study hard. I spent six years doing nothing but that. School, home, and prayer.
Tante Atie once said that love is like rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.
I was eighteen and I fell in love. His name was Joseph and he was old. He was old like God is old to me, ever present and full of wisdom.
He looked somewhat like Monsieur Augustin. He was the color of ground coffee, with a cropped beard and a voice like molasses that turned to music when he held a saxophone to his lips.
He broke the monotony of my shuffle between home and school when he moved into the empty house next door to ours.
My mother never trusted him. In the back of my mind echoed her constant warning, 'You keep away from those American boys.' The ones whose eyes followed me on the street. The ones who were supposedly drooling over me afterwards, even though they called me a nasty West Indian to my face. 'You keep away from them especially. They are upset because they cannot have you.'
Aside from Marc, we knew no other men. Men were as mysterious to me as white people, who in Haiti we had only known as missionaries. I tried to imagine my mother's reaction to Joseph. I could already hear her: 'Not if he were the last unmarried man on earth.'
When she came home during the day and saw him sitting on his porch steps next door, she would nod a quick hello and walk faster. She wrapped her arms tighter around me, as though to rescue me from his stare.
Somehow, early on, I felt that he might like me. The way his eyes trailed me up the block gave him away. My mother liked to say, 'I admire priests because they like women for more than their faces and their buttocks.' Joseph's look went beyond the face and the buttocks.
He looked like the kind of man who could buy a girl a meal without asking for her bra in return.
Whenever I went by his stoop, I felt like we were conspiring. How could I smile without my mother noticing and how could he respond to her brisk hello and mine too, without letting her see that wink that was for me alone?
At night, I fantasized that he was sitting somewhere pining away, dreaming about me, thinking of a way to enter my life. Then one day, like rain, he came to my front door.
I was stretched out on the couch with a chemistry book when I heard the knock. I looked through the security peephole to check. It was him.
'Can I use your phone?' he asked. 'I've had mine disconnected because I'm going out of town soon.'
I opened the door and led him to the phone. Our fingers touched as I handed it to him. He dialed quickly, smiling with his eyes on my face.
'Did we get it?' he asked into the phone.
His feet bounced off the ground when he heard the answer. 'Yes!' he shouted. 'Yes!'
He handed me back the phone with a wink.
'Have you ever really wanted something great and gotten it?' he asked.
My face must have been blank.
He asked me the question again, then suddenly slapped his forehead.
'I haven't even introduced myself.'
'My name is Sophie,' I said, jumping ahead.
'I am Joseph,' he said. I knew.
'Was it good news you just got?'
'What gave me away?'
He looked at me as though he was waiting for me to say something equally witty. I wasn't as glib, as fast on my feet. I couldn't think of anything.
'It was good news,' he answered. 'I just found out that we got a gig in the East Village from now until our tour starts.'
A gig?
'A job. I am a musician.'
'I know,' I said. 'Sometimes I hear you playing at night.'
'Does it bother you?'
'Non, it's very pretty.'
'I detect an accent,' he said.
Oh please, say a small one, I thought. After seven years in this country, I was tired of having people detect my accent. I wanted to sound completely American, especially for him.
'Where are you from?' he asked.
'Haiti.'
'Ah,' he said, 'I have never been there. Do you speak Creole?'
'Oui, Oui,' I ventured, for a laugh.
'We, we,' he said, pointing to me and him. 'We have something in common. Mwin aussi. I speak a form of Creole, too. I am from Louisiana. My parents considered themselves what we call Creoles. Is it a small world or what?'
I shook my head yes. It was a very small world.
'You live alone?' he asked.
My mother's constant suspicion prodded me and I quickly said, 'No.' Just in case he was thinking of coming over tonight to kill me. This was New York, after all. You could not trust anybody.
'I live with my mother.'
'I have seen her,' he said.
'She works.'
'Nights?'
'Sometimes.'
'Did you two just move here?'
'Yes, we did.'
'I thought so,' he said. 'Whenever I'm in New York, I sublet in the neighborhood and I have never seen you walking around before.'
'We moved about a year ago.'
'That's about the last time I was in Brooklyn.'
'Where are you the rest of the year?'
'In Providence.'
I was immediately fascinated by the name. Providence. Fate! A town named for the Creator, the Almighty. Who would not want to live there?
'I am away from my house about six months out of the year,' he said. 'I travel to different places with my band and then after a while I go back for some peace and quiet.'
'What is it like in Providence?' I asked.
'It is calm. I can drive to the river and watch the sun set. I think you would like it there. You seem like a deep, thoughtful kind of person.'
I am.
'I like that in people. I like that very much.'
He glanced down at his feet as though he couldn't think of anything else to say.
I wanted to ask him to stay, but my mother would be home soon.
'I work at home,' he finally said, 'in case you ever want to drop by.'
I spent the whole week with my ear pressed against the wall, listening to him rehearse. He rehearsed day and night, sometimes twelve to ten hours without stopping. Sometimes at night, the saxophone was like a soothing lullaby.
One afternoon, he came by with a ham-and-cheese sandwich to thank me for letting him use the phone. He sat across from me in the living room while I ate very slowly.
'What are you going to study in college?' he asked.
'I think I am going to be a doctor.'
'You think? Is this something you like?'
'I suppose so,' I said.
