American Street

by Ibi Zoboi

  TWENTY-NINE

  “NOW DON’T GO following him around like a sad puppy,” Chantal says as she’s typing on her laptop.

  “What? No way!” I say. I try not to giggle, because I feel guilty that Chantal knows.

  “I know you’re not. But if I’m right about Kasim, he’s the one who’ll be following you around like a sad puppy.”

  “He’s coming over soon. He’s bringing pizza. Want some?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Chantal says.

  “Why don’t you have a boyfriend, Chantal?” I finally ask, because Donna is still in love with Dray and Pri likes Taj.

  “Like I said, thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Is it true? You would make love to a book?”

  “Yep.” But she can’t hold back her laugh. “For real, though, I hope you never end up in a place where you feel ugly.”

  “Feel ugly? Somebody told you that?”

  “No one had to tell me, I just felt it. And don’t give me no ‘but you’re beautiful on the inside’ bullshit.”

  “No, you are beautiful on the outside,” I say.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, either. I’m beautiful when I say I’m beautiful. Let me own that shit,” she says. Her eyes have not left the computer screen this whole time, but I know she’s paying attention to everything I say.

  “Okay, then you are ugly.”

  “Thanks for being honest.”

  “Seriously. That’s what we say in Haiti. Nou led, men nou la. We are ugly, but we are here.”

  “We are ugly, but we are here,” she says, almost whispering. “I hear that.”

  Chantal goes back to her typing and I stand in front of the dresser mirror with a pair of scissors. I’m ready to cut out this stupid weave. But I don’t know where the fake hair starts and my real hair ends. So I call for Donna. In an instant, she’s in the room with her own pair of scissors.

  “You can’t just cut it. That’s one hundred percent human hair,” she says.

  Soon, I’m on the bed as she carefully cuts out the strings that were used to sew the fake hair into my cornrows. When she’s done, I’m so relieved to have my head back that I scratch my scalp for a whole ten minutes. I have to hurry up and wash my hair and get dressed before Kasim gets here.

  I text him for an exact time, then get into the shower. My body feels brand-new. Every part of me is open and ready to let the world in. I use all of Donna’s soaps that smell and look like cake. I spray on her perfumes—I can’t decide which one I like best, so I use all of them. My hair is back to normal, and while it’s wet, it sits high and round on my head. I use some moisturizing cream to gather it all up, brush it, and pin it into a neat bun. My scars from the fight are fading now, but my face still looks different. Older, maybe. Wiser, definitely.

  I check my phone.

  8:00 p.m.

  Kasim has not texted back. I don’t want to seem like a sad puppy, so I don’t send a text, either. Back in the room, I stare into the mirror again. I like this me better. No fake hair, no thick makeup, just my clean, simple face and my bun.

  I settle on a pair of gray sweatpants because it will be a cozy TV night on the couch. I wear one of Donna’s sweaters and notice that the neckline is wider than usual. It’s meant to slide off one shoulder. So I let it do that. One shoulder is naked and sexy. I add some oil. Maybe he will kiss me there.

  9:00 p.m.

  He should’ve been here by now, or at least called or texted. So I type in, Hey? and a sad face. I send it.

  I want to take it back because that sad face is the sad puppy I’m not supposed to be. I think of something else to text. Music comes on downstairs. So I type, Party at the Four Bees house! You coming? and a happy face. I send it.

  I pull out a book from Chantal’s shelf to read—something about a brown girl who wants blue eyes. Chantal passes me a bag of potato chips. I don’t take any. I want to eat the pizza Kasim brings.

  10:00 p.m.

  Fab, I won’t be coming tonight.

  Are you okay?

  Just got some business I need to handle right quick.

  It’s so late. You working?

  Maybe I could hit you up after I’m done. Will you be up?

  I’m going to sleep. I will talk to you tomorrow.

  Cool. Can’t wait to see your face again.

  I leave him alone to his business, throw the phone on my mattress. I grab Chantal’s bag of potato chips and look through Kasim’s last text. I read the line Just got some business to handle right quick over and over again.

  What business would Kasim have tonight anyway? Tonight is the night of the party. Tonight is when Dray is supposed to go and sell those pills. I shake the thought from my head, but now that the thought is here, I cannot shake it away.

  I quickly run out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

  Pri is still on the couch watching TV. I grab her coat from the closet and throw it on. The cold wind almost knocks me off my feet when I open the front door. Chantal is right behind me, but she just stands in the doorway.

  “Fab,” she says. “Why are you running out of here? Where you going?”

  I ignore her. When I reach the corner, Bad Leg is there, thank goodness. He looks different. He’s all dressed up in a black suit and bow tie. And sunglasses. He’s wearing sunglasses just like Dray.

  “Papa Legba,” I say, and pull the coat’s hood up over my head. “Did everything go as planned? Eh, Papa Legba? Did everything happen the way it should?”

  When Papa Legba speaks, my legs begin to shake:

  Cupid’s bow and arrow

  aimed straight for the heart.

  Tears shed from sorrow

  tearing everything apart.

  I take slow steps back to the house as Bad Leg sings this song while laughing and coughing and starting the song over again.

  “Fabiola, get in the house! It’s cold as fuck out here!” Pri yells from the doorway. Chantal is standing next to her.

  “What’s going on, Fab?” Chantal asks. “Why are you running to Bad Leg?”

  I come in and close the door behind me. Cupid, arrow, heart, apart.

  “What’s wrong with your face?” Pri asks. “You look like you’ve just seen a zombie.”

  Donna comes to the door to see what’s wrong.

  I check my phone. Kasim has not texted again. So I call him.

  No answer.

  “Fabiola?” Chantal says. “What’s going on? Why you acting all crazy?”

  I call again. No answer.

  “Donna, where is Dray?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” she says.

  “Can you call him, please?” I’m out of breath. My heart is a heavy bass. My stomach is a slow-burning fire pit now.

  “Why?” Donna asks.

  “Yeah, why, Fabiola? Why do you want her to call Dray right now?” Chantal asks.

  “Is he at that party? I need to know if he’s at that party.” I can’t get all the words out right. My body wants to do something else besides be in this house. I go back into the room and start to look for another sweater.

  “What party?” Chantal asks. “The one in Grosse Pointe? Why would he be at that party, Fabiola?”

  “Yeah, why would he be at that party?” Pri asks.

  Pri is repeating everything Chantal is saying and it’s driving me crazy. I want to yell “shut up.” But I don’t want to say another word.

  So I call Kasim again. Nothing.

  Chantal grabs me by the shoulders. “Fabiola, why would Dray be at that party? Why do you keep calling Kasim? And why are you talking crazy?”

  They all surround me now, and I’m about to explode.

  “What did you do, Fabiola?” Chantal asks, with her eyes and her lips trembling.

  Chantal drives so fast that I can’t even stand to look out the window. I’m in the passenger seat and I keep my head down on the dashboard, and for a good ten minutes, I forget to put on my seat belt. Their voices beat on me—po
unding and pounding. I explain everything—Manman, the detective, what I told Dray. Pri wanted to punch me. She was so close, she was right there in my face—she could have. She didn’t. But she called me every single dirty name she could think of. Chantal is as quiet as death. My head is spinning. Everything is spinning and moving so fast that it makes me sick to my stomach.

  My cousins hate me now.

  “I’m gonna call him,” Donna says really quiet.

  “Don’t fucking call him, D,” Pri says.

  “What if he’s there with Kasim? They’ll both get locked up.”

  “Dray is not stupid. He’s not going anywhere near the Park. You know that. Too bad she couldn’t figure that out.” Pri kicks the back of my seat.

  “And even if he was there, he’d know better than to have anything on him,” Chantal says. She’s been calm, even as she speeds and swerves around cars on the highway.

  “So that leaves Kasim. You hear that, Fabulous?” Pri leans toward my seat and yells, “Your man is gonna get locked up ’cause of your dumb ass!”

  “Pri, calm down and sit back,” Chantal hisses.

  I want to remember Papa Legba’s words now, but it all starts to feel and sound crazy. I need a prayer, a song, but everything now is too real—just as it was during the earthquake in Haiti. Even as people threw their heads back and screamed to God for help, the concrete and dust kept falling. That’s how it is now. If I were to call on God and my lwas, would they hear me? Would they see me in this speeding car holding my head and stomach and begging that Kasim is not arrested?

  Something hits me as Chantal exits the highway and the car slows down. Mesi, mesi, mesi, I say to myself, to my lwas, to God. I don’t have my phone, so I ask to borrow Chantal’s.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The detective.”

  “Nope! Hell no! You fucking kidding me?” they say all at once.

  “I will tell her not to arrest Kasim. She knows he’s not Dray. It’s Dray she wanted.”

  “Is that what you wanted? You wanted Dray to get locked up so you could get your mother?” Donna asks.

  I close my eyes and hang my head low because I’ve betrayed her. Even with everything that Dray has done to her, she still loves him. So betraying Dray was like betraying Donna.

  “Yo, I cannot believe this bitch here!” Pri says.

  “She will listen to me. She will not arrest Kasim. And Dray won’t be there for her to arrest him,” I say softly, trying to satisfy Donna.

  “Fabiola! Do not talk to the detective. Do not talk to cops. Do not talk to lawyers. That’s just how it is out here. That’s code. No more snitching!” Chantal says. Her voice is louder and harder.

  I shrink. I am small. I am nothing now. Where have you taken me, Papa Legba? What is this gate you have opened? I try to make sense of everything Chantal was trying to explain to me back in the house. If Kasim is selling for Dray, he will still get hit with the charge, as she said. And the cops will only get to Dray if Kasim snitches.

  The houses are bigger here—the lights on their lawns, walkways, and porches are brighter. The Christmas decorations are on the roofs and all over the wide and tall trees that tower over the curving roads. This must be the place where dreams rest their heads. I want to press my forehead against the window to get a better view of the houses, but it’s dark and I’m still shrunken in my seat.

  Until lights pour into the car—spinning blue and red siren lights from the police cars and ambulances. My insides sink.

  “What’s the kid’s name, Donna? The one throwing the party,” Chantal asks as she slows down the car.

  “Bryan Messner. Is this Buckingham Road?” Donna asks.

  Chantal looks up at her phone that’s stuck to the dashboard. “Yep. Shit. It’s hot out here. Cops are all over the place.”

  “We can’t be anywhere around this party with all these cops, Chant,” Pri says. “Let’s just go home.”

  Chantal parks the car far away from the swirling lights in the distance. “No, hold up. If Kasim is still there and nothing went down, we’ll take him home with us. Let’s just wait it out,” she says.

  But I don’t want to wait it out. I want to run out of the car and toward those lights, so I unlock the door. But Chantal grabs my arm. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Why don’t I go?” Donna asks.

  “So they could be like, ‘That’s the bitch who sold me the bad pills’?” Pri says. “See? We can’t even get into the party, so now what?”

  “I’m calling Dray,” Donna says.

  “So he could figure out that your cousin set him up?” Pri says. “And find out that we went to Q behind his back.”

  I’m tired of listening to them talk. So I open the car door, step out, and slam it shut behind me.

  “Fab, where you going?” I hear, but I keep going.

  Everything in my body feels tight and heavy as I walk away from the car, as if my skin and bones know that something is not right. I hear a car door slam shut behind me.

  “All right, look,” Chantal says when she reaches me. “We’re gonna pretend we’re going to the party. Okay? Don’t ask for Kasim. Don’t even mention his name. Let him see us first so that he’s surprised and it looks like a coincidence that we’re there.”

  I agree, and we walk down the street arm in arm—like a united front. This is how me and my mother would walk the streets of Port-au-Prince at night. If anybody wanted to take on one of us, they’d have to take on both of us. But we are not in Port-au-Prince. We are in Grosse Pointe Park. The air is lighter here, like how the air is freer in the rich hills of Petionville. But this dark free air feels dangerous, as if it knows we’re not supposed to be here, that we don’t belong here.

  I want to say sorry to Chantal. I want to ask her why, with all that money, they never bought a house here. I want to ask her why, with her all her brains, is she selling drugs. I want to talk, to sing, to take my mind off what I may have done to Kasim. But we’re getting closer to the swirling lights. They hurt our eyes, so we both raise our hands to shield our faces.

  There are people everywhere. We come closer to a car with the word POLICE stretched out wide across its side in big blue letters. A cop is approaching us. My stomach tightens and I squeeze Chantal’s hand.

  “Young ladies, you can’t come here,” the cop says.

  “We’re going to Bryan’s party,” Chantal explains. Her voice and words are different again. I’m not sure if she is answering the cop or asking for permission.

  “Party’s over. You live around here?”

  “Yeah. Over on Three Mile Drive. We walked here.”

  “Three Mile Drive, huh?” He looks us up and down as if we are dirty. “Let me see some ID.”

  “Okay,” Chantal says, and digs into her jean pocket. “It’s my high school ID from University Liggett. I don’t have anything with my address on it. Did something happen over there?” Chantal says with her soft, easy voice.

  The police officer looks at the ID card and then at Chantal and back at the card. He hands her the ID and motions for us to turn back around. “Go home, girls. Party’s over and there’s nothing for you to see here.”

  “Okay, thank you, officer.” Chantal takes my hand and starts to walk back.

  I take a few steps with her toward the car, but something tugs at my insides. I can’t go back home. I have to know what happened with Kasim. This is all my fault, and there’s something back at that party that I have to fix.

  I pull away from Chantal and run. I run past the cop. I run toward the blue and red siren lights. I run toward the crowd of teenagers.

  “Hey! Hey! Stop! Stop!” the cop’s booming voice shouts behind me.

  But I don’t stop.

  I hear Chantal calling my name. But I don’t stop.

  I only slow down when I reach the crowd. My heart races. The air around me isn’t enough. I can’t breathe. Something is wrong. I can feel it.

  Then I see her. Detective Stevens is
standing right there, a few feet away. Her eyes are stuck on me as if she can’t believe that it’s me, that I’m here.

  She opens her mouth to say something, but she stops. Then she starts again, “Fabiola . . .”

  Behind her, I catch a glimpse of cops unraveling a long stretch of yellow ribbon with the word CAUTION. The word goes around the whole ribbon and reminds me of one of Papa Legba’s warnings: Beware the lady all dressed in brown. The word beware echoes in my mind as Chantal pulls me away from Detective Stevens.

  CAUTION. Beware. CAUTION. Beware.

  Again, I run. I run past the detective. I run between the people standing around the yellow tape—some whispering, some covering their mouths, others shaking their heads. I push them out of the way because that yellow tape is like a magnet. I’m pulled to it because there is something there. I know it. I just know it.

  The first thing I see is a white sheet. I remember seeing this before. The earthquake. White sheets. Bodies. White sheets over bodies. A sea of white sheets. A mountain of bodies.

  But here, there is only one white sheet. And one body.

  I feel as if something is rising out of the earth. But the ground doesn’t shift. It’s my bones that are quaking. My knees are weak. I’m closer to the white sheet—to the body. And I know.

  I know that body.

  It’s Kasim.

  It’s Kasim’s body under that white sheet.

  I fall to the ground.

  I become the earth and I crack on the inside. The fault line spreads and reaches my heart.

  I am the one broken now.

  Kasim means “divided amongst many” in Arabic.