30
My Secret

“Haitian, Haitian, go back to your nation,” Jenna chants (again! Can’t she think of anything new?) as she and Angela pass me, Mary Agnes, and Maricel on our way to the Clark Street station a few minutes after school on Thursday.

I keep my mouth shut. Nothing good can come from responding to a crazy person, and my week has been bad enough already.

“I guess even Alex wants you to go back to your nation now, eh, Haitian girl?” Jenna asks. She and Angela turn around now, blocking our path. We’re right in front of St. Christopher’s, which I suppose is Jenna’s idea of the perfect place to have a fight. “Nobody wants anything to do with you at all.” Except your annoying boyfriend, I think.

Everyone in school has seen the video by now, and there’s no way for me to feel any more embarrassed or stupid than I already do. So what does Jenna want now? Doesn’t she have anything better to do? Mary Agnes and Maricel come to the edge of what is now a small circle, watching this confrontation between Jenna and me. The smirking Angela is here, too, showing her fool friend support.

“Why are you doing this, Jenna?” I ask. Because I’m new? Because I wouldn’t be your friend? Because your boyfriend likes me more than you?

“There doesn’t need to be a why. Because … I just don’t like you, that’s why.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I say. “Where is your family from? Because you have a West Indian look, don’t you?”

“I’m Bushwick born and bred, girl,” Jenna says. “They don’t make ’em more Brooklyn than me.”

“So you are, what, a Native American, then? Your ancestors were here before George Washington?”

This is going to be easy. Jenna Minaya may be mean, but she doesn’t have the brains God gave a cow.

“Mis padres come from the Dominican,” Jenna says. “And being Dominican’s something to be proud of. We’ve got beautiful beaches that celebrities go to. We have our own celebrities, too. Best baseball players in the world come from the DR. It’s not like Haiti over there, with nasty shantytowns and vodou dolls and people dying of crazy diseases.”

I notice that a few girls have gathered around Angela. I suppose they want a front-row seat, where they can see all the action.

“I didn’t live in a shantytown, Jenna. I lived in a villa. And Maman and I had a servant there, a sixteen-year-old Dominican girl called Blanca. She doesn’t speak very good French, or Kreyol, but she’s very sweet. She looks a little like you, actually.”

“You’re saying I remind you of your maid?”

“Yes, there’s quite a resemblance, especially around the eyes. She’s prettier, though, and more intelligent. We used to give her a nice big bonus every year, when we’d send her back to her parents.” I tilt my head to the side and pause for effect because I’m enjoying this. Enjoying it more than I should be, considering how many more important things are happening right now in my life than my fight with this silly girl. But I can’t help it; with all the hurt I’m feeling right now, why not share a little of it with her?

“Hey, maybe your parents are friends with hers?” I ask. “Maybe they all grew up together, in the slums.”

“Ooooh,” the crowd of girls moan, including Angela (so much for loyalty). If this were a boxing match—and perhaps it is—Jenna would be bleeding from her mouth, her nose, her eyes.

But I still haven’t delivered my knockout punch. “Why don’t you be a good girl,” I say, “and go get me a tub to wash my feet.” When she does nothing but stand there with her jaw hanging open, I say, “Go on! When I tell you to move, you move!”

Jenna Minaya does not move an inch. She closes her stupid, gaping mouth and narrows her eyes. Then she smiles: a sick, satisfied smile as if she, not I, is the one in control. She looks as strong as ever, more confident than a girl should be after what I’ve said to her.

“Bijou, about that villa you supposedly lived in with your precious maman,” she says. “Who lives there now?”

I don’t say anything. It’s not a question she wants me to answer, anyway. She’s going in for her own knockout blow now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see others watching this showdown: Rocky, Trevor, Nomura, and even, at the far edges of the circle, him. Get out of here, Alex, I want to scream. Leave me alone, forever! I hate him for seeing this.

“Nobody does, right, Bijou?” Jenna asks. “Because while you’ve been running around here for the last two months talking about ‘Maman this’ and ‘Maman that,’ she died in the earthquake, didn’t she? And your old grandfather was getting too sick and old to take care of you anymore.

“You didn’t know I knew that, did you? I heard my mom talking about it on the phone, weeks ago. She’s the parent rep on the board this year, so she knows all about you.”

“You’re a liar,” says Mary Agnes, stepping from the edge of the circle and pointing her finger in Jenna’s face. “And you’d better shut your mouth right now.”

“My mom told me to keep quiet about it,” Jenna says. “But I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t know the truth.”

“Don’t do this, Jenna,” Mary Agnes says. “Just stop.”

“At first, I actually felt sorry for you. I tried to be friends with you, but you were so rude to me.” Then she turns to Angela and says, “Except for Maricel and Mary Agnes, who don’t even count, Bijou has barely spoken a word to any of us. Am I right?”

No one says a thing, even Mary Agnes. Even me.

I want to yell at her, to fight back. But I feel like I’m in the middle of a nightmare, the kind where you try to scream, but not a sound comes from your mouth.

“But now that you’ve been here for over two months,” Jenna says, “you should get real and admit it: you don’t have a maman. Not anymore, anyway, and not ever again. So stop pretending, okay?”

“That is so weird,” Angela says. “This whole time, she was trying to fool us? Why not just be honest?”

I say nothing. What is there to say? I can never hurt Jenna the way she has just hurt me. She has not seen enough of life to feel this kind of pain.

That is when I fall. Not a loud smack on the sidewalk concrete, but a soft crumble into the arms of Mary Agnes. I see Maman, as she was the last time I saw her, early on the morning of January 12, 2010. She looked me in the eyes, nuzzled my nose with hers, kissed me, and said, “À bientôt.” See you later.

But later never came.

Mary Agnes and someone else, someone taller, help me to my feet. The crowd parts, letting us pass. Jenna looks at me one last time, no longer hateful. Angry. Sad. About to cry.

But why? Is she so filled with hate, she can’t enjoy her victory for even a moment?