10
A Little Bit Cute

It’s the Wednesday after the Spring Thing. Mary Agnes and I have gotten ginger ales and Utz at Peas n’ Pickles, and we spread our snacks across torn paper bags on the bench seats overlooking the East River.

“Did you see the look on Jenna’s face?” Mary Agnes says. “When Trevor came back with that apology, or whatever it was? I thought she was going to freak.”

“Let her ‘freak,’ “ I say. “She can’t hurt me. I don’t know why she has some problem with me.”

“I know why. She was the prettiest girl in our class, and now you are.”

“Stop.” I turn my head and laugh. “I am not.”

“Trevor seems to think so. And so does Alex.”

“Really, Mary Agnes. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Listen, before you got here, Jenna was, like, queen of everything. She got tons of attention. Not just from boys, but from teachers, girls, everybody. But now that you’re here? Maybe she’s suddenly not quite so fascinating anymore.”

I shrug. “I can’t help it if her boyfriend talks to me. Or if Alex does.”

“You don’t think he’s cute?” Mary Agnes asks. “Even a little bit?”

“Which one?”

Mary Agnes laughs. This is the thing I like most about her. She seems serious and bossy much of the time, but she likes to laugh, too, and she does it long and hard. “Alex,” she says. “You think I want to get you thinking about Trevor? Eww. He’s so conceited.”

“Yes, Alex, he’s cute,” I say. “And he’s very nice. But the point is that I cannot have a boyfriend. Ever.”

“I know, I know, it’s not allowed in your culture. I get that, but what does it mean? You can’t even talk to a boy until you’re twenty-one or something?”

I laugh. “This is how it works in a Haitian family.”

“But you’re in America now, not Haiti.”

“That is what everyone keeps telling me: ‘You’re in America now.’ But are things so different here? Is it so common, to see a white American boy walking down the street with a black girl? A Haitian girl?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s common, exactly, but it definitely happens. That’s the way it is in the U.S. Which is your new home, right?”

“Haiti is my home, Mary Agnes. It will always be my home.”

She bites her lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I would give anything to be home right now, in my real home, with Maman.”

Mary Agnes takes my hand. “I’m sorry, Bijou, really. I didn’t mean anything by it. Sometimes I forget about, I don’t know, everything you must have been through.”

I smile weakly and pat her hand. “It’s all right. I’m just a little sensitive sometimes,” I say. If she thinks she’s going to make me cry like Oprah Winfrey, she can wait all day. It’s not going to happen.

“You’re so together, I forget. You know?”

I suppose it’s better to have someone like Mary Agnes, who forgets, than all those nosy teachers at St. Catherine’s, always making me look them right in the eye, asking me how I am doing, as if I am some wounded animal.

The truth is that I also forget. If I spent every moment of every day thinking about those buildings, crumbling like paper, about my neighbors dead or dying, about Maman so far away, I would go crazy. When I am with Mary Agnes, or Maricel, or even Pierre and Marie Claire, I put away that part of myself, that Port-au-Prince Bijou, like clothes in a suitcase. I shut the lid and pretend it is not there.

“Anyway, being in America, being away from my mother, is even more reason why I can’t be with any boy,” I say. We have finished our snacks and are now walking up Old Fulton Street, back toward school. “My uncle would be angry to know even that I am with you after school. If he and my aunt were not both at work all day, he would be punishing me for arriving only thirty minutes after I am supposed to.”

“But that’s crazy.”

“To you, maybe. To me it is a little bit crazy that you get to do whatever you want. No one I knew before you and Maricel lives in this way.”

“Wow.”

We walk up Henry, past Cranberry Street. I wonder who named these streets. The first time I saw Pineapple Street, I looked up at the trees, hoping to see a bit of island fruit, but only the names are tropical. Everywhere in Brooklyn, it is only snow and concrete, and the coldest wind I have ever known.

“Oops!” Mary Agnes says. “Speak of the devil.” She nods up the street.

A block away, he walks out of Peas n’ Pickles. Not a devil, though—he, him, the boy, Alex. Before the Spring Thing, I’d only seen him once. Now, he seems to be everywhere.

“You planned this, Mary Agnes?”

“No, I didn’t. Promise.”

“I hope this is true.” I give her the eye. “No more secret plans, please.”

His other friends, the one called John and the other one, Maricel’s brother, catch up to him on the sidewalk.

“God, Bijou, relax. It’s Peas n’ Pickles. Everybody from St. Chris’s and St. Cat’s goes here, almost every day. It’s hardly a coincidence. We’ve seen Alex here before. More than once, too.”

“Maybe you did, but I didn’t.”

“That’s right, you not only never think of boys, you can’t even see them with your own two eyes.”

“Not until this moment did I care to, no.” She looks at me, surprised, but I smile to let her know I am only joking. Mary Agnes rolls her eyes at me.

“Hi, guys,” she says as we pass the boys.

“Hi,” they say at exactly the same time.

“Where are you guys going?” Alex asks. Everyone here calls each other “guys,” I’ve noticed, whether they are talking about boys or girls. A bit strange, no?

“Umm, to get snacks, obviously,” says Mary Agnes. “Duh.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Alex says.

“Don’t you mean that’s where you just were?” asks Mary Agnes.

I almost feel bad for Alex. He was probably perfectly relaxed before he saw me, and now he’s shy again.

“Okay, then, we’ll see you later,” Mary Agnes says. She walks away, and I follow her. I look back at the boys once. They’re as frozen as sculptures. Nomura very serious, Ira looking up at the sky with his mouth wide open, and Alex looking after us with puppy eyes as if his life were crumbling all around him. If only he could see himself. So much drama, and just over a couple of girls!

“Cat got your tongue, Alex?” Mary Agnes calls over her shoulder. “I guess you really did need flash cards!” Then she starts running toward the store, taking my hand and pulling me down the street.

“Ooh, that was cruel!” I laugh once we’re inside.

“Maybe.” She has a mischievous look on her face; she loves this. “Anyway, I thought you wanted nothing to do with them.”

“I don’t, but I don’t want to be mean, either.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad. I was only teasing him a little. He’s crushing out on you, hard. It’s pretty cute.”

“But he looked so, how do you say, pitiable? All three of them did.”

“We call it pathetic. Totally pathetic. Can’t they think of anything to say? Can’t they try to act normal and act like regular people?” But I can tell she is more amused than annoyed.

“Are all American boys like this?” I ask.

“No, there are other kinds.” She makes a sour face. “You remember those other guys from the dance, Rocky and Trevor?”

“Yes.” How could I forget?

“Those are the other kind.”

I’m glad, of course, that Alex isn’t like Rocky and Trevor. He is better-looking and sweeter than they are, but somehow he doesn’t know it. How is it that an uninteresting boy like Rocky can look in the mirror and see a movie star, and another, a truly handsome one like Alex, is so nervous he can barely even speak a full sentence to me without a set of cards to rely on?

“Maybe this was a good thing,” I say. “I never would have said this to him, but at least now he’ll stop looking at me with those sad eyes.”

“Actually, after that, Alex will probably be more interested than ever.”

“Comment? What do you mean?” I have a sip. This drink tastes nothing like ginger, but I still love it, the way the bubbles burn my throat.

“Boys want what they can’t get. Or what they think they can’t get.”

I squint at her, trying to see who Mary Agnes is, what she is.

“Friends aren’t supposed to get each other into trouble,” I say. “What are you up to?”

“Maybe getting into a little trouble is exactly what you need right now.”

Oh my Lord, is Mary Agnes the right friend for someone like me? “Trouble is the last thing I need in my life. You know that, right?” I say.

“Not bad trouble, Bijou. Good trouble. Just a little bit of fun. That’s allowed in Haitian culture, right?”

“No, it’s not!” I say, laughing. “In my uncle’s house, fun is absolutely forbidden!”