by Josh Farrar
“I wanted to tell you both how much we all love Bijou here at St. Catherine’s,” she says, more like a headmistress now than a prom date.
“Oh, really?” says Pierre.
Marie Claire squeezes his thigh. And not with love. It’s an order: Don’t cause trouble.
“Well, I’m really glad she came here,” Mary Agnes says, “and that we’ve become friends.”
Mary Agnes doesn’t stop there. In less than three minutes, she manages to tell us about herself and her family and to get more information on my uncle and his furniture-restoration business, on Marie Claire’s part-time job as an administrator at Kings County Hospital, than I knew myself. Pierre and Marie Claire nod and smile, and Pierre even asks some questions of his own. He wants to know, for some reason, how long she has lived in Park Slope, what her parents do for a living, even the names of her siblings. She tells him, and he seems as fascinated as if she were providing the explanation to the origin of life.
Mary Agnes checks her watch. “Oops, I’m really sorry, I need to get going,” she says. “It was so nice to meet you.” And she hugs them. Both of them! “Bijou, are you sure I can’t change your mind? You’d dance circles around Maricel and me.”
“I’m fine here,” I say, smiling. “Really.”
“Are you sure, Bijou?” my uncle asks.
I look at him as if he is a madman. As if he has asked me to change into a swimsuit and do cartwheels in front of everyone. “No, Uncle,” I say. “I really am fine.” Marie Claire laughs into her palm.
“Okay, I had to try,” Mary Agnes says. And just like that, as the lights go down, she leaves us, waves to her family, and disappears behind the stage.
“What just happened?” Marie Claire asks.
“We just met … a very nice girl,” Pierre says. “A very impressive young lady.”
Yesterday, Mary Agnes was a central part of the conspiracy to involve me in a sinful coeducational Musicale performance, and now she is my uncle’s favorite seventh grader in Brooklyn. Either I don’t know Pierre as well as I thought, or when Mary Agnes grows up, she should be an ambassador for world peace.
The lights have gone out completely now, and a single spotlight shows on the podium. Headmistress O’Biden welcomes us all to this year’s St. Catherine’s–St. Christopher’s Intramural Spring Musicale. Everyone applauds and cheers, and within moments, the first act, an eighth-grade boy and girl duo, are singing “Falling Slowly,” from the musical Once. It is a pretty song, and as singers, they are not bad. Marie Claire brings out a tissue to wipe away a tear at the corner of her eye while Pierre checks his watch for the hundredth time.
As Jenna and Angela take the stage as the second act, wearing matching short skirts and fishnet stockings, my whole body stiffens. I try to tell myself there is no way that they will try to embarrass me, not today, not ever again. But it is only as they are nearly finished with their number, a “sexy” but harmless dance routine set to the song “California Gurls” that I allow myself to relax.
“Silly,” Pierre says too loudly while the boys around us hoot and holler. “Their outfits aren’t appropriate, and they should be more … dignified.” Marie Claire gives him a look, but I could not have said it better myself.
“Thank you very much, girls,” says Headmistress O’Biden, who is probably relieved herself that Angela and Jenna did not push any more boundaries than they did. “Next, please welcome Mary Agnes Brady, John Nomura, and Maricel and Ira Lopez. Their choice of song isn’t listed here, but I’m sure they have something very special in store for us.” Half the audience claps; others giggle and cheer sarcastically.
Ira appears onstage alone and puts his laptop on a table, fiddling with cords and wires. He is probably getting the backing track ready. In the only rehearsal I attended, we didn’t even succeed in picking a song, so I have no idea what they decided on in the end. He is also probably preparing some sort of video, although I pray that the boy is a bit better organized now. Mary Agnes must have been crazy, after everything that’s happened, to allow him to be responsible for any kind of visual entertainment.
Ira is still monkeying with his machine and talking to the man running the sound and video system, but he keeps looking off to the side of the stage. He tries to concentrate on his work, but someone is obviously distracting him.
Alex walks onto the stage and cups his hand over Ira’s ear.
“Who is that?” Pierre asks. I ignore him and lean forward in my seat.
Ira is shaking his head, no, no.
“What’s happening?” Marie Claire asks. “Are they having some kind of technical problem?” I pray the problem is only technical.
“Who is that boy?” Pierre asks. I’m wondering what special gift of intuition my uncle possesses that could draw his attention to Alex Schrader.
Now Rocky and Trevor are on the stage, too, and Alex is gone. Ira unplugs one of the wires he connected only a moment earlier, and apparently plays something for the two of them, who hunch over the machine with great interest. Rocky puts his hand over his mouth, looking surprised, and Trevor, who I haven’t seen since that strange moment when he insisted on helping Mary Agnes carry me into school, rocks uncomfortably on his heels. Alex, checking their reaction, nods a quick okay, and all but pushes them off the stage.
When Alex returns, he is not alone. He is with his rada drum. And he is with my brother.
“Is that Jou Jou?” Marie Claire asks. “What is he doing here?”
“That’s the boy,” Pierre says, and he’s not talking about my brother. “God help me, I knew that was the boy.”
“Tonton, je t’implores. Ne fais rien,” I say. Uncle, I beg you. Don’t do anything.
Now the headmistress is whispering to Alex. She looks confused. Or angry. Or both. But finally she gives him the microphone and walks to the side of the stage. Alex nods toward my brother, who starts to play the raboday rhythm, his right hand slapping the stick loudly on the cow-skin head and cupping the drum with warm bass tones with his left.
“The white boy is going to play rara music,” Pierre murmurs, helpless. “God help us all.”
Alex steps to the front of the stage and calls out to the audience over the ancient vodou rhythm.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he starts, “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but there’s something I really need to say right now.”
There is nervous laughter from the audience, and one boy yells, “Schrader, I need to say right now that you’re a total dork!”
“I’m not talking to all of you,” Alex says. “Just to one of you.”
I fight the urge to cover my face with my hands.
“How about talking to none of us?” another boy says.
Then Trevor stands up and yells, “Everybody shut up and let Schrader talk!”
Rocky stands next to him, nodding. Suddenly they are all best friends? When the crowd quiets down, the two of them take their seats.
“The only person I want to talk to, the person who matters most to me in this entire room, is you, Bijou,” he says.
Oh my Lord, Alex. S’il te plaît, ne fais pas ça. Please, don’t do this.
Jou Jou’s raboday goes even stronger and louder, but Alex is still able to call out above the rhythm, his voice a high, clear tenor. “Bijou, you are the best person, the truest person, in this room. And I would be so honored if you would join me right now and help us do this raboday right. We can’t do it without you.”
He cannot be serious. He cannot think that this is the right time, the right place, to declare his feelings for me. That is what he is doing, isn’t it? This is more, after all, than asking me to dance along with the raboday.
Jou Jou yells above the beat, “Come on, Bijou! Get down here, sister!”
The people in the rows in front of us, each and every one of them, turn around to stare at me. I’ve never seen any of these parents, brothers, and sisters in my life. How do they even know I am the one he’s talking to—can they feel the heat burnin
g off my cheeks? (Alex has at last succeeded in making me blush.) The Lopezes, the Minayas, even the tiny, carrot-colored Brady children, are all staring at me, waiting for a decision.
“Go ahead, child,” whispers Marie Claire. “Do it.”
“Don’t you dare,” says Pierre. “I absolutely forbid it.”
I look at the stage, tears filling my eyes. Do I want to go and dance up on that stage with this crazy boy? With this sweet boy who is also the most inappropriate person I have ever met?
Alex, I’m going to get you for this. And Jou Jou, you, too.
35
Last-Minute Change of Plans
“We can’t do it, Ira,” I whisper to him. I can already feel Eagleton staring daggers into my back and know that there’s only a matter of seconds before I get yanked off the stage. But Jou Jou’s waiting and ready to go, so if I’m going to pull this off, if I’m going to do this the right way, it’s got to happen right now. And it’s got to come off perfectly.
“What do you mean?” Ira thinks I’m a nut. He spent four hours putting together the most perfect video of his life, a video that would end the St. Cathopher’s dominance of Rocky Van Sant and Trevor Zelo now and forevermore. And now I’m yanking that moment of supreme pleasure away from him. Then he spots R and T themselves, who are waiting nervously at the far end of the stage. “And what are they doing here?”
“If we show it to them, we’ve got them in the palm of our hands forever, and we don’t get in any trouble. But if we do it, if we purposely humiliate them in public, then we’ll be just like them.”
Ira throws up his hands, exasperated. “What if, this once, I want to be like them?” he asks. “They get to do whatever they want around here. And they have hot girlfriends.”
“Mr. Schrader, get off this stage right now,” Eagleton hisses. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”
O’Biden is right beside her. “I’ll handle this,” she says, stepping up to the mic and telling the audience that the next act needs a few more seconds to prepare. For a quick second, I panic, the headmistress’s presence reminding me that my mom is out there in the audience somewhere, surely wondering what the heck her rebellious, disobedient son is up to now. O’Biden is nodding toward the soundman, who gets the idea and puts a song on to chill everybody out. And I take it as a cue to chill out myself. I’ve gotten this far; now it’s time to see this thing through.
I scramble to the side of the stage, and Rocky and Trevor join Ira. It wasn’t hard to get them to follow me up to the stage. I told them we’d gotten hold of material that made the video they uploaded look like an episode of iCarly.
“Have you lost your mind, Schrader?” Rocky hissed, but Trevor could see how serious I was, and the two of them followed me up here, meek as lambs.
And they both get it as soon as they identify their own pretty faces in the video. I’m kneeling, stage right, out of the headmistress’s view, hopefully, but close enough to hear. I’m not going to miss a second of this; if all goes according to plan, it’s going to be my shining moment.
“Wait, this is not hooked up to the main screen, right?” Trevor asks Ira, craning his neck up for a look above the stage and looking relieved to see that the only light up there is emanating from Ira’s laptop (and possibly Rocky’s bioluminescent hair goop).
The video isn’t exactly what I would call original. It was directed by Ira and myself. But it was edited in the unmistakable style of Rocky and Trevor themselves. And this time, I definitely plagiarized on purpose.
In the video, Rocky, looking straight at Ira’s “invisible” camera, says, “The two of us own this school. Every girl here wants to be with us; every guy here wants to be us. And that’s never gonna change.”
Then Trevor chimes in with “Amen to that!” and a swell of gospel music (a genius touch suggested by my codirector) bubbles away on the soundtrack. Trevor’s voice gets louder and more echoey, repeating “Amen to that!” again and again and again, while Rocky comes back in with “Every girl here wants to be with us,” repeating the egomaniacal phrase again and again.
Back in real time, Trevor says, “You were planning on showing this, but now you’re not?”
“Exactly,” I say.
“And how does that work, exactly?” Rocky asks.
“Because I don’t need to. Because I know what it feels like to look like a complete idiot in front of the whole school, and it’s not something I’d wish upon my worst enemies.” It’s hard not to smile as I add the obvious: “Even when they totally deserve it.”
“What do you want in return, though?” Trevor asks.
I give Jou Jou the signal, thankful that I was able to get him through security as a member of the Doucet family, even though the Doucet family won’t know he’s on the premises for another ten or fifteen seconds. Jou Jou, smiling, passes me my rada, sits down, and starts up the raboday rhythm, loud and clear.
“All I want you to do right now is get off the stage,” I say. “I’ve got more important things to do.”
“Easy enough,” Rocky says. “Later!” He bounds off, but Trevor is slower to leave.
“Oh,” I tell him. “Next time you guys get the urge to humiliate me or any of my friends, you should probably know that Ira and I have literally hours’ worth of material on you two that makes this thing look like a public-service announcement.”
“Fine, man, fine,” he says, walking away. Then, over his shoulder, “She liked you better, anyway. You’re lucky.” And he jumps into the darkness.
36
Why Can’t We Be Friends?
Even as I squeeze out of the back row of the bleachers and down the steps to the gym floor—not an easy thing to do in the dark, even without three hundred people wondering who “Bijou” is, and what she is about to do—I have not decided whether to go to the stage or run to the exit sign to the safety of Pineapple Street. All I know is that I had to get out of that seat, sandwiched between my aunt and an uncle who forbade me from so much as moving.
All I knew was this: I needed the room to make a choice for myself.
Once I reach the floor, Alex is no longer standing at the edge of the stage, no longer calling for me to join him. He is seated next to Jou Jou on a plain metal chair, with the old, scratched-up rada in front of him, beating out the ancient vodou rhythm. The rhythm of my people. And through some miracle, he is actually good at it.
Like he was in the Rara Gran Bwa rehearsal and at his lesson, he is lost in the music, his eyes closed in concentration. And I don’t know whether he means it like this or not, but in his focus on the drum, Alex seems to be saying to me, I’m done trying to convince you; now you can make up your own mind.
Headmistress O’Biden stands less than ten feet to the side, shaking her head at Alex and my brother, and I have to admit, it is a funny sight: this worried old lady, so frustrated by a lovesick boy and the nineteen-year-old Haitian he has brought into her school to bang out this crazy-seeming music. She doesn’t know how to solve this rara problem, so she stands there, still as a statue.
Now that the stage and the exit sign are both twenty feet apart, I try to think about what Maman would do. Would she accept this sweet and handsome, yet absolutely embarrassing, boy’s invitation? Would she exhibit herself to all her classmates, once more, in yet another moment sure to be captured on video? Or would she escape into her own quiet space again, away from these well-meaning but unpredictable new friends?
Maman was a fun, exciting person who loved to laugh and dance and sing—lighting up the world each and every time she did—but she was also very private and had only a few people in her life who truly knew her.
So again I’m thinking, What would Maman do? Would she run to the stage or to the street?
Maman is not here, though. Only me. So, what would Bijou do?
The lights are so bright up here, I can see only Alex and Jou Jou. I strike the small cowbell with the stick I found lying next to my brother, playing the rhythm I have known by heart m
y entire life, and it is impossible not to return his smile.
Maman did choose the stage, I think.
She is here with us.
In Jou Jou.
In me.
And, just maybe, in Alex, too.
I dance to the raboday, and I don’t need to think any more about it than I think about striking the bell. As unexpected as it is to be introducing St. Catherine’s to the world of rara, the dance itself is the most natural thing in the world. It works best when you’re not trying at all, not even thinking at all.
Before long, the audience is clapping, quite loudly, along to the beat, and Ira has taken his position again behind the laptop, with Maricel by his side. They’re fiddling with something—I’m not sure what.
“What’s that, about a hundred and ten beats per minute?” Maricel asks Alex, who shrugs in response, still lost in the music.
“No clue,” he says, smiling, never losing the beat of the raboday.
“About a hundred and fifteen!” Jou Jou cries out. “What you got in mind?”
“Something cool,” Ira says as he and Maricel continue to tinker.
Suddenly, Mary Agnes and Nomura appear at the edge of the stage, and before I know I am doing it, I pull them onto the stage with me.
“Ack!” Mary Agnes says. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Yeah,” Nomura says. “We can’t dance Haitian.”
“Just follow me,” I say, demonstrating with arms, legs, and hips.
The crowd yells encouragement as the two of them start to copy my movements. And they’re not bad!
“Woo!” Alex yells, and I smile back at him.
I will still get you back for this, I think. But for now, this is fun.
