Before She Disappeared(32)

I nod.

“What I do remember is the dark. Waking up to a noise that scared me. I didn’t know what, I was only a little boy. But I woke up and I knew, without seeing, that something very bad was happening. Then I heard my mother, crying, pleading. ‘No,’ she was saying over and over again. Then I heard a terrible sound again. Smacking. Like flesh hitting flesh.”

I’m not sure what to say.

“I couldn’t get up. I peed the bed in terror. Then, LiLi took my hand in the dark. She told me it was just the TV, even though we both knew it wasn’t. She sang me a song, one of our favorites, and after a while I sang with her.”

“She would’ve been what, six at the time?”

Emmanuel nods. His gaze is far away, his young face grim. “Later, the earth started to shake and pictures fell off the wall and my sister was there again, grabbing my hand, pulling me outside into the open yard. ‘Stay,’ she ordered me. Then she disappeared into the house. I wanted to follow. I was so scared. People were screaming. I thought I would die. I thought we would all die, and there was nothing I could do.”

“You were three,” I remind him gently.

“When I saw my sister again, she was holding my mother’s hand. I don’t think my mother found my sister. I think LiLi went back for her. I think LiLi brought her out of our home, right before it collapsed.”

Six-year-old Angelique. It’s possible, I suppose, but I also wonder how much of this memory is clouded by a baby brother who idolizes his big sister.

“We had a father,” Emmanuel tells me. “I’ve never seen pictures of him. LiLi, my aunt, my mother, they never speak of him. I remember his voice. I remember his fists. And I remember LiLi did not lead him out of our house.”

This catches me off guard. I sit back, trying to understand what Emmanuel clearly believes. That six-year-old Angelique not only saved him and their mother during the earthquake, but she—deliberately?—left their abusive father behind.

“People say LiLi is shy. She’s not shy,” Emmanuel tells me fiercely. “She’s focused. She has her friends, but they’re foolish girls with foolish dreams. LiLi has a mission. Not just to save herself, but to save both of us.”

“She had a plan to protect you two against deportation?”

“She started taking classes online.” Emmanuel gestured to the laptop. “Two extra courses a semester. She said she could not count on her visa lasting three more years till graduation. But she could work harder to graduate earlier, so she could get into the college and have a student visa. Then she would be safe.”

“What about you and your aunt?”

“My aunt has a green card. She’s been here a long time. But she said if LiLi and I go, then she will return to Haiti as well. We have been together too long for her to want to be apart. We are hers, the children of her sister’s body and her heart.”

I imagine that sounds even more beautiful in Kreyòl. “So if Angelique had a student visa . . .”

“Then she and my aunt would be safe. Maybe then, they could petition for just me, or buy some time. LiLi told me not to worry. She always told me not to worry.”

“You don’t think she simply took off to avoid deportation?”

“Never.”

I point my chin at the laptop. “Did you and she share that?”

“Yes.”

“The police must’ve examined it.”

“They took it, kept it for months till Officer O’Shaughnessy asked for it back. He knew I needed it for my schoolwork.”

“They find anything?”

“No. But I knew they wouldn’t.”

I regard Emmanuel seriously. “Because you had the laptop for at least a full weekend before the police became serious about their efforts, and in that time . . . ?”

“I didn’t remove anything. There was nothing to remove.” Emmanuel touches the keyboard lightly. “My sister loves math and science. She would read codebreaking books and do endless number puzzles to wind down. She will become a doctor. None of us doubt her. But this is my superpower.” His fingers dance across the keyboard. “By midnight Friday, when LiLi still hadn’t come home, this is where I first started looking. I tore apart every gigabyte of data on the hard drive. Nothing. By the time the police requested it on Monday, what did I care? As usual, they were too late.”

“But your sister is very smart. And aren’t there a ton of apps designed solely to help teenagers avoid their parents’ spying eyes?”

Emmanuel merely shrugs. “LiLi might keep secrets from our aunt, but she wouldn’t keep secrets from me.”

“What about her phone?”

“We don’t have it. It was in her backpack, or I would’ve checked it, too.”

“You ever see a different cell phone around the house? Maybe something old-school, like a beat-up flip phone . . .” I let my voice drift off.

“An after-hours phone. Many kids have them.”

“Then you all know about them, including Angelique?”

“Yes.” Emmanuel hesitated. “Once, I noticed what I thought might be a phone, tucked underneath Angel’s school papers. But then it was gone, and I never saw it again.”

“When was this?”

“Over a year ago. September maybe, last year.”