Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

The two men who crowded together on the passenger seat did not introduce themselves, did not follow polite island custom. They sat, squat and muscled, with blue-black skin, and hungry rat eyes. Marie knew such men from Port-au-Prince. They sat and drank till they were filled with lust, then they picked luxuriously, like choosing cuts of meat, and went up the stairs, and the girls didn’t talk for a long time afterward.

Jean-Alexi didn’t seem to recognize her. Or if he did, he wasn’t letting on. Not that she’d expected a honeymoon meeting. He’d lost weight and put on years — he looked old and tired for twenty-four. His eyes were scattered and hyped. The old cockiness gone.

The main thing she noticed was the increase of his dreadlocks — now enormous and dusty-cocoa colored, billowing up large like an engorged cockscomb, bundled in half with a tie like a huge crest. His hair frightened and fascinated her. A shantytown rooster. As she reached to touch one braid, unable to guess if it felt stiff and hard as rope or soft as fur, he grabbed her wrist hard.

“Now, little Erzulie, what kind of trouble you looking for from your Jean-Alexi? Nuh, girl?”

Marie tried to pull her hand back, but he held the wrist fast as with a band of steel, a deceiving strength from such a banty man, strength hid like a strand of spiderweb.

He looked back at her, foot tapping, other hand thumping the wheel, his eyes a cracked gold that didn’t seem right. Then he pulled her hand to his lips, stuck out his tongue, and ran it along the inside of her wrist.

“Hmmm, homegrown sugar, that’s what I miss the most of the island.”

At this possibility, the other two men looked at her for the first time, appraising.

“Too bad you’re Thibant’s folk,” Jean-Alexi said, and dropped her hand roughly.

“Not mine,” one of them said.

Jean-Alexi looked at him hard. “Way too precious for you, brother.”

Marie was confused at this behavior after the way he had been before and wondered at the change. Was this fierce new look and behavior some kind of act in front of the others?

The past gave her a flicker of courage. “We’re hungry,” she said.

“Well, let’s feed you,” he said. “Don’t you know? Now you’re in the land of plenty?”

His crazy eyes studied her, but she convinced herself he meant no harm. No love, either. She remembered the candy he gave her that day on the beach — a dried-out, pink piece of taffy too stale to eat.

* * *

There was whispered discussion up front while in the back the girls and Marie exchanged wondering looks. A few minutes later, they pulled up to a brightly lit building with glowing neon. Jean-Alexi rolled down his window and talked at length into a speaker box that crackled back answers to his words.

When he drove around the building, a girl was sitting in the window. Marie guessed the same one he’d been talking to through the box. Her skin was pale and blotchy, her eyes a drained blue, her whole appearance suggesting something uncooked. Greasy, long hair, the color of brass, was held up out of her eyes with black bobby pins. But Jean-Alexi spoke to her as if she were the most enchanting princess, and Marie felt a stab of something — embarrassment for him? Jealousy? Here he was, courting the lowliest of white women.

“How you doing this night, beautiful lady?”

“That’ll be fifty-two fifty, please,” she said, expressionless.

Marie liked that she wasn’t buying his stupid flatteries.

He handed the window girl a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill with a flourish. “How about I take you out after work sometime, pretty lady? Take you for some real food?”

Marie thought that maybe the girl only heard words through the earphones, that in person, communication was only one way, outward.

The girl blinked at the bill and hesitated, then took out a fat highlighter pen and ran a yellow line over it, then held it against the fluorescent light. She signaled back to her manager, who was busy shoveling fries into small paper pockets. He shrugged.

“I’ll have to get change.”

Marie looked into the main building where the tables stood under the scrubbing light that killed any shadow. Each detail — a crack in a plastic seat, a man’s stubbled chin — showed in stark relief, like looking at grains of sand under the clear ocean back home. The people at the tables seemed to be moving in slow motion as if they, too, were underwater. Eyes half-closed, they ate their food out of paper and avoided looking at each other’s face. The night was hot yet they were bundled up in long sleeves and jeans and jackets. They did not seem to know the temperature outside, to know where they were. Marie could tell them — she who still had the smell of sour bilgewater on her feet, who’d risked everything to arrive at this very spot. You are in the land of dreams come true. What would they make of her sacrifice? The thought came up inside her, unwanted: What if this place cost more than it gave, what if it was really no better than what had been sacrificed for it?

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.