Why a person who was blind would want to go look at a bunch of art made out of garbage was beyond Lizbeth. Personally, she would have preferred returning to the hotel after lunch, where at least she could lie down under a fan to wait out the afternoon heat. That is, if the electricity was on. But Bea, she was something else. That woman was so full of energy she was jumping around like hot water on a skillet.
Lizbeth was exhausted. She was looking forward to heading back home to Texas the next day. Hearing what Mackenson had to say when they’d met up that morning had been enough to make her go straight to that nice woman at the hotel’s front desk to arrange for a seat on the first plane out. He’d hit a dead end. If her own sister didn’t know where she was, how were they ever gonna find that girl? And what kind of a girl doesn’t let her own family in on her whereabouts? Why, Mackenson had almost said so himself—Senzey was a fraud, looking to point the finger at her son for putting her in the unfortunate condition in which she found herself.
So here she was, waiting out the time until she could leave by babysitting Bea while Charlie was off on her own fool’s mission. What was that girl thinking, driving around here all by herself? Why, anything could be happening, and they wouldn’t even know. She could get robbed or carjacked or kidnapped—Lizbeth had heard that those things happened around here. She could likely have an accident, with the horrible roads and crazy drivers, and animals walking right in front of a car as if they owned the place. She’d seen pigs and dogs and goats wandering around clueless right in the middle of the city. And what about getting lost? Charlie could find herself out in the middle of nowhere, where nobody spoke a word of English. Not to mention the weather. They’d seen rain coming down in buckets practically out of the blue. Those roads were bound to turn into rivers right in front of her eyes.
Lizbeth mopped her forehead with a balled-up tissue. Even out of the sun, it was hotter than blazes. Mackenson had borrowed a car from the hotel for a couple of hours, and had escorted them to a small restaurant nearby, run by Haitian women. They were seated on the patio under the shade of a mango tree, Lizbeth on high alert the entire time, fearful of a falling piece of heavy fruit. That’s all she needed, to get a concussion while she was here. Bea had ordered goat in some kind of sauce, while Lizbeth asked for the pizza. There was no sauce on Earth that would convince her to eat a goat.
Again she noticed Mackenson’s impeccable manners, and his attention to cleanliness. She’d tried not to laugh the day before when he discreetly sliced up their shared dessert, leaving the portion Charlie had already attacked with her fork facing in her direction. He even used a napkin to pick up a piece of bread from the basket. She supposed his habits must’ve had something to do with living in a country with so many diseases. Lord knows she’d had to endure a boatload of vaccinations before heading on down here, though her doctor had claimed she was more likely to die from a car crash while she was here than from a mosquito bite or some tainted water.
And his fingernails! She’d never seen such a perfect set of nails on any man; smooth and buffed and not a speck of dirt. How he did that in this dustbowl of a city was a mystery. Folks back home could also learn a thing or two about courtesy from him, the way he excused himself from the table every time his mobile phone rang, bless his heart.
And now, here he was, smiling and nodding at Bea’s request to drive them downtown to some place where they make art out of rubbish. Wasn’t there enough trash for her right out there on the streets? Lizbeth had half a mind to fake a headache, just to get out of the heat and grime of the city. But the handsome Frenchman at the hotel had told Bea she would enjoy the place with the garbage art, so it was off to the garbage art they went.
“Found objects,” Bea corrected her, when they were in the car. “They are called the Atis Rezistans, Artists of the Resistance—the sculptors of the Grand Rue.”
Lizbeth didn’t answer. She was too busy hanging on for dear life as the car bounced across a pitted intersection, toward a traffic jam worthy of the parking lot at Costco just before a Fourth of July weekend. Only this was far worse. It wasn’t just cars, it was also a jumble of trucks and motorcycles and those painted tap tap things, people selling plastic bags of water and soda bottles carried in gigantic bundles on their heads, and pedestrians going every which way. There were men hanging over the open hood of a car, deep in discussion, and others unloading piles of lumber so raw the boards still held the outline of a tree. Any open space that might’ve been left was taken up by the umbrella-shaded “shops” that seemed to grow like weeds from the sidewalks. And no traffic cops, not a one, anywhere. It was a miracle anyone got from place to place in one piece.
But somehow Mackenson managed, finally squeezing the car into a tiny parking space just off the main street. “Be careful,” he said as he opened the door and took Lizbeth’s hand. “There is mud.”
She stepped down gingerly in her open-toed sandals to avoid the puddle, her foot landing smack-dab on a pile of trash instead. Mackenson led the two women across the busy thoroughfare, dodging the traffic amid a sea of honking horns. Lizbeth felt like she was inside one of the old video games her son used to play, where the frog had to make it across the street without getting himself squished to death. Once safely on the other side, she thanked the Lord and turned her attention to her surroundings. They call this “downtown”? The buildings were low, some of them crumbling, almost as if the earthquake had happened nine days instead of nine years ago. The street was wide, covered by a canopy of powerlines strung willy-nilly across the sky. Mackenson had said they were on boulevard something-or-other, but it looked more like a junkyard to her. Old tires and auto parts in piles everywhere, and not a tree in sight.
They turned right, Mackenson’s hand resting on Bea’s arm as he gently led her through a maze of abandoned cars and rusted motorbikes, lazing cats and pecking roosters, Lizbeth following closely behind.
“We are here,” he said. Lizbeth’s gaze was drawn upward, where, from atop a wrought iron arch, a human skull was staring down at them, with Christmas-light eyes hanging from its sockets. She thought she’d arrived at the gates of hell.
She quickened her pace to catch up with the other two as they continued down a narrow alley bordered by a row of dilapidated wooden shanties, which looked like they might topple right over with one sneeze. Could anyone even live in those things? Lizbeth had to wonder. “Are you sure there’s an art gallery back here?” she asked.
At the end of the path was a courtyard, an open-air space jam-packed with the kind of sculptures she’d seen outside the hotel. Only this was different. There were tons of them; huge statues towering overhead, knee-high figurines crowding shelves along the cinderblock walls, life-size likenesses that met her face to face, and each one of them spookier than the next.
At first glance, they reminded her of those popsicle stick figures Luke used to bring home from kindergarten, with yarn hair and little googly eyes from the craft store, only bigger, and made from trash, and way scarier. But some of them were actually quite complicated, when you really looked at them. It was pretty clever, the way they used marbles for eyes, hubcaps as hats, springs for necks, vacuum cleaner hoses as arms, tire rubber for clothes. Some of them were almost beautiful, decorated in lacy golden fabric and shiny mirrors. But mostly they were creepy, the bones and skulls and dismembered baby-doll parts sending chills down her spine.
They followed Mackenson into the cool shade of a three-walled room as big as a garage, Lizbeth hanging on for dear life to Bea, fearing the woman might trip up on something, what with everything so cluttered and all. She felt herself being pulled forward as Bea stepped in close to a tall wooden figure, pausing to remove her thick, round glasses to wipe them with a scarf. “What’s this one?” she asked Lizbeth.
“Well,” Lizbeth replied, moving in for a better look, “it’s kind of hard to describe. I think it’s supposed to be an angel, or maybe a queen. I can’t tell if that’s a crown or a halo on her head.” She watched as Bea carefully ran her hands down the front of the statue.
“That is the pussy,” came a deep voice from behind.
Lizbeth turned to see a dark man in baggy shorts and cropped, bleached white hair emerging from the shadows. “Pardon me?” She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.
“Ha! So these are the pubic hairs?” Bea’s fingers rested on a cluster of rusted nails that had been hammered halfway into the rough wood. “That’s fabulous!”
Lizbeth lowered her eyes and backed away from the piece, only to find herself poked from behind by a large, red penis hanging from a totem-like creature with a bucket on its head. She barely managed to stifle a scream.
“Are you the artist?” Bea asked the man.
“We are a group of artists here. But this is my space,” he answered, his English near perfect. “Would you like me to show you around?”
Lizbeth was already inching her way back out, toward the courtyard. “That’s so kind of you, but we really must—”
“We’d be delighted,” Bea insisted.
Lizbeth was wilting in the afternoon heat, her capri pants practically glued to her thighs, the money belt she wore hidden under her blouse damp with sweat. She reluctantly followed Bea, Mackenson and the artist through the ground-floor rooms, her eyes wide with wonder at the pieces the artist claimed had been on display in art shows all over the world. Paris, Venice, New York. Why anyone with half a mind would voluntarily go see these naked, nasty things was a mystery to her. She stuck close to the group as they climbed a crumbling stone staircase, not wanting to be left alone.
“You don’t mind if I touch them, do you?” Bea asked.
“Please,” the man said. “Go ahead.”
Bea, now latched onto Mackenson, made her way very slowly through the mess, exploring every sculpture up close as her hands ran over each and every crack and crevice.
“Shouldn’t we be getting back to the hotel?” Lizbeth asked. “Maybe Charlie’s come back.”
Bea ignored the question. “You know, you should really try this, Lizbeth. With your eyes closed. Sometimes people find they can see better with their hands than with their eyes.”
Lizbeth did not have the slightest desire to see things any clearer than she already had.
“Where do you find your materials?” Bea asked, rubbing her fingers across a pair of nipples made from metal bottle caps.
“There is an endless supply of trash here in Port-au-Prince, as I am sure you have seen. There is no system for proper disposal. So it is not hard to find things for us.”
“Recycling! I love it,” said Bea. “And the bones? The skulls?”
“Those were taken from the cemetery by people, after the ground was broken up by the earthquake.”
Lizbeth gasped a little. Bea simply continued to ply the man with questions about his so-called art. Apparently she was looking to buy a souvenir for her salon back home. Lizbeth began to grow impatient. That woman could talk the legs off a chair.
Her thoughts wandered as the group drifted through a seemingly endless maze of rooms. Outside a window she could see the crumbling rooftops of the shacks surrounding downtown, roosters and stray cats perched atop homes that looked more suited to accommodate them than humans. She couldn’t get her mind off of Senzey. Surely she would have tried harder to find Luke, or his family, if the baby was actually his. That baby wasn’t her son’s. No sirree. That girl had no doubt gone and got herself in trouble, and then looked to sweet Luke as her ticket out of it. What had she been thinking, chasing down a girl like that in a place like this? It was downright crazy, just like everyone had said. Everyone, that is, except for Charlie, who seemed certain that something would turn up. To Lizbeth, it seemed that the only thing likely to turn up around here was trouble.
She ground to a halt when, behind her, she heard Bea ask, “Why so many penises?”
“These are the Guédé,” Mackenson explained, without missing a beat. “The family of spirits that embody the powers of death and fertility. Baron Samedi is their leader, the head of the cemetery, which he rules with his wife, Maman Brigitte.” He smiled at Lizbeth.
“Yes,” she said, trying to cover her embarrassment. “I do believe we already met him, back at the hotel.”
“The Guédé are very mischievous, very sexual loa,” the artist said, beaming with pride.
“I see.”
“They make fun of people, swear a lot. Every year, in November, there is a big celebration. That day there are thousands of people in the streets who become possessed by the Guédé. It is very fun. Very wild.”
Lizbeth clucked her tongue. “It sounds like an excuse for bad behavior, to me.”
“How do they know they’re possessed?” Bea asked.
“Their voice, the way they act. When it happens, it is the loa doing the talking for them. And then, to prove that it is true that they have been possessed, they use the piman.”
“Piman,” Mackenson interjected, “is kleren, raw rum, with peppers soaked in it.”
“Here. I will show you,” the artist said, then left the room for a second. He returned with a bottle filled with a nasty-looking, cloudy liquid.
“And they drink that?” Bea asked, incredulous.
The artist nodded. “Some do. But mostly they rub it on themselves, on their face, or like this.” And then the man actually began to rub his own private parts, right there, right in front of them, with a grin the size of the Grand Canyon on his face.
Lizbeth felt herself once again blushing, and turned away. “They’re probably so drunk they don’t even feel it,” she muttered.
“Exactly,” Mackenson said.
Bea was laughing. “One can only hope!”
They weaved their way back through the warren of shacks, a rusted aluminum goddess type of thing almost as tall as Mackenson slung over his shoulder like a victim rescued from disaster. How on earth did Bea plan on getting that monstrosity onto an airplane, for Pete’s sake? Why, she’d practically have to buy it its own seat to get them to allow that. Lizbeth shook her head and continued leading the old woman toward the street until, suddenly, she came upon a sight that stopped her in her tracks.
“Ouch!” Bea said as she plowed into Lizbeth’s back. “Whadya stop for?”
Lizbeth remained silent and still. She was looking at a darkened doorway to her right, where a woman stood, stooped and gray-haired. In her arms was a child, naked save for the thin diaper covering its tiny behind. The woman’s broad hand cupped the back of the baby’s head as she gently swayed to and fro, dancing to a tune only the two of them could hear. But it was the woman’s eyes that Lizbeth would never forget. Two round buttons, like the ones on some of those statues they just saw. Two dark round buttons that bore right through her soul and into her heart. Lizbeth felt as though she’d been peeled open like a grapefruit.
They did not return to the hotel until close to dinnertime, hungry, tired, and soaked from the short walk from the car to the hotel. The rain was coming down in buckets, turning the staircase from the veranda down to the parking lot into a waterfall. Lizbeth unlocked the door to their room to find it empty and dark, with no sign of Charlie anywhere in sight.