They’ve always been watching us, Chantal says.
I don’t have the heart to write my mother. I would have to put everything down in words. So I try and try to call her. The numbers are dead ends. My questions are not answered, but her name is still in their system, they say. Is she in Haiti? I ask. They can’t tell me that. Was she let out? I ask. They can’t tell me that, either.
Part of me wants to go to New Jersey to find her. The other part of me wants to leave here for good and return to Haiti. Maybe she is there already. Maybe this was never supposed to be home. Maybe I was supposed to be here just to get this Dray out of my cousins’ lives.
But what about Kasim? Why Kasim?
Divided amongst many, I remember.
I don’t call Detective Stevens. I pray that guilt has swallowed her whole.
So we all move as if we’re walking through molasses. Everything is slow and thick and threatens to suffocate us.
A black car pulls up next to me one day, while I’m waiting near a supermarket for my cousins to pick me up. I am not afraid of Dray’s people. So I stand there and look directly into the dark windows.
One rolls down. It’s Detective Stevens sitting in the backseat.
“Get in, Fabiola,” she says.
“No,” I say. My bags are heavy. It’s almost Christmas and I am planning to cook a small meal of Haitian and American food. I want to carve out a slice of happiness just for a moment so that I don’t die in this place. I don’t want to talk to her.
“I have some information on your mother,” she says.
She disarms me with this bit of truth. So I climb into the backseat with my bags. It’s warm and smells like coffee and cigarettes.
Detective Stevens turns to me. Her face is different, or maybe I am seeing her with different eyes. She doesn’t smile like when I first saw her. If I’d first seen her with this face—furrowed brows and thin, pursed lips—I would not have trusted her.
She gives me a yellow envelope. I open it. It’s cash and a woman’s name from the ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“She’s already started the termination of proceedings,” Detective Stevens says. “ICE will drop the charges and release your mother into the United States.”
Before I leave the car, I tuck the yellow envelope inside my coat.
Papa Legba doesn’t show up at the corner anymore. I don’t hear his words. Every now and then, I try to remember one of his riddles, but it only conjures up more regret and guilt. I am superstitious about money now. It is like rainwater here. It pours from the skies. But if you try to catch all of it with wide hands and fingers spread apart—it will slip through. If you try to catch it with cupped hands, it overflows. Here, I will tilt my head back, let it pour into my mouth, and consume it.
We have to become everything that we want. Consume it. Like our lwas.
On the morning before we leave to pick up Manman, I help Pri squeeze two suitcases into the car.
It’s colder than it’s ever been and I’m not wearing any gloves. The skin between my fingers burns. It’s cracked and blistered from all the scrubbing and scrubbing. I didn’t wear any gloves, either, when I filled buckets with alcohol, bleach, and ammonia, dumped old rags and sponges in, and scrubbed death from the walls and floor of the house. The smell still lingers everywhere and sticks to our clothes and skin, and even our food. So Matant Jo is finally ready to leave this house.
We are all in white. Even Pri has shed her dark clothes and now wears a white turtleneck and pants. I had wrapped my cousins and aunt in white sheets after making a healing bath of herbs and Florida water for each one, and let them curl into themselves and cry and cry. This is what Manman had done for our neighbors who survived the big earthquake. The bath is like a baptism, and if black is the color of mourning, then white is the color of rebirth and new beginnings. Our brown skins glow against our sweaters, pants, and head scarves. We are made new again.
“You got your voodoo stuff in there, Fab?” she asks.
“Pri, you have to treat it with a little more respect. It’s not just my ‘voodoo stuff.’ It’s my life,” I say.
“So what? Without it you’re dead?”
“I don’t know, Pri. I’ve never been without my prayers and my songs. What do you hold on to?”
It’s snowing now. The white flakes dance around us as if they are part of this conversation.
“Myself. My family. Hopes. Dreams. Shit like that.”
She goes back into the house and I stand there near the car looking all around me. I rest my eyes on the street signs—American Street and Joy Road.
I notice something shift out of the corner of my eye. I turn to see Bad Leg near the lamppost. I start to make my way to him, but someone calls me from inside the house.
It’s Chantal.
By the time I turn back, he’s gone.