The brass-haired girl came back and gingerly counted out the green bills into Jean-Alexi’s outstretched hand, avoiding touching his long, curled fingers. One of the men in the passenger seat turned on the radio, and reggae blasted out. Maybe to convince her that it was like a regular tropical vacation in the van?
Large, white paper bags were handed from the manager to the girl to Jean-Alexi, who turned and gave them to Marie to pass out.
“You want extra ketchup with those?” the girl said. Already she belonged to someone else, her brow furrowed as she listened to a new order through her earphones and punched it in on her plastic board.
“You lose a big, fat chance at happiness, girl,” Jean-Alexi said, when the last tray of drinks crossed over.
“Would you mind moving your car ahead, sir? So the next customer can pull up?”
The van stood idling, Jean-Alexi tapping his fingers along the steering wheel as if he were sending out a message in code.
The girl cupped her hand over the mike and leaned over the counter, her head partway out the window. “I don’t do black fellows, hon.”
Jean-Alexi stepped down hard on the accelerator, jumping over the corner of the curb, and shouted, “Bouzin sal! Dirty bitch!” out the window. The bounce of the van tilted the big, papery cup of soda, which spilled down Marie’s shirt, but already she was smart enough to say nothing.
* * *
They parked in a deserted corner of a lot, and the men got out to relieve themselves against a dumpster. They smoked while the girls huddled in the back and ate their fill of hamburgers and fries. The girls trembled and asked Marie if they would be safe, and she assured them yes, even though she had no idea. They threw the paper remains out the window and curled against each other like stray puppies and fell into a desperate sleep.
* * *
They, twelve girls old and new, shared a single bedroom in a cinder-block apartment building. One had to step carefully because someone was always either lying asleep or sick. The girls marked their floor space by spreading out sleeping bags, or towels, blankets, pillows. But for all their efforts, the places they fought for still ended up being only the size of a coffin. There was hell to pay, and fists, if anyone touched another’s belongings. The net effect of their jealousy was that the room never got cleaned, the floor on which they slept turned grimy with grit and dust, dead insects and loose hair.
They were so possessive because they had nothing else, and this was no fanmi, family. Girls disappeared with alarming frequency, to be replaced by others, and so they became aloof and protective and tried not to get too close.
Maman’s girl, Marie felt too far from God in that filth, and she spent the first week negotiating the permission of each girl to mop her section of the floor on condition that each possession be guarded and then returned to its rightful place. Jean-Alexi, impressed by her leadership abilities, gave her special jobs.
* * *
Amélie, a girl already there when their group arrived, had a single possession that made her the envy of all — a pair of red, patent-leather high heels. She and Marie became friends because they discovered they had each lost their maman within a few months of each other, suffering much after that, until finally ending up in the cinder building. Amélie was light skinned, with soft eyes like a deer, and a straight, thin nose. Men stopped in the street and stared at the way she rolled her hips as she walked by. She talked all the time of becoming a model, but first she needed to save money to have her teeth fixed.
The first afternoon that they found themselves alone in the apartment, Amélie allowed Marie to try on her shoes.
“How you know Jean-Alexi so good?” Amélie asked.
“From home. We shared time together.”
“You sweet on him?”
Marie ignored the question by looking at the shoes. She had never before worn such things — thin, shiny straps that cut across the toe, a strap that choked the ankle, and a four-inch heel as thin and sharp as a dagger. She walked around the living room feeling like a giant, tripping forward as if she were on stilts.
The front door rattled, and Jean-Alexi walked in, followed by the two from the van, Zac and Lolo, carrying pizza boxes. When Jean-Alexi saw Marie, his eyebrows shot up.
“What you think, brothers? She take to them shoes like fish to water.”
Quickly, Marie sat to take them off, but he stopped her. “Keep walking. Get a hang of those things.”
Amélie made a face and went to the bedroom, slamming the door.
Jean-Alexi moved around the room on his toes, like a dancer, giving her advice on how to swing out her legs from the hip so that her stride would be like that of Amélie, who moved smooth as a cat. Starved, Marie basked in his attention.
“Tomorrow I take you shopping for some of your own girl stuff.”
“I don’t have money.”
“Don’t you worry. Jean-Alexi will take care.”
* * *
The next afternoon, he came back from his business appointments early and took her downtown, buying her lunch at a Jamaican restaurant in an alley. She ate jerked pork and dirty rice and drank cold beer, and she thought that her American life had finally started.
“Why don’t we eat at Haitian restaurant?” she asked.
“They all in bad neighborhoods. Too, the owner here owes me monies.”
He watched her lips as she wiped them with a napkin, then leaned in quick and gave her a kiss. He tasted of cigarettes, but she didn’t care because it was a kiss she wanted, not one she was paid for.
“So you remember our time together?” she asked.
“I know I had a sweet night with you.”
“But you don’t remember me on the beach. I was a little thing, and you said I was too young and small.”
He leaned over and squeezed her breast as if it were a peach. “You tête just right for me now.”
Marie swallowed her disappointment.
Jean-Alexi shook his leg as if it were on fire. “That years ago now. I’m a whole other person now.”
She cleared her throat for the speech she had been practicing: Maman’s dream for her to work someplace quiet, someplace filled with books. She had decided on a library, although she wasn’t sure what one did there. Maman’s idea of success was doing something that didn’t give you calluses on your hands. “I need to find a job. I want to go to school.”
“All in good times. You don’t need that now. Soon I going to have good businesses. You work in family place.”
“I’m not family.”
Now he slung his arm across her shoulders as they walked and nibbled on her ear. “Might be, nuh? You liked being with me, didn’t you?”
Jean-Alexi took her to a clothing store that played loud music, the fast, thumping kind foreigners danced to in nightclubs in Pétionville, and a girl with a round mahogany face framed by long platinum hair came up to Jean-Alexi and gave him a wet kiss on the mouth. She kept her wolf eyes on him, and Marie guessed they’d been lovers, but now he was all business and told her to find Marie something real pretty.
“One of your new girls?” the women asked.
“I’m his girlfriend,” Marie said, and they both laughed at her.
* * *
When they got back home, Lolo and Zac were eating ribs out of an aluminum tray and watching basketball on the TV in the living room.
“What should we call her?” Jean-Alexi asked.