by Ibi Zoboi
Someone starts pulling my hair. It’s Tonesha. I’m fighting two girls now. And I hear everyone else around me with their “Oh, shit!” and “Fuck her up, Fabulous!” and “Where Pri at?”
Darkness. Not black, but red. Like blood from the deepest part of being alive. It pumps fire—hot, sizzling in the pit of my stomach. I want to destroy her. Destroy them. Destroy everything. I don’t even feel my fists pounding on faces, on bodies, the hair being pulled from my scalp, the fingernails across my own face, the pounding on my back. Maybe I punch concrete, too. I don’t know because the red is so hot it numbs me. Maybe I’m fighting the wind, this place called Detroit, my cousins and their walls, the prison that keeps my mother, my broken home country floating in the middle of a sinking sea. Then the hot red wraps its fiery hands around my throat, and I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
TWENTY-SIX
EVERYTHING HURTS—MY HEAD, my hands, my neck, my shoulders. My scalp, ears, and face burn, and Donna is pressing something cold against my forehead. I wish Pri and Donna would just shut up, but they’re cursing and asking me too many questions. I can’t understand anything they’re saying because the hot red color has cooled off and is now a dull pink that makes me just want to rest my pounding head and sleep.
“Fabiola,” someone says, and it’s not one of my cousins. It’s Ms. Stanley, the principal. “We’re going to have to speak with your aunt. She’ll need to come in next week after your suspension ends.”
“But Ms. Stanley, Tonesha instigated the whole thing,” Donna protests.
“That’s why she’s suspended for a whole week. And Fabiola only gets three days.”
“Oh, come on, Stan, it wasn’t even in school,” Pri says.
“You know better than that, Pri. If it involves two students within a few yards of the school, then fighting is grounds for suspension,” Ms. Stanley says.
Never in my life have I been suspended. And never in my life have I fought in or near school. My mother would beat me herself, then would have the mother of whoever I fought beat me, too. Then she would call my aunt so she can beat me with her words. So when we leave the school after I’m suspended for three days and we climb into Chantal’s car, I ask my cousins, “Is Matant Jo going to beat me?”
“What?” Pri asks. “Beat you? Girl, ain’t nobody getting abused at home for getting abused at school.”
“You have amnesia now, Pri?” Donna asks. “Second grade after you beat that girl up for taking your Dora the Explorer book bag, you almost got suspended. Ma tore that ass up!”
“Oh, yeah.”
“She stopped doing that at some point, though,” Donna says.
“Just like you think Dray will stop?” I ask. I didn’t mean to say that. But it just rolled out of my sore mouth.
“You know what? Maybe it’s a good thing that you just got fucked up,” Donna says. “And I know for a fact that Kasim isn’t cheating on you. Those girls were testing you.”
“And she passed the test, actually. Fab beat the shit outta those girls,” Pri says. “You were throwing punches like Mayweather, and going in on both of them . . . at the same time!”
“For real, Fab?” Chantal asks. “I think you’ve just been initiated. This just proves that you could hold your own. We’ve all been suspended for one reason or another. Welcome to the club, cuzz.”
“You were suspended, Chantal?” I ask.
“Bunch of stupid girls messing with me all the time. I couldn’t throw a solid punch, but I could sure swing my arms like the Tasmanian devil.”
Pri swings her arms around all crazy and it makes the car shake. They laugh except for me. I’m still in pain, but I swallow it.
“Were they hurt?” I ask. “Tonesha and Raquel?”
“Damn, Fabulous. Don’t you know the rules by now? Keep their name out your mouth. From now on, they’re known as Bitch Numero Uno and Bitch Numero Dos,” Pri says.
“No, I got one,” Donna adds. “Ugly Bitch and Uglier Bitch.”
They all laugh, including Chantal.
Donna is laughing so hard that she rolls down the passenger window to get some air.
“Fab, don’t think Ma is gonna let you off easy,” Chantal says. “When I got suspended, she made me clean every corner of the house. But as for school, I’m just gonna talk to Ms. Stanley so it doesn’t go on your record. She’s good with that, as long as you keep your grades up.”
“I don’t want to go to that school anymore. I want to use that tuition money to help my mother instead,” I say, quiet, quiet. “And I think you all can use that money, too.”
No one says anything, but Donna pulls out her compact mirror and she turns it so that she sees me in the reflection. I see her, too. Our eyes meet in that little mirror and all I can think of is my duty to her—Ezili-Danto, the vengeful one. But I will fight Donna, too, if she gets in my way, and if she gets in her own way.
“D? You feeling better? Enough to hit up this party next weekend?” Chantal asks.
Donna puts away the compact mirror. “Hell yeah,” she says. The swelling in her cheek has gone down and she’s mastered the art of hiding bruises on her face with makeup and extra hair extensions.
“What’s she gonna roll up in there with?” Pri says.
My ears are wide open now.
“I already got a plan,” Chantal says.
She pulls up to a curb in front of an abandoned building. The signs say that it used to be a church, then a liquor store. Or maybe the other way around. I’m not sure which came or ended first, the God or the sin. Chantal turns to me.
“What?” I ask.
“You know you’re the Fourth Bee now, right?” Chantal asks me.
“Okay,” I say. “What does that mean?”
“You’re in too deep,” Pri says. “Plus, you beat up a girl, and you got suspended. Not to mention you’re all up in our shit now. So you’re a Fourth Bee. You’re fam, for real.”
Pri holds out a fist to me. I don’t know what to do with it, so I just slap it.
“No, Fabulous. You’re supposed to give me a fist bump.”
So I give her the fist bump she asks for, then ask, “What party?”
“Them white kids over at the Park will pay for anything. . . . I was thinking, with all those pills Ma got . . . ,” Chantal begins.
“What park?” I interrupt. I want to know and understand everything if they want me to be the Fourth Bee.
“Grosse Pointe Park. Fabiola, just . . . just listen for now, okay? Anyway, I don’t want Q hanging this money we owe him over our heads. We’ve made that much before, and we can do it again with our eyes closed.”
“You’ve made twenty . . . ,” I start to ask, but Chantal sends knives at me with her eyes.
“But on one night, though?” Pri asks.
“No. It’s just something to do so that he can see we’re out here putting our asses on the line to get him his money back. Even if it’s not all of it, it’ll be something.”
I try to wrap my mind around how much twenty thousand dollars really is. It’s over a million dollars in Haitian gourdes, and my mother and I received that much and more from Matant Jo within a year for my tuition and living expenses. So I believe them when my cousins say they’ve made twenty thousand dollars already.
“So we’re gonna steal Ma’s pills?” Donna asks.
“She won’t even notice, D,” Pri says. “It’ll be good for her to get off them shits anyway.”
The drive back home is longer and quieter because Chantal doesn’t put on any music. Something heavy sits between me and my cousins. I wish I’d never found out about their drug dealing. I wish that the detective had never asked me for anything. I wish my mother had never been detained. I wish, I wish, I wish. Enough wishing. There is nothing else to do but to walk through the doors that are opening for me. But this one with my cousins is locked with a key. This is the information I could’ve given to Detective Stevens if it had been Dray doing the selling. But no. It’s
my cousins. My family. I won’t give them away like that. I would be giving myself away, too, because now, I’m the Fourth Bee.
I let my mind wander as I stare out the window. I notice how much wider the skies are in Detroit. There are no hills or mountains or valleys. In Haiti, behind the mountains are more mountains. But here, at the end of every road are more roads. And slowly, it seeps in—like water on a boat. I have an idea. It’s fuzzy at first. I sit up in my seat and find something to focus my eyes on so I can think. It begins to sharpen. It becomes clear.
“Well, did you kick her ass?” is all Matant Jo says when she finds out about the fight. She’s come out of her room just to hear all the details. She doesn’t yell at me; she doesn’t threaten to not pay my tuition, or send me back to Haiti.
“Hell yeah! Or else she wouldn’t be my cousin,” Pri answers for me.
“Still, fighting is not gonna solve anything,” Chantal says as she wraps a bag of frozen broccoli in paper towels for me to put on my forehead. “You want to be the kind of chick who no one even thinks of fighting.”
“I think she got the message loud and clear. No one fucks with the . . . what? The Four Bees!” Pri slaps my back so hard that I bite my tongue.
Now everything hurts even more.
I don’t eat anything and am stuck on the couch in front of the TV for the rest of the evening. Kasim texts me that he’s already heard about the fight. He’s working now and promises to call me when he gets out. But I fall into a deep, heavy sleep and my whole body simmers down, then cools, and I am myself again.
I ask Chantal to take me to Kasim’s job before she picks up Donna and Pri. It was the first day of my suspension and I’m beginning to feel less sore from the fight. I have to use this time to plan. I know exactly what I have to do.
“Make sure you bring some books with you,” Chantal says. “And don’t get him fired.”
I’m at a table by myself and Kasim has brought over a croissant and hot chocolate.
“I’m on my break, so I can chill with you for a hot minute,” he says, and takes a seat right in front of me.
I take a sip of the warm chocolate. “You never make it sweet enough,” I say.
He starts to get up to bring sugar to the table, but I grab his arm. “It’s okay. You’re enough sweetness for me.”
He laughs. “You want a corn muffin to go with that cocoa? ’Cause that was kinda corny, Fab.”
We’re quiet for a moment. Then he reaches over to touch my still-bruised face. “I heard you fucked up Tonesha and Raquel. Damn. Obviously they don’t know nothing about no Haitian revolution. Y’all don’t play when it comes to fighting.”
“That was not a revolution, Kasim. They were disrespecting me, and Raquel told me that she wanted to be with you,” I say.
He laughs. “For real, though, they were fucking with you. And you didn’t see how butt-ugly Raquel is? I have standards, Ms. Fabulous. There’s a bunch a girls out here who will pop off at the mouth just to get a reputation. She would’ve never stepped to Pri or Donna with that mess. Just ’cause you’re new and you got an accent and you’re cute, she thought she could fuck with you. And I swear, I’ll check both Tonesha and Raquel when I see them. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I grab his hand and bring it close to my face. “So is this real?” I ask.
“I don’t know. What’s real to you, Fabulous?”
“For one, my name is real.”
“All right, Fabiola Toussaint.” Then he takes my hand in his and breathes into it. The warmth travels up my whole arm. “You feel that? That’s real.” He leans in and kisses me on my sore cheek. It’s a mix of pain and sweetness, and I take his hand again and hold it near my face.
Before he leaves the table, he says that Dray will be dropping something off, then he has a surprise for me after he closes up. He kisses me on the lips.
I step outside so that he and his coworker can wipe the tables, mop the floor, clean the machines, and count out the register.
Dray’s white car is already parked at the curb.
It’s drizzling and cold. It feels like rain, but when the drops hit my face, they’re as sharp as needles. It’s raining ice. I stand there and make sure that Dray sees me with his one eye. But he doesn’t roll down the window to let me in. Soon, Kasim will be out. I need enough time with Dray alone, so I walk over to the white car and tap on the window. He unlocks the doors instead of rolling down the window. I open the door and step into the dark place. It smells like weed again, so I inhale to take in everything about this car, this Dray, this moment. Manman says that in order for the lwas to help us, we sometimes have to embody them, let them mount us so they take over our thoughts. We become them so that we can move as they would move.
Maybe I am a little bit like Baron Samedi now, so I ask, “You have some weed?”
Dray laughs. “Some weed? Why don’t you ask your man to hook you up with some weed?”
“He doesn’t know I smoke,” I say.
“Oh, you trying to hide shit from your man, now? Don’t do that. That’s how me and Donna got into this mess we’re in now.”
I think of bringing up Imani and how he hits Donna, but I don’t. That door will lead to somewhere different. I know exactly where I want to go, so I say, “There’s a lot of shit I hide from my man.”
He laughs. “Yo, shorty. You for real? I’m the wrong person you need to be saying that to. Kasim is my boy.” He pulls something out from a little compartment between the seats.
“So. Donna is my cousin. What happens between you and her is your business. But you have to leave my friend alone. Imani doesn’t want you.”
“But that’s between me and Imani, though.”
“No, it’s not. If you try to bring Imani into this, then it’s you, Donna, and Imani.”
“Yeah, and ain’t no Fabulous up in that mix, either. So what are we, in junior high school now? Imani can’t speak up for herself?”
“She’s scared that Donna will want to fight her. Imani is not that kind of girl.”
“And that’s what I like about her,” he says.
“And that’s why you should leave her alone. She doesn’t want any trouble and she doesn’t want you. Or else she will tell everybody that you won’t leave her alone when you already have a girlfriend. You don’t want your business out in these streets, right?”
“Oh, I like how you think. Now, you need to convince your other cousins to mind their own business.” He hands me the marijuana. It’s the length of my pinky finger, and smaller than my mother’s cigars.
“Don’t tell Kasim,” I say.
“Why not? Kasim wouldn’t mind, trust me.” He pulls out a lighter from his coat pocket.
I let him light my weed or cigar, whichever it is, because I can’t tell anyway. I’ve tried cigarettes before, but would never try one of my mother’s cigars during a ceremony for fear that one of the lwas would mount me by mistake. I bring it to my lips, pull in the smoke, inhale, and let it out. I watch as the swirl of cloudy curlicues dance before me.
“Damn, you’re sexy,” Dray says, almost whispering.
I glance toward the windows of the café. They’re fogged, so I can’t see what Kasim is doing now. Still, time is moving and I’ve only got the key in the door. “I like your eye patch. You remind me of someone I know back home.”
“Oh, yeah. An old boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “He used to help me out a lot.” I inhale again, tilt my head back, and exhale.
Dray reaches over and brushes my cheek with his knuckle. “You’re smoking that joint like an OG. I like that.” Then he turns his whole body to me. “Fabulous, what the fuck were you doing at my house that day?”
“Your house?”
“Q’s. My spot.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” I say. My throat and the inside of my nose start to tingle, but I try my best to hide it. I give him back the weed. “I need money, Dray.”
“Oh, shit
. What you got in mind?” He takes a hit from the joint, rolls the window down, and flicks it out onto the street. Then he scoots over to get closer to me.
“No, not that kind of money,” I say, moving closer to the door. “My mother is in trouble. I need money to pay a lawyer.”
“Why don’t you ask your crazy-ass cousins? Matter of fact, your even crazier-ass aunt.”
“I don’t want them to know. My mother is being detained in New Jersey. She wants to give up and go back to Haiti. My aunt wants her to go back, too. She says there are no jobs in Detroit, so what’s the point?”
“She ain’t lying.”
“But I want her here with me. I need her here with me. I want her to meet Kasim. I really, really like him.”
“Can’t help you with that, sweetheart. I don’t know what makes you think I look like a fucking bank.”
“That guy I said you remind me of? Zoe Pound,” I lie.
“Zoe Pound? That Haitian gang down in Miami? What you know about that, Miss Fabulous?” He is turned to me fully now. The lock on the door has clicked open.
“I know a lot about that. And they are everywhere. Miami, New York, Boston. Some other places I’ve never heard of. But not in Detroit.”
“Damn right not in Detroit. Them niggas would have a whole lot of competition.” He eases back in his seat and looks behind me toward the café.
“My friend Baron, he is a big, big shot in Zoe Pound. He helped me and my mother a lot. But he can’t do anything now that I’m on this side. But I need to help him, make some connections for him.”
“First it’s money, now it’s connections. Just spit it out, Fabulous.” He moves his hand closer to me, but I don’t move my leg.
“I know you sell drugs, Dray. I know some rich kids like to buy drugs at parties. It’s the same way in Haiti. I heard some girls at my school talking about a party in Grosse Pointe Park. Do you know about it?”