“What?” I breathe. I sit down. I brace myself.
“It wasn’t random,” she continues. “Our father dipped his toe into the game for just a hot minute. One drop. That’s all. So, of course, Q had to pay up for that deal gone bad. So Q gave Ma thirty Gs ’cause we were just little kids and she was struggling really hard to raise us. She didn’t know English, and she didn’t have any skills. But that money wasn’t lasting ’cause Ma was giving it away—a couple hundred here, a couple thousand there, until Q put an end to that. He was like, Yo, they gotta pay you back. So she started loaning out money—a loan shark. And she had to get muscle to back her up because people weren’t paying her back at first. So Q hooked her up with some of his boys. And with that kinda weight, she had to have the mouth to back everything else up, too. If her boys couldn’t handle business, Ma would just roll up to somebody’s house, curse the shit out of them in Creole, and jack them up for all they got. You know why, Fabiola?”
“No. Why?”
“Because of you and your mom,” Chantal says. “Catholic school for all three of us out here was just pennies. But your ass over there in Haiti cost her like twenty Gs every year. Your school, money for your mom, your clothes. Hell, all this time, Ma thought y’all were building a mansion near the beach and she swore she’d go back down there to retire.
“But she’s getting sick. We don’t want her to do this loan-sharking shit anymore. Money was running out. We still gotta live, Fab. We still gotta breathe. Money’s just room to breathe, that’s all.”
I don’t even realize when the tears start rolling down my cheeks. I let them fall. I let them drip from my chin, and onto my mother’s nightgown, and onto Chantal’s blanket. The room is quiet. “What now?” I finally ask.
“What now is that you keep your mouth shut and let us handle this,” Pri says. “As a matter of fact, forget everything you heard and saw tonight. Don’t let Ma even read that shit off your forehead.”
Chantal nods. “Focus on graduating, Fabiola. That’s all.”
“My mother,” I whisper.
Chantal sighs. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
I don’t believe her, because this thing with Uncle Q is a much heavier burden than this aunt they hardly know. They are the ones who are responsible for that girl’s death. Not Dray. My cousins. I am at a crossroads again.
Hours pass and my cousins are asleep. I breathe in and pretend that I’m taking in my mother’s scent—baby powder and cheap perfume. I hug myself and pretend it’s her arms around me, pulling me in close, and kissing me on the forehead, and asking me if I washed my face, if I did my homework, if I made a good, hearty meal for her to eat.
Something pulls me out of bed, out of Chantal’s room, out of the house, and onto American Street and Joy Road. Bad Leg is nowhere. His overturned plastic bucket is gone, and the streetlight shines on only the empty lot and me. I am lost. There is no road for me to take. Nothing will lead me to my mother, or clear the way for her to get to me.
I turn to each of the corners—the four directions—as if to bow to every single possibility around me: north, south, east, west. A light rain starts to fall and I think of my cousins. If the old man at the corner called Bad Leg is Papa Legba in the flesh, if Dray with his eye patch and gold cross is Baron Samedi, if Donna with her makeup and pretty things is Ezili and, with her scars, Ezili-Danto, then Chantal and Pri can be my spirit guides, too, as Ogu, the warrior, and one-half of Les Marassa Jumeaux, the divine twins who stand for truth, balance, and justice. Maybe even Kasim represents a lwa if I look hard enough. They are all here to help.
I run back to the house and reach the door, turn the knob, but it doesn’t budge. I twist the knob from right to left, from left to right. It’s locked. I almost knock, but something about this door . . . I step back away from it and go down the short front steps. Something about those steps . . . I back away from the house and stand on the narrow patch of brown grass. Something about this house . . . 8800 American Street.
I used to stare at that address whenever those white envelopes with the blue-and-red-striped edges would make their way to our little house in Port-au-Prince. I’d copy the address over and over again, 8800 American Street, because this house was my very first home. But for three short months only. This house is where I became American. This house is the one my mother and I prayed for every night, every morning, and during every ceremony: 8800 American Street.
But maybe, again, my eyes are betraying me, because this house that stands here at the corner, with its doorway almost like a smile, with its windows almost like eyes making fun of everything it sees, seems different.