As if the boy already has my heart tied to his littlest finger, I say, “I’ll go, too. I will make sure she’s okay.”
I don’t even glance at my cousins to see if they would stop me. In the blink of an eye, I’m in the warm backseat of Dray’s car with Kasim next to me. It smells like a mix of freshly chopped wood and wild leaves—marijuana. I cover my nose and keep my eyes on my cousin, even as Kasim keeps looking over at me, smiling, and inching his hand closer and closer to my leg.
When we reach Aunt Jo’s house, Chantal and Pri are already standing in front, and the car is parked at the curb. The singing man is on the corner again. I can’t make out the words to his song, but I lean toward Dray in the driver’s seat. “Don’t hit him again,” I say.
He turns to me and so does Donna. “Who? Bad Leg? Nobody gives a fuck about him.”
Just as he says this, Bad Leg’s voice reaches my bones—it’s as smooth as a river, and it ebbs and flows and ripples at just the right moments. I can’t pull away from his song as I get out of that car. Pri has come over to help Donna, and she curses Dray one last time.
As we all enter the house and Dray and Kasim zoom off into the night, Bad Leg finishes his song with these words:
Love me to the moon and back.
Come on, babe, just cut me some slack.
Baby, why you always on the attack?
Put up your dukes, ha!
Show me them nukes, yeah!
And launch me to the moon and back.
Cher Manman,
I see you clearer now because I light my candle and pour the libation, rattle the asson, and ring the bell to call all my guides, the lwas. You’ve told me that they are here for me. All I have to do is call on them so they can help me. I believe you, Manman. Even without you being here to hold ceremonies with drummers and singers and a village of followers, I will practice all that you’ve taught me.
There, within the flame of the tea candle again, you are on your bed crying into a piece of brown paper. It’s too rough on your cheeks and nose, so you use the white sheet instead. You’re careful not to let anyone see you cry. How did you get there, Manman? What did you do? Is it because you are a mambo—a Vodou priestess who held ceremonies in the courtyard of a Christian NGO building? Are they punishing you for that, Manman? Are they punishing me? I’ve searched my memory for all the sinful things I’ve done. I let Marco touch me the night before we left. Was the lwa of love and fertility, Ezili, mad at me for that? Is that why she summoned her lover, Papa Legba, to block you from entering the gates to this freedom, to this sister of yours, to your nieces, and to me?
Matant Jo misses you so much that she is incapable of doing anything for herself. The other day, she held my face in her hands and prayed to God that it was your face and not mine. And just like I saw you do in the tea-candle flame, she grabbed the corner of her white sheet and wiped her tears.
Kenbe fem. Hold tight.
Fabiola
EIGHT
“DOES DRAY HIT her?” I ask Chantal and Pri after Donna is all bathed, in her pajamas, and passed out. It seems like no one else wants to sleep tonight. Pri and I are playing a card game while Chantal reads.
“Why? Did you see him hit her?” Pri holds her cards up as if she makes money from these games. She shuffles and deals like a gambler.
“The singing man on the corner said so. It’s like his poetry and songs are what he sees. He said something about an attack and putting up dukes. That’s like hitting and fighting, right?”
“What are you talking about? Bad Leg? He actually told you that shit?”
“It was in his poem if you listened.”
“Nobody listens to Bad Leg—that crazy-ass man. Some people around here even call him the devil. Got needle marks all up his arm and still ain’t dead. Ma said he was a crackhead when she first moved here. He’s gotten beaten up, burned up, tossed over the overpass on the highway, thrown in the river, and he still show up right there on that corner.”
“Why do they call him Bad Leg?”
“I’ll give you twenty dollars to ask him.” Pri puts down a two of diamonds. “For every person who has ever asked Bad Leg what happened to his leg, he tells a different story each time.”
“Yep.” Chantal looks up from her book. “I must’ve asked him fifty times and he gave me fifty different stories—his leg got crushed in Iraq, it got caught in a machine at a factory, Detroit rats nibbled on it when he was homeless.”
“Ain’t he still homeless? And he told me he was tortured by an east side gang,” Pri says as she collects my small pile of cards into her growing pile.