Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

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.

“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?