“All right, then. Ma thinks that anything free is just bullshit. Especially in this city. You don’t want a bullshit education.”
Ms. Stanley comes back in and motions for me to leave the office with her. Chantal waves me off.
“Honey, tell me how you pronounce your full name,” Ms. Stanley says before we enter a loud classroom.
“Fabiola Toussaint. FAH-BYO-LA TOO-SAINT,” I enunciate slowly.
With Matant Jo’s money back in Haiti, my mother was able to send me to one of the very best English-speaking schools. My classmates were the sons and daughters of NGO executives, Syrian businessmen, Haitian foutbòl stars, and world-renowned musicians. We were all shades of brown and not-brown. This is what the tuition paid for—to be with other students who were examples of the world.
Here, the class fidgets and talks loudly and the teacher rushes his lesson.
I have no pens, no notebook, no textbook—only my ears and memory. I try to keep up, but I quickly introduce myself to the girl sitting next to me as the other students get up from their seats and leave the classroom.
“That’s a pretty name,” she says, tossing her long locks back.
“My mom named me,” I say, then wish I’d said something more interesting.
“I’m Imani,” she replies. I can’t take my eyes off her hair.
“They’re real. You can grow them, too, if you want. You just have to be patient. Where’s that accent from?”
“Haiti,” I say, trying to say it like Americans. We walk out of the classroom together.
“That’s right. You the Three Bees’ cousin,” she says, examining me from head to toe.
I almost don’t want to be the Three Bees’ cousin from the way this Imani looks at me. So I start to walk quickly ahead of her.
“Wait,” she says, following behind me. “Everyone thinks you’re the Fourth Bee.”
“Me? The Fourth Bee? No way!”
“But Pri is going around telling everybody not to mess with her cuzz. She’s scaring the boys away, too, in case they might wanna holla at you,” Imani says as she pulls her heavy book bag over her shoulder.
I don’t let her see me smile. “They’re my cousins, but I am not a . . . bee.”
“I know you’re from Haiti and all, so if you knew about the stories I’ve heard, you’d want to have the Three Bees as your fam. You tell anybody that Pri and ’em over on Joy Road are your cousins, you’ll be like royalty.”
“What stories?” I start to ask. Students pour out into the hallway and Imani moves closer to me so she can whisper.
“They just go hard for each other,” she says really low. “If something goes down with Donna, Pri is right there fighting for her. And I hear she throws some hard punches. She don’t fight like a bitch with all that hair pulling and scratching. Chantal, on the other hand, uses her rich-people connects from her old high school to get people’s cars towed and shit like that. And ’cause they’re Haitian, everybody thinks they do that voodoo shit. Is it true? Do they put hexes on people? I hear their mother is a voodoo queen who goes by Aunt Jo.”
I let out a loud laugh, because everything Imani says sounds so outrageous. Then I quickly cover my mouth because the students start looking at me. I can feel their whispers on my skin. I don’t want all this attention. If my cousins are indeed royalty here, then I am just a peasant who only wants a good education, opportunity for a good future, and my mother. This is what she hopes for me, too.
I have two more classes with Imani and then it’s time for lunch. I watch my cousins in the cafeteria. They fold their wild, crazy selves into tiny squares at school—no fighting, no cursing, just royal. Donna walks as if she’s a supermodel—with her done-up face and her flowing hair and her nose in the air. The boys go out of their way just to say hi to her. Pri knows everyone and she’s always telling jokes and laughing. At the end of the day, when Chantal picks us up, she attracts a small crowd who insist on talking to her about everything and nothing. My cousins are indeed royalty here.
Never could I have imagined being in a house full of family and still feeling lonely. Loud music plays upstairs and the TV blares downstairs. No one is cooking in the kitchen even with the nice stove and refrigerator filled with food. I’m sitting at the table eating my dinner out of paper bags—a hamburger, French fries, and soda.
The whole house seems to want to squeeze me in, force a deep wail from out of my body because it’s only been one day and I am losing myself to this new place. This is the opposite of the earthquake, where things were falling apart and the ground was shifting beneath my small feet. Here, the walls, the air, the buildings, the people all seem to have already fallen. And there is nothing else left to do but to shrink and squeeze until everything has turned to dust and disappeared.
But not yet. Not without my mother.
I get up from the table and gently knock on Matant Jo’s bedroom door three times before I say her name the way she wants me to say it. “Aunt Jo?”
I hear footsteps and shuffling. She opens the door. She squints her eyes, and her hair is thin and lies flat against her head. She’s been wearing a wig all this time.
“My mother is still not here,” I say. My voice trembles, and the words come out of my mouth like a sudden rainstorm.
“I know” is all she says at first. She shuffles to the edge of her bed. It’s a little dark in the room and there’s a small TV on top of a dresser. The volume is down and I wonder what she does in there all day. Then she says, “My hands are tied, Fabiola. I did everything to get my sister here. Everything. I would’ve kissed the ground if she had walked through that door with you.”
“You knew she wasn’t coming, Matant? I mean, Aunt.”
“Things are complicated.”
“She was on the line with me. She had all her papers. They gave her a visa.”
“I know, I know,” she says, holding her head down. “You are smart. Your mother told me how your English was so good that those Americans had no choice but to grant her a visa.”
“It wasn’t me. She had all her papers. She was supposed to be here. They were supposed to let her in.”
She motions for me to come inside her bedroom. I step over some clothes and stand next to her bed.
“In some ways,” she says, “this country is like Haiti. They talk out of two sides of their mouth. You can never know what these people are going to do.”
“Aunt Jo, is my mother coming or not?” I ask. I know how adult Haitians can talk in riddles and never give you a straight answer. Even with her years of living in America, this is still true for my aunt.
She exhales. “Fabiola, those people and their rules are like sorcerers. If I go digging too deep into their trickery, I will end up with an ass for a face, and a face for an ass.”
“You are saying no. My mother is not coming? They are sending her back?”
She doesn’t answer and points to the dresser where the small TV sits. “The fourth drawer,” she says. “You will see a book, a Bible. Bring it to me.”
I do as she says. She takes the Bible and pats the spot next to her on the bed. I sit beside her and feel her warm arm against mine. It almost feels like my mother’s. Almost.