The Daboos asked her to keep books for them and to clean the rooms in the new wing, and she could stay in 16B as long as she liked. They showed her 16B. They said she could cook her own roti; Mr. Daboo would bring in a stove, two gas rings that you could fold up in a metal box. The room was quite grand, Jasmine thought. It had a double bed, a TV, a pink sink and matching bathtub. Mrs. Daboo said Jasmine wasn’t the big-city Port-of-Spain type she’d expected. Mr. Daboo said that he wanted her to stay because it was nice to have a neat, cheerful person around. It wasn’t a bad deal, better than stories she’d heard about Trinidad girls in the States.
All day every day except Sundays Jasmine worked. There wasn’t just the bookkeeping and the cleaning up. Mr. Daboo had her working on the match-up marriage service. Jasmine’s job was to check up on social security cards, call clients’ bosses for references, and make sure credit information wasn’t false. Dermatologists and engineers living in Bloomfield Hills, store owners on Canfield and Woodward: she treated them all as potential liars. One of the first things she learned was that Ann Arbor was a magic word. A boy goes to Ann Arbor and gets an education, and all the barriers come crashing down. So Ann Arbor was the place to be.
She didn’t mind the work. She was learning about Detroit, every side of it. Sunday mornings she helped unload packing crates of Caribbean spices in a shop on the next block. For the first time in her life, she was working for a black man, an African. So what if the boss was black? This was a new life, and she wanted to learn everything. Her Sunday boss, Mr. Anthony, was a courtly, Christian, church-going man, and paid her the only wages she had in her pocket. Viola and Loretta, for all their fancy American ways, wouldn’t go out with blacks.
One Friday afternoon she was writing up the credit info on a Guyanese Muslim who worked in an assembly plant when Loretta said that enough was enough and that there was no need for Jasmine to be her father’s drudge.
“Is time to have fun,” Viola said. “We’re going to Ann Arbor.”
Jasmine filed the sheet on the Guyanese man who probably now would never get a wife and got her raincoat. Loretta’s boyfriend had a Cadillac parked out front. It was the longest car Jasmine had ever been in and louder than a country bus. Viola’s boyfriend got out of the front seat. “Oh, oh, sweet things,” he said to Jasmine. “Get in front.” He was a talker. She’d learned that much from working on the matrimonial match-ups. She didn’t believe him for a second when he said that there were dudes out there dying to ask her out.
Loretta’s boyfriend said, “You have eyes I could leap into, girl.”
Jasmine knew he was just talking. They sounded like Port-of-Spain boys of three years ago. It didn’t surprise her that these Trinidad country boys in Detroit were still behind the times, even of Port-of-Spain. She sat very stiff between the two men, hands on her purse. The Daboo girls laughed in the back seat.
On the highway the girls told her about the reggae night in Ann Arbor. Kevin and the Krazee Islanders. Malcolm’s Lovers. All the big reggae groups in the Midwest were converging for the West Indian Students Association fall bash. The ticket didn’t come cheap but Jasmine wouldn’t let the fellows pay. She wasn’t that kind of girl.
The reggae and steel drums brought out the old Jasmine. The rum punch, the dancing, the dreadlocks, the whole combination. She hadn’t heard real music since she got to Detroit, where music was supposed to be so famous. The Daboo girls kept turning on rock stuff in the motel lobby whenever their father left the area. She hadn’t danced, really danced, since she’d left home. It felt so good to dance. She felt hot and sweaty and sexy. The boys at the dance were more than sweet talkers; they moved with assurance and spoke of their futures in America. The bartender gave her two free drinks and said, “Is ready when you are, girl.” She ignored him but she felt all hot and good deep inside. She knew Ann Arbor was a special place.
When it was time to pile back into Loretta’s boyfriend’s Cadillac, she just couldn’t face going back to the Plantations Motel and to the Daboos with their accounting books and messy files.
“I don’t know what happen, girl,” she said to Loretta. “I feel all crazy inside. Maybe is time for me to pursue higher studies in this town.”
“This Ann Arbor, girl, they don’t just take you off the street. It cost like hell.”
She spent the night on a bashed-up sofa in the Student Union. She was a well-dressed, respectable girl, and she didn’t expect anyone to question her right to sleep on the furniture. Many others were doing the same thing. In the morning, a boy in an army parka showed her the way to the Placement Office. He was a big, blond, clumsy boy, not bad-looking except for the blond eyelashes. He didn’t scare her, as did most Americans. She let him buy her a Coke and a hotdog. That evening she had a job with the Moffitts.
Bill Moffitt taught molecular biology and Lara Hatch-Moffitt, his wife, was a performance artist. A performance artist, said Lara, was very different from being an actress, though Jasmine still didn’t understand what the difference might be. The Moffitts had a little girl, Muffin, whom Jasmine was to look after, though for the first few months she might have to help out with the housework and the cooking because Lara said she was deep into performance rehearsals. That was all right with her, Jasmine said, maybe a little too quickly. She explained she came from a big family and was used to heavy-duty cooking and cleaning. This wasn’t the time to say anything about Ram, the family servant. Americans like the Moffitts wouldn’t understand about keeping servants. Ram and she weren’t in similar situations. Here mother’s helpers, which is what Lara had called her — Americans were good with words to cover their shame — seemed to be as good as anyone.
Lara showed her the room she would have all to herself in the finished basement. There was a big, old TV, not in color like the motel’s and a portable typewriter on a desk which Lara said she would find handy when it came time to turn in her term papers. Jasmine didn’t say anything about not being a student. She was a student of life, wasn’t she? There was a scary moment after they’d discussed what she could expect as salary, which was three times more than anything Mr. Daboo was supposed to pay her but hadn’t. She thought Bill Moffitt was going to ask her about her visa or her green card number and social security. But all Bill did was smile and smile at her — he had a wide, pink, baby face — and play with a button on his corduroy jacket. The button would need sewing back on, firmly.
Lara said, “I think I’m going to like you, Jasmine. You have a something about you. A something real special. I’ll just bet you’ve acted, haven’t you?” The idea amused her, but she merely smiled and accepted Lara’s hug. The interview was over.
Then Bill opened a bottle of Soave and told stories about camping in northern Michigan. He’d been raised there. Jasmine didn’t see the point in sleeping in tents; the woods sounded cold and wild and creepy. But she said, “Is exactly what I want to try out come summer, man. Campin and huntin.”
Lara asked about Port-of-Spain. There was nothing to tell about her hometown that wouldn’t shame her in front of nice white American folk like the Moffitts. The place was shabby, the people were grasping and cheating and lying and life was full of despair and drink and wanting. But by the time she finished, the island sounded romantic. Lara said, “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you were a writer, Jasmine.”