say her name the way she wants me to say it. “Aunt Jo?”
I hear footsteps and shuffling. She opens the door. She squints her eyes, and her hair is thin and lies flat against her head. She’s been wearing a wig all this time.
“My mother is still not here,” I say. My voice trembles, and the words come out of my mouth like a sudden rainstorm.
“I know” is all she says at first. She shuffles to the edge of her bed. It’s a little dark in the room and there’s a small TV on top of a dresser. The volume is down and I wonder what she does in there all day. Then she says, “My hands are tied, Fabiola. I did everything to get my sister here. Everything. I would’ve kissed the ground if she had walked through that door with you.”
“You knew she wasn’t coming, Matant? I mean, Aunt.”
“Things are complicated.”
“She was on the line with me. She had all her papers. They gave her a visa.”
“I know, I know,” she says, holding her head down. “You are smart. Your mother told me how your English was so good that those Americans had no choice but to grant her a visa.”
“It wasn’t me. She had all her papers. She was supposed to be here. They were supposed to let her in.”
She motions for me to come inside her bedroom. I step over some clothes and stand next to her bed.
“In some ways,” she says, “this country is like Haiti. They talk out of two sides of their mouth. You can never know what these people are going to do.”
“Aunt Jo, is my mother coming or not?” I ask. I know how adult Haitians can talk in riddles and never give you a straight answer. Even with her years of living in America, this is still true for my aunt.
She exhales. “Fabiola, those people and their rules are like sorcerers. If I go digging too deep into their trickery, I will end up with an ass for a face, and a face for an ass.”
“You are saying no. My mother is not coming? They are sending her back?”
She doesn’t answer and points to the dresser where the small TV sits. “The fourth drawer,” she says. “You will see a book, a Bible. Bring it to me.”
I do as she says. She takes the Bible and pats the spot next to her on the bed. I sit beside her and feel her warm arm against mine. It almost feels like my mother’s. Almost.
MATANT JO’S STORY
This is your home now, Fabiola. This is Phillip’s house—the house he bought with the last bit of money he had from Haiti. He had dreams, you know. That’s why when he saw this house for sale, on the corner of American Street and Joy Road, he insisted on buying it with the cash from his ransacked and burned-to-the-ground car dealership in Port-au-Prince. He thought he was buying American Joy. So he sent for me and our baby daughter, Chantal. I could not have asked for anything more—a house, a bit of money, and the love of my life. He was all I had—no friends, no family, no Haitian community like in Miami or New York. He was my everything. He came here for the cars and car factories. You’d think it would’ve been a car that killed him since he loved them so much. But no. The car he left behind is gone now, but we have this house. Even if everything burns to the ground by some twisted magic, it will still be the last house standing. But Phillip also left a hole in my heart, like the bullet wound in the back of his head. This hole has spread around me like a cancer. Maybe that will be my salvation, my death. Cancer, another stroke, a heart attack. Now that I won’t ever see my dear sister, I don’t care how I go. Maybe you, like my daughters, will fill this hole with a little bit of love until my time comes.
SIX