by Josh Farrar
“Hallo, Bijou, and how are you today?” asks Monsieur Guillaume, the kind, gentle old Haitian man who lets Rara Gran Bwa practice in the basement underneath his shop. Sitting behind the button-operated cash register, he strokes his beard and smiles at me, ignoring Alex for the present. He’s wearing an old blue sweatshirt; a purple birthmark sits on his left cheek like a coin; and his large, round eyeglasses are held together with duct tape.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Guillaume,” I say. He leans forward, and I kiss him on both cheeks.
“Now that you have come to visit me, I can call my day complete, child. I can go home and eat my dinner in peace.”
“Merci, Monsieur Guillaume.” I feel color in my cheeks and am glad my skin doesn’t give the secret away so easily.
Symphony music plays through a small black radio on a shelf behind Monsieur Guillaume’s head. “And who is your friend, Bijou?” he asks. “A schoolmate?”
“This is Alex. He goes to St. Christopher’s, the boys school.”
“Ah, Saint Christophe,” Monsieur Guillaume says, smiling like Buddha. “A very good saint for our people. He protect the traveling people, the people with the hard journey. So, Alex, you come to see the music today, have you?”
He shakes Alex’s hand. The old man’s grip looks strong.
“I don’t know what I’m seeing, exactly,” Alex says.
“Well, at least you’re honest about it, young man.” Guillaume chuckles.
“Have they started yet?” Bijou asks.
“They playing right now. Can’t you hear them?”
He reaches back to turn down the radio, and I hear the rumbling Haitian drums coming through the floor, through my legs and toes, like some ancient machinery deep in the heart of the building.
“Come on, let’s go,” I say, taking Alex by the hand before realizing I’ve done so.
“Enjoy, children, enjoy God’s music,” Monsieur Guillaume says, who raises his eyebrows. I should not have reached for Alex’s hand in front of him. Even if this behavior does not seem so bad to him, even though he does not know my aunt and uncle, he will still tease me without mercy. Is there any reason a Haitian girl exists except to be teased by her elders?
Alex and I take careful steps down the creaky, uneven steps, and I let go of his hand to place mine against the wall for balance. A single, bare bulb lights the entire basement, and there mustn’t be a radiator here, because it is at least ten degrees colder than it was upstairs in the shop. But it is all right. I have become used to freezing alive, everywhere I go. That is life here in Brooklyn.
Most of the band is already here, and they greet us with a chorus of kind words. Jou Jou is passing out bright orange Rara Gran Bwa T-shirts from the box he carries, and the musicians grab at them like children fighting over candy. They grin and joke as if they have no care in the world, fighting to get the XXL shirts that hang well past their belts. Fabian says, “Gentlemen, one at a time!” but he is laughing, enjoying the band’s playtime. Jou Jou tells me some of these boys have been away from their real families for so long that Fabian has become like their father. He cooks meals for them, counsels them when they are having troubles, even sometimes does their laundry. Other than Fabian, I do not know any of them well yet, but I love them for the way they have helped Jou Jou make Brooklyn a home. I can see that they truly care for him and that he has found more of a home in Rara Gran Bwa than he will ever have with Pierre and Marie Claire.
But today, while the band members are as kind and openhearted to Jou Jou and me as ever, it is Alex who is getting the special reception. The band members look at this white boy in a Flatbush basement as if he is an exotic animal.
Alex does not know what to do with the attention. He looks to me from the center of the room, the color rising to his face as always, with a look that says “help!” I have to laugh a little, looking at him here, surrounded by Rara Gran Bwa. I am sure that when Alex imagined the “date” we are supposed to be having, he never pictured this, being surrounded by a dozen tall black men with dreadlocks and drums. But now that he’s here, in the Haitian world, there’s no escape.
It will change him, whether he likes it or not.
16
A Drum of My Own, Then Something Better
“Alex, come over here,” Jou Jou says, his voice rising above the music. Rara Gran Bwa has been going full swing for fifteen minutes. The whole band is a blur of movement. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. I can’t keep my eyes off the drummers slapping those driving rhythms against the drumheads.
I glance at Bijou, who nods in her brother’s direction, urging me forward. I walk to where Jou Jou is playing a repeating pattern on the rada: bim-bap, bim-bap, bim-bim-bim-bap.
“You try it!” Jou Jou yells.
“Really?” I ask.
“Come on, do it!”
Fabian, the older guy from the park, seems to approve. Jou Jou holds the head of the drum toward me, demonstrating how to strike it with a flat palm. “This, we call a slap,” he says. Then, stopping the sound with his palm fully in the drum’s center, “And this, we call ‘bass.’” And finally, pinging out a higher tone on the drumhead’s edge, “This one here? We say ‘rim.’”
Then he shifts the drum over a little bit and gestures: Your turn.
I hesitate at first, but then I give it a try. Why not? What have I got to lose? I share the drum with him, copying the rhythm he’s playing in its simplest form, trying to make my hands do what his are. After a while, I get it, and Jou Jou starts drumming more playfully, complicated rhythms on top with a stick. I start to bounce along with him in time, letting myself get carried along the pulse of the band. Fabian and other bandmates yell in my direction. But amazingly, they’re not telling me to shut up and get the heck back upstairs. They’re urging me to play louder.
I’ve forgotten about Bijou for a minute or two—although, is it really possible to forget Bijou, for even an instant?—but here she is now, dancing in the center of the musicians, like the spirit has gotten hold of her, too. She holds her arms out to the side, like she’s squeezing a giant rubber ball between her hands. Then she bends her knees just so, and, feet closely rooted to the ground, shakes her hips to the rhythm.
“Ayooo, Bijou!” Fabian yells out to her.
Jou Jou is smiling and laughing at his sister’s awesome dancing, and he can barely play his rada. I can’t help but laugh, too. Bijou catches my eye, then, teasing, shakes her hip in a lazy, slow motion, like sending a wink my way. Is she flirting with me? Regardless, the next thing I know, I lose my rhythm and can’t get it back. She’s distracting me on purpose, and I can see Fabian and Jou Jou laughing at me. Not fair! I have to concentrate to get back into the groove, and, somehow, I manage.
When the music finishes, Fabian bounds over to me and pats me on the back.
“How long you been playin’ rada, young Alex?”
“I’ve … never played before,” I say, of course.
“Noooo,” he says. “Impossible.” I can tell he’s teasing, but not in a mean way.
“Nope. First time.”
The other band members talk among themselves, exchanging high fives (when they do it, they don’t look as cheesy as Rocky and Trevor do) and handshakes.
“You’re good, Alex, really,” Jou Jou says. “You ever play any kind of music before?”
“My sister’s the musical one in our family. She plays cello, really well. But my mom can’t carry a tune, and I think I got her musical genes. I tried to learn guitar last year, and it didn’t go so well.”
“Well, you don’t need to carry a tune to play rada,” Fabian says. “But that doesn’t mean it an easy thing. And you, you pick it up right away.”
“It’s a simple rhythm,” I say. “Isn’t it?”
Fabian calls the band together into a circle, like he did in the park. Only this time, I’m in the circle, too.
“Alex, that was so good,” Bijou says, back in the van. “How did you know how to do that?”
>
“I … don’t know.” The truth is, nothing like that has ever happened to me in my life. Everything came so naturally, and I’m not the kind of guy who’s a natural at anything. “It was like I didn’t even have to try. I just … let it happen.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Jou Jou says, although I think this is actually the first time he’s told me. “Rara’s not about ‘knowing’ or ‘trying’—it’s about letting the music inside you. Right?”
“I couldn’t say. I’m no good at music,” Bijou says. She moves a little closer to me on the backseat. We’re almost touching. I can feel an electric pulse between her legs and mine, and also an aching in my hand bones, where my palms hit the drum’s wooden rim again and again. So my entire body is vibrating with one sensation or another.
“You can dance, though,” I say. “Really well.” I don’t blush. I don’t look down.
“I love to dance. I always have.” She jabs me playfully. “You have talent, Alex. You should do something with it.”
“You think so?” If she’s going to keep moving closer to me like this, I’ll definitely “do something” with music. To be honest, I’d do anything Bijou tells me.
“Alex,” Jou Jou says, holding out his rada to me. “I want you to have this.”
“What? Your drum? For me?” I say. I don’t grab for it. I don’t even touch it, not yet. It doesn’t seem right.
“But what will you play?” I ask.
“You think this the only rada I got, Alex? I have another like it at home. This one, well, it has your name on it.” He pushes the drum toward me again, and this time, I take it.
“Seriously?”
“Think of it like a—how do you call it—a long-term loan.” Jou Jou doesn’t leave me any time to argue. He turns around in his seat, starts the van, and heads up Church Avenue, in the direction of my house.
“Can you show me?” I ask him. “Maybe teach me some things?”
“Yeah, man, I’ll be glad to. Anytime.”
“Is this really okay?” I whisper to Bijou. Then, even quieter, “Does he really have a second one?”
Bijou puts her hand over my ear, and shivers go down my back. My eyes bug out for a sec. She can’t see me, thankfully, but Jou Jou steals a quick glance at us in the rearview mirror and smiles. “You think my brother would be without a drum in his hands for more than fifteen minutes?” Bijou says. “This one’s for you. Take it.”
Jou Jou takes a left from Church Avenue onto Rugby Road. “This way?” he asks. A couple of people try to wave down the dollar van, but Jou Jou ignores them. “Next time,” he chuckles.
“Yep, keep going another four blocks,” I say. Ack, I can’t believe I’m almost home. I don’t want this to end. I wish I could stay in the backseat with Bijou forever.
As we get closer, I start to think about how I’m going to say good-bye to Bijou. When I saw her kiss Monsieur Guillaume in the shop, I had to admit once and for all that Nomura was right. The kiss-on-each-cheek custom is exactly that: a custom. Bijou did it as readily with the old man today as she did with me last week. So, I’m preparing myself for that again, and hopefully I won’t bump heads with her and be all awkward about it.
“Keep going this way?” Jou Jou asks. We are at Rugby Road and Cortelyou, almost on my block. For the first time, I notice how different my neighborhood is from Church and Rogers, where we were ten minutes ago. Here, the houses are bigger and set apart, with front porches and spacious backyards.
Suddenly, I realize that I don’t want them to drop me off right in front of the house. My mom might be home now, and I didn’t exactly tell her where I was going today. “Oh, hey, I need to get something for my mom at the bakery,” I say, nodding toward Steve’s, on the corner. “Would you mind letting me off here?”
“No problem,” Jou Jou says, pulling the van over by a fire hydrant.
Darn, this date is ending even sooner than I’d realized. There’s only so much you can prepare. “Bijou, can we do this again sometime?” I ask. “Sometime soon?”
“Yes, I would like that,” she says. “Very much.”
“Thank you, Bijou.” I suddenly realize how hot I am, maybe flushed still, from the drumming. Or from other things.
“For what?” she asks.
“For today. For … everything.” I pick up the drum and get ready to leave. “Jou Jou, thank you so much for the rada. I’ll take really good care of it.”
“You’re welcome, man. Call me, and I’ll give you some things to work on.”
“Cool, I’ll do that.”
Then I lean in for the kiss on the cheek. Now that I know what I’m doing, it feels a little more natural. We don’t bump heads, anyway. I don’t try to linger or make the moment last any longer than she wants; after all, Jou Jou is right there—he can see everything. But I try to freeze the memory in my brain, so I can hold on to that almond-flower smell of Bijou’s skin as long as possible. It’s got to last me until the next time I see her, after all.
17
New, Crazy Powers
My favorite part of any superhero movie is what the superhero does after he figures out for the first time that he has all these new, crazy powers. With a look of shock and wonder on his face, he flies around the city late at night, jumping from building to building, testing the limits of what he can do while trying not to clobber any innocent bystanders. Like a young deer that can barely stand on its legs one minute and is sprinting through grassy fields the next, the superhero takes some falls, too. Young Superman is going to lose his concentration when he encounters midair turbulence, and Spidey’s going to bang into some brick walls before saving himself with his brand-new web shooter. But whatever minor suffering he experiences along the way, the superhero’s first trip out into the world after his transformation, after he has become his new self, is a total blast. You can see the joy, the awesome new confidence, all over his face.
“What are you smirking at?” Rocky asks me when I pass him in the hall, and I immediately duck into the bathroom so I can check myself out in the mirror. Of course, whatever smirk Rocky saw is long gone, but I need to remember not to reveal too much, at least not to any St. Chris supervillains. If I slam into a brick wall, I don’t have a web shooter to save myself.
During science, first period, Mr. Chamberlain is droning on about animal cell anatomy. But the only cells I’m interested in are the ones in my brain that hold the memories of my time with Bijou. I use these cells, which, next to Nomura, are pretty much my best friends right now, to replay everything that happened yesterday. I fast-forward, rewind, and slo-mo each moment so many times that I’m worried the images will start to dissolve at the edges, like an old photo worn thin from too much touching. Part of me wants to distract myself with other thoughts, to keep the memories from blurring until I don’t recognize them anymore, but I can’t help myself; I need to keep on remembering.
Ira breaks the spell, leaning over his desk while Chamberlain is droning on and on. “I hear you had yourself a big day yesterday,” he whispers. He’s weirdly out of breath. How does he know? I haven’t even talked to Nomura yet. “Tell me about it,” he says.
“Later,” I say.
“Come on, dude. Tell me. Did you … get some?”
“Get some?” I whisper. “Keep your voice down.”
“Did you … you know, did anything happen?”
“Nothing I’m gonna tell you about,” I say, turning stiffly away from him as if I’m actually paying attention to Chamberlain.
“Bijou is so …” Ira looks so … sad, like he did at the dance when gushing about Jenna Minaya. It’s like he’s forcing himself to say the words but doesn’t get their actual meaning. “So totally hot.”
I can’t hide my expression of, I don’t know … is it outright disgust? Doesn’t Ira know not to talk about someone I care about like this? We’re not talking about Jenna Minaya here. We’re talking about Bijou Doucet. “Grow up, already.”
“I am grown up, jerk.”
His voice has a bitter edge I’ve never heard before. He turns away. Suddenly, the two of us are Mr. Chamberlain’s most attentive students. “I’ll find out soon enough, anyway.”
“What are you going to do, make a video about it?” Why am I being so mean to him? I can’t help it, somehow.
“Shut up, Alex.” He looks hurt.
“Sorry, man, that was harsh,” I say.
But am I really that sorry?
I’ve never heard Ira talk about getting some, but maybe that’s because none of us has ever gotten any. Then I look at Ira’s messy hair and untucked shirt, and I wonder why Nomura and I ever befriended him in the first place. We were only third graders when we started hanging out, and Ira’s quirks were funny back then, not annoying. But now, as he strains so desperately to be cool, to keep up, he’s not so amusing anymore. I abandon the conversation and pretend to take notes on membranes and centrosomes.
But at lunch, there Ira still is, a glutton for punishment as usual, tagging along as Nomura and I grab food upstairs. We’re trading bites of a couple of the orange Hostess cupcakes Ira brought to school and chatting about nothing in particular—you can’t really talk about anything interesting when Ira’s around, and Nomura gets that, knows that I’ll tell him stuff when I’m ready to tell him stuff—when I get a text from Mary Agnes: “I hear things went well yesterday, congrats. Next step: group date. Movie?”
“Who from?” Nomura asks.
“Mary Agnes.”
“Mary Agnes? What’s she say?” Ira asks, looking over my shoulder and reading the text before I can shield it from him. “Oh right, the movie.”
“Dude, knock it off,” I say, pushing him away.
“What?” he says, superoffended.
“This isn’t about you, okay? You’re … not invited.”
Nomura gives me a look: Simmer down, man. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I can’t help it. Ira’s driving me nuts.
