American Street

by Ibi Zoboi

  Pri and Donna come over to the bleacher seats in front of us. I glance at Imani to make sure she’s okay because Donna sits right in front of her and tosses her fake hair back so hard that it hits Imani’s knees. Without thinking, I gently shove Donna’s head and say, “Excuse you!”

  She turns around and asks, “What?”

  “Your hair hit Imani,” I say.

  Donna glances at her and says, “Oh, did it? My bad,” and tosses her hair so that it hits Imani again.

  I’m about to tap Donna, but Imani stops me, shakes her head, and mouths, “It’s not worth it.”

  Pri is sitting next to a girl and they laugh and talk as if they are more than friends. I wonder if this is Taj. I tap Pri on the shoulder, and when she turns, I motion toward the girl.

  “Oh, Taj, this is my cousin, Fabulous,” she says. “Fab, this is Taj.” Pri is a little different—the edge in her voice is gone as if she is smoothing out everything about herself to impress this girl.

  Taj turns to shake my hand. Her whole face smiles. “Nice to meet you, Fabulous,” she says. “I heard a lot about you.”

  They look good together and I can’t help but wonder why Donna has not had the same taste in picking out a good boyfriend. I shake the thought of Dray from my mind because I want to enjoy my friends and this basketball game, but I spot Kasim waving to us from the bottom of the bleachers. I smile big and bright and wave back. I can’t hide it. I really am happy to see him. Soon, he’s trying to make his way up past the crowded seats to get to where we are. I ask Imani to scoot over, and when I look back up, I see Dray coming up with Kasim.

  I tap Donna and point in their direction. She doesn’t do or say anything.

  Dray, with his eye patch and gold cross, holds his hands out and calls Donna’s name. “You gonna leave me hanging like this?” he says.

  Other people shush him and tell him to get out of the way.

  “Yo, mind y’all fucking business!” he yells to no one and everyone. “Ay yo, Donna?”

  “I’m not talking to you, Dray,” Donna says by the time Kasim is seated between me and Imani.

  “Donna, he just wants to talk to you,” he says. I nudge him. He shouldn’t get involved, and if he is, he should be on my side and on Donna’s side. But I don’t say this to him.

  Two girls get up from next to Donna to make room for Dray. They end up standing by the bleacher steps. Dray doesn’t even sit down when he comes over to us, and he blocks me, Kasim, and the people in the rows behind us.

  “If this don’t show you that I love you and that I’m sorry, then I don’t know what will.” He pulls something out of his coat pocket. It’s a little red box.

  Donna doesn’t even look his way.

  “If you don’t take it, I will!” someone nearby shouts. And everyone laughs.

  Dray ignores them. And Donna ignores him. Until he gets down on one knee in that narrow space between the bleacher seats. Dray grabs Donna’s hand and kisses it. “I love you,” he says.

  And maybe I buy into everything he’s selling because I can see how his one eye is almost welling up with tears.

  “Don’t do it, Donna, don’t do it,” Pri says through clenched teeth. “Just remember what that nigga did to your face.” Her leg is shaking and she keeps her fists balled up as if she’s holding everything in. She tries to smile around Taj and is trying hard not to let Dray unravel her. Or else she would’ve been in his face already, I’m sure. Dray opens the box and it’s a pendant. And as if everyone in the gymnasium has set their eyes on the little, bright diamond, they all stand up to cheer. I soon realize that it isn’t the pendant that makes them cheer; someone on our team has scored a basket.

  “Damn, I ain’t even see that shit ’cause of this nigga’s big-ass head!” someone behind us says.

  “Yo, what the fuck did you just say?” Dray is standing up now, looking behind us.

  No one answers him except for Donna, who is trying to get him to sit down.

  But Dray is too busy looking for the person who said he has a big-ass head to notice that Donna is trying to take the box from him.

  “Who the fuck said that?” he yells at everybody.

  No one answers him.

  “Kasim, find the bitch who said it and bring her over here.”

  Kasim looks around and I tug at the sleeve of his coat. I can’t believe he is ready to do whatever Dray says, but before I can say so, Donna speaks. “Are you serious, Dray? You come all the way out here to give me this cheap-ass jewelry and say how much you’re sorry and how much you love me, and then you’re gonna turn around and start beefin’ with other people?” she says.

  “I didn’t come out here to get disrespected,” Dray says.

  “Well, you’re disrespecting me. You stay disrespecting me.”

  Then Dray is back down on his knee and grabs Donna’s hand. I can tell by her face that she’s buying it. Donna is under Dray’s spell again. And Pri knows it, too, because she finally stands up and turns Donna around.

  “I swear, I will cut you off if you let that nigga get to you,” she says.

  Donna puts a hand in Pri’s face and says, “I got this, Pri.”

  Dray eases closer to Donna and leans in toward her. He whispers something—sweet things, maybe. Donna is slowly surrendering. I can see it in her body, how her shoulders come down, how her hand moves toward Dray’s hand. He’s still saying things to her—putting her under his spell. So I call out her name to snap her out of his spell. “Donna!”

  She turns to me. “What, Fabulous?” But Dray starts pulling her down the bleacher steps.

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to tell her not to go with him—to break it off for good so she can be free. And maybe, for a moment, I hope that Dray means it this time—that he’s really sorry and he loves her and he won’t hurt her anymore. There’s nothing else to do but to hold on to that hope. But I know it’s a lie that I’m telling myself. It’s a lie that Donna is telling herself, too.

  Donna and Dray leave the gym. Pri watches them, still with her leg shaking. Then she turns to me and our eyes meet. She shakes her head. I shake my head and shrug. It’s the first time we both understand each other without even exchanging a single word. Then something in her eyes softens when Taj touches her shoulder. Pri stops shaking her leg and turns back to Taj and the game. Cooler now, almost liquid.

  I’m pulled back into this game, to my friends, and to Kasim when he says, “How many times I gotta tell you not to worry about them? They’re doing their thing.”

  “You think that is love?” I ask.

  “He loves her. Trust me. I know. But we won’t have that kind of love.”

  Then right there, right in the middle of the bleachers for all my friends and schoolmates to see, he kisses me on the lips, for a long time. If Dray and Donna’s love is like a tornado—wild, dangerous, and unpredictable—then this thing between me and Kasim is like the ocean—deep, deep, and as wide as the endless earth.

  I can’t sleep because Donna has not come home yet. I’m in that sleep-wake place when I hear Bad Leg. Papa Legba has another riddle for me. My ears are wide open while my eyes stay shut. Chantal’s light snoring keeps me from hearing every single word, but it’s a song I remember from months ago—one of Bad Leg’s very first riddles, before I realized he was Papa Legba.

  Maybe it has been a few hours, or only a few minutes, but I’m forced back into that sleep-wake space by the sound of a man yelling. The words are hard and come fast. Shut the fuck up, old man! Mind your fucking business! I sit up on the air mattress. My head is still fuzzy, my eyes are sticky. Chantal is still asleep. You don’t know what the fuck you talking about! the voice shouts. I recognize it. So I rush to the window. I see the white car. I see the top of a girl’s head standing in front of the house—Donna. I see Dray standing over Bad Leg, who’s just sitting on the bucket. Dray shoves his head.

  “Was it you all this time? Huh, Bad Leg? You sittin’ here pretending you’re crazy and shi
t . . . ,” Dray yells.

  I don’t think. I’m out of bed, out of the room, and down the stairs in an instant. I hear more shouting from Dray, but I can’t hear his words from the living room. I don’t even put on a coat. I just open the front door. Donna is there and she quickly turns to me. Her tears are glistening on her cheeks.

  “You working with the cops, Bad Leg? You a fucking snitch, man?”

  I don’t step out because Dray’s words working with the cops are like a giant brick wall that’s been placed in front of me. I was going to help Bad Leg. I was going to beg him to become Papa Legba again and disappear. But I don’t want Dray to see me now. I don’t have any words for him.

  So I whisper to Donna, “Come inside.”

  She shakes her head and looks toward Dray, who kicks the bucket that Bad Leg is sitting on. The old man is as still as the lamppost above him. Then Dray shoves him in the head.

  “Dray!” Donna calls out.

  A light from someone’s window across the street comes on. A dog starts barking. Dray steps away from Bad Leg. But instead of walking over to Donna, he gets back into his car and drives away.

  “Come in, Donna!” I whisper again so I don’t wake Matant Jo.

  I pull her in. When we’re inside, she rushes into the kitchen and heads straight for the freezer. She takes out a pack of frozen peas, wraps it in paper towels, and puts it on her cheek. I turn on the light. She comes over and turns it back off as I try to pull her hand and the frozen peas away from her face, but she doesn’t let me.

  “I’m gonna tell Pri,” I whisper.

  She moves the peas away from her face. I can’t see anything, so I take her hand, walk her to the fridge, and open its door so I can see with the light from there. The left side of her cheek is red and swollen with still-bleeding scratch marks. It’s from Dray’s fist and hands. The scratches let me know that Donna was fighting back.

  I pull her in and hug her. I hold her for a long time in the dark kitchen.

  “You have the battle wounds of Ezili-Danto,” I whisper into her ear. “She is a warrior.”

  “I fight back,” she says.

  “No, you are not a fighter. You are Ezili’s child—the lover. The beauty. Leave him alone. I will fight for you, Donna. I will fight this battle for you.” I kiss her on her head and rub her back as she cries and cries.

  Then she says, “Please don’t tell my sisters.”

  “I won’t have to. They will see for themselves.”

  My cousins are hurting. My aunt is hurting. My mother is hurting. And there is no one here to help. How is this the good life, when even the air in this place threatens to wrap its fingers around my throat? In Haiti, with all its problems, there was always a friend or a neighbor to share in the misery. And then, after our troubles were tallied up like those points at the basketball game, we would celebrate being alive.

  But here, there isn’t even a slice of happiness big enough to fill up all these empty houses, and broken buildings, and wide roads that lead to nowhere and everywhere. Every bit of laughter, every joyous moment, is swallowed up by a deep, deep sadness. This is what happens to Matant Jo, who is back in her dark room again. This is what happens to Chantal when she studies so hard and she still has to find ways to pay for school. This is what happens to Donna, who doesn’t seem to know the difference between love and hurt. And Pri just fights the choking air. She fights everything.

  And in the middle of all this is Dray. And his uncle Q. One I can’t handle; the other I can do something about.

  So that night, a rage builds up inside me. I am hot red. I am burning coals. I am a sharp dagger and Scotch bonnet peppers in rum—Ezili-Danto’s favorite things. But this is only a wish because my mother—the powerful mambo—is not here with her songs and prayers and drums and offerings to make it so. But soon she will. I will make it so that at the very tip of my dagger will be Dray’s blood. I have to cut him out of my cousin’s life for good.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IMANI GOT A C on her paper. She didn’t care that I saw her essay when Mr. Nolan put it on her desk. Like me, her hair and clothes are different than they were a few weeks ago. But not in the same way. She wears a big sweater over her uniform and a long coat that almost covers her legs. Her hair isn’t combed and she doesn’t even put lip gloss on. It’s like she doesn’t care how she looks anymore. So I ask after class when we’re in the girls’ bathroom, “What happened? I thought this was your best class?”

  She shrugs. “I just wasn’t feeling this paper, that’s all.”

  “What? You wasn’t feeling this paper? I don’t feel a lot of the papers or the homework, but I still do it. And I get a good grade. You helped me, so I have to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help, Fabiola.” She’s washing her hands at the sink and doesn’t even look into the mirror like all the other girls do.

  “Okay. So why don’t you come to my house one day?” I ask. I miss laughing and joking with her and Daesia and Tammie. I’ve been spending so much time with my cousins, and thinking about my mother, that I could use some good laughs. Imani would make me forget my problems, but only for a little bit.

  “If I go to your house, then that means that I would have to get a ride from your cousins, and I am not getting in no car with no Three Bees, I mean, Four Bees. Stop trying to make me the Fifth Bee.”

  “We can take the bus. And we don’t have to be in the same room as my cousins,” I try to convince her.

  “Look,” Imani starts to say. But she waits for the last girl to leave the bathroom. “I don’t want no drama, but you have to promise not to tell your cousins.”

  I erase the hopeful smile from my face and step closer to her. “I promise. You are my friend. Now, what happened?”

  She picks up her bag from the floor, opens it, and takes out a plastic bag. She pulls out a dress—a black one, shiny, too small, and too tight probably. “Nice,” I say, even though I can’t picture her wearing something like that.

  “No. Not nice,” she says. “Fabiola, this was at my front door in a gift box with a note and flowers. I was so glad I got to it before my mother did. She would’ve kicked my ass!”

  “You have a lover, Imani?”

  “Dang, you’re so dumb!” she says.

  “Hey! Tell me what you are saying. I don’t understand.”

  She takes something else out of her bag. A card. She hands it to me. It reads, Can’t wait to see you in this, Gorgeous. Dray.

  “What?” I shout. “When did you get this?”

  Imani shushes me. “Please don’t tell anybody. I don’t wanna start no mess. I just need him to leave me alone.”

  “How is he going to leave you alone if I don’t tell Donna? You saw what he did at that game, right? Did he send you this before or after?”

  “It was like a few days ago, before the game. I thought he’d leave me alone since he got back with Donna. But he keeps texting me.”

  “Let me see,” I say, reaching my hand out for her phone.

  “Are you kidding me? I deleted everything. I don’t want no trouble!”

  She takes her book bag and walks out of the bathroom.

  I chase her out. “I will make him stop,” I say. “I promise he won’t bother you.”

  “How?” she says. “He thinks just because he has all this drug money, and a nice car, and all these friends who will do whatever he says, that he can have whatever girl he wants. You go ’head and try to stop that. He might come for you, too. He probably has.”

  “I promise I’ll help you, Imani. I got this.”

  I stick to Imani, Daesia, and Tammie as they walk down the block toward the nearby bus stop on Vernor and Campbell. Most of the kids from our school wait there.

  Pri texts me.

  I tell her I’m at the bus stop.

  She says she’s coming.

  I hear someone calling my name, and I think it’s her or Donna. But when I turn around, I see Tonesha with five other girls approaching the bus stop.
>
  “Oh, shit!” Tammie whispers.

  “That’s her right there,” Tonesha says to the girl walking next to her.

  The other girl is about my height, my weight, and has on all black. She’s wearing a hood that covers most of her face.

  “Hey, Fabulous! This is my cousin Raquel. Y’all can talk about Kasim, woman to woman,” Tonesha says.

  This Raquel doesn’t say anything.

  So I say, “Okay. . . .”

  “You messin’ with Kasim?” Raquel finally asks.

  “Yes, he’s my boyfriend,” I say, and wish that I knew a cooler word than boyfriend.

  “And did you call my cousin a bitch?” Raquel gets closer to me.

  “She called me a bitch, too!” I shout. “And she had an attitude!”

  “No, you have a fucking attitude. So I’ma call you a bitch, then.” She steps closer to my face. “And I don’t care who your fucking cousins are. The Three Bees aren’t here to save you. You started this shit. So let’s squash it right here, right now.”

  “Keep my cousins’ mouth out of your name!” I shout. I’ve heard my cousins say this, but it’s the first time that I’ve tried to wrap this curse around my tongue and I say it all wrong.

  Tonesha and Raquel and their three friends laugh at me. I hear the kids around the bus stop giggle, too.

  I try again. “Keep my cousins’ name out of your mouth, bitch!”

  Tonesha is the first to step closer to me. “Yo, call me a bitch one more fucking time and see if I don’t drag you across this sidewalk just like Dray be dragging your cousin with her cheap-ass weave all over Detroit. Go ’head. Try me.”

  “And you could keep Kasim and his broke ass,” Raquel says. She moves her head so much that it looks like it will fall off. She’s so close to my face that I can smell today’s lunch on her breath. So the first thing I do is put my hand in her face. She slaps it away.

  With that, I am hot red again. I am burning coals. I am a sharp dagger and Scotch bonnet peppers in rum. I am a volcano. I am Ezili-Danto. Everything—Haiti, my mother, my cousins, my aunt, the house, school, Kasim, the detective, Dray, America—comes to a boil: sizzling and popping and oozing hot, red lava. I clench my fist and punch her in the face. She punches me back. Then the punches come fast and hard. I’ve been here before—fighting when someone tries to steal my money, fighting when someone tries to cheat my mother out of her money, fighting jealous girls, fighting boys off me, fighting men off my mother. Fighting. Fighting. Fighting.