“Why call me anything but my name?”
The Two Fools, which name Amélie and Marie used behind their backs, were stoned. They threw their dirty dishes in the sink for the girls to clean as if they were slaves. Now the fools giggled and smirked while Jean-Alexi framed Marie between his fingers as if he were going to star her in a picture.
“You rename something to give it power,” he said, but Marie knew from her Maman one renamed to take power. “You are my lead lady. How about Maleva?” he said, plucking a rib from the tray.
“I don’t want my name changed,” she said, but he didn’t bother to hear. When she reached for a rib, he slapped her hand away.
“Got to watch that figure, girl.”
The fools laughed and stamped their feet. “Wi, wi. Yes, yes.”
* * *
Marie took her shopping bags and went into the bedroom, intending to lie down for a nap and wait for Amélie to come home for dinner. She worried about this given name, worried Jean-Alexi might try obeah, try to take her soul away. When he came in and insisted she dress in the new clothes and they go out, she told him she was tired.
His face grew mean with displeasure. “How you going to get a job and go to school when you’re so lazy? How are you going to be my lady?”
So she put on the white halter dress and the shoes as tipsy high as Amélie’s. Jean-Alexi looked at her critically and made her put on more mascara and lipstick, then handed her some silver hoop earrings that belonged to another girl.
“That’s not mine.”
“None of this belongs to any of you tifi, get it? Jean-Alexi’s property.”
Marie did not ask him questions because she didn’t want someone who held her future to think that she didn’t trust him. Gossip among the girls was Jean-Alexi wanted her to be his partner. When young ones were brought in, he took Marie to the kitchen and showed her how to grind up little white pills and mix them in juice to calm the girls down. Best way to ease them into the business with the least fuss. Too, she felt sorry for these girls, not introduced to the life before like she was. She cooked up big pots of spaghetti, trays of chicken and rice, the way Maman had taught her, so that they might feel some comfort.
Surely he didn’t see her like the other girls. They had a bond from the island. Maybe he was only an island cousin, which meant nothing more than someone you knew from the island, but he knew she was Leta’s child. Maybe he was wanting to settle down with just one, and she could be that for him. He told her over and over she was his bijou, treasure.
* * *
He said he wanted to celebrate, and they pulled into a hotel parking lot by the airport. Marie did not take the bait of asking, celebrate what? Getting out, she felt the hot wash of a plane’s wind as it passed low overhead to land. The bar was dark after coming in from the blinding afternoon sun. The blue lights overhead made soothing pools along the tables. Maybe this was not such a bad place after all. But the air had a sour, refrigerated smell — she shivered in the thin, new dress. Would it be so bad to be the girl behind the counter, all cool and dressed pretty, serving rainbow-colored drinks to people?
Jean-Alexi broke into a large smile — a perfect row of white, snapping teeth — and put his hand on the small of Marie’s back as he steered her through empty tables toward one occupied by a middle-aged man. Under his breath, Jean-Alexi said this man was going to help him get a liquor license. The man seemed squeezed into the suit he wore, rolls of fat overflowing the collar of his shirt. His baldness and full cheeks gave him the look of a baby, but when he looked up at her, there was no smile, no kindness. The shadows around his eyes were cruel, and Marie stepped back as if he’d growled.
“Don’t be afraid of César.” Jean-Alexi laughed. He jived and bobbed back and forth, and she saw that he was deferential and weak in front of this man. The transformation of Jean-Alexi from a minor prince of the slums to this depressed her.
Perhaps César was the owner of the hotel, or the manager of the bar. Maybe Jean-Alexi would get her work as a maid, a waitress, a bartender? But the table in front of César was empty except for a glass that held a thumb’s worth of amber liquid. No, probably she was César’s business that day.
“This is fresh Maleva that I promised you,” Jean-Alexi said, bending to give him a handshake and private words.
Marie turned and ran. She heard a name called out, but kept running, only later recognizing it was her newly christened one. A name she would not be using. She stood by the van until her breath came steady again, her heartbeat slowed. Goose bumps gave way to sweat in the heat. No one chased after her. After a while her feet hurt from standing in the heels, and she pulled off her shoes and stood barefoot on the hot asphalt.
After half an hour, Jean-Alexi, all bull confidence, strolled out as if he had enjoyed the visit with his friend as intended. He smiled at her and waved at the passenger door.
“Get in, get in.”
Watching the cars flying by on the interstate, the lights from the city beyond, the glowing windows of the hotel above, Marie understood she did not know another human being there besides him. She had no choice but to climb inside.
“You’re not fou, mad, at me?” she asked.
“Surprise, surprise. He liked that little act. Makes it more believable that you’re some virgin off the island. He say rest up a few days, and he’ll pay double.”
“You do this to me!” she screamed. “Yon fanmi! Leta’s girl.”
“Enouf.”
“I’ll tell Uncle Thibant what you do.”
“From what I hear, this is better than spreading your legs in chicken coops the way you did back home. Thibant sent you over on credit. You work off that boat ride, roof, and eats on your back.”
“Non!”
“Listen to me, we’re all ‘cousins’ over here. Just ’cause you and me bed don’t mean nothing if you can’t earn food in your mouth.”
They drove in silence.
Gentle Thibant cheated her after all. Sent her to a different corner of hell, collect. Marie looked out the window at the miles of city that she didn’t know. “I thought you liked me.”
He said nothing.
“I can clean for you.”
“Don’t need no maid.”
“I take care of the girls, dope them up for you. They trust me. I run drugs — no one expect a pretty little thing like me, right? Work off the debt slow.”
“Don’t need mules,” he said.
“I want to work in library.”
Jean-Alexi reached his arm so that Marie thought he was going to hit her, but he grabbed behind at a scrap of newspaper. “Read this,” he said, a dare, jabbing his finger on the print. When she began to read aloud, he slapped it out of her hand. “Reading a dime a dozen here.”
Marie dragged up the stairs behind him, went alone to the bathroom. She took off the dress and shoes, careful because they were not hers, and sat on the edge of the bathtub in her underwear.
The tub and the sink were ringed in filth. Trash overflowed with women’s personal. Maman had taught her cleanliness and modesty. Even in the worst times, she always turned away to dress, even if a man had ripped the clothes off so that the buttons scattered across the floor like teeth. She stared at the makeup piled on the shelves, the lotions and curlers and other fake the girls used to be beautiful. This was the life offered to her, the same life she’d tried to escape. Look at what Jean-Alexi had become. If she took it, how long before a better one offered itself? When would what she did finally become who she was?