I must be the only one who can hear Bad Leg’s song tonight. Chantal is as still as a rock on her bed, and the window is closed. His song is loud, but I can’t understand his words. I toss every which way trying to shut out his voice. My eyes are weary, my thoughts are on overtime, refusing to let me sleep. Everything and everyone swims around my mind like ghosts in a haunted house—the detective lady and her proposition, Kasim and his “shit you do for fam,” and the love that Donna has for a bad guy who sold drugs that killed a girl. I am being forced to make a choice.
I know that my prayers will ease my heart, so I get up. My legs take me down the steps, to the coat closet, out of the house, and to the corner of American and Joy.
“What should I do?” is the first thing I ask Papa Legba. I need straight answers, so I ask a straight question.
He’s quiet. There are sirens in the distance. A dog barks. The wind howls around me and I realize how strange this place is with all these little houses, and on most days, I barely see any people. If there was a place like this back in Haiti, everyone would come out and gather on the sidewalk to exchange meals and gossip. No one would be left alone in a tiny house with only their regrets and sorrows to keep them company.
Papa Legba finally begins.
Crossroads, cross paths,
Double-cross and cross-examine,
Cross a bridge across my mind.
A cross to bear across the line,
And cross the street across town.
Cross out, cross off,
cross your t’s and cross your fingers,
then nail him to a cross
as you cross your heart
and hope not to die.
A cigar appears in his hand. He’s never had it before. He takes a pull and exhales thick white smoke that swirls up into the air like a cloud. I watch it bend and stretch like a slow-turning cyclone until it stops at the street signs—where Joy Road meets American Street.
Joy and American. A crossroads. Intersecting. One is not the other. I look down Joy Road with its few streetlights dotting the wide path. There are not that many houses and lots of open land. It can either mean endless possibilities or dark, empty hope.
I look down American Street with its houses in neat rows and the open lots like missing teeth. I know so many people back in Haiti, so many families who would kiss the ground and thank Jesus for a street like this, especially one named American.
My two paths meet at this corner, and it seems like I have to choose one. One street represents a future, the other leads to a different kind of life. Papa Legba, the keeper of the crossroads, will help me choose.
“On American Street, I will live with my aunt Jo and my cousins, and go to school, and have a cute boyfriend, and keep my mouth shut because in Haiti I learned not to shake hands with the devil. But on Joy Road, I will tell the truth. The truth will lead to my happiness, and I will drive long and far without anything in my way, like the path to New Jersey, to my mother, to her freedom, to my joy. Which road should I take, Papa Legba?”
When I turn back to the streetlight, he is gone. The light only shines on the overturned plastic bucket and the dancing smoke. It’s beginning to feel as if I’m speaking to stagnant air—the spirits are just standing there without delivering my message to God.
“Where were you?” Chantal whispers as I quietly slide back onto my air mattress.
“Eating something in the kitchen,” I lie.
“Yeah, right. You trying to get killed out here on these streets?”
“Killed?” I say. “I feel safer here than I did in Port-au-Prince.”
Chantal laughs. I wait for her to stop, but she keeps going. Then she sits up on her bed to face me. I can see the outline of her head in the moonlight.
“You ever seen a kid get stomped in the face. With boots?”
“No,” I say. “Not stomped in the face. But beaten with a baton on the back by the police.”
“Oh, y’all got police brutality, too?”
“It was because of the manifestation before the election. What you would call a protest, like the one for that girl who died because of drugs. Did they find out who gave her those drugs?”
She’s quiet. Then she says, “Does it matter? She took them, right? If somebody hands you drugs and you take them, who’s to blame? What, there are no drugs in Haiti?”
“Of course there are. And drug dealers, too. But they don’t always have to deal drugs. There are other things to sell.”
“Well, did you ever have to dodge bullets?”
“During kanaval. Some people were jumping on cars to dance and have a good time. But MINUSTAH thought they were making trouble. So they shot and we ran.”
“Okay,” she says, settling back down on her pillow. “Do you know what a dead body smells like? I mean, after it’s been dead for, like, days.”
“Yes. I remember the earthquake very well,” I say, quiet, almost whispering.
“All right, then. You win.”
“No, I don’t. I lose. I am not home now. I left it behind. You are home.”
“Home? No, I’m not. I wasn’t born here. Haiti is home.”