Ann Arbor was a huge small town. She couldn’t imagine any kind of school the size of the University of Michigan. She meant to sign up for courses in the spring. Bill brought home a catalogue bigger than the phonebook for all of Trinidad. The university had courses in everything. It would be hard to choose; she’d have to get help from Bill. He wasn’t like a professor, not the ones back home where even high school teachers called themselves professors and acted like little potentates. He wore blue jeans and thick sweaters with holes in the elbows and used phrases like “in vitro” as he watched her curry up fish. Dr. Parveen back home — he called himself “doctor” when everybody knew he didn’t have even a Master’s degree — was never seen without his cotton jacket which had gotten really ratty at the cuffs and lapel edges. She hadn’t learned anything in the two years she’d put into college. She’d learned more from working in the bank for two months than she had at college. It was the assistant manager, Personal Loans Department, Mr. Singh, who had turned her on to the Daboos and to smooth, bargain-priced emigration.
Jasmine liked Lara. Lara was easygoing. She didn’t spend the time she had between rehearsals telling Jasmine how to cook and clean American-style. Mrs. Daboo did that in 16B. Mrs. Daboo would barge in with a plate of stale samosas and snoop around giving free advice on how mainstream Americans did things. As if she were dumb or something! As if she couldn’t keep her own eyes open and make her mind up for herself. Sunday mornings she had to share the butcher-block workspace in the kitchen with Bill. He made the Sunday brunch from new recipes in Gourmet and Cuisine. Jasmine hadn’t seen a man cook who didn’t have to or wasn’t getting paid to do it. Things were topsy-turvy in the Moffitt house. Lara went on two- and three-day road trips and Bill stayed home. But even her daddy, who’d never poured himself a cup of tea, wouldn’t put Bill down as a woman. The mornings Bill tried out something complicated, a Cajun shrimp, sausage, and beans dish, for instance, Jasmine skipped church services. The Moffitts didn’t go to church, though they seemed to be good Christians. They just didn’t talk church talk, which suited her fine.
Two months passed. Jasmine knew she was lucky to have found a small, clean, friendly family like the Moffitts to build her new life around. “Man!” she’d exclaim as she vacuumed the wide-plank wood floors or ironed (Lara wore pure silk or pure cotton). “In this country Jesus givin out good luck only!” By this time they knew she wasn’t a student, but they didn’t care and said they wouldn’t report her. They never asked if she was illegal on top of it.
To savor her new sense of being a happy, lucky person, she would put herself through a series of “what ifs”: what if Mr. Singh in Port-of-Spain hadn’t turned her on to the Daboos and loaned her two thousand! What if she’d been ugly like the Mintoo girl and the manager hadn’t even offered! What if the customs man had unlocked the door of the van! Her Daddy liked to say, “You is a helluva girl, Jasmine.”
“Thank you, Jesus,” Jasmine said, as she carried on.
Christmas Day the Moffitts treated her just like family. They gave her a red cashmere sweater with a V neck so deep it made her blush. If Lara had worn it, her bosom wouldn’t hang out like melons. For the holiday weekend Bill drove her to the Daboos in Detroit. “You work too hard,” Bill said to her. “Learn to be more selfish. Come on, throw your weight around.” She’d rather not have spent time with the Daboos, but that first afternoon of the interview she’d told Bill and Lara that Mr. Daboo was her mother’s first cousin. She had thought it shameful in those days to have no papers, no family, no roots. Now Loretta and Viola in tight, bright pants seemed trashy like girls at Two-Johnny Bissoondath’s Bar back home. She was stuck with the story of the Daboos being family. Village bumpkins, ha! She would break out. Soon.
Jasmine had Bill drop her off at the RenCen. The Plantations Motel, in fact, the whole Riverfront area, was too seamy. She’d managed to cut herself off mentally from anything too islandy. She loved her daddy and mummy, but she didn’t think of them that often anymore. Mummy had expected her to be homesick and come flying right back home. “Is blowin sweat-of-brow money is what you doin, Pa,” Mummy had scolded. She loved them, but she’d become her own person. That was something that Lara said: “I am my own person.”
The Daboos acted thrilled to see her back. “What you drinkin, Jasmine girl?” Mr. Daboo kept asking. “You drinkin sherry or what?” Pouring her little glasses of sherry instead of rum was a sure sign he thought she had become whitefolkfancy. The Daboo sisters were very friendly, but Jasmine considered them too wild. Both Loretta and Viola had changed boyfriends. Both were seeing black men they’d danced with in Ann Arbor. Each night at bedtime, Mr. Daboo cried. “In Trinidad we stayin we side, they stayin they side. Here, everything mixed up. Is helluva confusion, no?”
On New Year’s Eve the Daboo girls and their black friends went to a dance. Mr. and Mrs. Daboo and Jasmine watched TV for a while. Then Mr. Daboo got out a brooch from his pocket and pinned it on Jasmine’s red sweater. It was a Christmasy brooch, a miniature sleigh loaded down with snowed-on mistletoe. Before she could pull away, he kissed her on the lips. “Good luck for the New Year!” he said. She lifted her head and saw tears. “Is year for dreams comin true.”
Jasmine started to cry, too. There was nothing wrong, but Mr. Daboo, Mrs. Daboo, she, everybody was crying.
What for? This is where she wanted to be. She’d spent some damned uncomfortable times with the assistant manager to get approval for her loan. She thought of Daddy. He would be playing poker and fanning himself with a magazine. Her married sisters would be rolling out the dough for stacks and stacks of roti, and Mummy would be steamed purple from stirring the big pot of goat curry on the stove. She missed them. But. It felt strange to think of anyone celebrating New Year’s Eve in summery clothes.
In March Lara and her performing group went on the road. Jasmine knew that the group didn’t work from scripts. The group didn’t use a stage, either; instead, it took over supermarkets, senior citizens’ centers, and school halls, without notice. Jasmine didn’t understand the performance world. But she was glad that Lara said, “I’m not going to lay a guilt trip on myself. Muffie’s in super hands,” before she left.
Muffle didn’t need much looking after. She played Trivial Pursuit all day, usually pretending to be two persons, sometimes Jasmine, whose accent she could imitate. Since Jasmine didn’t know any of the answers, she couldn’t help. Muffle was a quiet, precocious child with see-through blue eyes like her dad’s, and red braids. In the early evenings Jasmine cooked supper, something special she hadn’t forgotten from her island days. After supper she and Muffle watched some TV, and Bill read. When Muffle went to bed, Bill and she sat together for a bit with their glasses of Soave. Bill, Muffle, and she were a family, almost.
Down in her basement room that late, dark winter, she had trouble sleeping. She wanted to stay awake and think of Bill. Even when she fell asleep it didn’t feel like sleep because Bill came barging into her dreams in his funny, loose-jointed, clumsy way. It was mad to think of him all the time, and stupid and sinful; but she couldn’t help it. Whenever she put back a book he’d taken off the shelf to read or whenever she put his clothes through the washer and dryer, she felt sick in a giddy, wonderful way. When Lara came back things would get back to normal. Meantime she wanted the performance group miles away.
Lara called in at least twice a week. She said things like, “We’ve finally obliterated the margin between realspace and performancespace.” Jasmine filled her in on Muffie’s doings and the mail. Bill always closed with, “I love you. We miss you, hon.”