Seth and Samona (5 page)

But I most remember the story that Granmè told me about Matant Margaret and their own grandfather—my gran-gran-granpapa. He was old and yellow when they were just little girls, Granmè had said. Everybody was saying he was losing his mind ’cause he took to mumbling to himself all the time and was making mistakes. He would go out fishing and come back with a goat or a chicken and swear until he cried that he had caught it in the sea. He would talk to the chairs and listen like they were going to talk back to him. He would get up and walk out of the house in the middle of dinner, thinking he had to go to work. Everybody except Matant
Margaret would start laughing and talk about the old people’s disease. It was Matant Margaret who would always go after Gran-gran-granpapa. She would catch up with him at the end of the road, take his hand and walk with him wherever he wanted to go. They would stop on the street and buy some
akara
, which is fried beans, or burnt plantain to eat from whoever was selling it on the side of the road. Then they would walk and walk and not go back home until it was dark and dinner was over. Granmè said that Matant Margaret was the only one who didn’t cry when Gran-gran-granpapa finally died.

Thinking about that story, I knew I wasn’t gonna be scared when it was my turn to look at Matant Margaret. I thought about how long she had been living in that nursing home and I knew—no matter what Samona said—that she wasn’t going to wake up. For the first time, I started to feel sad about Matant Margaret dying.

When there was no one left but our two families, Enrie whispered to me that he figured Samona had been lying to us the whole time and all of a sudden, I didn’t care. I would get Samona for making a fool of me tomorrow but for now, I wanted to think about Matant Margaret some more.

W
hen Manmi asked me to bring some food over to Mrs. Gemini’s the day after the funeral, I was glad to go. We had tons of food left over because everybody had come over to our apartment afterwards.
Grio
, which is fried pork;
du riz djon-djon
, which is rice and dried mushrooms; macaroni; cake—everybody brought something and our refrigerator was so full you couldn’t open it up without something falling out.

Our apartment was still full of relatives, too, who came from New York, Miami, Canada and Haiti. Everybody came to say good-bye to Matant Margaret and to spend some time with Granmè. It was a real big deal now that she was the oldest living person in the family. Our apartment was so crowded that Jean-Claude and I had to sleep on the floor in the living room. And it gets very tiring having to kiss a whole roomful of relatives good morning and good night and hello all the time. What’s really tiring, though, was all the noise. They spent all day arguing politics about Haiti and nobody
agreed about anything except that Haiti is in bad shape and something has to be done about it. My cousins who live in Haiti said that gas has gotten so expensive that people are stealing it from other cars and there’s no electricity at night. Ti Odette said that in Port-au-Prince, there are bodies found every day because the secret police are trying to put down any resistance to the Haitian army. It all sounds like a nightmare and I know that Manmi and Papi feel bad that they can’t take us to Haiti in the summers like they used to. We haven’t gone in five years so I don’t even remember much about it.

Anyway, with all the noise at our apartment, going to Samona’s house was like an escape. I was surprised when Chantal came into the kitchen and told Manmi that she would help me carry the food. Chantal had been busy with Marie and Rochelle, two of our cousins from Haiti. They’d never been to the United States and Chantal loved showing them around Boston.

Chantal hadn’t gone with me to Mrs. Gemini’s in a long time. She used to be good friends with Samona’s big sister, Leticia, but they stopped hanging around together after Chantal started seeing so much of Jerome.

Jerome. That was it.

As soon as we got outside I stopped and turned to Chantal. “You’re sneaking out to see Jerome, right?”

Chantal sighed and dug her hands into her jeans. “Don’t tell Manmi or Papi.”

We started walking down the street together. Chantal knew I wouldn’t tell Manmi or Papi but I didn’t like the way she was putting me in the middle of all of it. Suddenly I wanted to know what was so special about Jerome that Chantal would lie and sneak away for him.

“Why do you like Jerome so much?” I asked.

Chantal looked surprised. She searched my face for a minute. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“He listens to me, for one thing.”

I frowned. “We listen to you too.”

“No you don’t.” Chantal sucked her teeth. “Neither does Manmi or Papi. Jean-Claude used to listen to me when we were little but he’s so busy playing street hero these days, he doesn’t have time. You don’t listen either, Seth. You think I’m just a little Manmi to take care of the house. You and Jean-Claude get attention for other things. I get good grades like you and Jean-Claude, but it doesn’t count as much.”

I thought about that. It was kinda true that I thought of Chantal as a little Manmi. We had never played together like Jean-Claude and I did when I was little. She was always with Manmi and Granmè learning how to cook, clean and sew.

“Do you mind doing all that stuff—the cooking and cleaning all the time?” I asked, thinking about all of Jerome’s questions from the first time he had come
over. Jean-Claude and I don’t know how to cook anything. Neither does Papi.

Chantal shrugged. “I used to think it was unfair but whenever I said anything Manmi would start talking about American ideas going to my head. It’s easier to just do it than fight about it all the time. All Manmi and Papi expect of me is to go to college and become a nurse and marry a good Haitian man.”

I didn’t see anything wrong with that but I didn’t say anything. Chantal kicked a pebble along as we kept walking. I remembered that Samona once told the class that she wanted to be an astronaut and Mrs. Whitmore couldn’t stop herself from laughing. Samona had been so mad, she’d gone home at lunch and brought her mother back to tell Mrs. Whitmore off. I had always thought that Chantal wanted to be a nurse too though I don’t think I ever heard her say so. Maybe Chantal was right. Maybe we don’t listen to her.

“Do you want to be an astronaut or something?” I was ready to listen.

Chantal laughed. “No. I don’t want to be an astronaut. And I don’t want to be a nurse either. Being around all those sick people would make me just as sick. I’m not even sure I want to get married—ever!”

“Well, what do you want to be?”

Chantal searched my face again. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah.” Of course I wanted to know.

“You remember anything about Haiti? All the summers we spent in Bonville?”

Bonville was where Manmi grew up. It’s hard for me to remember much else. Haiti seems so far away most of the time. When Manmi and Papi tell stories about growing up there, it’s hard for me to picture the places they talk about or the mountains they describe.

“A little,” I said, trying harder to remember. “I remember Granmè killing chickens in the yard. And I remember Carnival—’cause we all dressed up in costumes and you had a long wig on.”

“It was so beautiful.” Chantal smiled. “Everything. You remember the markets? Granmè used to wake us up really early on Tuesdays to buy fish. Don’t you remember the time we bought those live crabs and they got out of the box and you were screaming? You remember the Bouki and Ti Malice stories that Monsieur Lulu used to tell us in the dark?”

I could remember pieces of everything Chantal was saying, especially the storytelling. “I remember the story you told me about the
lougawou
that eats kids and I was so scared I wouldn’t go outside at night for a whole week.”

“Everything is such a mess now. You should hear the things Marie and Rochelle tell me. School is hardly ever open. I know that there were probably problems when we were there too but we were too young to know about them.” Chantal sighed and stopped walking. “I want to help Haiti. Maybe go into government and
work for the United Nations. I don’t know—Jerome thinks I can do it. Haiti even had a woman president for a little while—”

“You want to be president of Haiti?” I said. My sister? President of a whole country?

“No.” Chantal shook her head. “But I could if I wanted to be.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was still in shock. Chantal had big dreams. It was hard to suddenly start thinking about her in a different way. She was looking at me like she wanted my permission or something but I didn’t know what to say.

“Forget it.” Chantal turned around and started walking the other way. “I’ll see you later, Seth.”

I watched her walk away before turning back toward Samona’s house. I needed to talk to Jean-Claude about all of this. But right now I had to concentrate on Samona. I had to tell her off so she wouldn’t think she’d actually scared me with her story about the wake. And if you can manage to put Samona aside and all, her house is fun to go to. There’s always something different going on. The last time I had to go over there, Samona’s brother Nigel had bought one of those kiddie pools and had everybody in it crushing grapes with their bare feet. He was trying to make the very first bottle of Gemini Wine. Nigel wants to be an inventor.

Samona’s house sticks out from every other one on the block. It doesn’t have grass, bushes or trees in front of it. Mrs. Gemini turned every inch of ground into a
big vegetable and herb garden that goes all around the house. So when you’re walking up the steps, instead of grass and flowers you can see corn, carrots, eggplants, rosemary, sage and other stuff growing out of the ground. Samona told me her mom has a big thing about organic food, which means food that’s all natural and doesn’t have pesticides or preservatives in it.

I didn’t even bother knocking on the front door because nobody ever answers it. One time I stood out there for half an hour knocking and ringing before Leticia shouted out the window for me to stop making a racket and go through the basement door in the back of the house. I went straight there today and found Mrs. Gemini in the basement cutting pieces of cloth at her worktable.

“Young King,” Mrs. Gemini said, looking over her glasses at me. “Long time no see.”

Mrs. Gemini is very, very tall, almost as tall as Papi. She has a face shaped like a triangle and eyebrows that look like bird’s wings.

“Hi, Mrs. Gemini,” I said, putting the bag of food on the table beside her. Mrs. Gemini calls me Young King because she says I always look like I have the burden of a kingdom on my shoulders.

She shook her head, and about a million tiny braids fell out from whatever was holding them together at the top of her head. They looked like tiny snakes. “You got a number for me to play?”

“Mrs. Gemini,” I said, shaking my head too, “you
know what the chances of you winning the lottery are?”

“Chances, shmances. I was born lucky, Young King. If I just focus my entire spiritual and mental being toward it—it will happen.”

“You say that every week, Mrs. Gemini, and it still hasn’t worked.” I smiled at her. “What kind of a star did you say you were born under?”

She smiled and rubbed my head. “I need a kid like you to keep my feet planted in the earth. And how many times do I have to ask you to call me Binta, Young King? How go the affairs of statehood?”

I sat down in a chair next to Mrs. Gemini. No matter how much she asks me, I can’t bring myself to call her Binta. It just doesn’t seem proper. “Huh? You mean the funeral? Manmi sent over some of the leftover food for you. She said to thank you for the wreath.”

“Good. Now I won’t have to scavenge the garden for lunch.” Mrs. Gemini went back to cutting the black and red striped cloth on the table. “Is everything okay at your place? Your grandmother feeling better?”

“I guess so. She got up to vacuum the house at six o’clock this morning. Woke everybody up,” I said, trying to sound annoyed. Truth was, I was glad to hear the vacuum. That meant everything was back to normal.

“Good. Tell your manmi that I’ll drive her to work Monday morning so we can do some woman-talk.”