My Mother's House

by Francesca Momplaisir

  Lucien was warmed by the thought that Leona’s wasn’t his second or even his third fabricated family. His second had been the Haitian immigrants who’d flocked to South Ozone Park based on word of mouth about KAM. They’d been craving community as much as Marie-Ange’s incomparable home cooking. They’d wanted to do more than roll the dice at weekend-long gambling binges that had left their pockets as depleted as their homesick hearts. They’d wanted a home since they could not go back home. Not just a home because they were making one in America. Back home was a place in and of itself, a place they couldn’t return to. Not yet. Not until they’d made it big in New York and could alight from the airplane stairs onto Port au Prince airport’s scorching tarmac, uncomfortably attired in wool suits, hundred-dollar wing tips, silk shirts buttoned to the collar, and as many gold chains as they could afford or borrow from their friends who understood their need to flaunt their ti-gran-negre frontage. They couldn’t go home until they had real INS-approved green cards and passports with expiration dates five or ten years into the future to ensure they could resume their janitor jobs and night school English classes. They couldn’t make return visits until they could fill at least six suitcases—two covered by their airfare, two they would willingly pay extra baggage fees for, and two filled with gifts from their friends who couldn’t yet make the trip—to show their people back home that they were making progress. Until they could return to their motherland with the requisite largesse and grandeur, they went to KAM and spent money and time they didn’t have, soothing their souls with Marie-Ange’s incredible cooking and Lucien’s costly hospitality.

  Lucien had been merciful to KAM’s male patrons but less so to the women, who lived in profound sadness over having left their children in the care of iffy relatives. He took advantage of those who were willing to give anything for a taste of home. With a few exceptions, he did not allow women at his gambling tables. Only the proven hard-core manly types could sit with the players. He tolerated the ones who drove overnight taxi shifts through crime-ridden Times Square, who owned multiple houses paid for in cash with earnings from transactions with deadly dealers, or who’d amputated all emotion and had not just left but had given away their children and were therefore thought to be heartless. He would send the softer ones to the kitchen to occupy themselves with gossipy conversations, dish washing, sweeping, and wiping until he was ready for them. In his wife’s presence with her back turned, he would cop quick, daring feels while the women stood at the kitchen sink or at the fridge door looking for whatever Marie-Ange sent them to fetch.

  He’d had a few trusted ones whom he’d loaned to his wife to clean piles of chicken leg quarters before the scalding water was poured over the poultry. They were never allowed to do anything more with Marie-Ange’s chicken, pork, or beef after the hot-water bath. She trusted only Nen-nen, when she visited, and him, who on rare occasions helped rewash and season the meats. Neither he nor she ever wanted the taste of anyone else’s hands in her food. He knew that there would have been hell to pay if she ever heard any of these women claim to have cooked anything at KAM. She alone was chef. The only manman, although she purposely kept her daughters out of the kitchen and as far away from the late-night action as possible. Friday and Saturday nights belonged to the grown-ups, the strays, and the prey on whom Lucien feasted as he supervised but did not play card games.

  Lucien remembered those days conducting the activities at KAM. He’d participated in the weekend fetes only by tasting whatever foods Marie-Ange had thought needed additional seasoning or especially well-prepared dishes that she hadn’t wanted him to miss out on before she sold it all. He’d also tasted whatever willing women he could feel up in a dark corner of the front room under the pretext of consoling, lending money, returning pawned jewelry, or triaging legal problems for Marie-Ange to properly diagnose and address during the week. He would sneak them into his garage: the women, feigning farewells, would leave through the front door and walk the dark, narrow driveway to meet him out back for an upright fuck, leisurely fellatio, or heavy petting.

  Although the women had thought these encounters were spontaneous, Lucien had planned them by first leering then peering through invisible holes strategically drilled into the bathroom walls and door. The most convenient place for his lasciviousness would have been the basement, but Marie-Ange had her temple there. If nothing else, Lucien respected the vigilant Vierge Marie statues on the multiple altars, at least for a time. But at the height of KAM’s prosperity, he’d kept his crimes away from the basement.

  Flashing back to his past, Lucien told himself that he hadn’t feared the deity at all. He’d valued the vodou practice only as an additional revenue stream. Whatever Marie-Ange couldn’t fix with her immigrant’s knowledge of America’s legal ins and outs, whatever she couldn’t deduce or connive to exploit with her intellect, legwork, or intuition, she diagnosed as spiritual ailment requiring sacrifices to Ezili. No animals or bloodshed, just ritual and, of course, money offerings to the goddess. Depending on the ailment—difficulty finding a job, a green card sponsor threatening to back out, a sickness that could not be cured without long hospital stays requiring health insurance, cheating/beating husbands, untouchable mistresses or paramours, loan sharks or landlords needing to be put in their places, even policemen abusing their authority like American Tonton Makout—a patron might spend as much in her basement temple as on his card table. The lovelorn and homesick patrons sustained KAM as a community center where all their needs could be met.

  Lucien’s cab and housemate, Dieuseul, had been introduced to his wife at KAM. She was one of the few black Americans who’d gone to Marie-Ange for help with an ex who wouldn’t contribute financially to raising their daughter. The courts couldn’t help because he made all his money off the books. He used her and her house as a crash pad between affairs with his flavor-of-the-moment floozies or when hiding from drug-dealing creditors. Marie-Ange’s remedy for her was to move another man in. She had the perfect candidate: Dieuseul, a hardworking just-come flush with cash and desperate for papers. Lucien even trusted this man on the day shift with his taxicab.

  Dieuseul had been vetted and vouched for, never mind his looks that at least Marie-Ange found attractive. He alternated his shaves between a bald head with a goatee or a low ’fro with a clean-shaven face. He was so dark and fierce-looking that Lucien had nicknamed him Shaka Zulu. His eyes were his lightest feature, but the whites of them had remained yellowish from a childhood vitamin deficiency that had not been cured until he came to America. Marie-Ange had warmed up to him because he resembled her father, who had been tall and dark-skinned, with the same regal warrior carriage and gentlemanly elegance. Truth be told, both men were as sexy, mysterious, poised, and charming as a vampire count. Dieuseul, Boss Dieuseul to most because of the immediate respect his comportment commanded, had large teeth and a mean smile. He was not typically handsome, but his posture and manner of dress made him irresistible to the forlorn single mother. His large hands and atypical size-thirteen shoes told the horny single mom everything else she wanted to know.

  Lucien was still wondering where Dieuseul had gone during the fire. He laughed as he remembered the ironic name and the arranged marriage. Dieuseul, “only God,” could have saved this woman and protected her daughter from potential predators. Even before Donahue began hosting sex-abuse victims who tearfully recounted their stories before a studio and national audience; before the movie version of The Color Purple exposed stepfathers as child molesters; before a fractured Truddi Chase morphed into twelve different personalities over the course of forty minutes with time for commercial breaks during a shocking installment of The Oprah Winfrey Show; before Oprah became Oprah, Marie-Ange and women like her had been watching and warning blind, lovestruck mothers of girl-children about men who might be more interested in their daughters than themselves.

  Lucien glanced around Leona’s room looking for some reminder of Dieuseul�
��s artistic talent, but she’d never hung any of the paintings there. He wanted some reminder of his home, but there was none to be found. He’d respected Dieuseul for being a gifted painter. He’d marveled at the first piece Dieuseul had shown him, a portrait of his six-year-old stepdaughter, Lexus. Dieuseul had loved and protected the adorable untouched girl.

  Lucien fondly pondered the unlikely friendship. He’d always known that Dieuseul found light-skinned people distasteful, especially those in authority or in a higher class. Knowing this, Lucien had always respectfully put the “Boss” in front of his name, even though he owned the taxi that Dieuseul rented to make his living. Lucien knew well the reason he respected Dieuseul. He had learned a lot from him—mainly that painting and photography were ideal covers for voyeurism and good excuses to touch and adjust the clothing of subjects. Lucien had never been a painter, but he’d had three cameras in his possession, one his own, the other two pawned objects held for cash-strapped patrons. He’d started taking Polaroid pictures of female visitors to his home, in public and private, so he wouldn’t have to have the film developed.

  Lucien had also photographed Leona secretly long before she’d ever struck a pose for him in his living room. He had waited for the sound of the toilet flushing to mask the click and wind of his camera as he’d taken her picture from his favorite peephole. He hadn’t bothered to puzzle out why such a book-smart woman had settled for being a home-care nurse, why her intellect had not translated into street smarts, common sense, or high self-esteem. He’d just taken advantage of his wife’s caregiver who, based on the history she’d divulged within days of working in his house, had indiscriminately tolerated men’s misbehavior and lies all her life. She had been and still was desperate to be loved and willing to be his caregiver after his wife died.

  He’d been able to tell that Leona had been hurting the first time they’d met from the way she’d held her handbag against her abdomen. She’d held back words as if suppressing vomit. He’d known that she needed someone, a man, despite the love she received from her son and granddaughter, full and half siblings, and church friends. Even the families of former patients who invited her out for meals, who bought her gifts to thank her for giving their dying loved one end-of-life care. When she’d finally spoken, he’d heard more than she’d said. And she’d said a lot! She’d thrown up words as if she hadn’t spoken to a prospective lover in decades. He’d known immediately how much she’d wanted someone, wanted the one who was in front of her, wanted him. He’d known that she could have done better for herself. Always the opportunist, he gave her the attention she had been craving and made her see herself through his warped lenses.

  Never mind that she was young, younger than Marie-Ange even. She would never know his age. Never mind that her cheeks were as smooth as a sea-worn stone, that her hair caught light and held it on its surface as shine. Never mind the touches, hand holding, and hugs she got from family and friends. Those were not enough. They were not enough. She needed one more to care for. She was a nurse, after all. She needed someone who would reciprocate both her nurturing and her lust that spilled over and into forbidden conversations. She needed a slurred whisper of love breathed on the back of her neck, prolonged and limber lovemaking that made plain sex seem as uneventful and chore-like as mopping up a spill. She needed someone to lick away the loneliness. She wanted something that felt like love, that could keep the lonely from moving around in the crawl spaces where hurt hides, waiting to surprise. She wanted someone to arrest the pain, satisfy the pangs, and just hold her.

  Having long ago mastered the inner workings of the female mind, Lucien had known within a week that, when the loquacious Leona fell silent, she was telling herself stories about the future life they would create together. She had been looking forward to the future union that Marie-Ange would generously bless.

  Lucien sniffed his armpit as he raised his good hand to slurp his lukewarm coffee. He smelled clean. The VapoRub competed with his creamy, sweet café con leche. He waited in bed where he’d been served by Leona. She would join him for a hard-earned amorous breakfast. His narcolepsy and partially lame limbs never interfered with the satisfaction of his and her libidos. In fact, his left hand, partially crippled into a claw, gave more pleasure during foreplay. He’d often wondered how many more women he would have been able to seduce, turn out, and trick at Bar Caimite if he’d had the boon of his post-stroke handicap in his youth.

  Lucien counted the minutes until Leona came back upstairs to rejoin him in bed. He needed to make her feel appreciated, so she would acquiesce to his future requests and forgive the new misdeeds he’d already been planning. He filled in the seconds missing on the digital clock on the nightstand nearest him by counting backward in between the clicking minutes. When Leona finally came upstairs, he counted her twitches and groans and the seconds until she fell into a pre-shift catnap. Then he made his way down to her basement.

  As he limped imperceptibly around the basement, he carefully assessed every section of that part of the house. Leona lived on a street of identical conjoined row houses. The houses in his neighborhood had more room for modifications than owners had opted for through the years—stilted back porches, expanded living rooms, redacted front parlors. The homes in her neighborhood could not be altered without impacting the ones on either side. Like uniformed Catholic schoolchildren forced to hold hands to keep one another in check on field trips, the row houses had no opportunity for deviation.

  Lucien looked around Leona’s basement. It was a bright, fully furnished space. Out of its center, a small living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two bedrooms sprouted like a horizontal version of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Lucien was not focused on the visible rooms, workmanship, or decor. He was studying the layout of the windows to determine how best to get into his own basement and get his girls out. He was also doing something he had never done before in anyone’s basement—checking for signs of a hidden safe room. Nothing could be hidden in Leona’s too-clean basement. Like her, it was wide open, readable, and innocent of secrets. She kept the doors to the bedrooms locked to keep them especially pristine in case she ever decided to rent the basement, which she never would. Lucien glanced at the doors and thought how a simple butter knife slid strategically between the lock and doorframe would open them. But he had seen those rooms. They didn’t even have actual closets, just stand-alone Ikea armoires. No false doors. Just rusted windows painted shut year after year to keep the temperature inside steady. There was a perpetually damp coolness that served to make the air inside feel just warm enough in the winter and cool enough in summer. The windows trapped air in and locked air out.

  Feeling his bladder full, Lucien went into the skinny bathroom. Instead of standing up to urinate, he sat down to examine the cracks and corners where the bathroom walls met, in case he’d missed something. He was disappointed that there was no safe room behind any of the walls.

  He returned upstairs and sat at Leona’s uncluttered kitchen table. With nothing there to count, he found it difficult to plot how to get back into his boarded-up house. He had no idea what he would do, if he were able to get in. Free the girls and lose them and all of his secrets forever? No, he would need a new place to house them.

  Lucien stood up and surveyed Leona’s kitchen again. He opened her cabinets and found only two or three of everything. Her pantry was not the stockpile that he’d been accustomed to with Marie-Ange. He opened the drawers and found enough utensils to soothe himself. Zero, one, two, three…twenty-one, two, three, four…Nothing. But he soon exhausted the tacky, ornate stainless steel flatware. He needed to get home to his own things, where he could take inventory of the outdated electronics he’d stacked to the basement ceiling. If they’d toppled over during the fire, the tubular path he’d hollowed out would be gone. There would be no way to get from the basement door to the bathroom behind which the safe room was hidden. He thought of how pleasurable it would be to cou
nt and restack his fallen property. It would be as if he’d just brought it all in again fresh off the street. I am nothing. Until I take, until I count, until all of it is mine.

  Unable to mentally sort through the piles of junk or figure out where to relocate his girls to, Lucien looked around Leona’s kitchen and found enough bottles to satisfy and inspire him to enumerate what he would need to bring for his Zero, One, Two, Three, and My. Five gallons of water, one for each of them to last one solid week. It would be impossible to carry all of them at once with his good hand and his claw. If he left the Spam and sardines and brought only bread for the confiture, he could force himself to haul the water two gallons at a time. No peanut butter this time. They’d manage. They’d had less in the past when they’d earned punishment for bad behavior. Maybe he could get help. He would have to have some assistance to break into his house. Someone stronger with the use of two good hands and a pair of sturdy legs would have to peel back the wooden boards over the back door.

  Lucien picked up Leona’s cell phone and dialed Dieuseul on the pretext of collecting the money owed for five full days with the taxicab. Gratefully, Dieuseul brought up the idea of getting into the house to gather a few of his things, his paintings mostly, before Lucien did. The arrangements made, Lucien took the cell phone upstairs to Leona. She was still asleep. He decided not to wake her up for work and turned off her phone.

  Lucien couldn’t help but shake his head at her peaceful slumber that reconfirmed her obliviousness. But he was homesick for the place where he didn’t have to wait for a woman to fall asleep to watch her unabashedly. He had made small strides since harboring Asante in the safe room. Sure, he’d added his three, no, four girls as well, but no one else. And no more spying, stalking, and squirreling away more strays—not since Four.