I nod but she can’t see me.
Chantal comes down the stairs while looking at her phone. “Y’all got ten minutes, ’cause first class is at eight. Whoever’s not done, I’m leaving behind. Fabiola gets a pass ’cause I have to get her registered. But the two of you are just gonna have to take the bus.”
“For real, Chant?” Pri says. “You gonna make your little sisters take the Livernois bus when that new ride is supposed to be for everybody? And by the time that shitty bus comes, school will be over.”
“If y’all don’t hurry up!” Chantal calls back.
I wonder how Matant Jo gets to work since Chantal’s car is the only car I’ve seen parked in front of the house. So I ask, “When is Aunt Jo going to work?”
“Work?” they both say together.
“Ma is working right now,” Pri says.
“Yep. She’s working on getting your mother out of that detention center,” Chantal adds. “And she certainly worked to get you over here from Haiti, didn’t she?”
I nod again and promise myself not to ask about Matant Jo’s work again, unless it is the work of getting my mother home.
Pri pulls away from me when I’m done braiding her hair. She stands up to check it out in a nearby mirror. “Nah. Do that shit over again. I just need six regular braids going back,” she says, taking out the two I braided on each side of her head.
“But they look nice,” I say.
“Don’t make them look nice—just make them look . . . regular.”
She comes back to sit on the floor in front of me.
“I hope y’all are ready,” Chantal calls out.
“We are going to be late if I braid your hair again,” I say.
“Just hurry up. Don’t make them all puffy. I need them tight.”
Donna examines Princess’s braids from afar. “In other words, she needs them to look like a dude’s,” she says.
“Shut up, D,” Pri says.
“Is that true? Make them look like a boy’s?” I ask.
“Just make them tight, Fabiola, and hurry up.”
“Why do you want to look like a boy?” I start by pulling the soft hairs at her scalp very tight.
“Are you serious right now? I’m not trying to look like nobody but Pri. Feel me?”
I glance down at her khaki pants. “You don’t have to wear a uniform skirt to school like me and Donna?”
“It’s cold as fuck outside. If y’all wanna wear them short-ass skirts, then that’s on y’all,” she says.
Pri’s mouth is so dirty. Since my mother isn’t here, I want to grab her little lips and twist them myself. I take my time with each braid even though Chantal has come down and is ready to leave. I want Pri to like them. I need her to like me. I’m happy to have been helpful after being here for only a few hours.
Pri leans her head on my knee and it feels like I’ve been here for years instead of hours—as if I’d never left in the first place. Whenever my aunt and cousins would call Haiti, I’d imagine my life as an American—living in a house full of family, going to school, having a car and a boyfriend. I shake the memory of last night from my mind—the singing man, the punching man, the saving blue-cap man, and Donna.
“I remember when we were little, you used to be the most talkative one on the phone,” I say to Pri. “You would always ask to speak to me and you would tell me all about school and your friends. Remember when you said you didn’t want Donna to be your twin, you wanted me to be your twin instead, and you said you were going to take the bus to Haiti?”
“Yeah, well, I’m all grown-up now, and so are you” is all she says. Then she lifts up her head and turns toward the TV.
Chantal is by the front door and starts to put on her coat, but the noise from the TV makes her stop. She glances in our direction, and Pri slowly pulls away from me. Donna comes over to stand near the TV. Pri reaches for the remote on the carpet and turns up the volume.
“. . . A seventeen year-old University Liggett High School student died last week of an alleged lethal cocktail of designer drugs. Locals are now saying there have been a string of parties over the last few months where the synthetic designer drugs were made available to partygoers as young as thirteen. Police have been in contact with members of the community and have opened an investigation.”
Chantal, Donna, and Pri exchange deep, quiet stares as if aiming sharp knives at one another.
Pri inhales and rubs her chin. “The fuck? They still going with this story?” she says. “One white chick OD’s and there’s an investigation? She did that shit to herself.”
“Sandra McNeil actually got killed last month and it didn’t even make the news,” Chantal says.
“Did you know that white girl, Chant?” Donna asks.
“She would’ve been a freshman when I was a senior. I definitely don’t think we were in the same circles.”
The news then shifts to a report on drug cocktails and what they do to you when you take them. I’m glued to this bit of interesting information but Chantal shuts off the TV. “We’re running late. Don’t pay attention to that shit, Fabiola.”
“I’m not done with my hair!” Pri whines.
She wants six braids and I’m only on the second.
“Fuck it,” she says, and gets up from the floor. In a few minutes we’re all out of the house and in the car. Matant Jo has not come out of her room.
I’m wearing a coat that used to belong to Chantal. I can’t figure out the zipper and all the buttons, but Pri helps me. She then takes off her hat, leans in closer to me, and hands me a comb. I still have to finish her braids.
“I hope you’re not trying to make her your little slave,” Donna says. She’s in the mirror again. “Fabiola, you don’t have to do what Pri says. This ain’t Haiti.”
“Hold up. It’s on her if she wants to cook and braid hair. Ain’t nobody forcing her to do shit. Right, cuzz?” Pri says.
I laugh a little. “Even in Haiti, I didn’t do everything that people told me to do.”
“Didn’t Ma and Aunt Val work as slaves when they were in Haiti?” Pri asks.
“No, dumb-ass. No one can work as a slave,” Chantal says.
I remember those stories from Manman, too. “Restavec,” I say. “They were not slaves, really.”
“Well, did they work?” Pri asks.
“Yes, they worked.”
“Did they get paid?”
“No, but . . .”
“So they worked as slaves.”
Both Chantal and Donna start arguing with Pri while laughing at the same time. This isn’t like the argument about money—there are more jokes and light insults. I laugh a little, too, because this moment reminds me of being with my friends back in Haiti. I can’t make a straight part in Pri’s hair because she and the car are moving so much. I pull her in closer and I can feel the weight of her upper body leaning on me completely. She trusts me.
I don’t get to stare out into the daytime Detroit streets as I finish braiding Pri’s hair. And maybe it is the feel of my hands on her scalp that makes her open up to me, so she is the first to tell her story. With each braid, with each touch, I begin to know and understand my dear cousins, my sisters from another mother.