Although he hadn’t known their exact worth at the time, he’d known enough to have certain items appraised. He’d taken the first offer he’d gotten for the Tiffany clock. He’d held on to the pocket watch that was eventually stolen by one of KAM’s patrons to whom he’d bragged about his finds. He’d given his daughters the Shakespeare collection at Marie-Ange’s funeral, but they’d purposely left the books behind. Besides these, his only remaining prizes were the ivory statues of a man and woman that he thought of as him and Marie-Ange, and the gramophone. He’d played it once for his girls over the intercom.
Stuck on the basement stairs, there was no way for Lucien to reach Dieuseul, who’d made a beeline for his room the minute he’d gotten past the kitchen. He was jealous of Dieuseul’s agility and imagined him easily adjusting his quick and eager gait to navigate the hose-soaked burned mess in the other rooms. He could see him climbing over the debris and the holes in the floor as he made his way up the stairs in the darkness. Through Dieuseul’s eyes Lucien surveyed the damage. He could see where the fire might have started. The melted power strips and extension cords, and the many appliances that were still connected, especially the hot plate, could have sparked the blaze. He felt the tremble but knew that Dieuseul would be less cognizant of or interested in the house’s reverberating laughter. He knew what Dieuseul was focused on finding—the small portrait of his stepdaughter that he’d painted to memorialize the little girl he remembered.
Lucien had peeped through a hole in the bedroom wall to watch as Dieuseul worked for weeks to capture the innocence of his little girl. He’d been trying to reassemble the likeness of the brown girl whose heart was broken as much as his after the divorce. She hadn’t been his child, but he’d always felt protective and possessive of the girl. Without the painter’s knowledge, Lucien had fallen in love with this realistic portrait of a ladylike brown girl in Victorian attire, her smile as subtle as one of Vermeer’s subjects or those on the faces of the Vierge Marie statues in the boiler room.
He had always deduced what Dieuseul had never been able to explain. He had gotten into the artist’s mind to find what he believed to be the reasons for the drastic change in his style of painting. It had only made sense that Dieuseul had lost all his patrons, parents who’d come calling at KAM for gentile reproductions of their children’s First Communion photos. The new disfigured, quasi-abstract impressionist interpretations of women and girls had left him with only two Haitian fans, his landlords. Marie-Ange had been schooled in European fine art and developed an appreciation for the undervalued Haitian artists of her father’s generation. Lucien had visibly shown his preference for the deconstructionist style that broke women down into more manageable pieces. He had been especially fond of Dieuseul’s reimagined renditions of his stepdaughter. Dieuseul had kept on painting for himself, sometimes leaving his bedroom door open and accidentally sharing new pieces with Marie-Ange. He’d given her three of them as payment for the increase in her electricity bill. He’d turned his room into a studio with kitchenette so he could stay inside for days without encountering his landlords except to use the bathroom. Lucien had seen the electricity-siphoning stockpile in Dieuseul’s bedroom but had kept quiet because of the silent agreement he’d made with his tenant.
Lucien shifted his weight onto his good side to get out of the freezing puddle beneath him. He tried to strategize how he would get himself back up without falling again. He knew that the longer he sat, the colder he was getting and the harder it would be for him to get up and maneuver in the narrow stairwell. He tried to divine whose revenge his present predicament was. Marie-Ange, whose defunct peristyle stood in the boiler room to his right? Or the women in the back room, whose bad thoughts had somehow landed him on his ass? Or Dieuseul, finally, for those times years ago?
But they’d made peace over his leering at his stepdaughter. Lucien had started before Dieuseul had moved in. He didn’t bother trying to figure out why Dieuseul hadn’t laid him flat on his back with a backhand or a punch for his obsession with the girl.
Lucien decided to at least try calling out for help. He shouted the name that seemed alien to him because he left off the “Boss” before “Dieuseul.” He knew that his friend would ignore him. Maybe Dieuseul had finally decided that Lucien was an undeserving deviant who’d used the guise of art to ogle and touch the women who’d come to KAM. Maybe Dieuseul was getting back at him for disrespecting Marie-Ange with the mistress housed in his basement under her nose. Lucien listened to hear if Dieuseul was coming down to get him, but all he heard was a thud outside. He assumed then that Dieuseul had half climbed, half jumped from the upstairs window rather than make his way back down to rescue him. Surely he’d been saved by the apple tree and backhoe that allowed him to tumble rather than crash into the ice-hardened ground.
Although he knew that he was gone, Lucien panicked and called out to Dieuseul. In between his screams, he heard Cocoa’s insistent singing. He thought he was imagining or remembering the sound. His heart raced even faster when he realized that the fire must have compromised the safe room’s soundproofing.
If he could hear her, then…But he still wanted to hear her sing. He wanted to hear all of them. Not scream. He hated their screaming, especially hers. Not Zero. One. He regretted taking her more than the white girl. If he made it back there, if she was still alive, he would take the opportunity to get rid of her before moving the others. He’d taken her because she’d looked like Veille, his Veille. But she’d turned out to be almost exactly like the vociferous Clair. He wished he’d known better.
Clair had been the outspoken one, irrepressible, defiant. She’d gotten him in trouble. But she’d been the prettiest, the one he’d liked to look at most, the one who’d looked like her mother, with all that hair. She’d gotten rid of it to spite him.
His mind allowed him to travel only so far at one go. He was already broken, stuck on the stairwell steps, unable to get into the basement proper. The thought of Clair and Sol was not helpful. But they’d both been so beautiful with so much hair. They’d become his enemies. He didn’t want to think of enemies in his position, but all he could see were his girls. Even if they made him angry. Even if they made him cry. Even if they made him freeze to death in a puddling sheet of ice with the subzero cold coming in. Even if they gave him nothing to hold on to. Even if they didn’t let him in. Even if they were his undoing. Even if they’d stayed alive out of pure spite. Even if they made it out and he didn’t. He would always have them in his head even if they finally locked him out of theirs. Like his own daughters. He never got to touch Clair. She had made herself ugly.
She had even shaved her head. Just to spite me. Can you believe it? All that beautiful hair, long like the women on my side of the family, but thick like my angel’s. She didn’t even go to the barber. And that One, she used a dull edge of a sardine can. No scissors. No scissors. There are plenty of candles. I don’t remember how many. Matches too. A lighter even. The fluid is probably too low to strike up a flame. Marie-Ange’s lighter from the boiler room. Four, One, apple jam, Spam jelly, sardines, no bread, maybe a gallon and a half of water. The one who shaved her head, she knows how to ration. She knows how to count like me. She hates me. They all do. Why did she have to die? My angel. My girls. Do they have to die? I have to get in. I have to get in. She shaved her head, but she can’t cut anything else. No scissors. The top of the Spam can, the spiraled rim peeled back. The rolled-up lid of the open sardine can. She can’t cut. Even if she wanted to kill herself, it wouldn’t go deep enough for her to bleed much. It’s a nice room. A safe room.
Lucien tried to shake off the frostbite creeping over his toes. He twisted his body to see if he could get moving. Each limb felt as heavy as an industrial steel pipe. His fingers didn’t move at all anymore. He could feel his insides going cold. Or had they always been that way? He had long stopped feeling his face. He couldn’t touch it even if he wanted to. He was too col
d to fall asleep, but he knew that his one friend would eventually take him over. It always did. It would shut his eyelids, nod his head, find him something to lean against. It would slide a pillow under his head, turn his breathing into snoring, let him turn to ice, let him die. He fought it off with thoughts of rescuing his girls. If he dared touch One, it would be a death match—Two and Three against him. He wasn’t as strong as he’d been when he’d taken her. She’d even ignored his pistol, his gift from a soldier at Bar Caimite. He’d finally subdued her after two loud bleeding years by bringing her a little present, Two. And then his second stroke had happened. Before Four. He’d lowered his sights and standards, except for the race of his next victim.
He’d wanted a white girl when he’d first come to America, but he was too light-skinned for them. They’d all wanted the genuine article, a true Mandingo, Shaft, Huggy Bear, Shaka Zulu type. For the first time in his life, he had been undermined by his complexion. He’d laughed when KAM men whom he’d considered inferior would tell him about their exploits. They’d described it all in great detail while pointing at the life-sized Farrah Fawcett poster on the garage wall just above the card table.
“Not by the color of my skin, but the content of my character!” he exclaimed, overenunciating in a thick accent. The men had assumed that he was referring to their bias toward white women, not his own feelings as a victim of prejudice. “I have a dream!” He laughed so hard tears rolled down his face. “A wet dream!”
“You’re going to hell, man!” one of his darker and, therefore, privileged patrons chided.
“We’re already there. You’re lying to yourselves if you can’t see it.”
He had never explained what he’d meant, assuming that the men would never truly understand. Was he referring to the karma for their secret misdeeds he’d somehow found out about? Or did he mean that all immigrant life was hell? Was he talking about their subjugation as black men in this country? Or as married men chained prematurely to first loves who’d never lived up to the porn fantasies fashioned by Times Square peep shows and videotapes Lucien provided as background entertainment in his makeshift casino? Had he been scorched at the steel plant in places they could not see? What hell? What could be worse than Haiti?
Lucien hadn’t verbalized it, but he’d believed that their hell was of their own making. Every regret, every longing for anything other than what they had, every twinge of covetousness, the greed that had brought them to his card table to gamble away hard-earned paychecks for a chance at a jackpot, their lusting after poster girls and deep-throat flick tricks, their shaking of heads when they entered his house through the front door and walked past Marie-Ange standing in the kitchen, their shaded eyes silently complimenting her fineness, the way they gobbled down her cooking, desperate and hopeful for refills on the house. These were the poured cements, wood frames, and aluminum siding for their personal infernos. Whatever they believed they’d settled for, instead of counting themselves blessed, they had sealed their deals with devils of their own conjuring. Their fantasies of a better heaven—that was hell.
* * *
—
LUCIEN WOKE up only because of the sunlight that started bleeding through the cracks of the back door, illuminating the snow packed in the corners. He knew the demolition team would not come, as Leona had predicted. He didn’t need his claw to thaw to grab a plastic-sheaved loaf of bread beside him. He grabbed and tore it open with his teeth, savoring a dry mouthful of bread. He could see a torn gallon that still had a few drops of water, but he couldn’t reach it. Still, he thought that captivity couldn’t be so terrible with a little bit of warmth and bland food. At least they weren’t out in the elements. He’d rescued at least two from bad weather. Tonère! He’d saved one from serious jail time and, worse, death to silence a potential DEA informant. Engras. What if he’d left them out there in the biting January cold with the piling snow breaching their Payless shoes, summer flip-flops, non-water-resistant high-tops? What if they were out there, straight, gapped, crooked, or decayed teeth chattering, in their tight jeans and T-shirts, flimsy housedresses, low-rise leggings, cutesy crop tops with their pierced or pristine belly buttons out, or braless with their thongs hiked up their asses like that ingrate.
None of them had been wearing coats when he’d rescued them. None of them had had more than two dollars to their name let alone in their pockets. Who gave a fuck about them but him? The Jean-Baptistes with almost a dozen kids and grandkids cramped in their Section 8 welfare rental? The other neighbors obviously weren’t paying attention and didn’t give a damn about anything except when they could get rid of his trash house and buy his land? Or the damned public schools that took attendance and just dropped them from their rosters after a week, figuring they’d dropped out? Or the cops? Shit. That was a good one. They’d just been here with the fire marshal to ensure he didn’t try to break into his own house. No one had even cared about the white girl. Yeah, he’d had a white girl. Finally. But he had had to get rid of her because she was trouble. Nothing but.
My. Zero. One, she’s as good as dead. Two. Three. Four, she’s been gone. I cried for her like I still cry over them. They’ve never seen me cry. Ever. I never made a sound or let the water fall onto their backs. So they never cry with me. They scream and then, after, I hear them cry from somewhere inside that I do not have within me. I am hollow like the things La Belle kept. I am a figure crashing into a wall, revealing nothing because there is nothing. But I cry. I have no feeling except the touch of water falling from my eyes. No feeling inside. I don’t remember it ever. If it had been there sometime before, I cannot recall. So I am nothing, not even a memory to myself. I will be their memory. They see the figure that I am. They make me into something—fear, father, harm, care, life, darkness. Still, I am nothing to myself. I am a mirror. I am nothing until someone looks at me.
He thought about Nihla. Four. He didn’t have to kill her. He could have just left her there with them. She’d done something awful. He couldn’t remember with his mind freezing over. Had she bitten him, maybe? Tried to run? Maybe he’d done it by accident. Maybe he hadn’t touched her at all. Did she hit her head? He tried to see what had happened. Did the piles of junk come down on her? He couldn’t find the memory anywhere. Maybe she’d slit her own throat. She’d been high, having a drug-induced hallucination. Asante would remember, even if she wouldn’t say anything to anyone about it. Maybe he hadn’t killed the white girl after all. Maybe they’d come for her, charming princes, men in tights or uniforms brandishing badges, carrying flashlights and a rough blanket to throw over her shoulders.
He wanted to be rescued. But he didn’t want to be held captive. He knew that whoever came would take him to a hospital because of his condition. That was prison. He hacked repeatedly, choking on the cold and the thought of being hospitalized. Better to die here in his house. He didn’t care if the girls could hear him. He wanted to scare them one last time, if just with his grunting and the rattling of phlegm in his chest. He didn’t care if One was also sick, that she would hear him and be jealous because she could no longer cough. He didn’t think of pneumonia, but he knew that whatever was making him cough and even his frostbite would force him into a hospital. He wanted them to know that something was wrong, that something was coming. He called out just to scare them. No name. He didn’t call for Dieuseul. He just shouted Kreyòl curses to make them wet their panties as they thought of him one last time. He wanted them to think that he had made it into the basement. He wanted them to shake at the thought that he had come to kill them all.
SOL
Sol glared at Cocoa with her eyes closed, knowing that the singer would understand instinctively, after years together in the back room, what was being conveyed. No need to say, Shut the fuck up! for Cocoa to understand the silence the situation demanded. He was here. He was coming. Sol could hear and sense Lucien’s approach better than any of the others. She didn’t know to whom or w
hy he was calling out, but she knew by the tones of the muffled sounds and the chill that was not a symptom of her fever that he was here. She nudged Chiqui, who’d fallen asleep holding her hand. She didn’t have to say her name. She’d given it to her.
There had been no other option but to shorten her sister’s given name to Chiqui. Anglos had barely been able to pronounce Chiqui, which they twisted into Chicky, let alone Xochiquetzal, the Aztec goddess of fertility after whom she was named because she’d been conceived and born under the harshest conditions. Much to Sol’s chagrin, Chiqui had always explained that her name meant “small,” as in Chiquita bananas. The sisters had been as different as they’d looked.
Sol didn’t know what her sister looked like now. The back room didn’t allow for a clear assessment. The years had aged them both in ways neither could see. Chiqui’s hair had been the lightest of browns with fuzzy blond tips that glowed in the light like a halo. She’d been pale, round, and flat except for her bulbous cheeks and small, curvy fuchsia lips like those painted on baby dolls. Her nose and ears were as small as her mouth. Only her eyes were black and slightly slanted like the eyes of the indigenous people of the Yucatán. Most couldn’t tell that her lashes were long because they were the same sunlit blond as the edges of her hair. Unlike Sol, Chiqui had a small gap between her front teeth. She had been poking her tongue through that gap when Lucien scooped her up from the same place he’d taken Sol, the same place Cara had vanished.
While Sol had been raging in his basement, Lucien had been watching Chiqui with her clippety-clop walk twisting her hips because she had never learned to use her arms to help propel herself forward. With a chunky shape—no waistline or hips—she was not his type. Her figure was neither boyishly childlike nor curvaceously womanly. She still had baby fat for breasts and broad shoulders held up by a wide back. Her flat backside made her look as if her pelvis was pushed perpetually forward. At the moment he’d decided to snatch her, Chiqui had been standing habitually with all her weight on one leg and foot, which emphasized her lack of hips.
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