by Ibi Zoboi
“You’ve been inside that white BMW of his, right? Did you ever wonder what he does to have that kind of car? And does he buy your cousin nice things?”
Everything I’ve noticed about Donna flashes through my mind—her long coat, high-heeled boots, gold-rimmed sunglasses, fake hair, makeup, even her fancy underwear. I nod. Slowly.
“Sweetheart? Bottom line: no one around here is gonna talk. So this all becomes like some sort of chaotic cycle. Bad people stay on the streets, good people die; bad people make a shitload of money, good people have to scrape pennies.”
“Same thing in Haiti,” I say, really quiet.
“I’m sure. But here, you can actually make a difference. Look, you have your cousins, but you don’t have to be loyal to their friends. You don’t owe anybody anything, except your promise to your mother, right?”
I just look at her.
“We know that Dray goes out to these parties in the nice parts of town. We just need to know the next time he’s going and to which party. Maybe you can ask Donna, or your other cousins. Not too hard, right? Just a time and a place.” She slips her hand inside her coat, pulls out a business card, and slides it over to me.
The waitress comes back with her pad in hand. “You ready to order now?” she asks in a thick Spanish accent.
“I’ll take my coffee to go. She’ll have whatever her heart desires,” the detective says, and slaps a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
I slide the money back to her as she steps out of the booth. “You forgot something,” I say, but I take the card and slip it into my wallet.
I retrace my steps back to the school, where the block is almost empty and most of the stores’ gates are already down. A car honks behind me, making me jump, and I curse out the driver in my head. I turn around to see Broke Kasim roll down his window, flashing his bright, dimpled smile. I sigh, roll my eyes. The curse words in my mind have all disappeared, and maybe there are squiggly lines that want to form his name in pretty script letters with curlicues and flowers and stars and hearts and more hearts.
“Fabulous, I’ve been looking for you,” he says. His voice is like a warm sea breeze filling up the cold, dry air in this place. “Where were you going? And why are you still at school?”
He shuts off the engine and gets out of the car from the driver’s side and comes around to open the passenger-side door for me. But I don’t go in.
“Pri was looking all over the place for you. I don’t even know why they haven’t given you a phone by now,” he says.
Still, I don’t go in.
“Come on, Fabulous. Get in. Pri went all the way downtown thinking you got on some bus to go to New Jersey.”
With that, I slide into the passenger seat of his old and dirty car.
“Why would you want to go to New Jersey, anyway? Why not New York, or better yet, Chicago? Hell, it’s closer.”
“You ask too many questions,” I say as I cover my legs with the bottom of my coat and place my book bag on my lap.
“Sorry about my car,” he says as he moves junk from in between the seats. “We can’t all be ballers like Dray and your aunt Jo.”
“Ballers?”
“Money makers. High rollers. Ain’t the president of Haiti a baller or rapper or something like that?”
My thoughts return to the woman with the brown coat, the detective. She said Dray was, like, a high roller, and that was bad.
He takes out his phone and dials a number. “Ay yo, I found her. . . . She was just standing in front of the school. . . . Yeah. . . . Hold on.” He extends the phone out to me. “Pri wants to talk to you. She’s pissed.”
I don’t really want to take it, so I slowly bring it up to my ear. I don’t say anything, but she immediately starts to yell as if she already hears my breath.
“Where the fuck were you? Are you shittin’ me right now? How you gonna straight disappear like that and don’t tell nobody where you went? Matter of fact, somebody said they saw you go into the CVS and then leave with some lady. What the fuck is that, Fabiola? You actin’ like you runnin’ these streets already. I done told you these bitches out here don’t play. Even those Mexican bitches around the school will cut you if you . . .”
I give the phone back to Kasim. He doesn’t know what to do with Pri’s loud, dirty mouth.
“Ay yo, Pri? Pri? Calm down. You know who you sound like now, right? That’s exactly how your mom used to go in on Donna back in the day. . . . Yeah, a’ight. You got a ride? Cool. . . . I’ll take her home, then. . . . Don’t worry. She’s with me. She’s in good hands.” Kasim laughs. “I’m just messing with you.”
It’s quiet in the car for a long second after he hangs up with Pri. Then he says, “Yo, you really gotta tell somebody where you’re going around here.”
I don’t look at him. I look ahead of me, then through the window next to me, but not at him. My thoughts are still simmering on that detective, Donna’s boyfriend, Dray, and my mother.
“You hungry? Wanna grab some dinner with me?” He starts the car but lets it idle.
I turn away and look out the window, trying hard not to smile.
“I mean, no disrespect, Fabulous. I could just take you home,” he says.
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “I can eat.”
“I’m sure you can eat. Ever had Middle Eastern food before? Like kebabs, tabbouleh, falafels, and shit.”
I smile. “I have Syrian friends back in Haiti. I miss them. My favorite food they make is baklava.”
“My favorite is baklava,” he mocks me with a fake accent and laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them bougie chicks. No wonder you call me broke. You need a man who’s gonna buy you boxes of baklava and get you nice and thick. Put some meat on those little Haitian bones.”
I laugh and hit him on his arm. He turns on the radio, but no sound comes through the speakers. He bangs on the dashboard and the music blares throughout the car. He turns the volume down and apologizes.
“See? I told you,” I say. “Broke.”
“I was waiting for you to say that.” He laughs as he pulls away from the curb and makes a U-turn down Vernor Highway. “You can’t tell by my car that I got stacks in the bank. I’m not gonna be one of those dudes rollin’ up in no BMW and still live in their mama’s basement. I’m trying to buy a condo next year, or one of them houses they’re selling for, like, five bucks and fix it up real nice.”
“Oh, yeah? So what do you do for work with all those stacks in the bank?”
“Been working since I was nine. Saved every penny. I can show you my job, if you want. The café across the street from the opera house. You been there? Maybe someday we’ll go—do some bougie shit with my bougie girl.”
“No, no, no, no. I am not your girl.”
He laughs. “Who said I was talking about you? Did you hear me say Fabulous? No. See? You need to work on your English comprehension.”
“But you said . . . Never mind,” I say. I can’t wipe the smile from my face, even as the time stretches thin and wide without another word being exchanged between us. I stare out the car window still smiling, and somehow, Detroit becomes more colorful than it’s ever been. But something is tugging at me. I think of all that is still wrong—my manman in New Jersey. Detective Stevens and what she asked me to do.
His cell phone rings.
“Ay yo, what up, Dray?”
I try not to listen and let my mind wander to some other place where that emptiness lives. But his constant yeahs and nahs pull me into his conversation with this person who should be off the streets if what the detective lady said is true.
“Fab, we gonna have to cut tonight short, a’ight?” Kasim says, hanging up, turning toward me.
“It’s okay,” I say, shaking my head. “Just bring me home.”
“Wait, wait.” He takes one look at my face and pulls out his cell phone again. “Yo, Dray. I’ll holla at you later, man. I can’t roll through tonight.”
Kasim hangs up and turns to
me. “Let’s go get something to eat. A’ight with you?”
My smile is even bigger now—a teeth-showing smile, as Manman would call it. But how could I even have a glimmer of happiness right now with my mother in jail for no reason? If only I could smile like Aunt Jo with half my face in a frown.
Kasim parks along a sidewalk that’s lined with tall and wide buildings. When he turns off the engine, I start to open my door. But he stops me and says, “Wait, I got you.”
He runs all the way to the other side of the car to open the door for me. The sign on the building in front of us reads BUCHAREST GRILL. I’ve been to a restaurant only once back in Haiti, and that was after my First Holy Communion. If my mother didn’t cook, we’d go to a neighbor’s house to get a plate of food in exchange for good neighborhood gossip. Already today, I will have gone to two restaurants. It is another reminder that my life here in Detroit could not be more different from home.
Kasim reaches for me as I step out of the car. His hand in mine is warm, and for a moment, I feel brand-new, as if like my cousin Primadonna, I am beginning to live up to this new name—Fabulous.
TEN
I DON’T LIKE the pita bread, and the bean dip is too cold. Hummus, they call it. Kasim devours a chicken breast topped with cabbage and pickles and other things I can’t identify. Even in this Middle Eastern restaurant, I try to find some seed of home in every dish. There isn’t enough spicy sauce on my sausage. The breads, salads, and pastas are all too dry. I only finish a small plate of curly French fries.
“What’s up?” Kasim asks, chewing with his mouth open. “Food ain’t fancy enough for you? Sorry ain’t no baklavas that your serious friends back in Haiti make.”
I giggle and a piece of food shoots out of my mouth and lands on the table. “Serious? You mean Syrian? From Syria.” I laugh.
He keeps chewing and looking at me. Then he asks, “Do people move back to Haiti when they’re old? Like retire with a house on the beach and shit?” He’s serious now.
I nod. Then I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe some people. But I don’t have the right family name with a big business to inherit. My mother wanted to retire here.”
“Retire here? In Detroit?”
“Uh-huh.” I take a sip of my soda, but even that’s not the same. Coca-Cola or Pepsi is only refreshing at the end of a long hot day. It makes no sense here with all this cold.
“That’s crazy. People go to Florida or Georgia to finish out their last days. My pops, he’s not old or anything, but he went back to Memphis. That’s in Tennessee. You ever heard of Memphis? I was supposed to go back and live with him there, but . . . Detroit is home. Know what I mean?”
I nod. I don’t really hear his words. His lips are nice and oily from his food and he licks them often. He has good table manners. He uses a knife and fork the way my teachers taught us at school. His fingernails are short and clean, and in between his fingers are not cracked and ashy. I’ve learned to notice these things about boys in Haiti. It tells me whether or not they live a hard life—if they use their hands to clean car windows for pocket change on the streets or to turn the pages of books in expensive schools. But here, I can’t tell. He says he works at a café. He doesn’t have the hands of someone who serves coffee all day. So I ask, “Do you read books?”
He laughs. “You’re asking me if I’m literate? Didn’t you just see me read the shit off the menu? You did hear me pronounce fucking chicken shawarma correctly, right?”
I sit back and wipe the smile off my face.
He just stares.
I stare back.
He laughs again. “I’m sorry, Fab. I just don’t like when girls do that. Either they think I’m swimming in cash money, or they think I’m dumb as fuck. First you think I’m broke and then you’re asking me if I can read?”
I open my mouth to say something, but my mind has not formed the words yet.
When the waitress passes, Kasim asks for the check. He’s a little bit different now. I’ve offended him. I smile on the inside because I want to hold on to this bit of discomfort between us for a while. This is how I will get to know him, get to know what makes him angry or sad.
He quickly takes the check and pays for everything with cash. He doesn’t look at me even as we leave the restaurant and get into the car. Before he starts it, I put my hand on his hand.
“I’m sorry, but that’s not what I meant,” I say. “I mean, do you like to read? Do you like school? Do you like studying?” I don’t look at him, but I can tell from the corner of my eye that he doesn’t like my question, or he doesn’t know how to answer. He twists his mouth every which way to try to come up with an explanation for questions that only require a yes or a no.
Finally, he says, “I ain’t never had a girl ask me that before. I mean, that’s not some shit you ask a nigga from around here.”
I wait for him to explain further. Then I ask, “Why not?”
“You think when Donna met Dray she asked him if he likes studying?”
“Dray did not take me out to dinner. You did. And I am not Donna.”
“You don’t get it. You’re just too different. You’re not from here.”
“No, no, no. I understand. There are guys like Dray in Haiti, too. We call them vagabon, drug dealers. Maybe some of them like to study, but they love money more.”
He laughs again. This time, as if I told a really good joke. “Yo, you trying to diss my man Dray? What makes you think he’s a drug dealer?”
I want to swallow back my words. My face gets hot, hot. I’ve spoken too much. “I did not say he’s a drug dealer.”
“So you think I’m a drug dealer?”
“Are you?”
He laughs. “So I’m broke, I can’t read, and I’m a dope boy.”
“I did not say any of those things, Kasim. You seem like a nice person.”
“And what about my boy Dray? You don’t like him, do you?” He starts the car, but he waits for it to warm up.
“He’s mean to Donna. How can you be friends with someone who doesn’t respect his girlfriend?” I ask.
“I told you they got their own thing going on. And besides, me and Dray are not just friends. He’s like fam. I know you can understand that with those crazy cousins of yours.”
“So if he’s family, are you going to do what he does, hit your girlfriend, too?”
He laughs. “Oh, you’re on a roll tonight, shorty. I’m taking tabs.” He holds up his hand and counts off his fingers. “Let’s see . . . We got broke, illiterate, drug dealer, and now, girlfriend beater?”
I laugh and look out my window, which is all fogged up. This moment feels very good, but I almost don’t want it. Something is missing. Maybe I don’t want to be completely happy if everything is not right. I don’t know if I can trust this boy. I take my finger and draw a line. I want to write a word or draw a picture, but a line is the only thing I come up with. Then I just wipe it all away and I can see the moon behind a tall building in the distance.
“I’m nothing like Dray,” Kasim says quietly. “I don’t hit girls. And I would never, ever disrespect you. Shit, I feel bad for even cursing around you. But that’s just who I am. I want you to see the real me.”
I don’t turn to face him. I listen. There’s honesty in his words now.
“Yeah, I sold some weed here and there for some change. I needed to hook my mother up so she could pay some bills, a new muffler for this piece-of-shit car over here, and maybe one day I’d want to go back to school. But I ain’t no kingpin, know what I’m saying? So it’s just favors here and there. Shit you do for fam.”
A cold chill travels up my spine. Shit you do for fam. The way he says it, it’s like he would do anything for his family, like for love and respect. I say it out loud. “Shit you do for fam.” I turn to him.
“Shit you do for fam,” he repeats.
The drive back to American Street is long and quiet. The silence swells between us and it’s warm and comforting. When he pull
s up to the house, he turns to me and doesn’t smile. The sun has set and I can only see his face from the light of the distant moon. His eyes look sleepy, but they move all about my whole face. I let his eyes caress me, until he reaches over to move my braid away from my cheek.
He leans in. I lean in. He kisses me. He parts his lips, but I keep mine closed, and I slowly pull away. He’s frozen there with his mouth slightly open, until he breathes. “Damn.”
ELEVEN
“DON’T GIVE IT up too quick, though,” Pri says as I’m changing out of my clothes. She’s sprawled out on my air mattress wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants—her at-home uniform. A pair of big blue headphones hangs around her neck.
“Oh, Princess!” I say, as if she’s just accused me of being a bouzin, a whore.
“It’s Pri, Fabulous! So. You gonna let Kasim smash that or make him wait?”
“Smash? He will not smash anything!” I say.
“Good. He’s nice and all, but make him sweat and beg.”
“Leave her alone!” Donna calls out from the bathroom. “Don’t listen to her. Why don’t you worry about your own love life, Pri.”
“No, Fab, don’t listen to her. Donna will buy you lingerie and shit and even book you two a hotel room if you leave it up to her,” Pri says.
“No, I won’t!” Donna yells.
Pri shakes her head and gestures for me not to believe anything Donna says.
I giggle and ask, “Do you have a love life, Pri?”
“Yes, she does!” Donna calls out again. “She can’t even step to the girl she likes.”
Pri quickly gets up from the mattress. “Thanks a lot, D!”
“Wait,” I say. “You like somebody?”
“Don’t ask me no dumb-ass questions, Fabulous.”
I stand in front of her. I don’t want her to leave. I want her to talk to me the same way she did when I was braiding her hair. “Do you need new braids?” I ask.
“So you can be all up in my business?”
“What’s her name?”
“None of your business.”