Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 39

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“Really, I’m sorry. I was just being nosy. I wanted to have a look at the house. Is this your room?”

She nodded and lowered her eyes.

I pointed back down the hall. “I kinda got in an argument with those guys back there. Do you mind if I just sit here for a while? I could use some female company.”

She smiled and stepped into the room, offering me the chair. After we’d settled ourselves, neither of us quite knew what to say. I could sense her awkwardness. After a while, she began to hum a tune.

“That sounds very pretty. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a song we used to sing in Haiti. To make children go to sleep.”

“Can you sing it for me?”

She smiled shyly and began to sing softly, but in a strong and pleasant voice.

Dodo ti pitit manman’l 

Do-o-do-o-do ti pitit manman’l

Si li pas dodo 

Krab la va manje’l

Her voice cracked, and she stopped singing. She stood suddenly, then crossed the room and stared out the window.

“You miss Haiti, don’t you?” She did not move to respond to my question, so I tried a different one. “How long have you worked for Joe?”

“Five years,” she said, so softly I could barely hear her. “That’s when you came from Haiti?”

She nodded and spoke without turning around. “Mister D’Angelo brought me over, and he sent me to school to learn English.”

“Your English is very good.”

She turned around and smiled, then crossed to the bed and sat next to me. “Thank you,” she said. “I cannot read yet, but I will learn.” She sat with her head down, her fingers tracing the floral design on her dress. I had never seen such a beautiful woman behave so modestly. Was it possible, I wondered, she didn’t know how lovely she was?

“So you met him in Haiti?”

She nodded without looking up.

“What was he doing there?”

“He was a drug policeman. There were lots of drugs in Haiti. He help the Haitian people.”

“Hmmm. I’ve met so many Haitian people lately. I didn’t realize there were so many Haitians in Florida.”

She smiled. “Yes, this is true. Haitians are in the supermarket, restaurants, shopping malls. Every year more and more. It is because it is so bad at home.”

“Do you still have family there?”

She frowned and appeared to struggle with her reply. “No,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “All dead.”

“I’m so sorry.” I looked at the top of her bowed head. She looked so young to have known such loss. “How old are you, Celeste?”

“I am twenty-three.”

“Joe brought you here when you were only eighteen?” She looked up quickly. “Yes. I love my country, Haiti, but it was bad there for me. There are many beautiful things in Haiti, many wonderful people. But this is my new country. There is nothing in Haiti for me now.”

Joe appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing back here?” There was something in his voice, some undercurrent of threat that made me feel like a kid who had been caught rifling through her parents’ belongings.

“We were just visiting.” I patted Celeste’s hand. “It was nice talking to you.”

Joe walked us out to the dock, where Mike untied the dinghy line while I prepared to climb down the dock. “Seychelle, I want you to know—” Joe said.

“Joe, stop.” I held up my hand like a traffic cop. “I came here looking for some answers about my dad, about who he was. And you know what? I found out that I’ve known that all along. I’ve always known who Red was. Nothing you say can change that.”

“I’m glad. I hope you understand that I would never intentionally say or do anything to hurt you. Are we still friends?” I nodded once and he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

Mike and I didn’t talk much on the ride back. As we cruised through the heart of the city, the late evening sunlight was turning the downtown buildings into golden towers. I sat up on the bow of the inflatable and tried to enjoy the beauty of the river, but my mind kept spinning images: Red, Gil, and Joe dockside in Cartagena; Perry waiting for someone in Flossie’s Bar; Gil’s photo on Perry’s Italian tow; new cell phones and radios. Joe had given me one version of what had happened down there over twenty years before. I needed to hear Gil’s version.

By the time we secured the dinghy and I’d turned down Mike’s dinner invite, it was approaching five o’clock. I drove straight to Jeannie’s to pick up Solange.

XVI

When I pulled Lightnin’ into Jeannie’s yard, I saw B.J.’s black El Camino parked on the far side of her van. I had hoped to just grab Solange and take off for Mambo Racine’s, so this was an unwelcome complication.

I saw him through the screen door when I reached the top of the landing. He was sitting on the couch talking to Jeannie, and in the few seconds before I knocked, when neither of them knew I was there, I watched him. He still gave me that shivery feeling—the way his biceps stretched the fabric of his white T-shirt as he raised his arm, his brown thighs showing beneath his khaki cargo shorts. His back was angled toward the door, and I could see his sleek black ponytail and his neck hairs pulled up into that rubber band. I had a sudden urge to kiss him right there, on his neck, just behind his ear.

I shook my head and knocked.

He was smiling when he unlocked the screen door. “We were just talking about you,” he said.

“Great,” I said as I walked through the door. “Hi, Jeannie. I came to pick up Solange.”

“Hey. I think taking that girl up to some Voodoo lady is nuts, but I can see you’ve got your stubborn heart set on it.” She rocked back and forth a couple of times to build momentum and then lifted her bulk up into a standing position. “I’ll go get her ready. It’ll take me fifteen minutes or so. She’s not dressed.”

I had the distinct feeling that she was giving B.J. time to talk to me.

“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I felt bad about the way we left things yesterday.”

“Listen, B.J., I really don’t have time to get into this now. I’m supposed to have this kid at Racine’s by seven, and I’ve just been on this ridiculous dinghy trip with Mike.” I was still in a bad mood from the conversation with Joe.

“What dinghy trip?”

“I was trying to find out something about my dad. It’s hard to explain. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

We sat in silence for a while then, the only sounds in the room those of the wall clock ticking and, through the screen, the city sounds of traffic and sirens and the far-off music of an ice cream truck.

B.J. took a deep breath. “Sey, I know what it’s like to hear stories about your father. Stories are all I’ve ever had about my dad.”

I knew that B.J. had been raised by a single mother in Southern California and that he had absolutely adored her. She’d died when he was only a few years out of graduate school. It was then that he abandoned the corporate lifestyle, moved to Florida, and started working as a boat carpenter. He rarely talked about his life before Florida, only occasionally letting loose with little tidbits.

“Even though I never met my dad, by his very absence, he played a part in my life. I would imagine he was this very powerful man, and it was the people around him who were preventing him from ever coming to visit his son. When I was in high school, my mother told me that he came from a wealthy Hawaiian family. He had been slumming in Southern California before going back to school up at Berkeley. She was seventeen and dancing in a Polynesian restaurant, and when he found out she was pregnant, he offered her fifty thousand dollars to get an abortion. She refused, he left, and that was the last she ever heard of him.”

“I’m sorry, B.J.”

“Don’t be. I had the greatest mom. No complaints. I just know that I want the chance to do the fatherhood thing right. Sey, being a family doesn’t have to mean polyester clothes and a minivan. Look at me. I was raised in women’s dressing rooms in a handful of Polynesian restaurants.”

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