by Ibi Zoboi
In middle school, it got around that we spoke French. And some dumb motherfucker started calling us the Frenchie Sisters. It didn’t help that our last name is François. By high school, Chantal had gotten a scholarship to some fancy prep school, University Liggett, Donna was going out with Dray, and I was . . . well, let’s just say I was the brawn. I don’t remember who came up with it first, but Chantal is the brains, Donna is the beauty, and me, I’m the brawn. Three Bees. The biggest, baddest bitches from the west side. Nobody, I mean nobody, fucks with us.
FIVE
“DOESN’T IT LOOK like a haunted castle?” Chantal asks after she parks the car.
I step into my very first snowfall. It started a few minutes ago while we were in the car. The roads here are so wide and straight and clean. We pass a small crowd standing near what looks like a bus stop—a tiny glass shelter with a single bench. Their hoods and thick coats make them look like the fat iguanas that cling to the bright-red flamboyant trees back home. Nothing here is alive with color like in Haiti. The sun hides behind a concrete sky. I search the landscape for yellows, oranges, pinks, or turquoises like in my beloved Port-au-Prince. But God has painted this place gray and brown. Only a thin white sheet of snow covers the burned-out houses and buildings. The flakes seem to appear from out of nowhere, like an invisible hand sprinkling salt onto zombies.
I am no zombie. I sniff the salty snow-filled air to make sure that I stay alive and human. If it’s snowing in New Jersey, I hope Manman does the same. The thought that my mother may not be seeing outside crosses my mind and I shake it off.
I glance up and down the wide street before stepping into the haunted castle that will be my new school. A few cars stop in front of the building and teenagers spill out onto the sidewalk. Pri and Donna leave for their first class, while Chantal and I head to an office where students wander in and out—most with their uniform skirts shorter than mine. I pull my skirt up a bit.
“Yeah, I know it’s below your knees,” Chantal says. “You don’t have to be like everybody else.”
“Not even in Haiti do girls my age wear their skirts so long, unless they’ve devoted their lives to being a virgin,” I say.
Chantal stares at me for a long second. Then she laughs. “Well, are you a virgin?”
Before I can answer, someone calls out Chantal’s name. A white woman with orange hair comes toward us with open arms.
“Chantal François,” the lady says. “Look at you.”
“Hi, Ms. Stanley.” Chantal’s voice is as sweet as mangoes, and she smiles big and bright and holds her head down. She becomes a different Chantal, like the one at the airport.
“Liggett took what could’ve been our best student away. How’d they treat you over there? Lemme guess. You’re up for the weekend from Yale? Harvard? Princeton?”
Chantal shakes her head and the smile disappears from her face.
“Okay. I remember you saying you wanted to get as far away from Detroit as you possibly could. Stanford? UCLA?” The lady is holding both Chantal’s hands and is looking straight into her eyes.
“ULS was fine and college is great, Ms. Stanley” is all Chantal says. Then she turns to me. “This is my cousin, Fabiola. She just got here from Haiti.”
This Ms. Stanley is like an overripe banana—too sweet and mushy. She’s so excited about my coming from Haiti, she hugs me for too long and holds my hand too tight. She asks so many questions I can’t keep up, until she finally asks if I speak English. Chantal answers for me.
“Well, great. Let’s get you all registered,” she says. “I’m sure you’re excited to be going to school with your cousins.”
We follow Ms. Stanley into her office. Chantal and I sit at a desk while the woman pulls out a folder from a file.
“You have all the documents you need?” Ms. Stanley asks.
Chantal takes out a big yellow envelope from her bag and slides it to Ms. Stanley. “My mother will come in with all her documents. We just didn’t want her to miss a day of school and have to stay at home alone and all.”
I quickly turn to Chantal, but she shoots me a look that says trust me.
Ms. Stanley takes the thick envelope without opening it and nods. “You know, those documents won’t really be necessary for now. This should cover her tuition for a while. How is your mother doing, by the way?”
“She’s fine,” Chantal says quickly.
Ms. Stanley nods, smiles, and disappears out of the office with the envelope.
Chantal turns to me and says, “My mother worked hard to make sure that you and your mother are taken care of. And she’s not just making bank—she is the damn bank. But your cousins think it’s gonna last forever. I keep telling them we have to save.”
“Matant Jo is a bank?” I ask with my eyes wide.
“Well.” Chantal pauses. Then she inhales and says, “Yeah, you can say that. She loans money out. Makes money from the interest. Like a bank, but a whole lot less complicated, and a whole lot riskier. So yeah, like I told you this morning, she works her butt off.”
I fidget with the pleats on my uniform skirt. “Why don’t I go to a free school?” I ask.
“Did you go to a free school in Haiti?”
“Free school in Haiti? No way.”
“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 har
d 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.
MATANT JO’S STORY
This is your home now, Fabiola. This is Phillip’s house—the house he bought with the last bit of money he had from Haiti. He had dreams, you know. That’s why when he saw this house for sale, on the corner of American Street and Joy Road, he insisted on buying it with the cash from his ransacked and burned-to-the-ground car dealership in Port-au-Prince. He thought he was buying American Joy. So he sent for me and our baby daughter, Chantal. I could not have asked for anything more—a house, a bit of money, and the love of my life. He was all I had—no friends, no family, no Haitian community like in Miami or New York. He was my everything. He came here for the cars and car factories. You’d think it would’ve been a car that killed him since he loved them so much. But no. The car he left behind is gone now, but we have this house. Even if everything burns to the ground by some twisted magic, it will still be the last house standing. But Phillip also left a hole in my heart, like the bullet wound in the back of his head. This hole has spread around me like a cancer. Maybe that will be my salvation, my death. Cancer, another stroke, a heart attack. Now that I won’t ever see my dear sister, I don’t care how I go. Maybe you, like my daughters, will fill this hole with a little bit of love until my time comes.
SIX
MATANT JO KEEPS a stash of money in her dresser, inside a Bible. She gave me a pair of one-hundred-dollar bills, two fifties, and five twenties from a pile of endless bills. She said it’s for my expenses. I promise myself not to let the cousins know that I have this money. I don’t want to join in on their arguments.
So I carry the four hundred dollars in my bag, in a wallet, as if it’s simply pocket change. It’s the most money I’ve had to myself. It makes me walk taller and speak with more confidence. This unearned cash makes me feel a little bit more American. This is the beginning of the good life, I think.
It’s Friday and Chantal has come to the school early to run errands with Pri and Donna. I was told to wait in the lobby until four o’clock, a whole hour after school has ended. I wonder what it is that they need to do that shouldn’t involve me. But still, I’m grateful for the little bit of freedom. And with my money, I have more courage to step out into this new free world.
There are still kids in the building practicing sports and participating in clubs, and some of them sit outside on the steps talking and laughing. As I walk outside, some say hi and some ignore me, but they still know that I’m the Three Bees’ cousin, as they say. I look up and down the block—Vernor Highway. Other kids are walking to the bus stop. I have enough money to take the bus all the way to the end of Detroit and back if I want to. I can even walk into a restaurant to eat by myself or go to a store to shop for clothes.
I let my feet take me down the block to a big store called CVS pharmacy. I almost run across the intersection even though the lights say I have the right of way. I don’t trust these speeding cars with too much road around them. A woman bumps into me, or I into her. I can’t tell because she seems to appear from out of nowhere. I quickly apologize with my very best English and step away. Any hint of an accent could be an invitation for judgment—that I’m stupid and I don’t belong here. But the woman is kind and smiles and apologizes, saying that it was her fault.
But then she asks, “Are you from around here?”
“Yes.” I nod. I look down at her clothes and shoes. Her coat is decent and clean, her jeans are plain, her boots look new, and her face is hard, but safe—like a schoolteacher’s. But still, she’s a stranger. I start to walk away.
I turn to her and only smile a little.
The lady follows me into the CVS, but she goes down another aisle as I stand there staring at the enormity of it all. So many things to buy. So many choices. Matant Jo was right about this country talking out of two sides of its mouth. This store is more than just a pharmacy. I walk out with only a bag of potato chips, juice, lip gloss, and gloves.
When I’m back at the school, Chantal and the twins are already waiting at the curb. As we pull away, I spot the lady who bumped into me, or I into her. I don’t know. She seems to be staring at this car, right into this window. Or maybe she’s looking at the school since she asked about it. I can’t tell for sure. I watch her from the backseat of the car as she walks down the block alone. Pri has already dug her thick hand into my bag of potato chips. I don’t ask where my cousins have been or why they left me. I’m only grateful.
Something tugs at my belly and I turn to the back window, looking for that lady again. But she’s long gone now.
SEVEN
ON MY FIRST Saturday night here, music pumps through every corner of the house. The bass pulses in my bones and I wish I could plug my ears. Aunt Jo is dressed up in too-tight jeans and a nice bright shirt for the first time since I arrived, and she has guests in the living room—four men who smoke and curse just as much as Pri. If Matant Jo is a bank, then these men must be her bank tellers. Except no customers come to the house.
I avoid going downstairs even though I’m hungry. Manman will not believe me when I tell her that I am hungrier here than I ever was in Port-au-Prince. Not from a lack of food, but from a lack of willing and able cooks.