But I don’t want to look like a church lady. I still want to look . . . good. So I take off my mother’s church dress and put on a plain sweatshirt that belongs to Chantal and a pair of new jeans. I wear the Air Jordans that Pri picked out for me, but I keep my hairstyle. Now I don’t look so . . . Haitian. So immigrant.
I fix my face in the mirror again to make me look serious, almost like Chantal’s, a little bit like Pri’s, with a touch of Donna.
“Okay. That’s better, I guess,” Chantal says. “Where’s he taking you anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if it’s to his house, ask him to bring you back here right away.”
“And if it’s to someone else’s house,” Pri adds, “tell him ‘Take me the fuck home!’ Say it just like that. Let me hear you.”
I know she’s tricking me just so she can make fun of my accent and make me sound stupid. My curses are all wrong. My swag, as they call it, is off. But in my head, I sound just like them. I sound American.
I fix my lips and make a face until it feels just like Pri’s, and I say, “Take me the fuck home!”
Both my cousins burst into laughter. Even Donna comes into the room just to drop her body onto Chantal’s, hold her belly, and laugh from a deep, joyful place. I look into the mirror and watch myself say those words over and over again, and each time, my cousins laugh harder.
“Yo, Fab! It’s fuck. Not fork!” Pri manages to say between laughs.
When the doorbell rings, we all look out the window to see Dray’s white car parked at the curb. Donna runs down to open the door and she calls my name. It’s Kasim. He’s driving Dray’s car to take me on our date.
Kasim has flowers and he’s dressed in a nice black coat, black pants, and shiny black shoes. His hair is shorter and neater and he’s wearing glasses. He looks really good, but that car makes my insides feel like a hurricane. I don’t want to get in, but I don’t have a choice.
He must’ve seen me staring, because he says, “Dray told me I could use it. He likes you. He thinks we look good together.” He rushes to open the passenger-side door. I look toward the corner where Bad Leg usually sits. There’s no one there. Not even the streetlight shines. The plastic bucket is gone.
I turn to the house to see my cousins’ faces pressed against the top-floor window. “Is it okay, Donna, if I sit here?” I call out nice and loud.
She gives me the middle finger.
I slide onto the leather seat and it smells like lemons. I sniff and sniff, searching the air for some remnant of Dray and his bitter-mint-and-sweet-smoke smell—marijuana. But there’s nothing but lemons.
“Oh, I got it cleaned before I came here,” Kasim says as he presses the button that starts the car. “I know it’s not mine and all, so I wanted it to have a different smell, a different feel. All right with you?”
I smile and nod.
He turns on the radio and I brace myself for that heavy bass music. But it’s something different. Something like jazz, but still hip-hop. I look at him. He looks at me and smiles. I start moving to the beat a little. He does the same and turns up the volume. The rapper’s voice is smooth, as if he’s reciting love poems. I’ve never heard anything like it, and a chill travels up my back, making me smile wider than I probably have in a long time.
“You like that?” he asks.
I nod.
“J Dilla. Detroit legend. He died when I was little. I’m into the classics, but all Detroit, all day. Motown, J Dilla, Slum Village.” He pulls the car away from the curb and his voice blends well with the music, as if he’s a background rapper for this J Dilla.
“What about Eminem?” I ask.
Kasim laughs. “Slim Shady? What’d you do, watch 8 Mile before you got here? You need to upgrade your info, Ms. Fabulous. You heard of Big Sean?”
He presses some buttons near the dashboard and the music changes. It’s something familiar I’ve heard on the radio in Chantal’s car. Kasim raises the volume and he dances while slowly turning down the corner of Joy Road.
And there is Papa Legba, leaning on his cane with a cigar in his mouth and looking straight into the car with his gleaming white eyes. My skin crawls, and suddenly what was just a smooth hip-hop song now sounds like heavy conga drums—a downbeat rhythm, like for the Petwo lwas, the fiery spirits signaling danger ahead. My stomach twists into a knot and I almost want to tell Kasim to stop the car and let me out.