Chantal is not home now to talk some sense into the situation. I text her, but she doesn’t answer.
“Where’s Donna? Just tell her to give me a second. That’s all. Baby? I’m sorry. I love you.” Dray tries to make his voice sound sad.
“Oh, hell no!” Pri says. “Donna, go deal with that nigga before I run down there and drop-kick him in his balls.”
“Donna?” Matant Jo shouts from downstairs. “Come talk to him. All these years of him running after you, and you running after him, it’s now you want to hide? Come down here. Curse him out. Tell him how you feel. But I swear on your father’s grave, if he puts a hand on you, it will be his last time.”
A chill runs down my spine when I hear my aunt say this. It’s as if she’s slowly coming back to life. I get a hint of the Jo who everyone respects around here. I get up from Chantal’s bed and open the door a little to see more of what’s going on.
Donna bursts out of her room and only stands at the top of the stairs. “A white girl, Dray? You got busted while you were with a motherfuckin’ white girl?”
“That’s why you don’t gotta worry about her!” Dray yells back.
“Fuck you! Get the fuck outta my house!”
“Final-fuckin’-ly,” Pri says. “It took a white girl for her to finally see him for the piece of shit that he is.”
“Donna!” Dray calls out. And then footsteps up the stairs.
I quickly hide behind Chantal’s door. I don’t want Dray to even know that I’m here.
“Dray, I done told you not to come up here,” Pri says. Through the cracked door, I can see that her socked feet are really close to Dray’s boots. Donna has stepped back and is quiet.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Matant Jo calls from downstairs. “Dray, you know better!”
“Jo, I’m just trying to talk to Donna, that’s all. Baby? Come on. I swear, you ain’t got to worry about nothing.”
“Tell me something, Dray.” Donna’s bare feet step closer to Dray’s boots. “Did Q have to bail out your white girl, too? Is she moving weight for you, or you just have her around to suck your dick every once in a while?”
“How you even know about this shit? You a fuckin’ snitch, D?”
I’m trying to figure everything out as the words swim in my head. Q. Bail out. Snitch. Something happened and didn’t happen at the same time. Dray got arrested and maybe it was because of the information I sent to the detective. But he’s here now. He’s out of jail. Something went wrong. My information was no good.
Dray steps closer to Donna, but Pri blocks him, and Matant Jo is now in the frame. I can tell that one of her slippered feet holds up most of her weight, but I’ve never seen her have the energy to come up the stairs before. I close my eyes and hope that no one calls my name.
“Get out! Get the fuck out, Drayton!” Matant Jo’s voice explodes.
“I’m not trying to start no shit, Jo. I just want Donna to listen to me!”
“Out of my house!”
Dray’s footsteps head back down the stairs.
Then he says, “Donna. I love you. I swear to God, I love you!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Pri yells back, but Dray is already out the door.
I rush to the window to make sure that he leaves, that he is finally out of Donna’s life. But before he gets back into his car, he looks up toward the window and sees me. For a moment, our eyes meet. I stare back at him, hard, squinting. If only he could hear my thoughts saying, I will destroy you, malfekté. He is the first to look away.
He might be Baron Samedi, guardian of the cemetery, but he is digging his own grave, and all I have to do is push him in.
TWENTY
I MISS RICE and beans. I miss spicy stewed chicken and red snapper seasoned to the bone. I miss banan peze, fried plantains—not like the too-sweet ones that Chantal gets from a Jamaican restaurant. I miss the hot sun and sweating all day and the beach and eating cold fresco with my friends and long walks up and down hills and Cola Lakay and deep-fried beef patties. I miss my mother.
I can tell that I’m skinnier because the thin gold bracelet I’ve been wearing since I turned sixteen now slips down my hand. I have to keep pushing it up to my wrist. Nothing tastes good. The most exercise I get is the short steps in front of the house and the stairs at school. Nothing else. Still, I’m skinny and it’s not a pretty kind of skinny like fashion models. It’s my body slowly giving up on everything, including the flesh on my bones.
But I know this won’t last. I just need one more piece of information on Dray that I can give to Detective Stevens. This is the drought before the cleansing rain, as my mother would say—the storm cloud before the sun.
“You on a diet or something?” Imani asks. She’s sitting next to me in the loud cafeteria. I’ve managed to block out all the noise to let my thoughts wander. I don’t notice how I’m picking at the ham, lettuce, and tomatoes from the sandwich and pushing aside the thick bread and slices of cheese.