American Street

If hot red is for anger and rage, pink is the color of a soft burning – hot enough to light up the dark corners of sadness and grief, but cool enough to be tender, innocent, open.

So trying to come to America from the wrong country is a crime?

Don't give me no 'but you're beautiful on the inside' bullshit." "No, you are beautiful on the outside," I say. "Don't give me that bullshit either. I'm beautiful when I say I'm beautiful. Let me own that shit," she says. Her eyes have not left the computer screen this whole time, but I know she's paying attention to everything I say. "Okay, then you are ugly." "Thanks for being honest." "Seriously. That's what we say in Haiti. 'Nou led, men nou la.' We are ugly, but we are here." "We are ugly, but we are here," she says, almost whispering. "I hear that.

Say it just like that. Let the words slide out and don’t be so uptight about it. It’s just English, not too complicated.

If you could fuck a book, you would." "You know what?" Chantal comes over and shoves Pri's head. "I would fuck a book before I fuck some dude who doesn't respect me. I'd fuck a degree, a paycheck, and a damn career!

We were too heavy. Not with our bags. Not with our bodies. But with our burdens.

But then I realize that everyone is climbing their own mountain here in America. They are tall and mighty and they live in the hearts and everyday lives of the people.

...as long as you have a bougie heart, you can aim for the finer things in life.

Creole and Haiti stick to my insides like glue—it’s like my bones and muscles. But America is my skin, my eyes, and my breath. According to my papers, I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m not a citizen. I’m a “resident alien.” The borders don’t care if we’re all human and my heart pumps blood the same as everyone else’s.

We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identities and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls and the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken places around us.

We have to become everything that we want. Consume it. Like our lwas.

My cousins are hurting. My aunt is hurting. My mother is hurting. And there is no one here to help. How is this the good life, when even the air in this place threatens to wrap its fingers around my throat? In Haiti, with all its problems, there was always a friend or a neighbor to share in the misery. And then, after our troubles were tallied up like those points at the basketball game, we would celebrate being alive. But here, there isn’t even a slice of happiness big enough to fill up all these empty houses, and broken buildings, and wide roads that lead to nowhere and everywhere. Every bit of laughter, every joyous moment, is swallowed up by a deep, deep sadness.

I forget every single thing in the world, every heartache, every tear, every pain as I watch that performance. The dancers, the music, the lights, the people in the theater are all so beautiful that I want to wear them on my skin for the rest of my life.

When you remember all the ways you been killed, and how that shit hurt your fucking soul, ain’t no way in hell you could shake that off. So I didn’t give a fuck about nothing.

My first meal in America is one that I make for myself and eat by myself. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.

Even as you kept telling me that I'm becoming a woman, you never let me go out into the world to be free.

Chantal’s English is like that of the newspeople on TV. Her voice is high and soft, and every sentence sounds like a question, even when she gives them my name and my mother’s name. It’s as if she isn’t sure of anything and this uniformed man behind the desk and the computer will have all the answers in the universe.

Manman says that in order for the lwas to help us, we sometimes have to embody them, let them mount us so they take over our thoughts.

Death parked itself on that corner of American and Joy, some days as still as stone, other days singing cautionary songs and delivering telltale riddles, waiting for the day when one girl would ask to open the gates to the other side.

We have to become everything that we want. Consume it.

This is the stuff my mother practiced back in Haiti. She is a mambo, a priestess. This is how we pray. We see the magic in everything, in all people.

Yes and no. It’s Vodou.” “Voodoo? Oh, I get it now. You put a spell on me?” “No, that’s not real Vodou. We have spirit guides—our lwas are like saints and I pray to them for help.

there are squiggly lines that want to form his name in pretty script letters with curlicues and flowers and stars and hearts and more hearts.