“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 Léogâne, 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.
“Mind your own fucking business, old man!” the punching man shouts. He kicks him one last time before returning to the car with his fists still clenched. I can’t see his face in the dim streetlight.
I shrink away from the window. I want to unsee and unhear everything. My heart is racing and there’s not enough air where I’m standing. Bad Leg is still on the ground, rolling from side to side. I’ve seen this before—old people in Delmas who see and say too much are often beaten up or killed by young vagabon who have no respect for elders, for life, or for themselves.
A second man comes out from the backseat of the car—younger, slim, and wearing a blue cap. “Yo, Dray, chill!” He runs to Bad Leg to help him up.
The punching man, Dray, calls out to his friend, “Yo, get the fuck away from him!”
But the blue-cap man ignores Dray and tries to help Bad Leg to his feet. He reaches down to pick up the cane, hands it to him, and makes sure the old man is stable before walking back to the car.
At the same moment, the passenger-side door opens, and I recognize those boots and that long coat. Donna stumbles out. Her long hair hangs over her face and she can barely stand up straight. She takes several clumsy steps toward the house and I quickly close the curtains. I let the dark living room be my hiding place as the front door unlocks and Donna steps in, removes her boots, and slowly makes her way up the stairs, leaving the strong scent of alcohol behind her. Her bedroom door lightly clicks shut.
I wait a few minutes before I come out of my hiding place. I replay everything until it all blurs into a dream. I want to tell Manman what I just saw and tell her that we have to go back. This corner where Matant Jo lives is no different from some of the streets in Delmas. I need to light her candles and hope that I can reach her.
Upstairs, I find a near-empty shelf in Chantal’s room, move the books aside, and start taking my mother’s things out of her carry-on bag: a small statue of La Sainte Vierge, two tea candles, the beaded asson gourd, a small brass bell, a white enamel mug, a cross, and a piece of white fabric. I bring the cloth up to my face and inhale the fragrance. I washed it by hand and soaked it in Florida water before we left. It smells of Manman’s magic—our lwas, our songs, our prayers.
I move the magic things aside to dust off the shelf with my hand. I place the cloth down first, the cross in the center, then the other items around it. I add water from the bathroom sink into the mug. I’m now only missing a potted plant for the libation. I light a candle. It hisses in the dark. Chantal turns over, but a pillow covers her face.
I call my spirit guides to bend the time and space between where I’m standing and wherever my mother is. Maybe everything is happening for a reason. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do. Maybe we should go back. What would Manman say? I need to know.
Cher Manman,
For all my life, you’ve taught me so much about how there is power and magic in our lwas, in our songs, and in our prayers. Now, for the first time in my life, I get to test the truth of your words. This is the first night I’ve spent away from you and I can’t even conjure an image in my mind of where you must be.
Remember that trip to Jacmel last year when we stayed at a friend’s house and you insisted that we share a mattress made for a crib? You pulled me in close and reminded me that even with my almost-woman body, I am still your one and only baby. Both our feet hung off the edge of the mattress and touched the cool concrete floor, and we prayed that a little mouse or a big spider would not eat our toes. I’m sleeping on an air mattress now and there’s plush beige carpeting underneath.