twelve months after that. If Frisner had not left for the United States, there would have been more proof swelling up Manman’s belly. But he stayed away. We did not see him again for almost a decade.
* * *
Nine years and nine months later, we received an appointment to see the consul at the American Embassy—for the thirteenth time. The man behaved as if he could not wait to scribble his name on the documents in Manman’s hands.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You and your children can be reunited with Mr. Desormeau at long last!”
Within days we were following Manman on a slippery tarmac bordered with mounds of snow. Frozen rain slapped our faces, causing Manman’s eye shadow to run. Every strand of her freshly pressed hair balled up like little fists that sparred with one another. Nothing was left of her beautiful coiffure but the horse’s tail pinned to the back of her head.
We’ve been in the States three years now and our daily routine never changes:
Frisner drives us to school in the morning, and picks Manman up from the factory on the way. When she gets in the car, she groans a reply to our collective Bonjour, then sets her head against the passenger-side window and falls asleep.
When we reach the school, we say, Au revoir, and kiss Manman on the cheek. We kiss Frisner too—though we don’t like to. As soon as the crossing guard gives us permission, we bolt. Frisner takes Manman home before driving to the auto parts plant where he works.
The first thing I do once inside the school building is unravel the Flora-Desormeau-just-came-from-Haiti cornrows that Frisner makes me wear. The shiny blue boul gogo barrettes scream newcomer. I force my hair into a ponytail and trace around the shape of each eye with the black pencil I bought from Newberry’s for ninety-nine cents. This doesn’t make me feel like some Egyptian princess or anything, just different from the girl whose parents think she’ll turn American and curdle like milk. I stop in the bathroom to wash off the eyeliner and redo the braids every afternoon before going back home.
Manman’s daily routine never changes either. Once Frisner drops her off at the apartment, she sleeps until it’s time for Ryan’s Hope. She cooks, cleans, and does the ironing during the commercials.
By All My Children, the pot of rice is ready. Before One Life to Live ends, the goat meat is so tender it’s sliding off the bone. By General Hospital, the apartment is guests-are-coming tidy. By then, Manman is also dressed and ready for work. Everything must be in its place before her favorite show begins. Nothing must disturb her when she settles down to watch the adventures of Luke and Laura, her favorite characters on General Hospital.
Manman expects us home at the beginning of The Edge of Night, the last soap opera of the day. If we’re not there while the opening theme song is playing, she panics.
“New York is a terrible place to raise daughters,” Manman tells Frisner. “Luke and Laura might have gotten married, but there’s still plenty that’s wrong with America.”
“I’m tired of your TV people,” Frisner responds.
“And I’m tired of the giants that like to step on grasshoppers, crushing them just for fun.”
“You’re not a grasshopper.”
“I wasn’t one in Haiti. I am one here. So are you.”
Now, when Manman talks about the grasshopper and the giants, Frisner walks away. “You’re the damn grasshopper!” he shouts in Creole.
On Saturdays, my sisters and I wipe off the layer of dust on the incomplete set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Manman catches up on some of the sleep she missed all week. Frisner fills the air with sentimental boleros and reminisces about God knows what. He turns the volume up so high you’d think Juan Gabriel and his band were in the living room with him, providing the soundtrack for his top-secret thoughts. He plays the same Spanish song all the time. I know the lyrics by heart. I had a kid at school translate: “You are always on my mind . . .”
When Frisner is done serenading the house with his sad song, he showers and shaves and piles on the Old Spice before driving to his girlfriend’s house—the one who sends him love letters all the time. Manman wouldn’t know what’s in those letters even if Frisner left them on the kitchen table like place mats. Still, he keeps them locked in the small safe behind the couch.
I check that safe periodically, in case Frisner forgets to lock it like he did once.
That’s how I found out that he has a couple of children by a seamstress back on the island. Those boys in the pictures look just like him: same forehead, same eyes, same nose, same teeth. I don’t think Manman knows about Frisner’s other family. But one look at those boys and his little secret would burst into flames and burn Manman down. There’s a boy at school who looks just like Frisner. I wonder if he is my brother too.
Sundays we drive to Brooklyn to visit relatives who seldom visit us. If we go by way of the Holland Tunnel, Manman tells Frisner to stop in Chinatown so that she can haggle with the street vendors like she used to in Port-au-Prince. If we head to the Lincoln Tunnel, which takes us to 42nd Street, Manman stares at the pimps in fur coats and hats as big and ornamented as cruise liners. She cringes when she sees the ladies in shimmering halter tops, up-to-here miniskirts, and thigh-high boots with stilts for heels. When Frisner sees those prostitutes, he says: “There goes Flora!” Manman usually nods in agreement.
Manman predicts it’s only a matter of time before a pimp puts me to work. “Look at Bobbie Spencer on General Hospital,” she says: “If a pimp can turn that pretty white girl into a bouzen, no girl child is safe in America.”
When we drive past Times Square on the way to the Manhattan Bridge which spills onto Flatbush Avenue, I keep my eyes fixed on the Broadway theaters, searching for Yseult Joseph’s name. Perhaps one day two cars will pull up at a red light at the same time. I’ll be in one with my family, Yseult and her family will be in the other. We’ll roll down the windows and scream our telephone numbers before the light changes. And then we’ll be inseparable again. Like the wings of a hummingbird.
* * *
On the way home from school one afternoon, Tamara, my sometimes girlfriend, runs toward me, calling out: “Flora, Flora, Flora Desormeau, chérie. Attends moi!”
Tamara is Haitian, but tells everyone she’s from Tahiti. Because she’s a half-Syrian grimèl with silky-smooth, siwo myèl hair, the American kids have no trouble believing her. They’d believe her if she said she came from Pluto. Those American kids adore Miss Tahiti.
“Where are you going?” she asks in a forceful way. Yseult never spoke to me like that.
“Lakay mwen,” I tell her.
Tamara pretends not to understand, but that girl speaks more Creole than all the fish vendors in Kwabosal put together.
“Home,” I repeat in English.
“Let’s go to the arcade,” Tamara says in that same perfect French Sister Bernadêtte used to speak. Yseult wouldn’t have asked me to go anywhere or do anything she knew I was not supposed to.
“I can’t go to the arcade,” I tell her. I don’t say what Manman thinks of those places: Only bad girls go to arcades—to look for boys who can’t wait to put proof in their bellies. Only bad girls behave in such a way to make the world point fingers and disrespect the family that failed to raise them properly.
“I can’t go with you,” I tell Tamara again, but the thought of playing a video game starts my heart racing.
“Are you scared?” she asks, laughing.
The Edge of Night is about to begin, I tell myself. If I’m not home by the time the opening theme song ends, Manman will call Frisner and a thousand tongues won’t be enough to describe what he’ll do to me.
“Flora!” Marjorie and Karine say my