Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

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?

She walked out of the bathroom wearing the clothes she had arrived in. She handed Jean-Alexi the dress and shoes. “I’m going.”

His chin went up and down rapidly, biting down on something nasty. He nodded. “Then.”

She took her bag of possessions to the front door, but now he shot up and followed her.

“I didn’t even fuck you to get mwen lajan, my money, back. Just suck me off then. At least there’s no chance of a idiot coming out nine months from now.”

“Non.”

“Don’t want to hurt you.” He banged his fist on the wall behind her head.

She looked at him then, but no longer saw him. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

He howled but let her walk away, down the stairs. They both knew that she had reached the point where she had nothing left to lose, and he had no chance bargaining that.

“You think you’re something special, but you’ll find out. It’s bad out there, fi . You’ll come back soon, unless you mouri, ” he yelled out the window.

“Coming back won’t happen.”

“I be here when you’re begging. Price go way up then,” he screamed down the block at her retreating back. Did he sense he might be losing someone true? Non.

When she could no longer hear his shouts, she sat on the ground and shook, as if she had just scraped by with her life. She wasn’t brave enough for her own actions.

After a time, Marie heard footsteps. If it had been Jean-Alexi, she might have gone back, but it was Amélie with another girl.

“Jean-Alexi kick you out?”

She nodded. The whole story in her eyes.

“I work at this place before here.” Amélie scratched around in her purse, then grabbed a piece of newspaper off the ground. “It’s bad, but they don’t ask questions. My sister, Coca, worked there. I don’t know anymore. Go early. Early bird gets the poison. You have someplace to sleep?”

Marie shook her head.

“Be careful. Careful out here. Not like back home.” Amélie took her aside. “If you see Coca, tell her I work as a model in a department store downtown, okay? This is just temporary, don’t want them to worry.” She emptied a few crumpled bills from her wallet into Marie’s hand. “What do you have?” Amélie barked at the other girl, who made a face, but added a few more. “It’s all I can.” With that, they walked away.

* * *

Marie found the building when the sky was still dark. Many hours from Jean-Alexi’s apartment, and she had spent the whole night in slow movement toward it, like a ship tacking in the ocean, asking for directions that were more often than not wrong. Nobody in this city of foreigners seemed to know where they were. That night they were all lost. Under the sickly orange glow of streetlights, the concrete building appeared squat and defeated and did not seem promising of any kind of future.

She sat against the chain-link fence, her bag in her lap, and fell asleep. She woke to a gentle kick on her thigh and looked up into the not-unkind face of a young Hispanic man. Marie showed him the address and said, “Amélie,” but when she got no look of recognition, she said, “Coca,” and he nodded.

Inside was a jail, small cages packed tight with dogs. The dogs barked and howled, their noises echoing and amplified against the concrete floor and walls until she felt a humming inside her head as if it would split open. The overwhelming smell of urine and kaka gagged her.