A thunderstorm starts as we drive from JFK Airport to my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn. I am 13. We have just picked up my soon-to-be-stepfather. He is of Haitian descent but French. His flight was an Air France flight. My mother will marry him in two weeks, but they have only just met in the flesh. They fell in love through love letters and hushed late-night phone calls. After a few months, he proposed.

In the thick of the storm now, our car threatens to slide off the road which we can barely see in front of us. It isn’t rain; it’s like tidal waves splashing on the windshield. We are terribly lost, which is terribly unusual. My mother should have this route memorized. She has dropped off and picked up many friends and relatives from JFK. It usually takes less than half an hour to get to my grandmother's house from the airport parking lot. But today all the signs are illegibly wet. My mother cannot find her exit. Two hours later, we’re in a factory-thick part of New Jersey.

My new step-father — we'll call him Beau-Pierre — beams throughout the troubled car ride. He studies our worried, irritated faces and tells us we are beautiful. He’s fluent in Haitian-Kreyol, but says everything in French. My grandmother does not speak French so my mother has to translate each one of Beau-Pierre’s ill-timed compliments. I understand French, but can only respond in English or Anglicized Kreyol. Beau-Pierre laughs at me when I try to communicate with him. "Quest-que dit la petit blanc?" he asks. "What is the little white girl trying to say?"

I don’t think his joke is funny.

We make it to Brooklyn eventually. The next day, we say goodbye to my grandmother and leave for Cambridge, Beau-Pierre's new home. As she drives, my mother listens patiently as her fiance reveals that Jocelyn, his baby mama in Paris, stole all his money as he was getting into a cab to go to Charles de Gaulle Airport. He had not told his recent ex live-in girlfriend that he was abandoning her and their child until the day of his departure. Naturally, she went ballistic. He shows my mother the fingernail marks Jocelyn left on his neck and arms. My mother whines, "But you told me you would cover half of the wedding expenses. You don’t have any money at all?"

"Je suis desole," he says simply, almost shrugging. I imagine he said the same words to poor Jocelyn.

For a half hour, silence fills the car like a stench. Beau-Pierre is the next to speak. "How long does it take to get to Cambridge?" he asks. When my mother answers "Four hours at the most," he becomes agitated.

"So this is the great Estats Unis?" he mutters. The words are loaded with mocking sarcasm. "Everything looks the same! We’ve passed three McDonald's already. Look at all the garbage on the highway. You would never see such a thing in France."

"You are no longer in France, my love," my mother sings, passive-aggressively.

"Merde!" he suddenly shouts. I gasp. My five-year-old little brother glances up from his Game Boy. My mother eyes our stunned faces from her rear view mirror. We are not accustomed to father figures. We are not accustomed to father figures with random bad tempers.

"Control yourself in front of my children," she tells him.

His open fist slams the dashboard. "Merde!" he repeats. He seems to be testing her, trying to push her buttons. I can tell she is already feeling overwhelmed. She has clearly made a mistake. The man she has promised herself to is obviously mad. But she has planned a wedding with 500 guests. And she is proud. She will go through with it. She will risk our lives to be someone's legitimate wife. Even if that someone is insane.

"Tell him it gets better looking once you leave Connecticut", I suggest to my mother. What I have said is not that funny, but she bursts into laughter anyway. She is relieved to laugh, to dissipate the tension he is determined to sustain. Her voice is cotton candy when she translates my comment. I giggle to encourage the cheerfulness. Beau-Pierre hesitates, but soon he chuckles too. My brother shrugs and returns to his noisy, mildly violent game.

My mother offers Beau-Pierre the wheel. Perhaps she wants to help him feel he has some control over his new surroundings. Or since everything that has come out of his mouth since we got in the car has been negative and disappointing, perhaps she hopes the task of driving will distract him from having to socialize.

It works. For the rest of the trip, he does not talk and he does not scream. Quietly, he studies the road as if he is leaving mental breadcrumbs behind on the blurry asphalt, just in case he needs to return to JFK.

Years later, my mother doesn’t drive anymore. Her back aches, her eyes are too sore — she always has an excuse. If I am late for school or it is too cold to walk, Beau-Pierre is the only one who will drive me. I dread this because we have a ritual joke that I don’t find very funny. Whenever we are alone in the car together, he always asks the same sinister question: "What would you do if the police pulled me over right now?"

The question — always asked in Kreyol — is my cue to say something that both alarms and amuses him. I always answer in English: "I’d tell them I do not know you. I’d tell them to arrest you because you kidnapped me."

"You would really do that?" he asks. He is hysterical now, laughing, slapping his knee.

"Of course I would," I confirm, but I never laugh with him. The joke is that I am perfectly serious.

Here is a secret about the joke: It is also a warning. Beau-Pierre must be consistently reminded that I am not afraid of him. He is an adult man, but I am an American girl. I have privilege. I can speak English better than he can. I have power. If I need to, I will sell him out. If he tries to hit or rape or take off with me in this car, I will not protect him. I will speak out. I will scream.