Читать книгу Drifting - Katia D. Ulysse - Страница 12

A NEW LIFE

There’s a roach on the patch of ceiling directly above my bed. I gather the blanket around me, leaving only a slit to watch its whereabouts.

Across the room, my sisters are sprawled out on the double bed they share. Karine is reading one of her mystery novels. Marjorie, the youngest, is injecting her brain with another dose of Daffy Duck.

Brooke Shields pops up on the screen, smiling a dazzling smile and winking her pretty-baby eyes. “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,” she coos, just as another roach starts to stroll across her face. Killing it would cut into Marjorie’s cartoon time, so she pardons the roach the way President Reagan pardoned the White House turkey last Thanksgiving.

When we hear the rattle of keys on the other side of the bedroom wall, Karine cringes and shoves the paperback under her pillow. Marjorie jumps from under the sheets as if a scorpion had stung her. She turns off the TV, whispering: “Shit. Shit. Shit.” My hands have a sudden dampness in them. The knot in my stomach tightens at the sound of my father’s grunts.

“Frisner is here,” Karine announces, as if no one else could tell.

I take a final look at the roach on the ceiling before switching off the lamp next to my bed. The room is silent now; everything is black. In the world inside my head, the sun is sizzling. I’m holding Yseult Joseph’s right hand in mine. We’re playing the Good Underwear game, singing, “Sak pa vire kilòt yo gen twou!” Caroline Saint Louis, Marie Lourdes Jean, and Elizabeth Lafrance are all there—in my old school yard. The nuns are in the upstairs chapel, saying their noonday prayers. Sister Bernadêtte cannot see us now. We’re free to spin as wildly as we please; free to play the forbidden Good Underwear game.

Caroline steps into the circle and starts twirling. She twirls faster and faster. Her skirt flies up to her waist. Her panties are pink with fraying white ruffles around her skinny thighs. “Kilòt ou gen twou. Your panties have holes,” we chant and laugh until she stumbles out of the circle, ashamed but not so consumed that she cannot continue to play. Her face glistens with perspiration.

Yseult lets go of my hand and leaps into the circle. Her braids flap up and down. The white ribbons hang loose—the bows undone. She sings as she twirls. Her panties are perfect: No holes. No fraying lace.

Yseult staggers in my direction, singing: “Sak pa vire kilòt yo gen twou.” It’s my turn to step into the circle. I spin around so fast that the girls’ faces become one big blur as the sun melts a rainbow in the sky and everything turns black and I fall down on the bed with the roach on the patch of ceiling directly above my head.

* * *

The front door squeaks. The deadbolt clicks. The chain lock slips into place. Frisner makes his way in the dark stealthily, hoping to catch us doing one of the fifty billion things we’re not permitted to do.

He’s on the other side of the bedroom door now, one ear pressed against the flaking mustard-colored paint, hoping to hear something—anything to confirm his suspicion that America damages girls.

I cannot see Frisner’s grease-stained fingers reaching through the hole where the doorknob used to be, but I know the movement just the same. (Frisner removed that doorknob when we moved into the apartment. Good girls don’t need locks on their doors, he’d said.)

Frisner is in our bedroom now, waiting, like the demon Sister Bernadêtte always warned us about. Her beautiful French lilt had done nothing to mask the ugliness of the name—God’s disobedient child sentenced to an eternal time-out.

I cannot see Frisner’s face, but I know that look on it—the look of someone condemned to spend eternity in a dingy apartment that’s arctic cold in the winter and infernal during the summer months. I imagine him cocking his head to the side as if there were horns jutting out of his scalp, weighing him down.

Frisner grunts again. He is glad to be home, but loathes this cramped space. If Manman would only agree to send us back to Haiti, his lifestyle would improve significantly. The room my sisters and I sleep in would be used as the dining room it was meant to be. The walk-in closet which he sleeps in could be used as a closet again. If only Manman would agree to send us back, his weekly paycheck wouldn’t have to stretch so far. He could put a few dollars away. Maybe take a vacation one of these years. He could go to Mexico and France—countries he loves without knowing why.

I can feel his eyes trying to adjust to the darkness. The narrow aisle between our beds is his personal virgin forest this time of night. He is the explorer who will trample upon the lush grounds. He is the hunter waiting for the slightest movement, a rustling of leaves. And then he will strike.

I hold my breath. Frisner knows I’m only pretending to be asleep, but he does not say a word. A good hunter keeps his mouth shut. A good hunter does not make a sound. After a few minutes of silence, he pounds his way to his bedroom.

Manman works nights at the factory across town. They don’t sleep together anymore.

* * *

In the morning when I wake up, the first thing I see is that official-looking letter which Mrs. Williams, my American History teacher, sent to my parents. Frisner taped it on the wall next to my bed, daring me to remove it.

Mrs. Williams’s letter says I am in danger of failing her class. Frisner responded to it by threatening to send me back to the island if I don’t get an A. He is convinced my brain is packed tight with thoughts about boys and sex.

“One day some guy’s going to give you what you’re after,” Frisner likes to say. “When he does, I will not save you from it. You’ll be on your own then.” Manman agrees with him. This is why she makes me come straight home from school every day.

* * *

From noon to four thirty, Monday through Friday, Manman watches Ryan’s Hope, All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and The Edge of Night. “You girls better be home before The Edge of Night ends,” she tells us, “or I’ll let your papa know that you’re turning American. He’ll fix you before the transformation is complete.”

Sometimes Manman lifts up her arms and cries out, “Woy, Bon Dye! Why did You curse me with a heap of girls? Why didn’t You give me sons instead? Boys get a girl pregnant, but you can’t prove they were even in the same room. Girls carry the proof in their bellies for the world to see.”

Frisner’s tongue is a knot when Manman mourns her lot. Maybe that’s because he remembers causing a young girl’s belly to swell with proof once. To make things right, he married that girl: Manman wore a white dress that stretched over my unborn body and a half-happy, half-sad look in her eyes. Frisner wore a black suit—the kind they bury accident victims in.

An uninvited guest, Hurricane Flora, crashed their wedding, reversing their chance at happiness. Tempestuous winds nearly tore the roof off the church before the priest could pronounce them husband and wife. The relentless downpour that accompanied Flora turned the ground into a reddish paste that coated the bride’s pretty shoes. The black-and-white photographs captured her annoyance. Her lips stayed pursed. Manman would have defeated the force that caused the hurricane—if only it had a face.

I was born forty days after the wedding and named for the hurricane that destroyed Manman’s magical moment on its way to killing thousands on the island. Karine came twelve months later, Marjorie twelve months after that. If Frisner had not left for the United States, there would have been more proof swelling up Manman’s belly. But he stayed away. We did not see him again for almost a decade.

* * *

Nine years and nine months later, we received an appointment to see the consul at the American Embassy—for the thirteenth time. The man behaved as if he could not wait to scribble his name on the documents in Manman’s hands.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You and your children can be reunited with Mr. Desormeau at long last!”

Within days we were following Manman on a slippery tarmac bordered with mounds of snow. Frozen rain slapped our faces, causing Manman’s eye shadow to run. Every strand of her freshly pressed hair balled up like little fists that sparred with one another. Nothing was left of her beautiful coiffure but the horse’s tail pinned to the back of her head.

We’ve been in the States three years now and our daily routine never changes:

Frisner drives us to school in the morning, and picks Manman up from the factory on the way. When she gets in the car, she groans a reply to our collective Bonjour, then sets her head against the passenger-side window and falls asleep.

When we reach the school, we say, Au revoir, and kiss Manman on the cheek. We kiss Frisner too—though we don’t like to. As soon as the crossing guard gives us permission, we bolt. Frisner takes Manman home before driving to the auto parts plant where he works.

The first thing I do once inside the school building is unravel the Flora-Desormeau-just-came-from-Haiti cornrows that Frisner makes me wear. The shiny blue boul gogo barrettes scream newcomer. I force my hair into a ponytail and trace around the shape of each eye with the black pencil I bought from Newberry’s for ninety-nine cents. This doesn’t make me feel like some Egyptian princess or anything, just different from the girl whose parents think she’ll turn American and curdle like milk. I stop in the bathroom to wash off the eyeliner and redo the braids every afternoon before going back home.

Manman’s daily routine never changes either. Once Frisner drops her off at the apartment, she sleeps until it’s time for Ryan’s Hope. She cooks, cleans, and does the ironing during the commercials.

By All My Children, the pot of rice is ready. Before One Life to Live ends, the goat meat is so tender it’s sliding off the bone. By General Hospital, the apartment is guests-are-coming tidy. By then, Manman is also dressed and ready for work. Everything must be in its place before her favorite show begins. Nothing must disturb her when she settles down to watch the adventures of Luke and Laura, her favorite characters on General Hospital.

Manman expects us home at the beginning of The Edge of Night, the last soap opera of the day. If we’re not there while the opening theme song is playing, she panics.

“New York is a terrible place to raise daughters,” Manman tells Frisner. “Luke and Laura might have gotten married, but there’s still plenty that’s wrong with America.”

“I’m tired of your TV people,” Frisner responds.

“And I’m tired of the giants that like to step on grasshoppers, crushing them just for fun.”

“You’re not a grasshopper.”

“I wasn’t one in Haiti. I am one here. So are you.”

Now, when Manman talks about the grasshopper and the giants, Frisner walks away. “You’re the damn grasshopper!” he shouts in Creole.

On Saturdays, my sisters and I wipe off the layer of dust on the incomplete set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Manman catches up on some of the sleep she missed all week. Frisner fills the air with sentimental boleros and reminisces about God knows what. He turns the volume up so high you’d think Juan Gabriel and his band were in the living room with him, providing the soundtrack for his top-secret thoughts. He plays the same Spanish song all the time. I know the lyrics by heart. I had a kid at school translate: “You are always on my mind . . .”

When Frisner is done serenading the house with his sad song, he showers and shaves and piles on the Old Spice before driving to his girlfriend’s house—the one who sends him love letters all the time. Manman wouldn’t know what’s in those letters even if Frisner left them on the kitchen table like place mats. Still, he keeps them locked in the small safe behind the couch.

I check that safe periodically, in case Frisner forgets to lock it like he did once.

That’s how I found out that he has a couple of children by a seamstress back on the island. Those boys in the pictures look just like him: same forehead, same eyes, same nose, same teeth. I don’t think Manman knows about Frisner’s other family. But one look at those boys and his little secret would burst into flames and burn Manman down. There’s a boy at school who looks just like Frisner. I wonder if he is my brother too.

Sundays we drive to Brooklyn to visit relatives who seldom visit us. If we go by way of the Holland Tunnel, Manman tells Frisner to stop in Chinatown so that she can haggle with the street vendors like she used to in Port-au-Prince. If we head to the Lincoln Tunnel, which takes us to 42nd Street, Manman stares at the pimps in fur coats and hats as big and ornamented as cruise liners. She cringes when she sees the ladies in shimmering halter tops, up-to-here miniskirts, and thigh-high boots with stilts for heels. When Frisner sees those prostitutes, he says: “There goes Flora!” Manman usually nods in agreement.

Manman predicts it’s only a matter of time before a pimp puts me to work. “Look at Bobbie Spencer on General Hospital,” she says: “If a pimp can turn that pretty white girl into a bouzen, no girl child is safe in America.”

When we drive past Times Square on the way to the Manhattan Bridge which spills onto Flatbush Avenue, I keep my eyes fixed on the Broadway theaters, searching for Yseult Joseph’s name. Perhaps one day two cars will pull up at a red light at the same time. I’ll be in one with my family, Yseult and her family will be in the other. We’ll roll down the windows and scream our telephone numbers before the light changes. And then we’ll be inseparable again. Like the wings of a hummingbird.

* * *

On the way home from school one afternoon, Tamara, my sometimes girlfriend, runs toward me, calling out: “Flora, Flora, Flora Desormeau, chérie. Attends moi!”

Tamara is Haitian, but tells everyone she’s from Tahiti. Because she’s a half-Syrian grimèl with silky-smooth, siwo myèl hair, the American kids have no trouble believing her. They’d believe her if she said she came from Pluto. Those American kids adore Miss Tahiti.

“Where are you going?” she asks in a forceful way. Yseult never spoke to me like that.

“Lakay mwen,” I tell her.

Tamara pretends not to understand, but that girl speaks more Creole than all the fish vendors in Kwabosal put together.

“Home,” I repeat in English.

“Let’s go to the arcade,” Tamara says in that same perfect French Sister Bernadêtte used to speak. Yseult wouldn’t have asked me to go anywhere or do anything she knew I was not supposed to.

“I can’t go to the arcade,” I tell her. I don’t say what Manman thinks of those places: Only bad girls go to arcades—to look for boys who can’t wait to put proof in their bellies. Only bad girls behave in such a way to make the world point fingers and disrespect the family that failed to raise them properly.

“I can’t go with you,” I tell Tamara again, but the thought of playing a video game starts my heart racing.

“Are you scared?” she asks, laughing.

The Edge of Night is about to begin, I tell myself. If I’m not home by the time the opening theme song ends, Manman will call Frisner and a thousand tongues won’t be enough to describe what he’ll do to me.

“Flora!” Marjorie and Karine say my name as if it’s a bad word. “It’s three forty-five.”

I’m too busy trying to solve the math problem in my head to answer: General Hospital ends in fifteen minutes. Manman has to leave for work in forty-five. How much time will I have to play if it takes five minutes to reach the arcade and fifteen minutes to walk home from there?

“Flora!”

“Tell Manman I had to stay after school to help the new teacher with something.”

Karine and Marjorie shake their heads in disbelief. I wave them away.