Roy stood on the front steps of his school waiting for the car that was supposed to pick him up. An associate of his dad’s, he’d been told, would be there at three o’clock to drive him to his father and his father’s second wife Evie’s house. Roy’s mother, his father’s first wife, from whom he’d been divorced since Roy was five, three years before, was out of town with her current boyfriend, Danielito Castro, so Roy was staying at his dad’s until she came back to Chicago. His mother told Roy that Danielito Castro, whom Roy had briefly met once, wanted her to meet his family in Santo Domingo. She had been gone now for a week and had been uncertain about when she would return.
“I’ll see how things go,” his mother had said. “I don’t think any of Danielito’s family speaks English, other than Danielito, of course, so it probably won’t be very long since I can’t speak Spanish. You’ll be fine with your dad and Evie, she’s a nice girl. You won’t even miss me.”
Roy asked her where Santo Domingo was and she told him, “The Dominican Republic, it’s on half of an island in the Caribbean Sea. The other half is a different country called Haiti. Danielito says the people there speak French. He told me the two countries are separated by a big forest and high mountains. He says the Haitians are very poor and are constantly trying to sneak into the DR, which is a richer country, so Dominican soldiers are permanently on guard along the border to keep them out.”
“Probably a lot of the Haiti people hide in the forest until night when it’s harder for the soldiers to see them and then sneak across,” Roy said.
“Maybe, Roy. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it when I’m there. Danielito says the Haitians are no good, that they don’t like to work.”
It was pouring when school let out. He did not have an umbrella or even a hood on his coat to pull up over his head so he hoped the person who was picking him up would not be late. Roy stood on the steps in the rain watching the other kids head for home or wherever they were going until he was the only one left. He waited for half an hour before he decided to walk to his father’s house, which was more than two miles away. His own house, where he lived with his mother, was only a few blocks from the school, but nobody was there and he didn’t have the key. He thought about going to one of his friends’ houses but he knew that Evie was expecting him so he kept walking, hoping the rain would stop.
The rain did not stop. Other than for a few short intervals it continued in a steady downpour. On Ojibway Avenue, the main shopping street that led directly to his father and Evie’s house, people hurried past him. Had he the fare, Roy would have taken a bus but he had not asked his dad for any money when he had dropped him off at school that morning. At the intersection of Ojibway and Western, in front of Wabansia’s sporting goods store, where Roy had bought his first baseball glove, a Billy Cox model, a maroon Buick clipped a woman as she was stepping off the curb. She fell down in the street and the car’s right rear tire ran over her black umbrella. The Buick turned the corner onto Western and kept going. The woman, who was wearing a red cloth coat, got up by herself. She bent down and picked up her umbrella, saw that it was broken and tossed it next to the curb. Roy was across the street from her when the accident happened. Nobody came to help her or ask her if she was all right and she walked across Ojibway and went into Hilda’s Modern Dress Shop. Her right leg wobbled and Roy figured she’d been injured or the heel of her right shoe had broken off.
It took Roy a very long time to get to his dad and Evie’s house and by the time he knocked on the front door the rain had weakened to a steady drizzle. When Evie opened the door and saw him looking like a drowned rat, she was horrified.
“Roy, what happened? Didn’t Ernie Lento pick you up?”
“No, I walked. I didn’t see anyone in a car at my school.”
“You should have called me,” said Evie. “I would have called a cab and come for you.”
“I didn’t have any money, or I would have taken a bus.”
Evie took Roy in, helped him take off his wet clothes and wrapped two big towels around him.
“I’ll make you some soup,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
Roy sat on the couch in the livingroom, covering his head with one of the towels. He looked around and for the first time noticed that there were no pictures on any of the walls, no paintings or photographs.
Evie came in and said, “The soup is heating up. I called your father and he said that Ernie Lento told him he was a few minutes late getting to the school but that you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”
“He must have been more than a little late,” said Roy. “I waited on the front steps for around a half hour. Evie, how come you don’t have any pictures on the walls in this room?”
“We have some framed photos on the dresser in our bedroom,” she said. “Family photos. You’ve seen them. My parents and grandparents. Your grandparents, too, taken in the old country.”
Evie left the room. Roy thought about Haitians creeping through a thick forest and waiting until night fell before hiking over a mountain range to get to the Dominican Republic. They probably didn’t have umbrellas or any money on them, either. Danielito Castro had told Roy’s mother that the Haitians didn’t like to work but it had to be really hard work just to get from their side of the island to Santo Domingo or wherever they tried to get to in the Dominican Republic; and once they got there, if they survived beasts in the forest and bad weather in the mountains, the people spoke a different language.
Evie came into the livingroom carrying a bowl of tomato soup and a plate with Saltine crackers, a spoon and a napkin on it.
“Here’s your soup, Roy. Blow on it because it’s hot.”
“Evie, what do you know about Haiti?”
“Why?” she asked. “Is that where your mother is?”
“No, she’s in the Dominican Republic, another country that shares an island with Haiti. Are the people in Haiti really poor?”
“I think so, Roy. Most of them, anyway, certainly not all of them. There’s always a ruling class who have more of everything. The only thing I know about Haiti is that it’s the only country that was taken over by people who once were slaves. They had to fight for their freedom.”
“My mother’s friend Danielito Castro says the Haitians are no good and don’t like to work.”
“I’ll tell you who’s no good,” Evie said. “I’ll bet that crumb bum Ernie Lento stopped in a bar and was drinking with his racetrack buddies. That’s why he wasn’t at your school on time, if he even got there. Your dad will find out. Eat your soup.”