13
Haitian, Haitian, Go Back to Your Nation

It’s lunchtime. Mary Agnes, Maricel, and I are walking down Montague Street with our sandwiches. Just strolling, enjoying a bit of nice weather, at last. It’s almost the end of March, and this is the first day since I moved here that I remember the sun tickling my skin. Ah, I hope this means spring is here.

“Did you know they have a playground up there?” Maricel asks, nodding upward.

“Who?” I have no idea who she is talking about.

“The boys, silly,” Mary Agnes says. “St. Chris’s.”

Maricel points, and I follow her finger to the rooftop of the school, where I see a fence that extends up past the top of the building by at least the height of a full-grown man.

“Alex and John and Ira are probably looking down at us right now,” Mary Agnes says.

“That is a bit … how do you say? Creepy?” I say.

“It’s not creepy,” Mary Agnes says. “It’s cute.” But to Mary Agnes, everything is cute, no?

“Why can’t they be friends with someone else?” asks Maricel. “Someone attractive? Who’s not my brother?”

“Feeling left out?” Mary Agnes teases.

“Alex likes Bijou, and you like Nomura,” Maricel says. “Who have I got to like? Nobody.”

I repeat the phrase in my head: Alex likes Bijou. I like this. I like this being liked. What I don’t like, though, is not knowing what it means, where it will lead. I can never be with this boy, can I? It seems so impossible.

“Someone’ll come along for you, Mari,” Mary Agnes says. “But let’s get back to Bijou.” She turns to me and raises an eyebrow. “Alex does like Bijou. But does Bijou like Alex?”

I can’t believe she is asking me. “This is silly,” I say. “Of course not.”

“Look at her,” says Maricel. “Is she blushing?”

“She totally is,” says Mary Agnes. “Because she totally likes Alex Schrader.”

I have finished my sandwich. I roll the plastic wrap into a ball and put it back in the paper sack. “All right,” I say. “Maybe a little.”

They both laugh.

“Very nice,” Mary Agnes says. “Everything is going according to plan.”

“How do you mean, ‘according to plan’?” I ask.

We walk by a brownstone stoop, only a block away from St. Catherine’s now, which is good, because we have only three minutes before lunch is over. What is less good: Angela Gudrun and Jenna Minaya are sitting on this stoop. As we walk by, they stare at us, and we stare at them. Then, as we pass them, they follow directly behind us.

“What plan is that, Mary Agnes?” Angela asks.

Mary Agnes says nothing. It’s the best thing to do when these two are around: just ignore them, and they will walk away soon enough.

“I’ll bet it has to do with Alex,” Angela says. “You know, Mr. Index Cards.”

“Right, him,” Jenna says. “He’s kind of cute, but he acts like he’s still in sixth grade.”

“Try fifth,” Angela says. “Zero confidence.”

I can feel Mary Agnes, to my right, about to say something. Her whole body is as tense as stretched wire. I touch the back of her elbow, a signal: Don’t do anything.

Then, from nowhere, Jenna says, or actually, sings: “Haitian, Haitian, go back to your nation.”

At first, I do not even understand her words. But I follow my own advice. I don’t say or do anything.

Jenna laughs at my silence and repeats the rhyme again, like a chant: “Haitian, Haitian, go back to your nation.”

She says it three times, and Angela joins her the last time, laughing so hard she can barely say the words.

Finally, I cannot stop myself. Only a few meters from the school steps, I stop, turn around, and look directly at her. “Stupid girl,” I say, pointing my finger at her, “do you even have any idea of the words you are saying?”

“What did you call me?” Jenna asks, taking a step closer.

Before I can respond, an entire fifth-grade class comes running down the steps, some of them slipping between Jenna and me. I look up to see Miss Williams, who is peering down at us, trying to see what’s going on.

“Everything okay down there, Ms. Minaya?” the teacher asks.

“Yep!” Jenna says brightly. Then she whispers under her breath, “We’ll settle this later,” and runs up the steps, two at a time.

Sometimes I do not understand people. I do not understand them at all. Why would she tell me to go back to my country? Isn’t America supposed to be the place where everyone comes from somewhere else?

Once we are inside, Jenna and Angela walk in the opposite direction.

“Bijou,” says Mary Agnes, “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” I ask. “You didn’t do anything.”

The first time we visited America, Maman told me there might be people in America who would not like me because I am black or because I am Haitian. She told me that for most Americans the word “Haiti” means only three things: vodou, the way it is seen only in movies, with snakes, little dolls, and evil curses; poor people, like the ones who lived in poverty well before the earthquake; and that murdering disease AIDS. She said that some people think like this because they are ignorant, and it makes them feel better about themselves to look at me in this way. To insult me to my face so that they might feel better about their own sorry selves. But this is the first time that I see it is actually happening.

It is one thing to think about the possibility of something happening, and another, quite different thing to actually have it happen. Oh, how I wish Maman were here. Or Jou Jou. Or even Tonton Pierre.

“How was school, my love?” Marie Claire asks when I get home.

“Very good, tante,” I say, lying. “I’m going to go and do some homework now.”

She smiles at me so peacefully that I almost believe my own story, and soon enough, I am doing my prealgebra problems, almost able to give the boring work my full concentration.

In ten minutes, the phone rings. My uncle, he has a cell phone, but still he keeps also the old phone. He says you never know when there might be an emergency and we need this phone.

I never answer it, though—only once, last week, Mary Agnes called me to say hello, but other than that, I never get calls—so I stay in my room. It rings and rings and rings.

After the fifth ring, I hear Marie Claire pick it up. I go back to my homework.

In another moment, though, Marie Claire knocks on my door.

“Bijou?” she calls. I run to the door and open it. Marie Claire puts her hand over the phone and whispers, “C’est un garçon.” It’s a boy.

She looks at me as if I have brought a boy in the house and am hiding him under the covers. I say nothing but plead with my eyes: Don’t tell Tonton. I did not ask this boy to call. It is not my fault.

Marie Claire shakes her head, looking truly sad. She hands me the phone but goes nowhere. Isn’t she going to give me any privacy? She’s not just going to stand there, is she?

Marie Claire does not move.

“Hallo? Who is this, please?” I look up at my aunt. She raises her eyebrows: Get on with it, child.

“It’s Alex,” he says.

I say nothing.

“You know, from yesterday? In the park?” he asks.

“I know, I know, of course,” I say. I try to sound stern and upset, the way Pierre would expect me to. “But how did you get this number? And why are you calling me here?”

“C’est pour école,” I say to Marie Claire. “Oui, c’est un garçon, mais c’est pour lycee.” Yes, it’s a boy, but it’s for school.

Oh, why did he have to call? Doesn’t he understand how much trouble I could get in for this?

“Alex, thank you for giving me the assignment,” I say, hoping that Marie Claire will believe this silly lie, or at least ignore it.

“What assignment?” he asks. I hope she didn’t hear that. I just keep talking.

I continue, “But you cannot call me at home. Ever.”

“Oh no. I’m really sorry.”

“It is all right. But you understand now, all right?”

“Sure, sure,” he says. “Hey, I hope … I’m really—”

But I hang up before he finishes. I have no choice. I will have to explain later—and hope that he understands.