“Yeah, well, I’m all grown-up now, and so are you” is all she says. Then she lifts up her head and turns toward the TV.
Chantal is by the front door and starts to put on her coat, but the noise from the TV makes her stop. She glances in our direction, and Pri slowly pulls away from me. Donna comes over to stand near the TV. Pri reaches for the remote on the carpet and turns up the volume.
“. . . A seventeen year-old University Liggett High School student died last week of an alleged lethal cocktail of designer drugs. Locals are now saying there have been a string of parties over the last few months where the synthetic designer drugs were made available to partygoers as young as thirteen. Police have been in contact with members of the community and have opened an investigation.”
Chantal, Donna, and Pri exchange deep, quiet stares as if aiming sharp knives at one another.
Pri inhales and rubs her chin. “The fuck? They still going with this story?” she says. “One white chick OD’s and there’s an investigation? She did that shit to herself.”
“Sandra McNeil actually got killed last month and it didn’t even make the news,” Chantal says.
“Did you know that white girl, Chant?” Donna asks.
“She would’ve been a freshman when I was a senior. I definitely don’t think we were in the same circles.”
The news then shifts to a report on drug cocktails and what they do to you when you take them. I’m glued to this bit of interesting information but Chantal shuts off the TV. “We’re running late. Don’t pay attention to that shit, Fabiola.”
“I’m not done with my hair!” Pri whines.
She wants six braids and I’m only on the second.
“Fuck it,” she says, and gets up from the floor. In a few minutes we’re all out of the house and in the car. Matant Jo has not come out of her room.
I’m wearing a coat that used to belong to Chantal. I can’t figure out the zipper and all the buttons, but Pri helps me. She then takes off her hat, leans in closer to me, and hands me a comb. I still have to finish her braids.
“I hope you’re not trying to make her your little slave,” Donna says. She’s in the mirror again. “Fabiola, you don’t have to do what Pri says. This ain’t Haiti.”
“Hold up. It’s on her if she wants to cook and braid hair. Ain’t nobody forcing her to do shit. Right, cuzz?” Pri says.
I laugh a little. “Even in Haiti, I didn’t do everything that people told me to do.”
“Didn’t Ma and Aunt Val work as slaves when they were in Haiti?” Pri asks.
“No, dumb-ass. No one can work as a slave,” Chantal says.
I remember those stories from Manman, too. “Restavec,” I say. “They were not slaves, really.”
“Well, did they work?” Pri asks.
“Yes, they worked.”
“Did they get paid?”
“No, but . . .”
“So they worked as slaves.”
Both Chantal and Donna start arguing with Pri while laughing at the same time. This isn’t like the argument about money—there are more jokes and light insults. I laugh a little, too, because this moment reminds me of being with my friends back in Haiti. I can’t make a straight part in Pri’s hair because she and the car are moving so much. I pull her in closer and I can feel the weight of her upper body leaning on me completely. She trusts me.
I don’t get to stare out into the daytime Detroit streets as I finish braiding Pri’s hair. And maybe it is the feel of my hands on her scalp that makes her open up to me, so she is the first to tell her story. With each braid, with each touch, I begin to know and understand my dear cousins, my sisters from another mother.
PRINCESS’S STORY
Ma named us Primadonna and Princess ’cause she thought being born in America to a father with a good-paying job at a car factory and a house and a bright future meant that we would be royalty. But when our father got killed, that’s when shit fell apart. We don’t remember too much of that ’cause we were little. But by the time we got to middle school, Ma had the newest car on the block—a minivan with leather seats. Then later, we had the first flat-screen, the first laptops, the first cell phones out of everybody we knew. Yeah, there were dudes always rolling up to the house with stacks, and other dudes standing on our front steps keeping watch and shit. But we did all right. We did better than all right.