“It’s not voodoo shit,” I tell her. “Manman told me that ever since Uncle Phillip was killed, she had to find answers to why God took away the one true love in her sister’s life. But only the lwas were able to give her answers. They speak to her, and she listens.”
Pri comes to sit next to me on the bed. “Fabiola, I know you’re family and all, but keep my father’s name out your mouth,” she says, and kisses two of her fingers and raises them up to the ceiling.
I nod, even though my mother has been setting up shrines and praying for Pri’s father’s soul on the anniversary of his death each year. And we always say his name in remembrance—Jean-Phillip Fran?ois.
Donna barges into the bedroom wearing only her fancy underwear and holding a basket filled with combs, curlers, a curling iron, a flat iron, a blow-dryer, pomades, hair lotions, and makeup. “Ready for your fabulous makeover, Fabiola?”
“No,” I tell her.
“Well, you need one,” she says, and starts with my hair anyway.
By the time she’s done, fake hair flows down my back and my new face looks plastic—my eyebrows are perfectly arched and thicker than I’ve ever seen them, my lips are magically fuller, and my eyelashes look like bangs for my eyes.
Pri, Aunt Jo, and her friends all cheer and clap when I come down the stairs in borrowed high heels that make my legs wobble, and Donna takes a few pictures of me. Chantal only shakes her head as if she disapproves of the whole makeover. I want to tell Donna not to put them on the internet, but maybe this new self will reach my mother and she will come to smack the makeup from off my face and rip the tight dress from my body.
Chantal drives us, but she doesn’t come to the party. “Be careful, y’all! And look out for each other,” she says as Pri gives her a time to pick us up.
“Why don’t you come?” I ask her before getting out of the car.
“I have a big test this week” is all she says.
This birthday party is at a nightclub—a plain, short, and wide building. It has one narrow purple door with the letter Q on it drawn in bright-silver paint. The street is crowded with people, and a few come over to say hi and hug my cousins. My cousins’ friends stare at me and start asking too many questions.
It’s not their bodies inching closer that make me nervous, it’s their words that sound just like the heavy bass music—hard and fast like too-loud conga drums.
The smell is different here. Not like in Port-au-Prince, where everyone on the street is a mix of sweat, gasoline, and baby powder. Here, it smells like the MINUSTAH troops who hang out at the clubs in Petionville on Saturday nights—alcohol, marijuana, and lust. Some of my friends would go for money and a good time, but I never liked it.
Pri pulls my arm hard, away from the crowd, and yells, “Y’all better not put a finger on my cousin, or it’s my fucking fist in your face!”
“Yo, chill, Pri!” a guy standing nearby says. “Ain’t nobody checking for your cousin.”
“You better not. Nasty ass,” Pri says.
The guys standing on the sidewalk are all covered with thick, dark coats and baseball caps that shield their eyes. They hold red plastic cups in one hand while the other hand is shoved into a pocket of jeans that hang too low below their waist. They are the vagabon who Manman tells me to stay away from because they lead to nothing but trouble, the vagabon who my friends like to have as boyfriends because they can rap and have their own money and cars. Wyclef is their god and American rap videos are their church. But those Port-au-Prince vagabon are fakers. These Detroit vagabon are the real thing.
As Pri pulls me in through the purple door, my eyes lock with one of the vagabon. He pushes his blue cap up and stares right at me, smiling. I stare back at him until I recognize him. The blue-cap boy—the one who came out of the car to help Bad Leg. He’s not a man but a boy, probably my age. I smile a little, too—my small way of saying “thank you.”
Inside is as dark as it is outside. Bodies are pressed up against one another just like they do on the narrow, crumbled sidewalks of Delmas. The men are in their coats while most of the women are dressed like in the American music videos—short, shiny dresses that look like tinfoil around their thighs, shoes with heels like ice picks, and hair from the tails of horses. Here, there is more smoke, more alcohol, and the conga drum voices blend with the heavy bass music. Pri has to push her way through. Some people stop to give her a hug. Some smile at me and tell me, “Welcome to the D, shorty!”
Someone hands me a red plastic cup and I take it because I’m thirsty and hungry. But it’s alcohol. Not Prestige beer or Rhum Barbancourt—the strong, bitter, or sweet alcohol made for men who talk politics and play dominoes into all hours of the night. Pri has a red plastic cup, too, and she pours the alcohol down her throat as if it’s cool water on a hot day.