11
Rara Surprise

Early Sunday evening, Tonton Pierre, Tante Marie Claire, and I are just finishing dinner when the doorbell rings. They don’t know who it is, but I do!

Tonton Pierre shrugs and walks to the door, trying to hide a secret excitement. He thinks it is one of his old-man friends at the door, with an invitation to play backgammon or cards at the barbershop, where he is spending half his lifetime. But my uncle is about to be disappointed. Jou Jou is the one at the door, so I am the one who will be having a bit of fun tonight.

“Ah, c’est seulement toi,” Pierre says to my brother. It’s just you.

“Bonjour, Tonton Pierre,” Jou Jou calls out, clutching the rada, a drum we use in Haitian music, under his arm. He doesn’t try to hug my uncle—Tonton Pierre doesn’t like hugs—but my brother doesn’t bury his happiness, either. His eyes bounce around the room, full of energy, hungry to take in all they can, even in this room he knows so well, this kitchen where he has eaten so many meals and sat through so many of Tonton Pierre’s stubborn speeches.

“Keep that bloody animal skin out of my house,” Tonton Pierre says, going back to English. Tonton Pierre is always telling Jou Jou and me that we must speak “American” if we are going to get anywhere in this country, but when he’s alone with Marie Claire, or with his card-playing old men, he himself speaks Kreyol.

“Yes, sir,” Jou Jou says.

“Lay it on the stoop. I don’t want it stinking up the room.” Pierre sniffs hard. “Come on now.”

“He heard you, Pierre,” Marie Claire says. And it is true: since leaving this house shortly after he turned eighteen, my brother has realized that following my uncle’s rules, or at least appearing to, is the best way to keep the old man quiet.

“Marie Claire, you are looking very nice tonight,” Jou Jou says, kissing our aunt. From the shopping bag he pulls out two enormous mango fruits, big as melons.

“Aah, they are perfect,” Marie Claire says, greedily pulling them toward her before anyone can take them away.

“You are the perfect one, Auntie,” Jou Jou says, kissing her hand like a gentleman. I roll my eyes. My brother is shameless, always flattering, like Gran-Papa, before he became so old that I was caring for him more than he was for me. Like my grandfather when he was young, Jou Jou is not stupid or unaware; it is only that he refuses to fall into the dark mood of this house. Jou Jou will not let Tonton Pierre, no matter how grumpy he is, spoil his mood.

“You come here to take our niece away from us again?” Pierre asks, as if I am not in the room. “It’s very late for a school night. She must wake at seven tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll have her home early, Uncle, I promise you.”

“The sun will be down in an hour, boy.” Who else but Uncle would call Jou Jou a boy? Anyone who looks at him can tell he is a man, but Tonton Pierre needs to keep my brother in his place. “Think about what you are saying.”

Jou Jou pretends to check the watch on his wrist. It’s a game I’ve seen them play before. “You are right, Uncle,” he says. “Ninety minutes, then? I can have her back by eight thirty. Is that all right?”

My brother looks at Marie Claire with his big brown eyes. He is the stray dog she cannot help but pet and love.

“Let Jou Jou be with his sister, Pierre,” my aunt says. “He is good with her.”

“We didn’t take her off the streets of Port-au-Prince only to put her on the streets of Brooklyn,” Tonton Pierre says. “We took her off her grandfather’s hands because he couldn’t handle the girl anymore.”

“I can handle her. Right, Bijou?” Jou Jou winks at me. “At least for one evening.”

“These people you go with are not good people.” What my uncle means is, they are not Christian people. “They belong to no one. They belong only to the street.”

Jou Jou almost responds, but he thinks better of it.

“Bijou is safe with Jou Jou,” Marie Claire says. “He is her brother.”

“Joseph, you can’t possibly continue with that devil’s music.” Tonton Pierre is forgetting that we are talking about whether or not I can go to the park and not his favorite subject: the sins of rara. “Good people have no time for this street music, nephew. Which is why I’m so disappointed in you. You could have done something with your life. You still can. A doctor, a respectable businessperson, someone who would build up the community instead of hurting it. But instead of helping anyone, all you do is drive that dollar van around and play your drum until all hours of the night.”

Jou Jou can’t hold back anymore. “Uncle, I do help our people. I help bring our own culture back to us, here in America.”

“That’s not your culture, boy. You were raised right. That’s some peasant culture, ignorant fools banging on drums all day because they don’t know any better. Because they haven’t gotten either education or the sense to follow a more righteous path.”

“Uncle, at the Gran Bwa, it’s not only the poorest Haitians who come out to march to the music. It’s everybody, the whole community.”

“It isn’t anybody I know, I can assure you that.”

“If you could only see the looks on everybody’s face, Tonton. The joy they feel in hearing their own music, seeing they own culture, here in Brooklyn. It’s magic.”

“Bijou will be fine,” Marie Claire says, staying calm, not looking up as she does the dishes. Safety and security are everything to my uncle. What this means for those of us living with him is that we are almost never allowed to leave our own home.

“It is a sin, I tell you.” Tonton Pierre throws up his hands, but I can tell he is tiring of this argument. We have won!

Which means I get to go to Prospect Park to see the rara with my brother, while Marie Claire must stay home with my uncle, who steals all the stale air in this house with greedy lungs.

The sun is out on Rogers Avenue, but there is a brisk wind that makes the hairs on my arms stand up. As Jou Jou and I walk toward the park, we pass schools, auto garages, and, mostly, churches: the Gospel Tabernacle Church of Jesus Christ, the New Life Center of Truth. Everything here is new, new, new! And yet the buildings look so old and dirty. If a church has “new” in its name, shouldn’t the priests wash it once in a while?

“How could you stand living with that man for three entire years, Jou Jou?” I ask him.

“Tonton is not so bad, sister,” Jou Jou says. “Next to Papa, the man is a saint.”

I never really knew our father; he left us when I was very young. But from what Maman and Jou Jou tell me, I did not miss very much. So I don’t. Miss him, I mean. My brother, mother, Gran-Papa, and Gran-Maman were always enough of a family for me.

More churches: Dios con Nosotros Baptist Church, Right with God Ministries. There are so many houses of God in Flatbush, it would seem as if every person in America is in love with religion. But now we’re walking by a restaurant where the smell of frying meat passes through a steamy vent. Which do Americans love more: God or hamburgers? In Flatbush it is hard to tell.

“How can you say Tonton is so wonderful? You left his house as soon as you had twenty dollars in your pocket.”

“The two of us see things different, it’s true.” He looks me in the eye. “But Tonton is … cranky. The man means well.”

To our right, on Snyder Avenue, is the police station. With its large facade made of brick and rough concrete, it looks like a school for bad children. To the right of the station is a painting of a policeman. GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN TO LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS, read the words under his smiling face, and I suddenly realize that this policeman died, and this is his memorial. Did he really die the death of a hero, as the quote says, while trying to protect his friends?

I think of all the people I saw fighting and dying for the lives of family and friends. These are my heroes: my school-teacher, Madame Jean-Baptiste, directing all the children out of her classroom, trying to point the way to safety with a hand that was bleeding and badly broken; our headmaster, who cried tears of joy when he saw that everyone in his school was living, only to discover after walking six miles that his own wife and young son lay dead under rubble at home; and Gran-Papa, who ran to cover Maman’s body with his own as soon as he felt the house begin to shake.

“You hear the drums?” Jou Jou asks.

“Don’t tell me you can hear them this far away, crazy man,” I say.

“Of course I can. When you feel the drum in your spirit, the way I do, you have the senses of a superhero. A god!”

“You don’t even have the sense of an animal.”

“Oh, but I do, Bijou!” He jumps at me, fast as a cat, spreading his ten fingers to tickle me.

“Don’t!” I cry out, laughing already. He hasn’t tickled me once since I arrived here in January, because he hasn’t needed to; the threat is always enough.

“Tell me you don’t hear that,” he says, cupping his hand to his ear.

“I don’t hear nothing,” I say.

“Any thing,” he says. “You don’t hear anything.” Jou Jou likes to correct my English whenever he can, but we both know I speak as well as he does. While I was learning grammar from Tous Mes Enfants, he was playing football—what Americans call soccer—with his friends in the field behind our house in Port-au-Prince.

Finally I do hear the thumping of the drums, the cries of the metal konets. I remember Pierre calling Jou Jou’s drum a “bloody animal skin.” He meant to make an insult, yes, but the sound of rara truly is a living thing: the drums like a heartbeat, the konet horns rising above the rhythm like birds taking flight.

We always thought Jou Jou would be a great football player, not a musician. But soon after he came to New York (“For a better education!” my uncle claimed), he learned to dance with his hands instead of his feet. Every week, he would call Maman and me speaking of nothing but drums, and of Rara Gran Bwa, the band he had heard playing in Prospect Park. They were master musicians, he said, and if his dream were to come true, he would one day be asked to play the rada—a cone-shaped vodou drum with a cow-skin head—with them.

That day did come, a little over a year ago, and no sooner did Jou Jou get the invitation than he moved out of my aunt and uncle’s house and into a tiny Flatbush apartment with two other members of Rara Gran Bwa. So much for Jou Jou’s “better education.” He is so poor now, sometimes he can barely afford to pay his rent. But I have never seen him so happy. He is living his dream.

The pounding of the drums gets louder as we twist through a small opening in the park fence along the avenue. The late-March sky is beginning to darken, and merry sounds fill the air: the chatter of Sunday picnickers, insects buzzing, little children playing their games. I love Prospect Park, the tall tree tops, the smell of leaves, the sun over the lake.

Jou Jou and I are walking along the broad path in the park, runners and cyclists whizzing by us, when I hear a voice say, “Look, it’s Bijou.”

Two boys on bikes stop, turn, and look at me. It’s Nomura and Alex. Suddenly these two are everywhere I turn!

“Hey, Bijou,” says Nomura.

And Alex manages to push out a quiet “Hiya.”

In Port-au-Prince, no boy schoolmate would ever walk up to me and speak to me so boldly. But this is the United States, where there are no rules at all.

“Hello,” I say.

“It’s … nice to see you,” Alex says.

A moment of quiet before Nomura says, “Did you … have fun at the dance?” Alex gives him a look.

“It was all right, I suppose.” I stop, not sure how to continue. Did any of us have “fun” that night?

“Hi, guys. I’m Jou Jou, Bijou’s older brother.” The boys shake his outstretched hand. “You must forgive Bijou’s silence. She used up all her words on the way over.”

The boys laugh, and I glare at the idiot Jou Jou, always looking for a chance to embarrass me.

“I’m John Nomura, and this is Alex.”

“You boys ridin’ around the park, then?” Jou Jou asks. “Nice night for it.”

I don’t know whether Jou Jou is just being Jou Jou or whether my brother is trying to torture me on purpose. But either way, his friendliness makes this situation even more awkward. I suddenly wish my uncle were here; he would dismiss these boys with a wave of his hand, and they would be afraid to ever speak to me again.

“What are you guys up to?” Nomura asks. Alex looks happy that at least one of the two of them is able to speak in my presence.

“We go to the Gran Bwa, the drum circle.” Jou Jou raises the rada and plays a flourish on the cow-skin drumhead with his right hand. “Can’t you tell?” I try to catch my brother’s eye. He is being a bit too friendly with these two. Can’t he tell I want to make this visit we are having as brief as possible?

“Oh yeah,” Nomura says. “We just passed it. Those guys are loud!”

“Not loud, my friend. These are master drummers playing over there.” He shifts the drum from one arm to the other. “Hey, you want to join us? I promise, you will love it.”

I jab Jou Jou in the ribs, but he just laughs, enjoying my discomfort. He is evil sometimes, my brother. How does he know Alex and Nomura will “love” the rara? Most Americans hate our music, call it a bunch of noise.

“I’ll go!” says Alex, a bit too much excitement coming through, which, of course, makes him blush bright red, like he did at the dance.

“That’s the attitude, man,” says Jou Jou. “And how about you, John?”

“Actually, I’m late already. Got to get home.” Nomura looks quickly to his friend, then smiles with satisfaction. “Alex, tell me all about it, cool?”

“Uh, sure,” Alex says.

“Is this a good idea, Jou Jou?” I ask, hoping that there may still be a way out of this, even if it makes me seem a bit cruel. “Will Rara Gran Bwa want outsiders to hear their rehearsal?”

“Maybe I should head back, myself,” Alex says. “If it’s a rehearsal.”

“Sister, you well know it’s no rehearsal today. Alex, come on, you going to be my personal guest. All right?”

“Okay,” Alex says, smiling but still looking a little scared.

“It’s settled, then,” Jou Jou says, shaking Nomura’s hand good-bye. I’m going to kill him later. “John, we meet again sometime soon, all right? It’s always a pleasure to meet my little sister’s schoolmates.”

“Later,” Alex says. He and my brother wave good-bye to Nomura as he rides away.

“Bye!” Nomura calls from behind his back, whizzing away toward home. I wish I could race home on a bike and leave my brother and the boy to become friends for life.

“All right, Alex, come with us,” Jou Jou says. “You’re in for a treat.” He swings the rada around, playing a beat with his calloused palms. He leans over toward me and whispers, “I do this for you, Bijou. Looks like in Port-au-Prince you forgot how to make new friends.” I’ll get him for this when we get home.

When we arrive, we see a circle of ten or twelve men, all Haitian, in a shady grove of trees between the bike path and Parkside Avenue. About twice as many people look on, moving their bodies to the rhythm. “Hey, Jou Jou!” two or three of the musicians call out as he joins the line of three other drummers. Now I am alone with Alex, and I try to guess what he is thinking. He’s probably never been to the Caribbean part of Flatbush before, and he’s certainly never joined the scary Haitians beating on their animal skins in the middle of Prospect Park.

I glance at him, though, and see no fear on his face at all. Listening to the music, he looks relaxed, happy. This means, at least, that I don’t have to struggle to think of things to say to him; for the moment he is absorbed by something other than me or his own embarrassment. I cross my arms and try to calm myself enough to enjoy Rara Gran Bwa, which is, after all, the reason I came here in the first place—to hear my brother play the music he loves with all his heart.

Some of the musicians are as young as Jou Jou, others as old as thirty or forty, each of them holding at least one instrument. In the center of everything is a tall, skinny man, wearing white pants with the Rara Gran Bwa logo stitched in bright yellow letters up and down the legs. The man wears a knit cap on top of a mountain of dreadlocks and rubs a small stick against what looks like a shaker of salt. He makes swift, buzzing patterns, eyes closed like he is praying.

Other men play snare and tom-tom; maracas; a graj, which looks like a cheese grater; and other percussion instruments. To their left, four more guys stand shoulder to shoulder and play the crying melodies I love on the konet, a long metal trumpet with a bell at its end.

“What does ‘Gran Bwa’ mean?” Alex asks.

“It come from the French, ‘Grand Bois,’” I say.

“Great woods?”

“I forgot, you know French,” I say. Alex smiles, looking a little proud. “It’s more like ‘great tree,’ though. Or ‘big tree.’ “ Still a trace of a smile on his lips. It is a nice smile. He is a handsome boy, I can’t help notice. “So, this place is named after the Haitian spirit Gran Bwa. He’s very important in vodou, and the band pick him as their patron spirit. Gran Bwa look like a giant tree. You see that rock over there, with the face carved into it?”

Alex arches his neck to get a view of the Gran Bwa sculpture to the right of the band. “Yeah, I see it. That’s him?”

“Yes. You can see how powerful he is, how fierce. Gran Bwa has control over all the wilderness. So he is a bit wild and unpredictable. Filled with energy and magic, too. Like the music, no?”

I nod to Jou Jou, who works his mouth along with the thick rhythm, like chewing beef jerky. His dreadlocks, not quite shoulder-length yet, dance along in time. Maybe this is what Gran Bwa would have looked like when he was here on Earth, filled with life and unpredictable energy. The sky is almost completely dark now. The snare drummer bobs his shoulders, and the sax player leans back, exposing his throat. The man playing the salt shaker dances toward the middle of the circle, wearing the grin of an elf, full of mischief. “Whoa-ah! Come on, come on!” he shouts, pushing the musicians to play louder, tighter.

“That’s Fabian, the one with the knit cap,” I lean over and tell Alex. “He started Rara Gran Bwa, long time ago. He’s the leader.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” he whispers. “He’s amazing. He’s just playing that little salt shaker, but he’s incredible. It’s like he’s conducting.”

“That’s right,” I say, smiling. “Exactly.”

For a moment, Jou Jou looks at Alex and me again, or maybe at a spot of the tree directly behind us. He bobs his head left and right, sometime closing his eyes, so deeply under the music’s spell, the crazy fool doesn’t seem to recognize his own sister.

“How long has he been playing the drums?” Alex asks me.

“About three years now, I think. I’m not sure, exactly. He came to America four years before me.”

“That’s all, a few years? He’s so good!”

“Rara music, if you’re Haitian, it’s in your blood. Jou Jou, he pick up the rhythms faster than most. An outsider would never learn so quick, but he’s been hearing the music his whole life.”

“He’s fantastic. They all are. I’ve never heard anything like it. Do they teach it in the schools there?”

“Rara? In the schools? They would never allow it. Rara is street music. My grandfather, my mother, my uncle … they hate this music. They think Jou Jou throw away his life by doing this.”

“Really? What’s wrong with it? It’s just … music.”

“Yes, but to them it’s musique démoniaque. Devil’s music, you see?”

“Not really.”

“The Christians in Haiti, they think the people who make this music in Haiti for centuries are the low people, the poor. They think this music, it is vodou music that the uneducated and ignorant use to call bad spirits.”

“And Haitians here in Brooklyn think that, too?”

“Some of them, yes. Mostly the older ones, like my uncle.” Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Too private. It is not good to talk badly about an elder.

“That’s too bad.”

He shakes his head. Maybe he doesn’t believe that anyone could hold such harsh opinions about something as innocent as music. It’s only sound floating on the air, after all. But this is another thing about Americans I have noticed: they want to think everyone around them is so happy, living in harmony. They choose not to see the walls that separate people from each other, these walls that exist everywhere one cares to look.

In another minute, the song continues with four long blasts from the konets. Fabian, dancing and calling out from the center of the circle, tosses his head into the air to cue that the end is near and finally kicks powerfully with his right leg. The entire band syncs when he brings his foot to the ground, and the piece is complete. The spectators, including Alex and me, erupt in cheers.

“Do they ever play concerts?” Alex asks. “You know, in clubs or wherever?”

Suddenly, I remember what it felt like the first time Alex spoke to me, before those cruel boys teased him about the cards. I had forgotten how nice the conversation was, before others had to spoil it.

“In the past, they play lots of house parties. Like, in the community, here in Flatbush. And benefit concerts for kids, things like this to buy presents for them at Christmas, you know. But now, since the earthquake, they getting much more popular. Clubs in Brooklyn and Manhattan, good clubs. They might even be invited to the New Orleans Jazz Festival this year. We will see.”

Jou Jou approaches us, his expression soft and relaxed again, as it was during our walk.

“What you think, sister?” he asks, kissing me on both cheeks.

“Très bien, Jou Jou. Beautiful. Rara Gran Bwa sound fantastic, as always.”

“And you, Alex? You like the music?”

“Yeah, it was incredible,” Alex says. “You guys are amazing. My sister plays the cello. But it’s nothing like this!”

Jou Jou rears his head back to laugh. “Now that’s some positive feedback, man. Thank you. I like this boy, Bijou. He’s good.”

I grit my teeth and let the comment pass. Now I know he’s trying to torture me.

“Do you guys rehearse a lot?” Alex asks.

“Well, this isn’t a practice. This just a little jam session at the Gran Bwa here. But yeah, we practice, too, over on Church Avenue. You should come sometime.”

“I’d like to.”

“Jou Jou, we not done yet, man,” says Darly, the petwo player. He wears a sour look on his face, as always. “Get back here.”

“Yes, man, I’m comin’,” Jou Jou says. He gives us a look of pretend-scared, rolls his eyes, and heads back toward the band.

“Okay, get in here, brothers,” Fabian says, kneeling and extending his hand. The band members surround him like football players in a huddle. “One band, one sound!”

The band repeats, “One band, one sound!”

Fabian yells, “Rara, Rara, Rara Gran Bwa!”

And the band repeats, “Rara, Rara, Rara Gran Bwa!”

Alex’s phone buzzes: a text. “Oops, that’s my mom,” he says. “I’ve gotta get going.”

“Time for dinner?” I ask.

“Yep. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten.”

I look at my watch: 8:15. “Oh no, me too!” If I don’t get home in fifteen minutes, my uncle will go crazy. And it’s more than a mile’s walk to get home. Forgetting about Alex for the moment, I wave to get Jou Jou’s attention. “Jou Jou! We need to get out of here, and right now!”

“Okay, okay!” Jou Jou calls back, laughing as usual, not one concern in the world. “J’arrive, j’arrive!” I’m coming.

Finally, after a few high fives with his bandmates, my brother is by my side. We say a quick good-bye to Alex, and we are running, running, racing to get home before my uncle’s deadline.