“What? How did you find her?”
I pause for a long while. “There was a number on the website. I just gave them her name,” I lie. “She wanted to speak to you. She really wanted to hear your voice.”
“That easy, eh?” she says, slowly sitting up. She yawns and rubs her face. It’s as if sleeping makes her tired. “So what is her situation? Why are they keeping her there? How is she doing?”
“I think she is okay.”
Her hair is smashed in the back and it fans out around her head like a peacock’s, but not as beautiful. “She did it to herself, you know. She’s always been so hardheaded, that Valerie. Just like me,” she says, and scratches her head with both hands. “Well, I am so happy you spoke with her. She will take good care of herself. My hands are tied, Fabiola.”
Her words are small and sad, even though she now knows that her sister is okay.
“Aunt Jo, why do you sleep so much?” I ask.
She inhales long and deep. Then she coughs. “Get me some water.”
In a less than a minute, I’m by her bed, placing the glass of cool water on her nightstand. She quickly drinks it and her gulps are loud and deep. “Do you want more?”
“No, I’m good,” she says. She inhales again. “No, really. Thank you.” She’s looking straight at me now.
“You’re welcome.”
“You’ve done more for me in these past few weeks than my own daughters have.”
I shake my head, wanting to reject the compliment.
“No, really. I mean, you cook, you clean. I’ve never seen the stove so spotless, the refrigerator so . . . organized,” she says.
I look around the room, and I want to clean up in here, too. There are a few clothes on the floor next to her bed. But I want to throw out the things on her nightstand most of all. The drinking glasses I’ve been looking for all week are there. And bottles and bottles of pills. But I’ve never seen her go to the doctor or the hospital.
“Where do you feel pain?” I finally ask. “Is it your heart, your back, your bones, your head?”
She closes her eyes. “Everywhere, Fabiola. Everywhere.”
“But you’re too young, Matant. I mean, Aunt.”
“Tell me about my sister. Was she in pain, too? Because whenever I called her, she would say everything is fine. Just fine. I never believed her.”
“She wasn’t in pain, but she was tired of fighting. Everything about Port-au-Prince was a fight.”
“Didn’t I send you enough money?”
“Yes, of course. But . . .”
“But, I know,” she said. “Money can’t buy happiness, as they say. I should know.”
Silence falls between us, but before it spreads and pushes us further apart, I take her hand in mine.
She looks up at me. “So, what is your plan?”
“To get my mother home.” I don’t think that’s what she was asking. Maybe she wants to hear that I am going to be a doctor like Chantal. But I tell her the truth. First, my mother. Then, everything else.
I glide my finger along the top of the dresser next to me and collect a thick layer of dust. “I am not tired of fighting. I am just starting,” I say.
“Oh, yeah?” She laughs. “Tell me, what is it that you’re fighting, Faboubou?”
My heart wants to collapse because she says my nickname exactly the way my mother says it, with the same voice. Faboubou.
“Matant. If you call me that, then I will call you Matant. That’s how I’ve always known you. When you used to phone Haiti, I would say Matant Jo. You never corrected me then.”
“You’re in America now, Fabiola. You have to practice your English.”
“I know my English.”
“Thanks to me.”
“If my mother was here, you would do the same thing to her? Make her call you Jo?”
“Of course.” She comes over to the dresser, opens a drawer, and pulls out a pair of underwear. Then she undresses right in front me. I don’t turn away. I examine her body. It looks swollen, as if every sad thing in the world has stuck to her bones. She has a hard time pulling off the nightgown from the left side of her body. So I help her.
I place the nightgown over my arm and start picking up the other clothes from the floor. A bunch of empty pill bottles and a few alcohol bottles lie open on their sides. I pick those up, too. I look around for a trash can, but there isn’t one. So I hold in my arms and hands as many of her dirty clothes and pill bottles and alcohol bottles as I can.
She’s sitting at the edge of her bed buttoning her shirt. She tries to smooth down her hair, but it still sticks up. So I set down the things on the dresser, grab a comb from her nightstand, and help her with her hair, just like the many times I’ve done it for my mother and Pri. My aunt melts beneath my hands. Her good shoulder hunches over, she lets out a deep quiet breath, and before long, she starts humming. It’s a song I know, a song my mother sings, too. So I hum with her.