But there is nothing left to do but fight. I keep grabbing the banister and screaming. He pulls my fingers back, then he grabs both my arms. He wins. I am at the bottom of the stairs. Still, I fight. I kick. I scream.
There’s a hard blow that makes me numb. Darkness swallows my face, eats my thoughts. The pain pulses throughout my body and makes me weak, makes me surrender. I hear words and voices and cries as if they are far away, sealed tight in a jar.
“Get the fuck up!”
“She can’t. You kicked her!”
“Fab? Fab? Get up. Please get up.”
Another jolt of pain. In my face. It echoes in my head like church bells.
“Don’t fucking kick her in the face! You want her to talk? Don’t fucking kick her in the face!”
A sound—flesh against flesh. A scream.
“What the fuck, Dray! What the fuck! Pri, Pri! Get up.”
“Dray! Stop! Please! Stop!” It’s Donna’s voice, chopped into broken pieces.
“Shut the fuck up! Yo, wake her up. Wake her up or I swear to God I’m gonna light this whole house up!”
“Fabiola? Fabiola? You gotta talk. You gotta explain yourself. If you can hear me, try to get up.”
“Kasim,” I manage to say, because the taste of iron fills my mouth, the same mouth he’s kissed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, bitch! Kasim. Say his name one more fucking time. Kasim.” Dray’s voice breaks.
It sounds like a giant wall has cracked, and soon it will come tumbling down.
With my head still like the bottom of a beaten conga drum, I stand up. I hold on to Chantal, and when I’m on my feet, my head spins. I spit my iron blood in his face. “Kasim,” I say again.
He doesn’t wipe it away. “Yeah, my fucking brother, son! That was fam, son! My brother. He was all I got. All I got!” His voice is shaking. Dray’s wall is cracking, splitting down the middle.
I can see him now. Close, so close. Something is in his hand, but I don’t dare turn my head to see because I might fall again. I can think of no other words besides his name. “Kasim” is the only breath I can breathe right now.
“You gonna fucking come in my car, and kiss me, talking about how you need money for your mother, bitch?” He paces around me.
Chantal pulls me close to her, but I free myself. I want to be like a tree, a concrete pole—unbreakable.
That thing in his hand is up by my face now.
A gun. That thing in his hand is a gun.
“Dray, baby. Baby, listen to me.” Donna with her broken voice.
“Shut up, Donna! Shut up. You had something to do with this, D? Huh, Donna? The way you left me hanging like that? You had something to do with this?”
“Dray. No, baby, no. I swear. Baby, I would never do that to you.”
Donna is a river. Her cries flow into every corner of the house. Chantal only breathes heavily, as if this space is slowly wrapping its hands around her neck. Pri is a ball of fire—still, steady, waiting. She stands close to me, ready to catch me if I fall.
“Huh? Answer me!” Dray yells, and his spittle reaches my face. “You want your ten percent now, Fabulous? Huh?”
My cousins plead. Their words are prayers to the walls, this house, this corner.
He presses the gun against my pounding head. The tears from my eyes are a waterfall. My bones are rattling, and maybe even the blood that flows from my heart is running toward safety, trying to get out. Get out. But I am as still as a pole.
“Dray. Not here, not now,” Chantal says. “We didn’t know. We didn’t know.”
“Yo, fuck you! Shut the fuck up! I’m talking to this bitch right here. Huh, snitch? You gonna fucking snitch? You don’t even know how this shit works out here in Detroit. You gonna talk to cops, bitch?”
I can feel his whole body shaking from how he holds the gun against my head. His wall is tumbling down.
I remember walls. I remember concrete. Whole cities can seek vengeance, too. And even the very earth we stand on can turn on us. I remember the rumbling sound of falling walls, of angry earth. And maybe the dead rose up out of the ground the day my country split in half, and the zombies, with their guardian, Baron Samedi, leading them, forced their way out of cemeteries in search of their murderers.
I will do the same. By the grace of my lwas, when his walls come tumbling down for good and he kills me tonight, I will do the same.
I am not afraid of dying. Death has always walked close—an earthquake, a hurricane, a disease, a thief and his knife. If Death owns half of my aunt, then I will sell my whole self to it.
My mother will know where to reach me.
So I say, “Do it, Dray. You want to kill me, do it!”
“Fabiola! No! No!”
My cousins try to pull me away, but I am steel, too.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
A click.
A bang.
A burn.
A dark.
A light.
THIRTY-ONE