Haiti Noir
“Whoa! What a show,” Philippe said in what sounded like awe.
“It wasn’t a show.” My voice was smaller than usual. My mother and father took turns reassuring me. Of course it was all just a show, there’s nothing to be scared of. Their words were like water trickling over stone. Later, when I told her about it, Grandmère Lucille said I was right, it was a good sign. But she never did explain what she meant. That’s the way she was, always an enigma.
If only Grandmère Lucille could see me now. I have her spiral notebook, where she wrote her unsent letters and jotted down the names of herbs and what they do. There is a family legend that when Grandmère Lucille worked as a maid in Haiti, she had used her leaf medicine to save a black American woman’s life. Who knows? I might have to save someone’s life too. When I once asked her about it, Grandmère Lucille replied with a typical Haitian proverb: “Only the knife should know the heart of the yam.” Another secret she would never tell, and now it’s too late. It was frustrating always being told to mind my own business, when all I wanted was to make sense of things. Still, I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and this little notebook is all I have.
A woman calls my name, and my heart sinks. Her hair is cut in a smooth white bob. She’s slender and prettier than the photos I saw online.
“Fabienne, is it? Fabienne, I’m terribly sorry for the wait,” she says with that Boston Brahmin accent that immediately makes me think of the Kennedys. No surprise there. Miss Porter’s, Radcliffe, English, magna cum laude.
We shake hands. Her sunglasses are propped jauntily on her head, showing off gray-green eyes, those high cheekbones that age gracefully, and lightly freckled skin without makeup or a trace of sheen. Even more annoying is that she’s actually smaller than she appears on television. I suck in my stomach and straighten my back.
Her sleeveless white linen shift is completely unwrinkled. The dress I instantly recognize as Eileen Fisher, that New York designer whose cheapest organic cotton tanks are still fifty bucks. The kind of clothes Philippe’s wife buys all the time. Way out of my league.
“Anmwe!” a woman near the front door screams. Nobody moves to help her. “Anmwe!” she screams again, before slumping down in a chair to cry. She probably turned away for less than a second. Now her suitcase is gone.
When I glance over at Miranda, she is yawning. Then she turns her back to the front door. She looks like she’s studying the rusty single-propeller plane idling on the runway, ready for boarding.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” I hear myself say in a forced bright voice as I pick up my scuffed backpack to line up behind her for another passport check. We are last in line and will probably have to sit together on the plane.
“So where are you from?” she asks me.
“I’m Haitian.”
“Of course you are.”
What does she mean by that? Something like rage rises in me. There are some clients I know will push my buttons. She probably hasn’t read a thing I sent to her personal assistant. An hour late and she just waltzes in completely unruffled and expects it all to fall into place because she has someone like me sweating the details. Naturally, she’s one of those lucky people who can’t imagine what it means to worry about mundane details like money. Which is never far from my mind these days.
“Our neighbor’s nanny is from Haiti. Solange.”
Please don’t ask me if I know her.
Miranda continues in her blithe staccato: “How long did you live here in Haiti?”
The short answer is “not long,” but I never say this right away. I first explain that my parents were born and raised in Haiti, where I was born. Grandmère Lucille took care of me until I was two, while my parents finished college and looked for jobs. Then we moved to the U.S., where my classmates asked me if I stuck pins into Vodou dolls. Oh, and if we were responsible for AIDS.
Yet wherever we lived, our house was filled with Haitian music, proverbs, legends, paintings, sculptures, and the earthy scent of rice with wild black mushrooms. Living in Haiti was a state of mind, and my parents were ambivalent immigrants who passionately nurtured their memories. Even so, no matter how hard they tried, each passing year felt like the tide ebbing, making them strangers to their own homeland. Philippe and I ended up speaking English at school and at home, and hearing Creole only when my parents spoke to each other. We always understood what they were saying, even though we couldn’t speak the language ourselves. The technical term is auditory comprehension, not the same thing as fluency.
It’s only three days. I can fake anything for that long.
“Only a few years, but don’t worry, I’m fluent in Creole.” Could she see right through me, or was I just being paranoid? With some people, you know exactly where you stand. A conservative political commentator once wrote an editorial in the International Herald Tribune about the “Tahitians” on their boats to Florida. I wrote a letter to the editor, pointing out that those poor “Tahitians” would have had quite a long way to row if they ever wanted to reach Florida.
But Miranda isn’t like that. Maybe the sad state of my birthplace is embarrassing me, though I will never admit that to her. It’s complicated to try and explain how I can be proud of a place most people see as a hopeless basket case. So I have to be a ruthless editor, slashing away at paradox to clear a path of understanding.
“My parents left Haiti because of Papa Doc Duvalier. They both received scholarships from the French government to study in Paris, where they met.” I try to sound nonchalant and not intent on pleasing her one way or the other. Try to make her like you without being obvious. Desperation is a turnoff. Never let them see you sweat. It makes those people anxious.
I want some positive response from Miranda, but she remains uncommitted as we climb the rickety steel steps into the plane.
“Would you prefer the window or the aisle?” She shrugs off my question and takes the window. Thank goodness, because I get vertigo. The plane rattles down the runway, bouncing us up and down like a trampoline.
Miranda pulls out a paperback from her raffia tote bag and puts it on her lap. Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse. Oh God. That would be just like Miranda to think she can learn something real about Haiti from that book. Zora actually wrote that Haitians are all liars. When I saw that, I couldn’t read anymore. On the other hand, she did say she loved her Haitian maid Lucille, which is a neat coincidence. Then again, I guess Lucille isn’t such an unusual name.
“At last,” Miranda says, peering out of the dust-caked window, “the ride of our lives.”
The plane clears its throat as it prepares to take off. There are no announcements about exit doors, oxygen masks, emergency landings, seat cushions, flotation devices, or seat belts. I fumble in the gap between our seats for a buckle. There are no seat belts.
When we finally land at the small airport in Cap Haitien, Miranda’s face is still a serene mask. If she feels any of the nausea I do, she hides it well.
We elbow our way through yet another crowd to reach our white SUV, parked in front of the airport. Alexis Auguste is standing by the front passenger door. He’s a good-looking guy, tall and slender, with small round glasses. Around fifty or so, with a dark smooth face and just a sprinkle of gray at his temples.
I know it’s him from the photo on the Planters for Peace itinerary. Alexis shakes hands with all of us. Miranda can’t stop smiling when he opens the door for her so she can sit in the back with him. Great.
Manuel is driving us to our hotel and telling us a bit about the city. On either side of us are canals filled with what looks like raw sewage.
“Cap Haitien was once known as the Venice of the Caribbean,” Manuel says with pride, as if he’s oblivious to the crumbling boulevards and fetid air.
There are people everywhere. Women in bright dresses carrying baskets and bundles on their heads, men sauntering by in crisp shirts and jackets despite the muggy hundred-degree heat. The paint peeling from the wooden shutters of our h
otel makes it look shabby from the outside, even with those graceful wrought-iron balconies. This once grand establishment is now nearly empty. Manuel complains that the tourists on the cruise ships who disembark on the paradise beaches at Labadie never make it into town, and they’re never even told they are in Haiti.
Inside, the hotel has good bones, graceful archways. It’s a peaceful oasis in the middle of so much heat and noise. There’s a well-stocked bar I can’t help but notice. Good for a nightcap. On the other side of the lobby are some men in crisp shirts grouped around a whiteboard. They are all darkskinned, except for a few dressed in business suits pointing to charts on the board, who are light-skinned with wavy brown hair.
I can’t stop staring at that painting on the wall. A woman half underwater, floating on her back, with a tiger standing by the shore, watching her. Are there tigers in Haiti? I almost ask Manuel. Of course not, he would say, except in a painter’s mind. The woman isn’t afraid of drowning either. For a moment I’m floating like she is, until I hear Miranda’s voice.
“No signal,” she says, holding up her iPhone. “Can I try yours?”
I hand her my cell and watch as her face lights up. It turns out there are no more single rooms, so Miranda and I will be sharing. Just my luck.
All I want is so simple: a shower with real water pressure and an insect-free room to sleep in. But it’s hard to sleep when I can tell I have failed to impress Miranda Wolcott. I end up not sleeping and imagining all of my worst fears: flying cockroaches and rats crawling over my body and bats entangled in my hair. Did I mention how scared I am of insects and rodents?
The next morning we travel to the border, then down to Hinche. We visit Alexis’s cooperatives and hear long talks about the hairy Creole pigs and their importance to small farmers, the dangers of deforestation, the need for sustainable agriculture and food security. Manuel and I quickly become buddies. I sit in the front seat and chat with him as he drives us to our next destination, two pros in the travel business, trading horror stories and talking shop. Now Miranda, on the other hand, is getting the star treatment from Alexis. I wonder if they know each other from somewhere else, the way they’re so chummy. Maybe he’s softening her up for the Big Ask. Sure. That’s what I tell myself when I get annoyed at how he fawns over her.
As we’re standing on the banks of a river that is shallow from the drought, Alexis looks more serious than I’ve seen him. “This is the Massacre River, where in 1937, the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the slaughter of at least twenty thousand Haitians.” No one says a word. We stare at the river. “It was a genocide, an act of ethnic cleansing. This river ran red with Haitian blood.”
I feel a sick heaviness in my chest and try not to picture bloated corpses floating past us. No one moves—as if in silent agreement, we want to honor the dead. Then Alexis turns around and leads us across the river, hopping from stone to stone. On the other side, we push through tall stalks of sugarcane and stop in silence at a scarred tree.
“Here was a Dominican prison,” Alexis says. “Only this tree survived, a silent witness to history.”
We finally reach an unassuming wire fence. A factory billows smoke in the distance.
“This is the real border,” explains Alexis, “but most people don’t realize that.”
There’s a group of farmers up ahead, waiting for us. I feel lightheaded from the sun and my exhaustion, and now I’m supposed to say something to introduce myself. The phrases I copied from the Creole grammar book are right here in my tiny reporter’s notebook. When my turn comes, I stand up.
Sweat tickles the hairs on my upper lip. I clear my throat. “Mwen rele Fabienne,” I start to read aloud, but my hands are trembling and the words are swimming off the paper and sliding into the earth. I clear my throat and squint at my notebook. I try to hear my mother’s voice speaking Creole, to imitate what she would have said. It’s no use. My voice trembles while I sniff back tears.
“You’re crying,” says one of the farmers. I look up and recognize his face. Earlier, when we were walking through his land, he had spotted me and called out in Creole, “You’re Haitian, aren’t you? I can tell by your beautiful skin.” But now his voice is sharp: “You’re crying, but we’re the ones with a reason to cry.”
I have a reason too. I can understand my parents’ language but can’t use it here, now, for a simple greeting. I can translate long speeches from Creole to English for Miranda, yet can’t string together one simple sentence when I need to. I am functionally illiterate in what should be my mother tongue, a fumbling tourist in what should be my homeland. The farmers stare at me in silence, and I look down at the ground, wishing it would swallow me up.
The farmers begin to tell stories of being threatened and forced to sell their land so a free-trade zone can be built. “We will fight for this land until we die!” they yell, waving their machetes. But some say they’re afraid of what may happen if they don’t sell. Alexis listens to all of it along with us, then he asks if there’s a way they can put their heads together.
“What people learn with their eyes, they don’t forget,” he says. He holds up a small poster of a big fish ready to eat a little fish, with other small fish swimming away in fear. His next poster shows all the little fish biting the tail of the big one. “Are fish more intelligent than people?” he asks.
The farmers murmur, shaking their heads.
“You need to unite in your battle,” he adds, “then we can accompany you.”
The farmers applaud Alexis and gather around him, all talking at once. Miranda is beaming, like a woman in love.
The next day we survive the bruising ride over bumpy dirt roads to Hinche, where I volunteer to help out with interpretation for a radio interview in French.
“Are you Haitian?” the interviewer asks me.
I pause before replying. I mention that my grandmother Lucille was from a village near here.
Miranda abruptly says that she and Alexis are going somewhere together, and she doesn’t need me for a couple of hours, so I go off to find some of the plants in my notebook. I even find the serpent’s herb, and it looks exactly like Grandmère Lucille drew it.
That night in Papay, we sit with Alexis under the gazebo of his modest house, nestled in a heavily guarded compound. For a man about to lead a march, Alexis looks enviably serene. He’s showing us the posters, like the ones with the fish, that he uses with people who can’t read. Small bats flutter in the distance as night approaches. When Alexis’s wife appears to announce that dinner is ready, Miranda seems a bit annoyed, and for a moment I wonder if Alexis is the real reason she came here.
Alexis speaks eloquently the following morning about fighting the Plan of Death, his name for what the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.S. want. He tells the audience gathered there that alternatives exist, and that just as two hundred years ago Haiti inspired the world with its revolution, it can again be an inspiration in the fight against globalization. For the first time, I really listen and let his words sink in. His call to arms lingers in the air. And then it rains. The steady drumming on zinc roofs is greeted by chanting and singing that lasts for hours.
Miranda stands up to present a painting she had secretly bought in Cap Haitien on our behalf, and which she is now offering to Alexis so that it can hang in the new dormitory. She thanks the crowd with the only two Creole words she knows, “Mèsi anpil,” and then sits down to thunderous applause. As I’m about to head back to my room, Manuel grabs my arm.
“This morning, an old woman came by the center and left this for you.” He hands me a stained envelope, with nothing written on it. “She said she heard you yesterday on the radio, and she knew your grandmother. She didn’t tell me her name.”
I wait until I’m in my room to open the envelope and pull out the folded yellowed pages, torn from a notebook. It’s Grandmère Lucille’s handwriting all right, and the torn pages are from the very same notebook I brought with me.
I can’t wait to tell
Miranda the whole story, to see the look on her face when I say, Guess what? My grandmother knew Zora Neale Hurston. She helped her when Zora came to Haiti and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. She’s that Lucille, the one in Tell My Horse. My grandmother. This must be the reason she visited me in my dreams. To show me this.
It’s three in the morning by the time I drift off, lulled halfasleep by the farmers’ vigil. First the murmured Latin phrases, the Gregorian chants from nuns in sky-blue habits who came by bus for the march. Then the soft acoustic guitars of troubadours in straw hats, their lyrics as sweet as the wild honey from the bees of Papay. Dawn approaches, and for the first time in my life, I hear gospel music in Creole.
“We need to love one another other,” a woman’s voice sings, soaring and fading, trying to sow love in the dusty path of death.
We have two SUVs for the long ride back to Port-au-Prince, because some people from this center are coming with us. And, of course, Miranda is in the other van, so my story will have to wait. Despite the warnings not to march, the people voted to go ahead. Alexis’s eyes are calm but red-rimmed when he shakes our hands and thanks us for coming. He kisses Miranda on both cheeks and they look right into each other’s eyes. Am I out of it or did something happen between them? It’s true I didn’t see her much last night. Who cares? I feel triumphant this morning. Nothing can bother me now.
Alexis tells Manuel and the other driver to be careful. I take my seat of honor in the front, next to Manuel. Our two SUVs are whisked through the gates that quickly close behind us.
We’re stopped by uniformed men who, after peering into the cars, brusquely wave us on with their guns. I’ve never seen so many people with guns. We pass a village perched on the edge of a steep cliff. Below is the Lac de Péligre, the Lake of Danger.