“Alo.” Miriam had decided she would send the caller away, or else risk having too many lumps in her signature dish which today she would serve with black beans and salted herring. Customers would start arriving soon for their noonday fix. She would not disappoint them. The goat meat she painstakingly cleaned was now marinating in a special concoction. By nightfall, every bit would be gone. People would come from far away for a taste. Kenold and most of the other guys who sold those brightly painted canvases up the street from the lycée and Anne-Marie Javouhey elementary stopped by Miriam’s for food on their way home. In all the years since she quit a back-breaking factory job to open the eatery, she had never let her customers down.
“Alo?” Miriam repeated, annoyed. Jean-Jean, the man she hired to clean the latrine behind her house, walked by with his shovel in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Miriam’s house was equipped with indoor plumbing, but she kept the old relic behind the house for customers. Miriam’s thoughts shifted to the days when hers was the only household in all of Puits Blain with a telephone. Nowadays, everyone had phones: maids, stall keepers at the marketplace, farmers, tap tap drivers, even Jean-Jean—a man whose profession required him to work under the cover of night when no one would see or judge him.
“M-m-i-s-s Mi-ria-m,” he stuttered, his head bent low due to chronic humiliation, “I’m c-coming tonight to start that j-job for you.”
“Kapitèn Poupou!” a group of giggling children saluted Jean-Jean. Ashamed, he pretended not to hear.
Miriam nodded. Now was not the time to explain why the job would have to be postponed. She would speak to Jean-Jean later. Perhaps she should have him seal that hole and make the old latrine disappear like the thatched huts and tincovered shacks that used to populate the area. Puits Blain was no longer an idyllic haven. The kenèp groves were gone. The cornfields had been replaced by top-heavy palaces with high walls surrounding them. Tightly clustered wannabe mansions and the ever-expanding bidonvilles did not spare a single sapling. On the upside, there was now a Culligan water depot just steps from her porch, making it much easier to run her business. The cyber café halfway down to Kay Peshòt—right in that spot where Papa Malbranche used to tether his blind horse—stayed packed with those seeking escape via the Internet. Hotel Flamboyant’s sparkling point of light stood on land where, it was said, a girl once turned herself into a mabouya to escape a beating. Miriam’s umbilical stump was buried under the flamboyant tree in her front yard. So was Foufoune’s, but that meant precious little to her sister. The dirt path where Gwo Manman used to ride her mule was now a bustling artery that accommodated the United Nations’ fleet of tanks hellbent on keeping Haiti safe. Minustah soldiers manned every few feet, catching gang members before they could disappear into the convoluted alleyways. Gone were the days when Puits Blain did not need guarding. Yes, Miriam resolved, it would be best to have Jean-Jean seal the latrine and demolish the decrepit wooden shack surrounding it once and for all. Anyone could hide in there. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Her customers would have to manage without it. Miriam shook her head. Her old Puits Blain no longer existed, but unlike her sister, she would never abandon her ancestral land to live elsewhere.
“Alo,” Miriam said a third time, keeping one eye on her steaming pot of cornmeal. She realized by the loaded silence on the other end that it was Foufoune. Gwo Manman’s children knew each other so well that they needed to maintain at least one ocean between their respective homes. Same mother, same father, same ancestral blood in their veins, but those two had even less love for each other than a goat and a butcher. Foufoune liked to think she was accidentally switched at birth. Nothing else could explain why her blood turned to ice whenever she even thought about her sister. Hatred raged inside of them like a parasitic cancer. The disease spread over the years, taking control of their lives, until one could no longer bear the sight of the other.
“It breaks my heart that my only two children cannot get along,” Gwo Manman often lamented.
“I have no problem with my sister,” Foufoune would lie to appease her mother. But to her friends, Foufounce would say: “Miriam is jealous of me because I made it and she’s nothing.”
“Hello, Miriam?” Foufoune said timidly.
Miriam knew what her sister had called to say: their mother had died; no one needed to tell her that. Just as she was cleaning the goat the previous night, Gwo Manman had stood under the flamboyant tree and announced that she had had it with the snow, the sleet, the wind, and the crazy language that always left her mind in a jumble. Foufoune’s apartment was a jail cell she would escape, and soon.
Yes, Gwo Manman had whispered in the darkness, I’m on my way home.
“Who is this?” Miriam asked sharply. A doctor might have just signed her mother’s death certificate, but Gwo Manman had been dead for years, as far as she was concerned. The day Foufoune put her on that plane and made her say goodbye to Puits Blain was the day Gwo Manman had passed away. Taking a fish out of water suffocates it; putting a bird in the most beautiful aquarium drowns it. Every time Gwo Manman looked out of the apartment window, all she saw was sky and shapeless air—sheer torture to a woman who preferred her bare feet on a packed-dirt floor to fancy tiles, or even Foufoune’s pretty rug. As far as Miriam was concerned, Foufoune might as well have put a bullet in the old woman’s heart.
“Miriam, is that you?”
Who else could it be?
“Gwo Manman ki te nou.” Foufoune’s throat tightened around the words. Our mother has left us.
“I’ve heard,” Miriam lied. “I was about to call you when the phone rang.” With her free hand she picked up the wooden spoon and resumed stirring her cornmeal. Elderly people like Dona Malbranche died every day in the diaspora, leaving relatives to bury the truth in distant graves. Some who did not believe in cremation became sudden converts; get rid of the evidence!
“Manman nou mouri,” Foufoune’s voice broke. Our mother is dead.
“When are you bringing her body?” Miriam asked, her eyes narrowing.
Foufoune scratched her head. She saw no reason to bring the body back to the island. She could not be expected to travel all that distance every time she wanted to place a wreath on her mother’s grave. She was a naturalized citizen, an expat; the tenth department was her new patrie. Why did her sister always go out of her way to be so damn difficult?
“Bring my mother back,” Miriam snapped. She was addressing a brazen kidnapper, not her sister: “You can’t keep her a prisoner anymore.” Hadn’t the ransom been paid in full? Hadn’t Gwo Manman paid the ultimate price for her freedom? “You need to bring her back where she belongs.”
Foufoune sniffled, hearing accusation after accusation between every two words. “If wanting to give my mother a better life was my crime, then I’ll take the blame.”
“But you didn’t give her a better life,” Miriam hissed. “You cheated her out of her life. You stole years from her. Years! She was living in exile. She was confined to the life you thought she should live. Gwo Manman did not want to be in the States.” There! She had said what she’d meant to say for years. No more civility. No more pretenses. “Gwo Manman never stopped crying,” she added. “She wanted to come home. Her life was here in Puits Blain. She was happy with me. Everything she was familiar with was right here. You locked her up in an apartment morning, noon, and night. She was free here, not trapped like a tortured detainee.”
“Gwo Manman had a good, happy, comfortable life with me,” Foufoune argued back. Only Miriam would be so callous as to talk to her that way at this horrible time. Puits Blain had become unsafe, hadn’t Miriam heard? It was just like her to pretend things were not what they really were. Wasn’t it only a matter of time before their mother would have been robbed, or worse? Any number of things could have happened to her. What did Miriam have to offer Gwo Manman anyhow? Selling rice and beans to a bunch of sweaty passersby was hardly a life of luxury.
“I talked to Gwo Manman often,” M
iriam said. “I called her after I knew you’d left for work. She hated the life you forced her to live. If you had sent her back to me, she’d be alive today.”
“How you talk!” Foufoune snapped. “Why didn’t you come get your dear mother if you were so concerned about her well-being?”
“And have you send the police after me at the airport? You had yourself declared her legal guardian. You just bring Gwo Manman’s body back to me or I swear you will pay.” Miriam slapped the phone shut.
Sympathy clouds hovered over Brooklyn, D.C., and Miami: places where relatives of the deceased lived. More rain fell over Puits Blain, but the heat spell would not be broken. Miriam put the phone back in her apron and focused her attention on the massive pots bubbling with aromatic food. Her house and place of business—a respectable concrete-block two-story—would soon fill with mourners. But first she would finish cooking. Death and mourning always made people famished.
Word scurried via scared rèstavèk children all the way to the stalls lining the cemetery’s wall, where Gwo Manman’s friends sold bottles of a cure-all the old woman swore by. The oil might not have extended her life by a minute, but just before she died Gwo Manman had looked for the last bottle of lwil maskreti she owned and clutched it as if it would go with her to the next place: the Last Department. The thick brown oil did nothing but spill on Foufoune’s pretty rug. Ki te mele m. She didn’t care.
* * *
Grudgingly, Miriam shut down her business and opened the house to visitors who came to shake their heads and grunt. Je wè, bouch pe. What was there to say? Gwo Manman was made to leave her home and die in a place whose name was like rock salt inside her mouth. The Gwo Manman everyone knew never would have allowed herself to live or die anywhere but in Puits Blain.
Miriam dutifully wore a black dress and positioned herself near the doorway to welcome visitors/spectators and set the tone for the gathering—a dark theater in which she would be a reluctant star. All eyes would be on her tonight. Po dyab, pitit. Take heart, my dear! The uncooked goat meat she had prepared went to Jean-Jean, a tip for the job she hired him to do.
“Mèsi, mèsi, Miss Miriam,” he had said, quivering at his good fortune. Miriam had also thrown in the change he returned from the sacks of cement she sent him to buy. She would have him seal the latrine after the funeral. “Mèsi! Mèsi!” Jean-Jean sometimes lost his stutter when he saw money.
There were a few faces in the house Miriam did not recognize. Death dragged impunity in its wake, so no one was turned away. Gwo Manman would have been pleased. The more mourners the merrier!
Faces brightened when the subject inevitably turned to Rhum Barbancourt. Miriam had always suspected that their mother’s delectation for rum was another reason why Foufoune had flown down to Puits Blain years prior, packed up a few of Gwo Manman’s clothes, and taken her away.
“I don’t want to live in America,” Gwo Manman had protested. “I am too old for that. What will I do there? I’m afraid of the cold. I don’t want the snow. I want to live in my country.”
“Gwo Manman, please.” Foufoune had swatted the air around her with dismissive hands. “Look around you! Puits Blain is all dust, don’t you see? You’ll be happier with me in America.” Besides—this she had thought but dared not say— I work too hard to have my mother live like this. Foufoune sent enough money monthly to keep her mother living very well, but Gwo Manman insisted on sitting with the stall keepers behind the cemetery. She liked the taste of Barbancourt in her mouth. She liked that wild drum music. Rumor was that she had a boyfriend. No, boyfriends—at her age! She liked to be shirtless under the noonday sun; said it had healing powers: That’s why I never get sick! she’d say.
Gwo Manman cursed the day she’d allowed Foufoune to take her away. But admitted she had been curious about the foreign place too. She had dreamed of being able to say that she went there once. Only once. And came back. But Foufoune had tricked her. There was never a return ticket.
Foufoune arrived several days later with Dona Malbranche’s body in a gorgeous coffin.
“You look well,” Miriam remarked upon seeing her sister for the first time since she came and took Gwo Manman away years ago. Not a single crease in Foufoune’s flawless features. Hair, as usual, in a classic chignon. Foufoune had always been the beautiful sister, “the one who’s going to amount to something,” everyone, even Gwo Manman, would say.
“And you haven’t changed,” Foufoune said, eying the tufts of unruly gray around Miriam’s temples, the head tie she must have borrowed from a charcoal vendor, the rust of subpar living in her sunken eyes. Koshon Mawon! The words tickled Foufoune’s lips, but she did not speak them. There were stains on Miriam’s skirt: blood, no doubt—probably from cutting off fish heads to make soup. Koshon Mawon! Long ago when they attended Anne Marie Javouhey elementary school, Foufoune and her girlfriends had made up a song which they liked to sing whenever they saw Miriam approaching:
Miriam Malbranche is dumber than a twig
Her mother, her sister:
No one wants her
Not even a wild pig …
Miriam threw her arms around her sister, saying: “We have only each other now.”
Foufoune, in turn, kissed her on both cheeks.
That night while Foufoune rested, Miriam paced under the flamboyant tree. Gwo Manman did not die peacefully— that much she knew. She suffered. Li soufri. Miriam held her belly. She wanted to scream, but swallowed the pain.
A few other relatives flew to the island to say their goodbyes. They booked rooms at Hotel Flamboyant, where the pool sparkled and massive generators guaranteed the power would stay on. They brought laptops in order to meet deadlines; they still had to make a living. Nouyòk pa lan jwèt a moun, surely Miriam understood. Business reports and dissertations did not stop for death.
No one planned to stay Down There too long after the services. They all led busy lives. They would spare a day or two, and then mount their winged friend to return to their respective chapters in their respective storybooks. During the services, however, they would be most dedicated, most single-minded, most unwavering in their show of grief. They would not be reproached. By the time they were through, all of Puits Blain would know just how much they loved the old woman they hardly knew.
* * *
The stained glass inside église Saint Pierre rattled with their screams. Eyes darted between the pews to see who was crying and how many teardrops were actually shed. Some of the practiced mourners would have outdone themselves had the body been displayed. They felt cheated.
The procession to the cemetery boasted an impressive number of those who had succumbed to sezisman. Long-lost cousins swooned, dropping down in front of moving cars. There were wreaths galore (more flowers than Gwo Manman had seen in life). The affair cost many, many thousands; everyone was duly impressed. The casket, copper of course, came with a sixty-year moisture and water seal warranty—just in case. (You know Haiti and hurricanes, the dealer had said). Gwo Manman’s burial clothes—an elegant mother-of-thebride two-piece—were precious. Pity no one got to see how prettily she was dressed. And who among them would have discerned how much she loathed the outfit?
These clothes make me look like a clown, Dona would have said, if she could have seen herself. I look like a madigra mal maske.
At Miriam’s house after the interment, there was no place to punch a pin. Everyone ate their fill. Barbancourt 5 Star flowed like Saut d’Eau’s waterfall. A young man complained there was not enough ice. His drink was not cold enough. “In this heat, the mourners need ice. Where is the ice?” he wanted to know.
“Why are you here?” Miriam asked the disgruntled mourner. “Did you know that the woman whose funeral you attended never once owned a refrigerator? But does that matter? You want ice. We’re out of ice. Don’t move. I’ll see to it that you get your ice.”
Foufoune asked Miriam what was wrong.
“We’re out of ice,” Miriam said, shaking with disgust. “This
boy is crying for ice. We’re out of ice.”
“Where is the ice?” Foufoune asked, desperate to do something—anything—right. The parched earth under her feet had shifted when she watched her mother’s coffin being worked like an oversized pacifier into the tomb’s mouth. Tears had spurted out of her eyes when she heard Miriam scream: “Not again, Manman! Don’t leave me again, Manman!” Foufoune’s heart had softened. She realized then that she did, in fact, love her sister. And Miriam loved her.
Burning tears stood in Foufoune’s eyes. It took burying their mother to see that she could never have despised her own flesh and blood. And Miriam had been so generous. So selfless. Miriam had been the one who handled every detail of the funeral. Trying to plan it from thousands of miles away was a logistical nightmare. Perhaps Miriam was right about everything else. Perhaps she should have sent their mother back to Haiti to live. Perhaps Gwo Manman would still be alive today.
“I’ll take care of getting more ice,” Foufoune said. She would crawl on her knees all the way up to Caribbean Market and carry bags of ice on her head, if that was what Miriam wanted. One day she would tell Miriam that she regretted taking Gwo Manman to the live with her in the States. One day she might even ask for forgiveness. Her sister had been right all along: Gwo Manman belonged in Puits Blain. She knew that now. How could she have been so selfish? So blind? Her mind raced with regret, but what came out of her mouth was: “Where can I go to get more ice?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Miriam said. She summoned Jean-Jean, who barely looked like himself in his fine funeral clothes. His work clothes were in a satchel by the outhouse, which he would start sealing “after the last mourner leaves,” as Miriam had instructed him when he arrived much earlier than he was told. Pending jobs made him uneasy. The sooner he sealed the hole, the less of a chance Miriam would have to change her mind; and the sooner he would get the rest of his money.