I wish I could hear somebody talking. I wish I could hear Manman one more time. I remember when it was her shouting that made me come out of the darkness into the real world.
After I got shot, Manman waited till the soldiers had gone and then she carried me to the nearest checkpoint. She left Dread Wilmè there in the street, dead, where the MINUSTAH troops had abandoned him. They weren’t mad, those guys. They were willing to kill the man – they had the balls for that – and guaranteed they were going to take some bullets for it, but they knew that take Dread out of the Site and they would have a fucking revolution on their hands. It wasn’t worth it. Not only that but Dread was reputed to eat babies, man, and they’d seen him walk down the street with a thousand bullet holes in him. The white soldiers, the blancs, they didn’t want that vodou with them.
Manman, though, she was pissed that they had left me behind. I was a child, bleeding; she thought that even in a war people should not leave children wounded in the street. She was afraid that I was going to die, and then she would be left with nobody.
I woke up again when I heard the shouting. I opened my eyes and I was in her arms. I wasn’t light then, I was, like, 50 kilos or something. She had carried me all the way to where the street was blocked off by an orange shipping container and there was a barrier across the road. Sweat was beading on her face and her eyes were huge, they were so close to me. Everything was kind of bleached and washed out, and I was aware of the smell of my own blood. Casques-bleus were pointing guns at us and they were doing some of the shouting.
Manman was shouting, too, but not at the soldiers. She was ignoring them, and instead walking toward these people with cameras, with no uniforms, who were on the other side of the barrier. The soldiers were holding these people back, but they were squeezing past and taking pictures of us. I could see the flashes going off and they made my head spin even more. This was, like, dawn. There was a little light in the sky, like blood seeping from a wound, but not much.
The people with the cameras, I figured they were journalists. They were shouting and shouting – in English, I think. Manman didn’t speak English, but she shouted in Kreyòl and she shouted in the broken French that she knew. She shouted:
— My son was shot by MINUSTAH soldiers in the slum.
She shouted:
— He was shot during a military operation to kill Dread Wilmè. Dread Wilmè is dead and my son is injured. Help me.
One of the reporters broke away from the group and turned to the soldiers. He thrust a video camera forward.
— Can you confirm that Dread Wilmè has been killed? he asked.
The soldier backed away, looking nervous.
Manman didn’t stop shouting. She walked closer and closer to the barrier, and the soldiers were backing away from her now, unsure how to proceed.
— Please, she said. Please, let me through. Let my son have treatment. Please. You shot him, now just take him to the hospital.
All of this, the reporters were filming and taking photos of it. The flashes, they were a bit like guns going off, and they made me think I was going to be sick, or faint again. I didn’t, but I kind of wished I would.
— We heard gunshots from inside Site Solèy after seeing vehicles enter there from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, said one of the reporters in French. We also saw a helicopter. Did you shoot this boy?
She asked this young soldier near her, but really she was asking all the soldiers, and she was talking for the camera, too.
I saw one of them, who seemed a bit older than the rest, turn away and talk quietly and quickly into a walkie-talkie. The others had their fingers on their triggers, and not all the guns were pointing at us; some of them were pointing at the reporters. Manman, she was smart. She wasn’t even looking at the soldiers; she was talking to the reporters the whole time, showing them the wound in my leg, telling them what happened.
— I saw Dread Wilmè die with my own eyes, she said. They filled him with so many bullets you could pick him up with a magnet.
The reporters were pressing forward then, trying to get into the Site, and the barrier was straining against them. One tried to duck under and a soldier brandished his gun, shouting. I think someone could have got shot right then, but at that moment the soldier on his walkie-talkie stepped forward and put a hand on the barrel of the gun.
— Let the woman and the boy through, he said to the men who were manning the barrier. Escort them to Canapé-Vert for treatment.
The reporters went quiet, then they were all shouting at once:
— Does this mean you confirm the death of Dread Wilmè at the hands of MINUSTAH troops?
— Can you . . . ?
— Do you . . . ?
— What is the status of Dread Wilmè?
— Did you shoot this boy?
The soldiers raised the barrier, and Manman moved through. Now she was ignoring the reporters completely, and it was like they didn’t exist anymore.
— No comment, said the soldier with the walkie-talkie. No comment.