Chapter 9

’Tis virtue, and not birth, that makes us noble:

Great actions speak great minds, and such should govern.

—John Fletcher

Brahami dabbed a handkerchief across his forehead with an unsteady hand. As I watched, I was surprised that his growing discomfort provoked a cynical joy in me. “Is it a Haitian custom for the powerful lord to take advantage of the weak servant?” I asked, unable to contain the knot in my chest.

Perspiration pearled on his forehead again. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

As we strolled along the quiet street, he put his arm around my shoulder. Though the gesture seemed natural, it was untimely. I couldn’t control the anger and resentment that suddenly flared, and I shrugged his arm away.

“I may have good intentions,” he said, “but I always take the easy route. What happened between your mother and me is a perfect example. I went along with Darah’s decision not to have you in my life because it was easier.”

Glancing at his profile, I noticed his obstinate chin looked aristocratic, although the way he had abandoned me was less than noble. “What do you mean?”

I wasn’t sure if he heard me, and at that same moment a barking black dog ran out of a gate. Brahami bent down as if to pick up a stone that wasn’t there. The dog changed direction and ran back to the housekeeper, who closed the gate behind them.

I managed a faint smile. “It’s interesting how you chased that dog away.”

“That was kaponaj.”

“What’s that?”

“Kaponaj is, oh, I guess you can say, intimidation,” he explained. “To survive in Haiti, you have to know how to intimidate before someone else gets the upper hand.”

“A brilliant concept!”

“Your mother could have used kaponaj on me, you know.”

“Why didn’t she then?”

“She was too naïve.”

“Meaning?”

“She could have threatened to make a scandal, for example, to get something out of me, like money to raise you.”

My anger was on the rise again. “Why did you think it was all right to touch her?” I blurted.

“I would have stopped, if she had asked me to . . .” He spoke in a courteous voice, coated with irony.

“When I asked you about my mother earlier, you became uncomfortable and I had an urge to add to your discomfort. Would that have been kaponaj?” I asked, this time in a more neutral voice.

“I guess.”

 

* * *

 

At six o’clock in the morning, colorful tap-tap buses, lopsided from the weight of mercantile goods, chickens, and goats, drove servants to other people’s homes and laborers to factories and construction sites. Women traveled on foot or on a donkey’s back from one town to another to sell food staples and secondhand clothing. Those with strong and erect backs carried large baskets of fruits and vegetables on their heads, swinging their arms like soldiers on their way to battle. The more fortunate women sat on donkeys loaded with merchandise on either side, beating the animals’ flanks to move them along. One woman who clutched the end of a tether in her hand stood with her legs astride. Her other hand held her dress up and away from the beer-colored liquid that poured from her upper thighs, that foamed and disappeared into the earth. The donkey nodded, looking as tired as an old slave. A few feet away, another woman squatted to relieve herself as well.

As the car crossed the rusty metal bridge that separated the capital from the northern rural areas, I saw a small girl who reminded me of the time I’d rode in a jeep with John and Margaret away from Monn Nèg. Water had rushed in the river, making gentle whooshing sounds. The burning summer heat, at that time, had filled me with happiness and fear.

Looking down again from this same bridge during the trip back to Monn Nèg, the scene was desolate. The dried-up river exposed its rocks to the sun. Women bent over puddles of muddy water to bathe their naked babies. Brown hills stood bare against the horizon, void of their green cover and precious topsoil. What had happened over the years?

When Brahami announced we were approaching our destination, my heart skipped and jumped in anticipation. Monn Nèg seemed vaguely familiar. More houses had been built on land that used to be vacant. There were fewer trees and I was surprised to see cars on the unpaved streets. The compound was packed with people dressed in mourning colors. Some sat on wooden chairs or straw mats. When the two jeeps pulled up, the men removed their straw hats.

A woman rushed toward us, unable to hold back her tears. “I am Marie Ange, your godmother,” she said, grasping me in a warm embrace. “Come, you must see your great-grandmother at once,” she went on in a rudimentary French with a singsong lilt. She smiled and held me at arm’s length. When she finally let go, she led me to the matriarch, a thin, toothless, elderly woman in an immaculate white dress that had been through many washes. A white scarf covered her bristly gray hair. She strained to peer at me as she leaned her stooped figure on a cane.

“Pitit mwen, my child,” she said in a stirring voice. She took my hands into hers and heaved a wounded sigh. Her hands were rough, but her eyes shone with kindness and wisdom. She hugged me and kissed my cheeks with wet lips, before disappearing behind a closed door.

 

* * *

 

I sat on a low bench next to Marie Ange, who washed cups and saucers in a plastic basin. “Your mother bought these sixteen years ago after the Bonsangs first came here,” she said, “just in case they showed up at our door again.” She rubbed a handful of soapy straw on a saucer. “But they haven’t been used since you left with the Winstons.”

Jésula, Marie Ange’s mother, interrupted and could not have picked a worse time to talk about money. “Do you know Hagathe didn’t pay me for the merchandise I picked up for her last week?” she said.

“Ou finn deraye, you’ve lost it. Manman, with all due respect, I don’t think you should be thinking about money right now. People are right to say your head isn’t straight because of all the spirits dancing in it,” Marie Ange snapped, placing the cup she had washed in a wicker basket to dry.

Jésula burst into a wail. “I need to find some money to pay for a Mass for Hagathe’s soul to rest in peace.” She sobbed and took a handkerchief from her dress pocket to blow her nose. “My poor niece, you have to forgive me if I hurt your feelings.” She looked at the sky with great expectation. “Your body isn’t even in the ground and I’m talking about money you owe me. I’m sorry. You have to give me a number to play so I can have enough money to pay for a Mass so your soul can rest in peace.”

The other women laughed, but Marie Ange shook her head in disapproval.

 

* * *

 

“I’d like to view the body,” I said, having savored the last drop of the black, overly sweetened coffee that Marie Ange served.

“I’m coming with you,” Mom said, and led me by the hand the way she used to when I was a young girl.

Hagathe lay under a white sheet on a table in the middle of the room. As I contemplated the lifeless body, I fell into deep meditation recalling the day she told me to go with the Winstons. “How would you like to go to New York with Mesye and Madan Winton?” she had asked.

“Do they live in a pretty house with beautiful things like in the book you gave me?”

She nodded yes.

“Are you coming too?”

“Mwen pa kabap, I can’t,” she said. “They’re going to take care of you while I’m sick.” She took a deep breath. “You will go to a nice school.” Streams of tears rolled down her cheeks. The morning sun, streaming through the window across from the bed, brought life to her saddened face.

“Manman, what’s wrong?”

“Go play,” she ordered, and turned her head away from me.

I stood in respectful silence until I heard Marie Ange say that they were ready to wash the body. Mom then led me to a corner of the room. Lamercie, who had worked as an undertaker and a midwife, was no longer strong enough to perform those rigorous jobs. Marie Ange later told me that she could only do those tasks for family members. At the head and feet of the body my great-grandmother lit candles; she then washed the body with fresh leaves soaked in water and changed the cotton balls that sealed the body’s openings. Because my mother’s mouth had remained open when she died, her lower jaw had to be tied shut. “The corpse could release a poisonous odor that would endanger lives,” Marie Ange explained.

When I left the room, a man in a black polyester suit, whose high cheekbones reminded me of Jésula, approached me. He introduced himself as Uncle Dieudonné; and as he hugged me awkwardly, I could smell alcohol on his breath. Before I could speak to him, Marie Ange said that they were ready to head to the church. As he walked away, another episode from my awkward past came to mind.

That day, dressed in a pastel blue dress with a white collar and white sandals purchased in a fancy boutique, I no longer looked like a child from Monn Nèg.

“What’s your name?” Dieudonné had asked.

“Iris,” I answered, showing a gap where two front teeth used to be.

“Do you want to go with those people?”

“Yes. We’re going to New York.”

“Everyone dreams of going to New York. You’re lucky.”

The fragmented recollection of isolated moments like this troubled me. Images flashed before my eyes without my being able to thread them together, to see a total picture.

The professional mourners’ wails resounded like confused dialogues, and sent eerie chills down my spine. When the wailing subsided, two men placed the pinewood coffin on top of small cushions on their heads that were made by tying a rag into a circular shape.

Lamercie stayed at home. It was considered bad luck for the elderly to attend funerals. I walked between Mom and Dad. Jésula, Marie Ange, Magda, and her children followed. Pépé, Cynthia, Brahami, his parents, and Madame Dufour rode in the jeeps. The vehicles drove along the wide road. The procession took a shortcut, winding through roads so narrow that we, at times, had to form a single file. When we walked into town, people who watched made the sign of the cross.

Inside the church, I inhaled the scent of burning candles and frankincense. People whispered and pointed at me. Father Leblanc droned on and on about eternal life. He then read a verse from the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” My mind drifted. A desire to remember more about my life with Hagathe haunted me. Caught in a nightmarish world of forgetfulness, I stared at a mahogany statue of the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus.

Father Leblanc’s voice again echoed in my ears and I tried to focus on his words. “Because God made us in His own image, man is a spiritual being. That is why we need to have an intimate, personal relationship with Him. Eternal life means loving God, and loving God shows itself in love for people.” Thoughts about Hagathe returned to my mind, and I no longer listened.

Finally we reached the cemetery. People shrieked and wept. Marie Ange fainted. Thunder pealed, but the rain never came. Mother Nature’s kaponaj.

 

* * *

 

The villagers and townsfolk surveyed the soft drinks, bread, tea, coffee, cassava, rum, and sardines next to bags of rice, beans, and ground corn laid out for them. Men played cards and dominoes, while drinking white rum spiced with cinnamon sticks straight from the bottle. The women drank tea or coffee and sat on low chairs or on mats spread over the dirt floor. Some sat with no cushion at all, their cotton skirts or dresses tucked between their legs; feet on the ground, knees side by side. Children played tic-tac-toe, moving pebbles from the holes they dug in the ground. Those who had walked a distance recovered from fatigue and hunger and slept under shelters made of fresh palms. Tin lamps with rough wicks lit the yard.

“Did Hagathe have a good send-off?” Lamercie asked.

“People whispered a lot during the church service,” Jésula told her mother. “I guess they were trying to figure out who the white people were. I tell you, the last time people were so excited in church was years ago, when the first person from town who had gone to live in New York came home.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Jésula laughed at the memory. “I guess that woman wanted to show us country folks how they dress in the place where she came from. She showed up in church for the celebration of St. Christopher’s Day dressed in clothes that didn’t seem like cloth and made her look like a big white cat with a black face. She had on shoes that came up to below her knees. The poor woman fainted in the middle of the packed church. I guess her body couldn’t take the heat.”

Lamercie joined us in laughter. “I remember that day,” she said.

Marie Ange called me inside the bedroom, where Hagathe’s body had been displayed. She handed me a red cotton undershirt that she took out of a brown paper bag. “Tan pri,” she begged. “Wear this to bed every night for the next two months,” she whispered. The seriousness of her voice alarmed me. “Your mother never got over being separated from you.”

“What’s this supposed to do?”

“It will keep her away from coming to get you when you’re asleep at night.”

“How is she going to come for me if she’s dead?”

Marie Ange shrugged. “I guess you don’t know about these things.”

I put the undershirt in my bag and cannot remember what I did with it. I do know that I never did wear it and that Hagathe never did come for me—that is, until much later.

“Tomorrow,” Marie Ange went on, “I have to go back to the cemetery to put an eyeless needle and a spool of thread on her grave.”

I cast a questioning look at her.

“It will take her mind away from wanting to come get you,” she said. “She’ll be too busy trying to thread a needle she can’t thread.”

 

* * *

 

Early the next morning, after everyone else had left, I sat on Madame Dufour’s front porch with Pépé. A local bus drove by, raising a cloud of dust. Curious passersby stared at us and whispered to one another. “They’re the beautiful people of the city,” a boy about fourteen years old told his two friends.

“Sak pase? What’s up?” Pépé asked, as she slapped her right shoulder, killing a tropical marsh mosquito.

The three boys grinned. “I told you they speak Creole,” one of them said.

“Where are you from?” asked another.

At that moment, Madame Dufour came out. “Allez, foutre!” she yelled, chasing the boys away.

“They weren’t bothering us,” I said.

“You don’t know these people. You give them this,” Madame Dufour measured her hand, “they’ll take that,” she showed the length of her fleshy arm. “These people don’t know their place.”

I didn’t think the boys had done or said anything offensive. Somehow, I knew better and left the matter alone. On an impulse, I announced, “We’re going for a walk.”

“You should visit my brother-in-law’s mills to see how we make sugar and rum. I’ll ask the priest if his driver can take you.”

“Why did Madame Dufour treat those boys that way?” I asked Pépé when we were alone. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She probably thought they were being fresh.”

At the mill, workers clad in rags carried sugarcane stalks from the field to a large basin. Bulls plodded around the basin in a circle, grinding the juice from the cane. The workers brewed and simmered the liquid until it was the consistency of molasses. Women in tattered clothes gathered under a tent to cook cornmeal and red beans over wood fires.

Madame Joseph sat under an almond tree, fanning herself. A young girl massaged her legs. As we approached she exclaimed, “I must have a sixth sense!” Dismissing the girl, she slipped her feet into plastic slippers and stood up to meet us. “I was just thinking about the beautiful people in the city, and voilà! You must be my daughter’s friends.”

“Actually, we’re not. We’re staying at Madame Dufour’s in town and she suggested we stop by the mill,” said Pépé.

The workers gawked. Even the bulls had stopped to stare. “Haven’t you seen people before? You’re so uncouth,” Madame Joseph, Madame Dufour’s sister, snarled. “When are you going to learn to mind your own business?” With their heads down, the men went back to work.

She led us to a veranda, and just beyond I gazed at a tree trunk with bare stunted branches and at the barren mountains on the horizon.

“The landscape used to be green,” said Monsieur Joseph, who had joined us. “It was a jungle when I was a young man.” He waved his hand and remarked, “Look at it now.”

“You must meet our daughter Chantal. You’re the kind of people she should know,” Madame Joseph stated emphatically.

Chantal wore fashionable red shorts, a white T-shirt, and gold hoop earrings. Her fingernails and toes were painted red. Pink sponge rollers covered her head. She suggested that we move to the living room where four mahogany armchairs formed a circle around a coffee table on which cheap porcelain figurines were arranged. A framed black-and-white photograph of a worn-out Papa Doc with his arm around Baby Doc’s shoulders decorated a wall. Next to it was a picture of Monsieur and Madame Joseph on their wedding day.

“This is why I am always telling you the living room must be dusted first thing in the morning. I never know when someone will show up.” Madame Joseph surveyed the room and focused her annoyed eyes on the barefooted restavèk, who was no more than twelve years old. “What an embarrassment you are. Get out of my sight!” she ordered. She then turned a smiling face to Pépé and me. “How long are you staying at my sister’s?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” Pépé told her. “But my sister is staying a little longer.”

Madame Joseph’s face lit up. “Then you can invite my daughter to a New Year’s Eve party.” She smiled broadly, turning hopeful eyes on her daughter. “Chantoutou, these girls can introduce you to decent people in Port-au-Prince.”

The daughter returned a smile, then asked what we were going to wear to the party.

“We haven’t given it a thought,” Pépé answered.

“Don’t worry, Chantoutou, we’ll give you money for a new dress,” Madame Joseph said, smiling at her daughter.

As I can recall, the idea of going to a party was never discussed. I only remember Pépé mentioning that she and her family usually spent New Year’s Eve with her Auntie Suzanne and her family.

The restavèk entered the room with a tray of five glasses of lemonade, which was way too sweet for my taste. Chantal suddenly announced, “That boy down the road sent me a love letter.”

Madame Joseph kissed her teeth, barely making an audible sound. “He thinks he’s your equal, just because he goes to school in Port-au-Prince.” She turned to Pépé and me again. “You will introduce my daughter to some decent people, right?”

Pépé smiled without committing herself. I said nothing.

As the driver pulled out of the yard, I thought about the social dynamics in Haiti and the unusual circumstances of my birth. The barrier between Hagathe and Brahami was bigger than the chain of mountains on the island. I began to have some understanding of the distress Brahami must have felt when he learned of Hagathe’s pregnancy.

“Are you going to call her?” I asked Pépé, leaning back in my seat.

“Who?”

“Chantal.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Why do you think she brought up that boy?”

“To feel important.”

“I can’t believe how the mother talked to the young girl!”

Pépé shrugged. “People here are like that.”

I could not help but think about my mother’s life as a domestic servant and wondered if the Bonsangs treated her with the same arrogance and scorn, stripping her of her dignity.

“In all the years I’ve been driving Father Leblanc to that woman’s house, she has never, not even once, offered me a glass of water,” commented the driver, a middle-aged, dark-skinned man with salt-and-pepper hair.

“How long have you been working for Father Leblanc?” I asked.

“Over twenty years. I’ve been around since the beginning of their relationship.”

“Whose relationship?”

“It’s almost official now. Madame Joseph and Father Leblanc have been lovers for a long time. People say it started with her opening her heart to share her disappointments in love. The more she confessed to him, the more his excitement for her grew. He would invite her to share a meal or an afternoon snack. As time went on, they shared more.” The driver smiled, showing his tobacco-stained teeth. “When it became clear to her that he would never leave the priesthood, she married Monsieur Joseph. Father Leblanc celebrated the wedding. But that didn’t put a stop to their relationship. Everyone, except her husband, notices the daughter’s resemblance to Father Leblanc. The priest has lunch with them twice a month, and she visits him whenever she can. Only God knows what happens behind closed doors!”

The driver parked the car off the road, next to a woman crouching in front of a tray of mint candy and cigarettes set on a wooden bench. He asked for a loose cigarette and searched his pockets for coins that weren’t there. When I offered to buy him a pack, he gladly accepted. A few feet away, a woman in a torn dress sat under a rubber tree, rocking a naked toddler with ashen skin, a huge belly, and reddish hair. The child was sobbing and inhaling his mucus.

“Is the baby sick?” I asked the mother.

“She’s hungry.”

My heart tightened. I reached into the pocket of my jeans and handed five gourdes to the woman, who thanked me with a litany of prayers.

“How long has Father Leblanc been in this parish?” I asked the driver, watching him light a cigarette and inhale deeply.

“Father Leblanc came here from France during President Lescot’s antisuperstition campaign,” he said. “Even now, he whips parishioners who practice vaudou. That’s why people are discreet when it comes to those things.”

That evening when we reached Lamercie’s home, people were already gathered in the yard. Those who lived far away had spent the night. Some of the women prepared and served food, while others helped to set up an altar for the first day of prayers in one of the two rooms.

The luminous hues from an oil lamp revealed a bouquet of wild flowers and a wooden cross that had been placed on a table covered with a white cloth. Candles on both sides of the table brightened the room. Underneath the table a woman placed an enamel plate of boiled plantains, yams, and dried codfish, along with a glass of water and a cup of black coffee. The pè savann, the bush priest who conducted Catholic prayers, shouted, “Be quiet!” to the people outside and berated them if they did not participate in a prayer or a song. When it was over the people called out, “Amen!”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Marie Ange took me inside the room where the prayer had been held the night before. She handed me an aluminum box that contained a stack of gourdes, my mother’s elementary school certificate, all of the Christmas cards and pictures she had received from the Winstons and me, and the deed to the land Acéfie had purchased before she died. There was also a picture of Brahami standing in front of the Louvre in Paris that later I would tear into pieces.

“Is there anything here you want to keep?”

Marie Ange smiled and said she would like the Christmas cards and the pictures.

“You should also keep the money and the deed.”

“B-but they’re yours,” she protested.

“I don’t need them.”

“Mèsi. The deed to the land will be here should you ever return to build something. This is home, ou konprann?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“I have something else for you.” She lifted the mattress and took out a book from a brown paper bag; it was faded by time and humidity. “Do you remember this?”

She handed me the first book I’d ever owned. As I turned the pages, the sight of a ballerina leaping across a stage reminded me of the day that I braved the hurricane. As I recall, my Haitian family and I were inside the house where we rarely spent time, except to sleep or when there was a hurricane. I sat on a bundle of soiled clothes wrapped in a sheet that the grown-ups would wash in the river when the sun returned. Suspended in the air, the ballerina’s legs stretched into a horizontal line. I later peered out of a hole in the door and listened to the blasting wind, as forceful as a rushing train. Leaves whirled wildly as the wind scattered them away. Like them, I wanted to float in the air. That afternoon, giving in to a sudden impulse, I opened the old wooden door to face the wind. Oblivious to its fury, I spread my arms under the torrential rain. But instead of flying up in the air, like the leaves and the dancer in the short fluffy skirt, I was blown into a pool of mud. My mother ran to me, and struggled to get us back inside. As soon as Marie Ange closed the door, Hagathe lost her composure and pulled me onto her knees. Her arm, stronger than I ever imagined, went up and down. Her palm landed forcefully on my behind. Her anger matched the wind’s fury.