Free Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber Page B

can they, four shades darker than she, talk and act so white?
    Lulu and Cleo feel sorry for me. Lulu is always giving me grooming tips. Dolores, child, that is not the right style for your hair, I must tell you that, no. Cleo, tell her, she should wear it pulled back, away from the face. And she has such pretty eyes, see it, girl! Dolores, you should get you some contacts, like me. They don’t cost that much.
    And so on, in that musical voice. I bob my head, grin, and make excuses. I like them both and wish often that I were again myself so that we could be friends. I eat my yogurt slowly, willing my stomach to accept its bland nourishment. Cleo and Lulu are chattering about some neighborhood event. They live in the Grove, too, in the large island community there. They are always complaining about the Bahamians and Jamaicans, and explaining to each other and to me why these are both lesser breeds without the law. And, my word, the Haitians ! I allow their talk to soothe me, like the sound of a brook, without much attention to content. Nor is it much expected. Now some remarks about their Episcopal church, their minister. I am consulted here, being a Catholic, and the arbiter of doctrine therefore. I make a mumbling reply. It has been thirteen years and seven months since my last confession. I am badly lapsed but persist in a fragment of belief. Now that I have Luz, I will probably start church again. I wish to bring her up in the faith of my father.
    I’m thinking vaguely about finding a church when Lulu says, “The police are not saying anything, but I heard from my cousin Margaret, she lives in Opa-Locka and she knows the family of that poor girl. Margaret heard that she was cut wide open down her middle and the baby was stolen away.”
    “Not true!” exclaims Cleo, her eyes wide with horror. My eyes too.
    “True, very true!” Lulu affirms. “But, what you can expect, them in Overtown!”
    “Terrible, them, but …” Here Cleo lowers her voice and looks dramatically past her shoulder, then confides, ” Youknow what they want with that baby, heh? Haitians .”
    “What?” Lulu put her hand to her mouth. “Jesus save us! You think for human sacrifices?”
    “What else for? What I think is they should have a care, the authorities, before they allow some of these people in the country. I don’t say all of them by any means, but …” Here she stopped and I felt her stare. “Why, my girl, what is the matter with you now? You look like you are about to be sick.”
    I let my spoon fall to the table, mutter something, grab up my cheapo bag, and dash to the toilet. Out of both ends this time, top first, then the other, although I can’t imagine there was much to purge, maybe old rubber bands, pieces of spleen. Another zero-calorie day for Dolores.
    After, I find myself at the sink, washing, washing, mindlessly washing my hands until they are red and wrinkled. Am I developing an obsession now? That’s all I need, paranoid delusions, obsessional syndrome, this is what the intern will say when he admits me to Neuropsychiatric. I wish.
    Oh, Cleo, it’s not Haitians, no, this is far beyond Haitians. Haiti is strictly minor league for this kind of thing: the most extreme voudoun, done by the most power-crazed bokor in that whole wretched island, is like an amateur company stumbling through The Iceman Cometh in Kankakee. What we have here, Cleo, in comparison, is Broadway, the ultimate source and font and center of all that, the pure neolithic technology, unadulterated by transportation and slavery, barely touched by the colonialists.
    Has he found me? I recall once, when we were first in love, idly speculating on where we might live, as couples do, running through the cities, the countries, totting up the pros and cons. San Francisco? Pretty, nice climate, but everyone wanted to live there. Chicago, where we met, good school, teaching opportunities, terrible climate. New York, if you can make it there you can make it