chapter 6
"Bonjou, Chevelle. Jwaye Nowe!"
Chevelle groaned, rolling over in bed to see her mother standing in the doorway shaking her small, but very loud, Christmas tambourine in her hands. The sound of it filled the entire house, and Chevelle wanted to be upset that she'd been so abruptly woken up from her dream, but when she saw the smile stretched across her mother's lips, she couldn't help but smile back.
Things with her family had been so weird recently that Chevelle had almost forgotten it wasn't always this way. That the walls of this house had held a lot of joy in the past, and that they would more yet in the years to come.
"Jwaye Nowe, Manman," Chevelle croaked out, sleep still clouding her eyes. "You look pretty."
"Thank you," her mother said. "Now get out of bed, mwen cheri. It's already eight o'clock."
"But Manman, it's Christmas day. Can't I sleep in?"
Although she would have liked to, after last night, Chevelle just didn't have it in her to match her mother's current energy level.
She had returned home sometime between four and five that morning, so right now, she was running on less than four hours of sleep. She wasn't ready to go downstairs and interact with everyone that would no doubt start bombarding her with questions about where she'd gone last night. In fact, Chevelle was surprised her mother hadn't said anything about it yet. Skipping Mass like that was the kind of thing that, back in Haiti, would've landed her a good ass-whooping. I guess after the year the Etiennes had though, Chevelle ditching the Christmas Mass was really the least of their worries.
Chevelle didn't want to risk angering her mother first thing on Christmas morning, because when Nadègine Etienne was in a good mood, everyone had a good day, but if she found even one thing to be upset about—no matter how small—her tongue became a bayonet. No matter where you were in the house, you couldn't escape the barrage. Chevelle had assumed she'd be able to sleep in this morning since, traditionally, the Etienne's didn't do much on Christmas day. They usually held all their festivities on Christmas Eve since that was just how people did things in Haiti.
Yesterday, after Chevelle and her father returned from the grocery store, they put some Tabou Combo on the speakers and they all came together to cook and decorate the house for their Réveillon that evening. It was just as tiring as it sounds, and especially so for Chevelle who had to masterfully outmaneuver Jared and Farah the entire day. The whole time, Chevelle couldn't stop thinking about how similar this all was to last year. Jared had spent last Christmas with the Etiennes as well, and they had gone through this same routine—the music, the cooking, the decorating—except last year, whenever Chevelle caught Jared's eye, they would smile at each other, maybe he would wink. When Chevelle passed by Jared, he would give her ass a light smack. When he found her alone in the kitchen, standing by the stove, gently stirring the joumou, he would snake his arms around her waist and kiss her neck softly.
This year, whenever Chevelle was unlucky enough to turn the corner and see Jared, he was always in Farah's arms, smiling at her the way he used to smile at Chevelle. Kissing her the way he used to kiss Chevelle. She was sick of it. The only reason Chevelle had stomached yesterday's torture was because of tradition. That, and because she didn't want to blow up and give everyone in her family yet another reason to think she was crazy. After suffering through all of that, at the very least, Chevelle knew she deserved a good night's rest.
"So you want me and your sister to do all the cooking?" Manman asked.
"Cooking?" Chevelle repeated, now sitting up in her bed. "Why are we cooking? We cooked so much food already, Manman, the fridge is full. It could barely close yesterday!"
"Chevelle, we have guests coming for Christmas dinner. You want us to serve them rès manje?"
Chevelle sighed. "No, I don't want us to serve them leftovers," she muttered.
It was just like her mother to make plans that involved everyone else's labor without ever actually telling anyone. And now Chevelle was expected to spend the entire day cooking, again, except on an empty tank this time.
"Who's coming over anyway?" Chevelle asked. "Ooh, is it Tonton and Matant Innocent? I hope they bring the new baby! I can't believe he's almost one and I haven't met him yet."
A look Chevelle couldn't quite decipher flashed across her mother's face. "Chevelle, you know Tonton and Matant Innocent went back to Ayiti," she said. "In October."
Tonton and Matant Innocent were like an extension of the Etienne family. Chevelle had known them ever since her family first moved to America. They weren't really her uncle and aunt, but they were the only other Haitian family in the entire neighborhood, and so they quickly became tonton and matant to Chevelle and her siblings.
The Innocents were in their late forties—a little bit younger than Chevelle's parents—and they had been trying to have children ever since they got married over twenty years ago. Finally, last year, Matant Innocent got pregnant and it had been cause for celebration. She had a beautiful baby boy early this year, but since Chevelle lived a few cities away and had been avoiding home (for obvious reasons), she hadn't yet gotten to meet him. That was one of the very few things she'd been excited to come back here for, and now the Innocents were gone.
"Why would they leave?" Chevelle demanded.
Her mother sighed. "Their visas expired," she said. "They couldn't get approved for renewal, and with the way things have been in this America, they decided it was best to leave before they got deported. Because of the baby. They didn't want to get separated from piti Marquis."
"Oh my God," Chevelle whispered, heartbroken.
It was a scary reality, how fleeting 'home' was for certain people in this country.
Nadègine nodded, a deep sadness in her gaze, and even though neither of them said it, Chevelle knew what they were both thinking about. About their own situation—even more messy and confusing than this one. About how hopeless things seemed to be nowadays.
Chevelle could see the blame in her mother's eyes. Even if Nadègine would never voice that blame for fear of her daughter's mental instability, Chevelle still felt it. And not just from her mother. From everyone. But since they all kept their true feelings bottled up, those feelings seeped into their relationships in other ways. It showed in their day-to-day interactions—the way Chevelle's father rarely looked her in the eyes anymore, the way her mother always nitpicked at the most insignificant things, the way Josephe kept Chevelle at arm's length, always ending conversations before they got too vulnerable, never sharing their real truths with each other the way they used to. And Farah...well, that one was obvious, but then again, Farah had always been one for theatrics, so after everything that had gone down in their family, I guess Chevelle shouldn't have been so blindsided when Farah decided to date Jared.
"The Mitchells are joining us for Christmas dinner," Nadègine finally said, forcing a smile back onto her lips as she tried to switch gears in an attempt to evade the uncomfortable energy settling in Chevelle's bedroom.
Chevelle frowned, sure she hadn't heard her mother right. "The Mitchells as in Jared's family?"
"Wi. His parents."
And just like that, all the guilt and empathy Chevelle had been feeling towards her family disappeared.
She didn't understand how they could justify inviting the Mitchells over for Christmas when they knew how hard things were for Chevelle already. If they really wanted to do all this, they could've just told Chevelle not to come! She honestly would have preferred that—just spending Christmas alone in her apartment where she could at least roll herself a joint when she felt this hopeless and overwhelmed.
And it wasn't any fault of the Mitchells. Mike and Shereen Mitchell were actually fine people; they were simple and kind, which Chevelle had loved when she'd originally gotten to know them. They'd taken an instant liking to her, and so during Chevelle and Jared's relationship, she'd spent a lot of time in their home, met Jared's other siblings, and even gone on vacation with their family. Their niceness was fun back then. Unintimidating. Now though, Chevelle realized that maybe they were kind to a fault—especially when it came to their children.
The simple fact that they were coming to her home to spend the holidays with her family said it all. Chevelle had dated Jared for over two years and the Mitchells hadn't come to visit her family even once during that time. And they'd had two holiday seasons to do it! The fact that they were coming now, of all times, felt like a slap in the face to Chevelle. It felt like they were endorsing Jared's relationship with Farah in a way they never had with hers. And how could they be okay with this? With their son running through the Etienne women like he was Indiana Jones?
But then again, Chevelle had to remind herself that they had always been like this. Too sweet. Too lenient. Ever since he was young, they had let Jared do whatever he wanted without any consequences. That was why he felt emboldened enough to do what he'd done to Chevelle. They didn't raise him with enough discipline or sense, and this was the result.
Chevelle hadn't seen the Mitchells since her breakup with Jared, and it had been hard losing them. Especially since things were already weird with her own family by that time. In the last few months of their relationship, Chevelle had been leaning on the Mitchells for that extra support she had lost from her parents, and when she ended up losing them both, she was left with nobody. And the worst part of it was that she'd really loved them too. Maybe more than she should have, but at the time it didn't feel like she had much of a choice. They'd taken her in like she was their own daughter, except unlike with her real parents, with the Mitchells, Chevelle only got the good parts.
With them, she only got the encouragement, the praise, the support. It wasn't until after her breakup with Jared that she began to realize maybe things hadn't been as perfect as she'd led herself to believe. That, in many ways, their acceptance of Chevelle had been quite self-serving—more for their own benefit than for hers. So they could feel good about themselves for 'saving' someone as helpless and desperate as Chevelle had been.
"Chevelle, I expect you downstairs in ten minutes," her mother said. "Fe vit." Hurry it up.
Nadègine exited Chevelle's room and, of course, refused to close the door properly. Probably because she thought it would bother Chevelle enough to force her out of bed to close it herself. And it did. For a moment, Chevelle considered locking herself in her room and staying there until the Mitchells had left, but she didn't want Jared to know how much this was affecting her, and so instead, she decided that the best way to avoid this hellish situation was to leave the house altogether.
She washed her face quickly and then grabbed her car keys before heading downstairs and making a beeline for the door.
Thankfully, Jared was out in the back, grilling the tassot with Josephe—or, more accurately, sitting on a lawn chair, watching Josephe as he did the grilling, but either way, that was good news because it meant that Chevelle would only have to deal with her parents and Farah on her way out.
"Chevelle, kote ou prale?" her father asked, just as she was about to open the front door.
Stopping in her tracks, Chevelle groaned internally and slowly turned around to face her father who had now lowered his newspaper and was peering up at her from above his glasses. "I'm going to the store," Chevelle said, and immediately she regretted it. She'd just blurted out the first thing that came to mind, but now that she'd said she was going to the store, she realized that she would actually be expected to go to the store.
"Which store?" her father asked.
Chevelle shrugged hastily. "Mwen pa konen, Papa," she said. "I don't know. Just the store."
"To buy what?" her mother asked, now joining in on the conversation.
Reluctantly, Chevelle turned to face her mother who was in the kitchen, looking at her with a raised brow and one arm folded over her chest while she stirred the tchaka on the stove. Farah was at the counter, chopping carrots and cabbage for the stew, but Chevelle could see from the amused expression on her face that she was paying keen attention to the conversation.
"We need wine for the guests, non?" Chevelle said.
Her mother and father both looked from Chevelle to each other, skepticism flashing in their eyes, but they said nothing. Finally, her father just waved her away and Chevelle let out a breath, turning on her heel as she sped out of the house before something else could stop her.
"We also need shallots!" she heard Farah call as she exited the house. "In fact, I'll just text you the shopping list."
Chevelle didn't bother responding or even waiting for Farah to finish talking as she swung the door shut. She got into her car and pulled out of the driveway, peeling down the street before she even knew where she was going.
Once she was actually on the road, Chevelle felt kind of bad for slamming the door in Farah's face, but then she remembered the reason she even needed to escape the house, and just like that, all her warmth dried up. It was tiring, constantly going through this cycle of being unkind, feeling guilty about it, and then remembering that she had every right to feel this hostility towards the people she loved. Farah was her little sister, and up until a few months ago, her best friend. Losing Farah had felt like losing a part of herself, and Chevelle still wasn't used to this. This weird limbo they were in—both of them still holding a lot of love for each other, but neither having enough courage to overcome their circumstances.
As she sped down the barren streets, part of Chevelle wanted to call Abel and see what he was doing—maybe even hang out again—but she didn't want to seem so needy. Not only was it Christmas day, but he'd also given her two of the best orgasms of her life just last night. She needed to let it cool off a little before she ended up scaring him away. She had a knack for doing that.
Chevelle ended up driving to the grocery store. She didn't mean to, but before she realized it, she was pulling into the empty Shoprite parking lot, and since it was Christmas, the store was obviously closed. Chevelle could've made the 20-minute journey up to the megamarket that was open 24/7 every day of the year—she definitely thought about it, but honestly, she just didn't care enough. That was forty extra minutes of driving just for her to spend her hard-earned money on some wine to impress her ex-boyfriend's parents, and for what? She and Jared weren't together anymore, so what did the Mitchells' opinion of her really matter? She liked them, sure, but that didn't change the fact that they hadn't reached out to her even once since the breakup. Since her hospitalization. Not to see if she needed anything, not even just to see if she was okay. So why should she care about making her home welcoming to them? Fuck them. And fuck Jared too.
Rather than going home, Chevelle decided, instead, to go to the one place that she knew would be open on Christmas day: the park. It was a short drive, and when Chevelle got there, she thought she'd brave one of the lesser trails despite the weather, but it was colder than she remembered it being when she'd left the house and she didn't have nearly enough layers on. Halfway to the trailhead, Chevelle had to turn around and run back to her car, turning on the seat warmers to the highest setting and sitting on her hands for a good three minutes before she could feel her fingers again. Instead of the walking trail, she decided she would go on the driving trail. She'd never actually gone on it before despite having been to this park more times than she could count, and as Chevelle cruised down the winding roads, she realized that the driving trail was actually much prettier than she'd anticipated.
In the walking trail, she was able to experience the detail. The birds chirping as the leaves rustled in the wind, the sunlight pouring in between the full branches, the dirt crunching beneath her feet, the cool air whipping her face. But in the driving trail, Chevelle realized, she could see the bigger picture of things. She could see the whole forest—the mass of trees and their infinite leaves swaying side to side in the breeze. She could see the thousand-and-one shades of green bleeding into each other, blending into an intricate, living mosaic. It really put things into perspective—seeing a forest that big. That old. A forest that had been there long before Chevelle and would remain there long after she was gone. It made Chevelle realize that she, too, had been here long before her current problems began, and that she would remain here long after they were gone.
When Chevelle finally left the park, she didn't do so planning to go back home, but half an hour later, she pulled up to her house and saw Mr. Mitchell's car, a beautiful white Bentley, sitting in her driveway.
Immediately, Chevelle's heart rate spiked. She didn't know why she was suddenly so nervous when, if anything, she should've been the most comfortable. She already knew them, and she wasn't dating Jared anymore, so she didn't need to impress them. It was everyone else that needed to worry about impressing them. Chevelle knew that it was her parents' and Josephe's first time meeting the Mitchells, and, she had just assumed it would be Farah's first time as well. Maybe because it made her feel better to believe that, somehow, she was still closer to them (and, in turn, to Jared) in a way she hoped Farah never would be. It was selfish, but it was the truth. She didn't want Farah's relationship with Jared to succeed.
And so, when Chevelle entered the house and was met with the sight of Jared and Farah sitting on the sofa with Mrs. Mitchell, all of them laughing at the top of their lungs, the bitterness she had fought so hard to keep away began to creep back in. Not because she particularly wanted the Mitchells to herself—I mean, by now she'd realized that they weren't as much of a prize as she'd once believed. It was more because seeing them like that—seeing Farah so close with Jared's family—made Chevelle realize that she was being pushed out. Replaced. That what Farah and Jared were building might actually grow to become more than what Chevelle and Jared once had. That soon, it wouldn't be that Farah was dating Chevelle's ex anymore; it would be that Chevelle had once dated Farah's man. That Chevelle had barely dated Farah's man. And once Farah had the more rightful claim to him, Chevelle knew that her family would stop walking on eggshells around her. That they would start telling her to 'get over it.' To move on already.
And how was she supposed to move on? How could she be expected to move forward when her spirit hadn't yet found peace? When the wound was still raw? When she had to be reminded of her pain every fucking day?
Chevelle's relationship with Jared was the longest relationship she'd ever been in. She'd shared things with him that she'd never even shared with herself before.
When Wilson died, it had been painful, and Chevelle still remembered that pain to this day, but at least when he died, he was gone. She didn't have to be faced with constant reminders of him everywhere she turned; she was actually able to move on properly. She knew that if Jared had just left her life when they broke up, things would be a lot better by now, but he hadn't. And at first, Chevelle told herself it was because he still cared—because he was still hurting and he wanted to keep her close. But the longer he and Farah dated, the more Chevelle was faced with the chilling reality that maybe Jared was dating Farah not because she was Chevelle's sister, but simply because he liked her more.
It wasn't hard to imagine, since, after all, Farah was a lot less work than Chevelle. She was all the strange, decrepit humor with none of the mental illness. She was bubblier; she laughed more. It was easier to know where you stood with her. People also found her far more approachable—less intimidating than Chevelle. Maybe because she was smaller—shorter, cuter, sassier—or maybe because she was better at hiding her huntress behind a smile.
The front door closed behind Chevelle and everyone in the house turned to look at her. She felt like a deer in headlights as she looked from Jared, Farah, and Mrs. Mitchell in the living room to Josephe and her mother in the kitchen, to her father who sat at the dining table, talking with Mr. Mitchell.
As she entered her own house, it felt like she was interrupting something intimate. Something she was never meant to be a part of. And it must've been some kind of divine punishment—retribution for something she'd done in a past life—because it was always in moments like this, when she wished she were invisible, that people paid the most attention to her. When Chevelle wanted to be seen though—when she begged for someone to just take one honest look at her—that was when people looked away.
Especially the people she loved the most.
chapter 26 coming to Radish on Sunday, chapter 7 coming to wattpad next week!
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top