I unzip one of my suitcases and pretend not to listen, but I can’t help wonder who this Dray is. Chantal is almost begging Donna not to go out.
“Dray’s not gonna be racing,” Donna promises. “And he don’t like me in his car when he does anyway. He says I give him bad luck.”
Chantal presses her hands to her forehead as if to say that Donna is not using her head. “And you don’t see that as disrespectful? He’s your man, but he thinks you give him bad luck? Whatever, Donna. You already made up your mind. But I’m sick of this shit.”
Donna doesn’t say anything, but I can see hurt flash across her face, like a strike of lightning. It’s gone in an instant, hidden behind her layers of makeup and hair. The bedroom door closes and I can barely hear her footsteps going down the stairs. The sound of a car’s engine filters in through the window.
“You won’t be sneaking out of the house to meet up with your shitty boyfriend, right?” Chantal asks.
I turn to her, wide-eyed. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I didn’t think so. And don’t get caught up in Donna and her boyfriend’s shit. ’Cause he will try to holla at you. He ain’t shit.”
She is talking to me and not talking to me at the same time. I only listen and don’t give her any response. As she climbs into bed, I open the suitcase with my mother’s clothes. I pull out one of her nightgowns to wear. Hopefully, this little bit of a connection will help ease her through to this side.
“Hey,” Chantal says from her bed. “I’m sorry about your mom. I wish she was here, too. Ma was saying how she was gonna be cooking and cracking jokes. Don’t worry. We’ll figure everything out.”
I hold on to the hope in her words.
As Chantal turns off the light, I crawl onto the air mattress. It feels like clouds beneath my body. I pray for sleep to come soon, for Manman on the other side, and for Donna, who is racing out into the night with her boyfriend.
At one thirty in the morning, my eyes are burning and my stomach cries from hunger. I have not slept well since Thursday. This past week, my friends threw me a big party in our school’s yard. It had been too late for us to return home, so we all spent the night sleeping on the hard concrete classroom floors. We had so much fun joking and giggling. The next few days were spent packing and giving away extra clothes and saying no to everyone who asked me to squeeze this or that into my suitcase for a loved one in Miami or Boston or New York.
We made jokes about how to pronounce Detroit. Deux-trois. Two-three. And Michigan rhymes with Léogane, the town, Mee-shee-GAN. Except Americans don’t say it that way. In the dark, I practice whispering “Dee-troit” and trying to get my mouth to wrap around the word just right.
Quietly, I slide off the air mattress. I need to light a candle for my mother so she can find her way back to me, but I realize I don’t have matches in my bag. I tiptoe down the dark stairs to search for some.
A small lightbulb is plugged into a socket in the kitchen. The green numbers on the stove say it’s now two in the morning. I open up all the drawers until I find a lighter instead, pocketing it in my mother’s nightgown.
A man’s voice slices through the darkness. He’s singing. It’s coming from outside. I move to the living-room window and I can hear the words to his song, something about dancing in the streets. It’s an old catchy tune—like an American commercial. I tug apart the heavy curtains.
Again, the singing. Louder now, more joyful.
Across the street, a single lamppost shines on an empty weed-infested lot. Sitting on what looks like an overturned plastic bucket is an old man with a hat. He throws his head back and sings the last verse to his song:
Welcome to the D!
City of the Dead.
Welcome to the D!
Oh, don’t let those
Hungry ghosts wake
Your little sleepy head.
He finishes out his tune with a low, guttural hum just as the deep, pounding bass of a revved car engine overrides his voice. A white car zooms around the corner and comes to a screeching stop right in front of the house.
The singing man stands up from his bucket and braces himself to sing the chorus as loud as he can.
Welcome to the D!
Better pack your lead.
Welcome to the D!
Oh, don’t let that
Greedy dope boy
Get all up in your head.
At that same moment, a man comes out of the driver’s side and takes long, deliberate steps toward the corner.
“Shut the fuck up, Bad Leg!” the man shouts, loud and crisp.
He reaches the singing man, grabs the collar of the old man’s dirty coat, and punches him until his body is limp. The punching man lets go and Bad Leg falls to the ground—his body like an empty potato sack.