pardoned the White House turkey last Thanksgiving.
When we hear the rattle of keys on the other side of the bedroom wall, Karine cringes and shoves the paperback under her pillow. Marjorie jumps from under the sheets as if a scorpion had stung her. She turns off the TV, whispering: “Shit. Shit. Shit.” My hands have a sudden dampness in them. The knot in my stomach tightens at the sound of my father’s grunts.
“Frisner is here,” Karine announces, as if no one else could tell.
I take a final look at the roach on the ceiling before switching off the lamp next to my bed. The room is silent now; everything is black. In the world inside my head, the sun is sizzling. I’m holding Yseult Joseph’s right hand in mine. We’re playing the Good Underwear game, singing, “Sak pa vire kilòt yo gen twou!” Caroline Saint Louis, Marie Lourdes Jean, and Elizabeth Lafrance are all there—in my old school yard. The nuns are in the upstairs chapel, saying their noonday prayers. Sister Bernadêtte cannot see us now. We’re free to spin as wildly as we please; free to play the forbidden Good Underwear game.
Caroline steps into the circle and starts twirling. She twirls faster and faster. Her skirt flies up to her waist. Her panties are pink with fraying white ruffles around her skinny thighs. “Kilòt ou gen twou. Your panties have holes,” we chant and laugh until she stumbles out of the circle, ashamed but not so consumed that she cannot continue to play. Her face glistens with perspiration.
Yseult lets go of my hand and leaps into the circle. Her braids flap up and down. The white ribbons hang loose—the bows undone. She sings as she twirls. Her panties are perfect: No holes. No fraying lace.
Yseult staggers in my direction, singing: “Sak pa vire kilòt yo gen twou.” It’s my turn to step into the circle. I spin around so fast that the girls’ faces become one big blur as the sun melts a rainbow in the sky and everything turns black and I fall down on the bed with the roach on the patch of ceiling directly above my head.
* * *
The front door squeaks. The deadbolt clicks. The chain lock slips into place. Frisner makes his way in the dark stealthily, hoping to catch us doing one of the fifty billion things we’re not permitted to do.
He’s on the other side of the bedroom door now, one ear pressed against the flaking mustard-colored paint, hoping to hear something—anything to confirm his suspicion that America damages girls.
I cannot see Frisner’s grease-stained fingers reaching through the hole where the doorknob used to be, but I know the movement just the same. (Frisner removed that doorknob when we moved into the apartment. Good girls don’t need locks on their doors, he’d said.)
Frisner is in our bedroom now, waiting, like the demon Sister Bernadêtte always warned us about. Her beautiful French lilt had done nothing to mask the ugliness of the name—God’s disobedient child sentenced to an eternal time-out.
I cannot see Frisner’s face, but I know that look on it—the look of someone condemned to spend eternity in a dingy apartment that’s arctic cold in the winter and infernal during the summer months. I imagine him cocking his head to the side as if there were horns jutting out of his scalp, weighing him down.
Frisner grunts again. He is glad to be home, but loathes this cramped space. If Manman would only agree to send us back to Haiti, his lifestyle would improve significantly. The room my sisters and I sleep in would be used as the dining room it was meant to be. The walk-in closet which he sleeps in could be used as a closet again. If only Manman would agree to send us back, his weekly paycheck wouldn’t have to stretch so far. He could put a few dollars away. Maybe take a vacation one of these years. He could go to Mexico and France—countries he loves without knowing why.
I can feel his eyes trying to adjust to the darkness. The narrow aisle between our beds is his personal virgin forest this time of night. He is the explorer who will trample upon the lush grounds. He is the hunter waiting for the slightest movement, a rustling of leaves. And then he will strike.
I hold my breath. Frisner knows I’m only pretending to be asleep, but he does not say a word. A good hunter keeps his mouth shut. A good hunter does not make a sound. After a few minutes of silence, he pounds his way to his bedroom.
Manman works nights at the factory across town. They don’t sleep together anymore.
* * *
In the morning when I wake up, the first thing I see is that official-looking letter which Mrs. Williams, my American History teacher, sent to my parents. Frisner taped it on the wall next to my bed, daring me to remove it.
Mrs. Williams’s letter says I am in danger of failing her class. Frisner responded to it by threatening to send me back to the island if I don’t get an A. He is convinced my brain is packed tight with thoughts about boys and sex.
“One day some guy’s going to give you what you’re after,” Frisner likes to say. “When he does, I will not save you from it. You’ll be on your own then.” Manman agrees with him. This is why she makes me come straight home from school every day.
* * *
From noon to four thirty, Monday through Friday, Manman watches Ryan’s Hope, All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and The Edge of Night. “You girls better be home before The Edge of Night ends,” she tells us, “or I’ll let your papa know that you’re turning American. He’ll fix you before the transformation is complete.”
Sometimes Manman lifts up her arms and cries out, “Woy, Bon Dye! Why did You curse me with a heap of girls? Why didn’t You give me sons instead? Boys get a girl pregnant, but you can’t prove they were even in the same room. Girls carry the proof in their bellies for the world to see.”
Frisner’s tongue is a knot when Manman mourns her lot. Maybe that’s because he remembers causing a young girl’s belly to swell with proof once. To make things right, he married that girl: Manman wore a white dress that stretched over my unborn body and a half-happy, half-sad look in her eyes. Frisner wore a black suit—the kind they bury accident victims in.
An uninvited guest, Hurricane Flora, crashed their wedding, reversing their chance at happiness. Tempestuous winds nearly tore the roof off the church before the priest could pronounce them husband and wife. The relentless downpour that accompanied Flora turned the ground into a reddish paste that coated the bride’s pretty shoes. The black-and-white photographs captured her annoyance. Her lips stayed pursed. Manman would have defeated the force that caused the hurricane—if only it had a face.
I was born forty days after the wedding and named for the hurricane that destroyed Manman’s magical moment on its way to killing thousands on the island. Karine came twelve months later, Marjorie 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
