My Mother's House

by Francesca Momplaisir

  She’d sat with perfect posture in the front seat of his van as if trying to get the attention of and recognition from a teacher. With little in the way of street smarts and having only been told that she was being taken to where her big sister was, she’d chatted away about her favorite pastimes: video games, chess (she was captain of the club at school), and all manner of board games. Lucien handed her an old Game Boy preloaded with Tetris, to which she’d instantly become addicted. She rattled on during the drive that he extended to ensure that she was too absorbed in the game to notice where she was being taken. Chiqui loved being a know-it-all, to compete and to win, which later irritated Lucien because she would try to find ways to outsmart him to escape. But lacking his patience, his decades of hard-won savvy, the internal motivation of someone who feared jail time, and genuine psychopathy, she was easily manipulated.

  Sol had tried to teach Chiqui how to resist, but she knew that her sister loved food and had been accustomed to being well-fed. Chiqui had not had the benefit of deprivation to prepare her for the back room. She could not fight off hunger, and so she’d fallen victim to the seduction of food that Lucien used to control her. Coupled with her fear of the dark and intolerance of loud noises, he’d easily kept her in check. Sol had just begun teaching her how to cope when Cocoa arrived, triggering all of Chiqui’s acute pain points and general dislikes.

  Sol had remained calm to keep the youngest two from getting on each other’s nerves. Cocoa was very pretty, adept at playing dumb, and deliberately coquettish, which had won her privileges from Lucien. But Sol had seen how the new cellmate had come across to Chiqui like the ditzy girls at school. An incredible singer with range from JHud alto to Beyoncé falsetto, Cocoa exasperated Chiqui’s chronic earaches. However, once Cocoa proved her exceptional intelligence and showed Chiqui how to use syrupy sweetness to elicit small favors, she won over her would-be secondary adversary. Together, they’d gotten Lucien to leave the back-room door unlocked some of the time, so they could use the toilet in the adjacent bathroom instead of the encrusted buckets. Chiqui’s tiny bladder had been more than grateful, especially when she began to urinate more and more often.

  She’d worn diapers around the clock until the age of five and at night until age nine. At twelve, she was still a chronic bedwetter, which became her biggest problem and the greatest annoyance to her fellow captives. Accustomed to bunking three to a bed with Sol and her mother, Chiqui would unknowingly roll closer to Cocoa and Asante in her sleep. The cheap black leggings and oversized T-shirt she’d been wearing when she’d first been abducted by Lucien had to be burned in the shower because they could neither be sanitized nor flushed. Comfortable with the smell of her own perfume and good Haitian home cooking, Cocoa was the first to recommend fire as a remedy for Chiqui’s clothes. Asante hadn’t been speaking to anyone then. Accustomed to her own womanly odors, she’d been captive in the safe room’s stink too long to care. Even Cocoa’s singing couldn’t coax Asante out of her deepest silences.

  Lucien had never planned to take a beloved and well-known girl who lived that close to home. He’d known Cocoa’s parents for years. Her older siblings had been his daughters’ peers. She came from a decent family with close neighborhood ties, although she did not attend the Catholic school across the street. With seven other children, her parents could barely afford their government-subsidized rent. Cocoa grew up believing the lie that Lucien and Marie-Ange were the greatest parents because their children were proven role models who’d succeeded and been able to get out of SOP. She’d been lured into Lucien’s house on the pretext of seeing his children, who’d stopped by for a visit and wanted to hear her sing. That would be her way out of her parents’ house and SOP.

  Cocoa had gone from a tantrum-throwing shrill toddler to a precocious emotional songstress to get attention as the last in a line of eight. In the family order, her only claim was being the baby, but even that was no novelty to her exhausted parents. They were devout Haitian Christians who did not believe in contraception. In over their heads, they had plunged headlong into the U.S. welfare system and had never gotten out. Only Lucien and Marie-Ange had known, because they’d helped broker the deal for the Jean-Baptistes to rent the home they’d once owned. Cocoa’s parents started to show her affection only when they realized that her voice might pull them out of poverty or at least the grave of loan-shark debt. They’d never thought it odd that Lucien was present at every one of their daughter’s public school talent shows even though his children were all grown and had attended and graduated from parochial school. He’d also augmented the contributions Cocoa’s older siblings provided to subsidize her dance, acting, and voice lessons; performance wardrobe; and hair salon visits.

  Trapped in the safe room, Cocoa had ingratiated herself to Lucien, leveraging their cultural and neighborhood connection. Before and after private performances, she would ask him about Haiti, Marie-Ange, his daughters, allowing him to tell her what she knew to be lies about his close family ties. She was a budding actress, after all. When she grew tired of listening to him, she insisted on singing to transmute her pain. Very early on, she made the conscious decision to use her circumstances to inspire her songwriting and infuse her voice quality to produce something so superb it was transcendent. In the small space Lucien allowed her during her time outside of the back room, believing her performances to be for him, Cocoa was the dance and the dancer. She was the melody and the voice, the lyric and the composer. In the back room, she drummed against the damp dirt floor, a sound that no one heard except her, that no one besides her felt except the sensitive Sol. Her humming became meditative chants that lulled even Chiqui’s aching eardrums. Cocoa rubbed the hinge between her cellmate’s ears and jaw to allow her soothing, hopeful music to take full effect.

  Cocoa knew that she would be missed and searched for after her disappearance. If her parents could not afford even borrowed reward money, her siblings and her committed older boyfriend would cobble together an attractive lump sum. Because of her popularity, she was naïvely convinced that the media would pay attention when a cocoa-colored girl went missing. The one who looked like a demure Nicki Minaj or Janet Jackson from her Good Times years. The curvy, busty, but innocent-looking, downright adorable fourteen-year-old who never wore makeup but kept her hair and nails “did.” The one who smiled with the deepest dimples while singing in the deepest voice or the highest. The one who walked like she was forever being watched on the sidewalk or the stage. The one who posed like a dancer, spoke like a newscaster, and batted her lashes like a Disney Channel ingenue. She got noticed and people would feel her absence. Someone would bring the local news’ attention to the fact that the disappearance of black and brown girls like her did not get the same coverage as those of the blond, blue-eyed lost then found Elizabeth Smarts of the world. Someone in the neighborhood, or maybe on the Southside, and desperate for diapers, formula, or just their next fix, would break ranks for the reward money and call in a tip. And they did. But how could anyone know that the highest contributor to the growing reward pot had been her cunning captor.

  Sol remembered Lucien bragging about his coup. She wondered what was keeping him from coming through the steel door. If he could put up money to undermine the search for Cocoa, then he could fight his way through the cutting clutter blocking his entry to the back room and slit all of their throats, start a second fire to incinerate their bodies, and, this time, feigning senility, continue crying that children had been trapped and burned up in his basement. He’d done things almost as bad. He had killed one before. With Asante’s help, he had murdered Four.

  Sol held her breath, but it was shallow, so she quickly exhaled. “Go ahead. Sing if you want to. It might be the last time.”

  “Stop saying stuff like that!” Cocoa shouted.

  “You mean the truth?”

  “When did this happen? When did you stop trying?”

  “You don’t get it. I am
already dead.”

  “I’m not singing at anybody’s funeral.”

  “You think there’ll be a funeral? Who’s gonna bury me? Next you’ll talk about scattering my ashes in the Gulf of Mexico.” Sol’s utterances left her breathless, so she could not laugh.

  Cocoa didn’t bother to argue.

  Chiqui ignored both of them.

  Asante surprised them all with her mad laughter. “This house is coming down. If he makes it in here first, he’s going to get rid of all of us. There will be nothing to bury or scatter or sing over, you simpleminded bitches. I know better than all of you what he’s capable of. Twenty years. Or has it been more? Who the hell knows?” Asante stopped. She could feel an enormous gas bubble form and rise up from her stomach into her sternum. She wanted to vomit but had nothing inside and she hated to dry heave. She pressed down where her rib cage met and parted like wings, forcing the gas bubble back into her stomach, through her colon, and out of her body.

  “Why do all of you insist on saying these things in front of My. He might only be four, but he understands more than you think.” Chiqui was angry at everyone, including Sol.

  “Just make sure he gets out,” Sol responded consolingly.

  Sol lay back down and thought about Asante’s comment. Twenty years back. She could count forward only from the months after Nihla came, stayed for seven days, and then disappeared for good. Even if she hadn’t been able to stand the new girl, Sol had never wanted Nihla dead.

  I am not Zero. I am not Four. I am not white, hooked, or coming down, down, down. Four wants powder, needle, and pipe. Four tells time. She say, “Monday.” He cannot convince, cannot confuse Four. Not like us. Four comes from New something…“Jersey,” Zero says. Four say, “New York. Best powder, rock, pipe. Best needle.” She take him. Again. Again. Again. She do everything for small bills and purse change. She runs and runs. Into his van. Cold. Rain. Winter. He bring her here because he scared. One of us is pregnant. He is scared to touch Zero, Two, Three, and me. He scared of blood like my bald head, shaved with candle glass of cracked Virgen Maria. Four stay Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Four cry, she sweat, kick, bang, all the way to Sunday. She bleed in the room where he take Zero, One, Two, Three, before he carry My inside. Nice room. Bed, rug. Nice food. Music. He bring rock, powder, pipe, needle. He bring death. He so scared, he kill Four.

  Asante was the one who knew the most about what had happened to Nihla. Although she’d never spoken to any of the others about that time, and because she never would, they’d all assumed that she had done in Lucien’s number Four. But all Asante had done was listen to the slurred speech of a jonesing and delusional addict as Nihla recounted just how she’d ended up in the back room and how she was planning to get out. Asante didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that she’d done a bit more than just listen. But as the oldest inhabitant of the safe room, she had a right to keep what she wanted to herself and to keep things from herself to save what was left of her sanity. She didn’t like to think about Nihla, not even the nickname she’d given her in anger. The last time she’d uttered “seven-day slut” out loud had been the day after Lucien had followed her instructions on how to get rid of the girl. Asante didn’t even allow the name Nihla to flit across her mind. She didn’t count to four or five ever. And she’d softened what was left of her memory of the girl and remembered only that she’d been there six, maybe seven days. She’d wiped the word “slut” and all its versions from her mind and mouth ever after in the safe room. She would not let him make her call out or count women, even if it meant that she had to stop speaking altogether. Of all the horrors of the back room, Nihla and My were Asante’s biggest regrets. She had covered her ears to shut out the sound of him since his birth. That a child had been born in that place was an unendurable fact she wanted to deny. But My’s voice was ever present. His crying. His counting. At least she could mute Nihla’s noise when remembering her story.

  Monday.

  Lucien had not waited long to pounce. Nihla was still high and drunk from the third Long Island iced tea to which a john had treated her earlier in the day when she’d stumbled into the freezing rainstorm. Lucien had known her from his frequent trips over the George Washington Bridge for discarded furniture in Fort Lee. Snowbirds who’d finally had enough of the Northeast threw away so much well-preserved furniture that their hired movers were unable to fit into their loaded trucks. He’d forced his van to make the trip from Queens to New Jersey in the freezing rain to keep from missing bulky trash day. Nihla was a bonus pickup. He didn’t like to take her while she was high. But he’d felt something approximating pity when he saw her roll out of another customer’s clean used car that night. He usually picked her up on the Jersey side and drove her to Washington Heights, so she could score. Since his van was light—most of the furniture had fallen victim to early spring ice pellets—he’d diverged from his normal routine. He could tell that Nihla didn’t know what side of the bridge she was on when she crawled straight into the back of the van and waited for him to join her. He didn’t. He wouldn’t let her do him while she was so high.

  Lucien drove over bridges and under overpasses, along highways and then the narrow two-way streets to his house. Nihla had no idea. When he unloaded her into his basement, it may as well have been another cheap motel or cluttered back seat. It wasn’t until she saw the other women, one of whom she could tell was pregnant, that she realized that the dungeon she’d been brought to was anything but safe. The brain fog from drunkenness had started to wear off by then. Only a more lucid manic high persevered, making her crave something to help her maintain that state.

  Asante hadn’t known what Nihla had been running from, but she could tell that the girl desperately needed another hit. She didn’t want to be in the mind of someone that strung out, but neither her experience nor Lucien had given her a choice. To solve what had become a crisis for all concerned, including the pregnant one, she’d had to figure out how to get Nihla one of three things—another temporary fix, a murderous overdose, or a way out of the basement. Without heroin, Nihla had had no choice but to talk her way through her thoughts. The only one in the back room she’d been allowed to talk to had been Asante. Poor old Asante, who’d been in the back room for over two decades, had had nothing but time to listen to Nihla as the girl started to unravel into a bloody pool in the clean room where Lucien had taken each of them when he’d wanted and how he’d wanted. Somehow, he’d decided when—halfway through Nihla’s tenure—and how would be the most fucked-up thing Asante had ever been forced to do by any man, including Lucien. And Asante had been forced to listen to Nihla’s words drooled from her sobering, slobbering mouth.

  Nihla had always had another hit before she could start to remember her parents’ house in Maywood, her mother’s hyper-polite Macy’s customer-service voice, her father’s serious bookkeeper tone, and the welts from their corporal strictness. They’d both worked their way up to managerial status at their respective jobs after completing community college night school degrees, affordable on working-class salaries. Nihla rubbed her thigh for the scars left by overprotective parents who’d tried to beat every ounce of superstar aspiration and tween rebelliousness out of her. Materially, she was spoiled, but her parents never spared the rod, especially when her preferences were for Nikes, hip-hop gear, and iPod downloads of rap music. When she tried to bring home black and Latino peers, they pulled her out of public school and practically cuffed her to a desk at Paramus Catholic, a school they sacrificed to afford.

  Asante had wanted to hold Nihla’s hands to keep her from peeling her skin. She couldn’t hear the voices that made the girl slap her itching upper arm. She didn’t know the sounds that were worse than hallucinations. The sounds of parents who’d told her that she wasn’t pretty, graceful, or talented enough to be a model, singer, or dancer. She watched as Nihla scratched at her scabs to rub out the memory of the first time a white student had
offered her H in a corner of the varsity gym. None of her black or Latino friends had ever even offered her weed, just musical highs and the drunkenness of video-chick dancing. PC had expelled her sophomore year for stealing credit cards from more affluent students and trading those for weed that she blatantly smoked on the football field. Zero tolerance. Her mother had given her a sound thrashing when they got home, knocking her straight into the arms of welcoming dealers across the bridge. Her parents had tracked her down and bounced her from her grandmother’s home to her uncle’s, then finally to her most tolerant aunt’s until she was eighteen. She had never finished high school or bothered to take the GED exam. She had simply couch-surfed from high to high.

  Through the darkness Asante had seen what the others couldn’t: Nihla’s shaky smile, an almost snarky grin that simultaneously conveyed her persistent naïveté and inexpressible anxiety. Zero tolerance, my ass. The smell of her unwashed backside permeated the safe room with an intolerable odor. Cocoa hummed into prolonged exhales. Nihla looked at Cocoa, the newest before she’d arrived. How could she sing in a place like this? Although she could barely see the other women, she knew that she was the only white girl there. She could tell that they’d become a little hopeful, since no one ever stopped looking for a white girl. She knew better.

  Only Asante had known that their new cellmate had been about to crash from her high. In the half-light of the votives, she had seen the girl peering at her through matted strands of hair. She could feel Nihla’s embarrassment as she scanned her from head to toe, the dirty dreadlocked tresses, the plaid flannel pajama pants with cuffs so wet they almost dripped, the once-white mud-encrusted sneakers. She could also see Nihla’s scabs from tearing off skin when drugs were scarce. Asante had never injected anything herself, but even coming off the pipe, frequent joints, and whisky soaks had made her flip out during her first dry days in the back room. Compared to withdrawal, hunger was as easy as a child’s chuckle.