“It’s not an accusation, Dad. I did it. They just caught me.”

This seems to be the first thing that snaps him back to reality. He’s left scanning my face, and his jaw is clenched, as though he’s searching for a sign that this person he’s staring at is categorically not his son.

“I’m so sorry, Dad. . . .”

“You had it, Henri!” he yells as I sink into the kitchen chair right next to Ma. “Everything we’ve been working for was in your hand, and you ruin it by doing something so incredibly stupid and—and so wrong!”

The rest plays out exactly as expected, with Ma holding her neck, her lips tight, staring at us in disbelief from the other end of the table while Dad paces around the space, sucking his teeth and waving his arms at the heavens, all Haitian and no hint of Americanized chill. There’s a stain on his jumpsuit, and his sweat pits are visible through the fabric like he was already having a crap day before this fell in his lap.

Ma chimes in with a quiet “You didn’t have to do this, Henri,” but it’s a teacup against the maelstrom. I want to explain how I didn’t have it in the palm of my hand, that like everything good in life, Columbia was a crapshoot and that all I did was take a shot. A shot that cost me everything.

“Fah respow, son,” Dad says, slipping into Creole like he does when he can’t keep his cool. “The one thing, Henri, and you failed at it. . . . Just like Lionel!”

Fah respow.

It’s Dad’s favorite Haitian saying, which translates to something like “Earn your respect.” It’s the first lesson I remember from him that didn’t relate to which way to screw in a light bulb or how to take a transfer bus to avoid using multiple MetroCard swipes on the subway.

It doesn’t matter if a store owner glares at you from the moment you walk into the store all the way out the door or if a cop calls you “boy” and asks to see your backpack but not Ming’s. As long as you know you haven’t done anything wrong, that there’s nothing in your pocket, no stain on your hands, you’re “fucking untouchable” is how Dad had phrased it, dropping me at my entrance exam for FATE years ago.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. Haitian relatives I’ve never met are sitting in a line in tiny crooked frames along the kitchen wall, and all look appropriately somber for the occasion. They watch the proceedings with dour frowns because no Haitian ever smiles in portrait photos, ever.

“You’re not like those other private school kids, Henri! You can’t live life cutting corners!”

“Yeah,” I mumble too loudly. “Their parents would have paid someone else to do it.”