“You were born here after your mother’s visa expired seventeen years ago. She wanted to make sure you were born American, that you could come back. Unfortunately, overstaying your visa is breaking the law. They think she might do it again.”
I swallow hard and glance toward the exit. I recognize some kids from my school coming in, but they don’t see me just yet.
“Fabiola, we can get her out. And we can expedite the process for her to obtain a green card. She won’t have to hide once she’s here. She can live and work legally. Isn’t that what she wants? What you both want?”
I sit up in my seat, and it’s as if my insides are like flowers that have blossomed after a tiny bit of rain. Something comes alive within me. But I wasn’t born last night, as my mother would say. I remember how Manman would outwit those vagabon in suits who would offer expedited visas in exchange for things that are not meant to be given away for visas. “What will this cost?” I ask.
“No. No money. Just information . . . on Drayton. Dray. Your cousin’s boyfriend.”
I take a sip of water. “I think he hits my cousin. They call them D&D—Dungeons and Dragons. That’s all I know.”
“You’ve been inside that white BMW of his, right? Did you ever wonder what he does to have that kind of car? And does he buy your cousin nice things?”
Everything I’ve noticed about Donna flashes through my mind—her long coat, high-heeled boots, gold-rimmed sunglasses, fake hair, makeup, even her fancy underwear. I nod. Slowly.
“Sweetheart? Bottom line: no one around here is gonna talk. So this all becomes like some sort of chaotic cycle. Bad people stay on the streets, good people die; bad people make a shitload of money, good people have to scrape pennies.”
“Same thing in Haiti,” I say, really quiet.
“I’m sure. But here, you can actually make a difference. Look, you have your cousins, but you don’t have to be loyal to their friends. You don’t owe anybody anything, except your promise to your mother, right?”
I just look at her.
“We know that Dray goes out to these parties in the nice parts of town. We just need to know the next time he’s going and to which party. Maybe you can ask Donna, or your other cousins. Not too hard, right? Just a time and a place.” She slips her hand inside her coat, pulls out a business card, and slides it over to me.
The waitress comes back with her pad in hand. “You ready to order now?” she asks in a thick Spanish accent.
“I’ll take my coffee to go. She’ll have whatever her heart desires,” the detective says, and slaps a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
I slide the money back to her as she steps out of the booth. “You forgot something,” I say, but I take the card and slip it into my wallet.
I retrace my steps back to the school, where the block is almost empty and most of the stores’ gates are already down. A car honks behind me, making me jump, and I curse out the driver in my head. I turn around to see Broke Kasim roll down his window, flashing his bright, dimpled smile. I sigh, roll my eyes. The curse words in my mind have all disappeared, and maybe there are squiggly lines that want to form his name in pretty script letters with curlicues and flowers and stars and hearts and more hearts.
“Fabulous, I’ve been looking for you,” he says. His voice is like a warm sea breeze filling up the cold, dry air in this place. “Where were you going? And why are you still at school?”
He shuts off the engine and gets out of the car from the driver’s side and comes around to open the passenger-side door for me. But I don’t go in.
“Pri was looking all over the place for you. I don’t even know why they haven’t given you a phone by now,” he says.
Still, I don’t go in.
“Come on, Fabulous. Get in. Pri went all the way downtown thinking you got on some bus to go to New Jersey.”
With that, I slide into the passenger seat of his old and dirty car.
“Why would you want to go to New Jersey, anyway? Why not New York, or better yet, Chicago? Hell, it’s closer.”
“You ask too many questions,” I say as I cover my legs with the bottom of my coat and place my book bag on my lap.
“Sorry about my car,” he says as he moves junk from in between the seats. “We can’t all be ballers like Dray and your aunt Jo.”
“Ballers?”
“Money makers. High rollers. Ain’t the president of Haiti a baller or rapper or something like that?”
My thoughts return to the woman with the brown coat, the detective. She said Dray was, like, a high roller, and that was bad.
He takes out his phone and dials a number. “Ay yo, I found her. . . . She was just standing in front of the school. . . . Yeah. . . . Hold on.” He extends the phone out to me. “Pri wants to talk to you. She’s pissed.”