American Street

by Ibi Zoboi

“Her name is Taj,” Donna says. The bathroom door is closed, but she can still hear everything we’re saying.

  “Would you please cut that shit out, D!” Pri shouts. “Damn. And wipe that smile off your face, Fabulous. It ain’t like that.”

  Chantal’s heavy footsteps rush up the stairs, home from her college classes. It’s as if a cloud of cold air has followed her into the house, and I shiver in my pajamas. “What y’all getting on about?”

  “Kasim took Fab out to dinner,” Pri says. She settles back down on my air mattress and I sit on Chantal’s bed. “Like a restaurant, for real for real.”

  “If he asks you to marry him, say no,” Chantal says as she drops her heavy book bag on the floor and takes off her coat.

  “Marriage? We’re talking about fucking and you roll up in here talking about marriage? Fuck outta here with that shit!” Pri throws a pillow at her big sister.

  I giggle and throw a pillow at Pri just for fun. She throws it back. I try to duck, but it hits me in the face.

  “Did you tell her how Kasim always falls in love and wants to buy wedding rings for his girlfriends?” Chantal asks. She starts taking out books and her computer from her bag before she even undresses.

  “What?” I say. “Wedding rings? He’s only . . . Wait. He’s seventeen, right?”

  “Eighteen, so he’s old enough to get married if he wants,” Chantal says. “Wait, I got something for you.” She hands me a box from her book bag.

  “Married? No way,” I say as I open the unmarked box. I can’t hide the smile on my face, because the thought of getting married makes my insides like syrup. It all plays out in my head like a very fast commercial—picking out a dress with my mother, getting my hair done in a salon, seeing my cousins fight over which bridesmaid dress they want to wear, going on a honeymoon to Italy or Miami.

  The box holds a brand-new cell phone, and I immediately turn it on and start pushing all the buttons.

  “Look at her face! Now you can text Kasim your wedding plans, ’cause you were seriously thinking about it, weren’t you?” Pri says.

  I quickly snap out of it as Donna comes into the room and all my cousins start to laugh at my expression.

  Then Donna asks, “Are you a virgin, Fab?”

  I smile and nod. “A little something here and there, but . . . my mother would kill me.”

  “No dick? Good, stay that way,” Chantal says.

  Pri kisses her teeth. “Fab, mother and dick are two words that should not be in the same conversation. And ain’t nobody wanna be like your corny ass, Chant. If you could fuck a book, you would.”

  “You know what?” Chantal comes over and shoves Pri’s head. “I would fuck a book before I fuck some dude who doesn’t respect me. I’d fuck a degree, a paycheck, and a damn career! And Fab, you better act like your mother is here. Don’t do anything she wouldn’t want you to do.”

  “Yeah, listen to your mother, Fab, and not corny-ass Chantal,” Pri says.

  My cousins go back and forth with their jokes and playful insults. Pri takes another pillow and starts hitting her sisters. They each do the same. I grab a pillow to cover my face so I can laugh and laugh. My whole body feels strange. My heart doesn’t beat; it dances. It’s as if Kasim has stepped into my mind and invaded every single thought.

  As everything calms down, Pri lies on Chantal’s bed, breathing heavily and still giggling. Donna is at the dresser mirror, messing with her hair. And Chantal is at the edge of her bed with an opened book and a highlighter in her hand. While their attention is away from me, I let my thoughts wander—Kasim, Kasim, Kasim.

  “Aww, she likes him,” Donna says, coming over to my mattress and plopping down next to me. “He’s sweet. He’ll take care of you.”

  “Get away from her, D,” Chantal says, not looking up from her book.

  Donna waves a hand at her. “It’s all about love, Fab, I swear,” she says. “If he loves you, he’ll make you feel like a million dollars.”

  I suddenly wonder if Dray really loves Donna. I don’t think it’s love that makes her feel like a million dollars—but maybe the actual money he gives her for all those wigs and makeup and clothes. Drug money, if what the detective said is true. If Kasim could make me feel like a million dollars, then I want it to be a million dollars of love and not actually a million dollars.

  “Do you love Dray?” I ask suddenly.

  The room gets quiet.

  “Of course I do,” Donna says.

  There are no more jokes and laughs after that.

  I must be the only one who can hear Bad Leg’s song tonight. Chantal is as still as a rock on her bed, and the window is closed. His song is loud, but I can’t understand his words. I toss every which way trying to shut out his voice. My eyes are weary, my thoughts are on overtime, refusing to let me sleep. Everything and everyone swims around my mind like ghosts in a haunted house—the detective lady and her proposition, Kasim and his “shit you do for fam,” and the love that Donna has for a bad guy who sold drugs that killed a girl. I am being forced to make a choice.

  I know that my prayers will ease my heart, so I get up. My legs take me down the steps, to the coat closet, out of the house, and to the corner of American and Joy.

  “What should I do?” is the first thing I ask Papa Legba. I need straight answers, so I ask a straight question.

  He’s quiet. There are sirens in the distance. A dog barks. The wind howls around me and I realize how strange this place is with all these little houses, and on most days, I barely see any people. If there was a place like this back in Haiti, everyone would come out and gather on the sidewalk to exchange meals and gossip. No one would be left alone in a tiny house with only their regrets and sorrows to keep them company.

  Papa Legba finally begins.

  Crossroads, cross paths,

  Double-cross and cross-examine,

  Cross a bridge across my mind.

  A cross to bear across the line,

  And cross the street across town.

  Cross out, cross off,

  cross your t’s and cross your fingers,

  then nail him to a cross

  as you cross your heart

  and hope not to die.

  A cigar appears in his hand. He’s never had it before. He takes a pull and exhales thick white smoke that swirls up into the air like a cloud. I watch it bend and stretch like a slow-turning cyclone until it stops at the street signs—where Joy Road meets American Street.

  Joy and American. A crossroads. Intersecting. One is not the other. I look down Joy Road with its few streetlights dotting the wide path. There are not that many houses and lots of open land. It can either mean endless possibilities or dark, empty hope.

  I look down American Street with its houses in neat rows and the open lots like missing teeth. I know so many people back in Haiti, so many families who would kiss the ground and thank Jesus for a street like this, especially one named American.

  My two paths meet at this corner, and it seems like I have to choose one. One street represents a future, the other leads to a different kind of life. Papa Legba, the keeper of the crossroads, will help me choose.

  “On American Street, I will live with my aunt Jo and my cousins, and go to school, and have a cute boyfriend, and keep my mouth shut because in Haiti I learned not to shake hands with the devil. But on Joy Road, I will tell the truth. The truth will lead to my happiness, and I will drive long and far without anything in my way, like the path to New Jersey, to my mother, to her freedom, to my joy. Which road should I take, Papa Legba?”

  When I turn back to the streetlight, he is gone. The light only shines on the overturned plastic bucket and the dancing smoke. It’s beginning to feel as if I’m speaking to stagnant air—the spirits are just standing there without delivering my message to God.

  “Where were you?” Chantal whispers as I quietly slide back onto my air mattress.

  “Eating something in the kitchen,” I lie.

  “Yeah, right. Y
ou trying to get killed out here on these streets?”

  “Killed?” I say. “I feel safer here than I did in Port-au-Prince.”

  Chantal laughs. I wait for her to stop, but she keeps going. Then she sits up on her bed to face me. I can see the outline of her head in the moonlight.

  “You ever seen a kid get stomped in the face. With boots?”

  “No,” I say. “Not stomped in the face. But beaten with a baton on the back by the police.”

  “Oh, y’all got police brutality, too?”

  “It was because of the manifestation before the election. What you would call a protest, like the one for that girl who died because of drugs. Did they find out who gave her those drugs?”

  She’s quiet. Then she says, “Does it matter? She took them, right? If somebody hands you drugs and you take them, who’s to blame? What, there are no drugs in Haiti?”

  “Of course there are. And drug dealers, too. But they don’t always have to deal drugs. There are other things to sell.”

  “Well, did you ever have to dodge bullets?”

  “During kanaval. Some people were jumping on cars to dance and have a good time. But MINUSTAH thought they were making trouble. So they shot and we ran.”

  “Okay,” she says, settling back down on her pillow. “Do you know what a dead body smells like? I mean, after it’s been dead for, like, days.”

  “Yes. I remember the earthquake very well,” I say, quiet, almost whispering.

  “All right, then. You win.”

  “No, I don’t. I lose. I am not home now. I left it behind. You are home.”

  “Home? No, I’m not. I wasn’t born here. Haiti is home.”

  I shake my head, but she doesn’t see me. “You would rather be in Haiti?”

  She sighs and turns over on her bed to face me again. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if my father had never sent for me and my mother when I was a baby. Like, maybe the twins would never have been born. And your mother would not have come here to give birth to you. And maybe we’d be like sisters. We’d go to the beach every day, and eat good Haitian food, and go shopping for jeans and American clothes, and whatever we needed to know about America, we’d see it in the movies.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “The nice beaches cost money, and the public beaches are dirty and crowded. There are no movie theaters, and to go to a shopping center with nice clothes, we would have to take a bus for eight hours to the Dominican Republic.”

  “That’s not true,” she says. “I saw your pictures on Facebook. You were doing good. Especially with Ma’s money.”

  “Well, me and my friends, we did different things. Not movies and malls. Not much in the city, in fact. I rode my bike through the streets of Les Cayes, rode donkeys up the mountainsides near Cap-Haïtien, and the beaches we went to were not resorts. We shared the ocean with fishermen and washerwomen. And we gossiped and joked. And fought. I had to fight a lot, because people knew we were getting money from family abroad. Manman was tired of fighting. She wanted her own money. She wanted to see her sister. She wanted me to be like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Matant Jo talked about you when she called. She said you were going to be the very first doctor in the family. Is it true? You’re going to be a doctor?”

  She pauses, then sighs. “Don’t worry about me. Just make sure you get through your junior year. And stop messing with Bad Leg. And don’t go around asking about that white girl. Please.”

  I nod, but she can’t see me in the dark. I rest my tired head on her last words, letting them be my pillow.

  CHANTAL’S STORY

  What if memory is like a muscle? My anatomy & physiology class tells me how the human body works, but it can’t tell me how the human mind works—not the brain, but the thoughts and memories.

  I remember being nine years old, translating newspaper articles for my mother about my father’s murder. I remember everything about that day those detectives walked into our house and I had to sit there and listen to every detail and tell it back to my mother in Creole. I had to do it the other way around for those insurance people from Chrysler—translate my mother’s demands from Creole into English.

  Creole and Haiti stick to my insides like glue—it’s like my bones and muscles. But America is my skin, my eyes, and my breath. According to my papers, I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m not a citizen. I’m a “resident alien.” The borders don’t care if we’re all human and my heart pumps blood the same as everyone else’s.

  I try to walk a path that’s perfectly in between. On one side are the books and everything I have to do to make myself legit, and on the other side are the streets and everything I have to do to stay alive out here.

  Ma wanted me to go to a big university. She told me not to worry about her and my sisters, to just do my own thing. But how could I? This is home. My mother is home. My sisters are home. And even you . . . you force me to remember the home I left behind. You make me remember my bones.

  TWELVE

  “FABIOLA, YOUR WRITING is good, but I have to give you a low grade because you didn’t back up any of your claims,” my English teacher, Mr. Nolan, says, looking at my paper and not at me.

  I wonder if he can see a reflection of my face on that paper—if he can see me, my whole story. “Claims?” I ask.

  “You were supposed to write a research paper, not a personal essay,” he says, handing me back the homework. “There are some interesting ideas here, but they’re unsubstantiated. You need to gather some sources, use quotes, and add a ‘Works Cited’ page. Use textual evidence.”

  He quickly gathers up his things on his desk and leaves the classroom. English is the last class for the day, so I thought there’d be time for him to explain everything to me. I’ve been writing essays and poems in English my entire life. I went to an English school in Haiti. It doesn’t make sense that my paper isn’t perfect.

  I stare at all his markings, comments on the sides, question marks, whole sentences crossed out. I feel attacked because I wrote down everything I knew about the Haitian revolutionary hero Toussaint L’Ouverture and why he is important to me. But Mr. Nolan thinks everything I said was all wrong.

  Someone coughs while I’m putting the essay back into my folder. Imani is standing in the doorway of the classroom. She already has on her coat and a gray scarf wrapped around half her face. “Why do you look like you’re about to cry?”

  “I’m not going to cry.” I blink several times and swallow hard to make sure.

  “Were you trying to get Mr. Nolan to help you? Waste of time,” she says.

  “I got a D on my paper,” I tell her.

  “A D? Did you write it in English? I mean, good English?”

  “Of course I did! I know how to write in English!” I rush past her and into the hallway. Other students are making their way out, too, and I try to spot Donna or Pri in the crowd.

  “Look, I always get As on my papers. I can take a look at yours, if you want.”

  At first I don’t want Imani’s help—I want to write essays perfectly by myself. But then I realize that writing papers for Mr. Nolan is just another American system I need to game, as Pri would say. I never see Pri doing any schoolwork, but somehow she doesn’t fail her classes. And Donna doesn’t even carry a book bag. She takes a purse to school and I wonder what sort of magic she does to fit any books into it. Maybe Imani knows the answers. She always has a giant, heavy book bag as if she’s selling goods at the market.

  I stop and Imani almost bumps into me. “Yes,” I say. “Please. I don’t understand what Mr. Nolan wants. He says I’m a good writer, but I’m still doing something wrong.”

  “All right, let’s go somewhere and I’ll take a look at it. You can pay me back by getting me something to eat.”

  I don’t question why Imani always wants to make sure I’m okay, and offers to help me with my schoolwork. I’m only thankful; this is one door Papa Legba has opened for me—friendship
. Imani has big opinions about the world, and maybe she clings to me because I listen. I am amused by everything she says—McDonald’s food is really plastic, downtown Detroit will be all white in ten years, the government watches us through our cell phones. I only laugh when she tries to prove it by showing me an article or video on the internet. Maybe she and Kasim can be friends, too, because he likes to talk about the same things.

  I text Kasim for the address to the café. He always asks me to come see him, but I never wanted to have Chantal take me over. Now that I have a friend, I get to taste a slice of this Detroit freedom. But I still let Chantal know where I am and that Kasim will take me back home.

  Imani and I walk to the corner of our school’s block to catch the bus that goes down Vernor Highway. Once on the bus, I start to walk to the back, but Imani pulls my arm toward a seat next to her.

  “Always sit close to the bus driver,” she whispers.

  I think of the small tap-tap trucks in Port-au-Prince where Manman told me to sit near the back so I can jump out in case anything happens.

  “He’s your boyfriend, Fabiola?” Imani asks after I tell her that we’re going to see Kasim at his job.

  I shake my head. But the smile on my face tells a different answer.

  “Don’t lie to me. I’m trying to help you out. Now, since you’ll be meeting up with your boyfriend after school and all, this is the forty-nine bus and it goes down Vernor until you get to Twenty-First. Then you’re on Bagley. We’re gonna get off on Bagley and Walsh and walk to Michigan Avenue. Got it?”

  I take note of this bus and the places it passes. The streets are even wider here, and there don’t seem to be enough cars and enough people to fill up all the space. The sky stretches long and wide, and maybe this bus can go to the very edge of the world—or at least to my mother in New Jersey. I jump when Imani calls my name, and I don’t notice that fifteen minutes have gone by. Maybe she was talking all this time, but my mind was on the wide, endless roads.

  When we’re off the bus, we walk a few blocks to Kasim’s café and stand outside. We watch through the wide window as Kasim serves coffee behind the counter.