“Too dark?” he asked.
“A little,” I said.
“M’renmen darkness,” he said. “In sugar land, a shack’s for sleeping, not for living. Living is only work, the fields. Darkness means rest.”
“Darkness is good,” I said, simply to agree.
“Is she still there?” he asked of Félice. “I told her to leave, I did, but she won’t go. She can’t stay all night. I don’t want her to stay.”
Félice stirred and cleared her throat as though to remind Kongo that she was listening.
“You the woman who’s with Sebastien?” he asked. “You Amabelle?”
“Yes.”
“When he was killed, my son, Sebastien found the clothes you see next to you, to bury him in. Brought me a pile of wood, Sebastien did, to make a coffin for my son. Sebastien, he is like my own blood.”
“Condolences,” I said. “I am sad for the death of Joel.”
He plopped the dough on the ground and pounded it with his knuckles.
“I was asked to make a request of you,” I said. “Don Ignacio, the elder at the house where I am, would like to come see you.”
He removed his hand from the dough and concentrated on digging the flour out from underneath his fingernails. Then he reached into his pocket for snuff and took a pinch.
“That is a strange request, Amabelle,” he said. “What do they want with me, these people?”
“Don Ignacio wishes to talk to you of Joël’s accident.”
“I don’t know if it was an accident, Amabelle. He was not one to die so easy, my son.” He raised his face towards the ceiling to keep the snuff from sliding from his nose down to his chin. Outside Félice cleared her throat again, this time it sounded like she was crying.
“The elder, Papi, he would like to pay for Joel’s funeral,” I said.
“No funeral for Joël,” he said. “I wanted to bury him in our own land where he was born, I did, but he was too heavy to carry so far. I buried him where he died in the ravine. I buried him in a field of lemongrass, my son.” He lowered his head, letting the tobacco mix drop to his chest. “He was one of those children who grew like the weeds in the fields, my son. Didn’t need nobody or nothing, but he did love his father. It wasn’t ceremonious the way I buried him, I know. No clothes, no coffin, nothing between him and the dry ground. I wanted to give him back to the soil the way his mother passed him to me on the first day of his life.”
I could hear the children outside drawing sticks to decide who should have the first turn at playing with the goat bones. I no longer heard Félice.
“Of all the things he’s done, my son,” Kongo was saying, “of all the ways I’ve seen him be, I’ll never forget how he looked when he was born. So small he was, so bare, so innocent.”
He picked up the dough again and crushed it between his fingers.
“You shouldn’t spend too much time with this old man,” he said. “I don’t want to push you out, but kite’m. Go see Sebastien now.”
“What word should I bring to Don Ignacio?” I asked.
“Tell him I am a man,” he said. “He was a man, too, my son.”
Sebastien was sitting in a corner in his room, rubbing an aloe poultice over some blisters along his calves.
“The body forgets how chancy a cane fire can be,” he said, handing me the ointment.
Sebastien had a bunch of carbuncles over his hips and belly. As I rubbed the poultice on them, I didn’t feel as though I was touching him. It was more like touching the haze of anger rising off his skin, the tears of sadness he would not cry, the move san, the bad blood Joel’s death had stirred in him.
“There are new ticks in the fields with this harvest.” He groaned while turning over for me to rub the ointment onto his back.
Papi’s cedar planks were lined up against the back wall. The planks were glowing, even in the faint light. Papi’s madder glaze had filled the grain in a way that made the surface sensitive both to the shadows and to the light. From the floor you could see the imperfections in the finish, the shading differences, places where the tint didn’t match because Papi had waited too long before adding another coat, or where he had by chance brushed backwards, against the grain.
“Señor Pico’s son died today,” I said.
“This is what I heard,” Sebastien said, his voice rising with a smile as though it were not a sad thing at all.
“You should not rejoice for something like this,” I warned. “He was only a child.”
“I am not rejoicing,” he said. “And even if I was—”
“It would not be right,” I said. “We would not have wanted them to rejoice when Joël died.”
Silence was his most piercing weapon when he was angry. He said nothing for some time.
“Who are these people to you?” he asked, pushing at a few of the boils until the blood and pus bubbled to the surface. “Do you think they’re your family?”
“The señora and her family are the closest to kin I have,” I said.
“And me?” he asked.
“You too,” I said, wanting to announce that he came first.
“We’ll see,” he said.
I thought of what Mimi had suggested in the stream the day after Joel had died. An eye for an eye, she had said. Did one only have to wish for it to make it true?
“What are you going to do with Papi’s wood?” I asked.
“What am I going to do with what wood?” he asked.
“This wood,” I said, pointing behind him. “The wood I gave you for Joel’s coffin.”
“Kongo didn’t make use of it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll keep it for the next time somebody dies.”
He sat up and leaned against the gray cement wall, looked at the doorway through the scarred fingers laced over his face. Yves yawned loudly from outside, waiting for the right moment to come in and bed down for the night.
Sebastien rose, put on his clothes, and walked me back out into the night. We said nothing to each other as we walked to Señora Valencia’s house. On the way, we walked past the ravine where Joel had been buried. A fast breeze darted through the bamboo and lemongrass on either side of the road, blowing through them like a chorus of flutes and whistles.
Félice was ahead of us on the road, pacing back and forth over the steep edge of the ravine. Her posture as she tipped towards the gorge reminded me of myself standing at the river’s brim the day my parents had drowned.
Sebastien and I accompanied Félice back to the gates of Doña Sabine’s house. She went along with us, glad, I thought, to have been found.
The next morning, before dawn, while everyone was still asleep, Juana and I watched from the doorway of the old sewing room as Señor Pico padded his son’s coffin with a pile of clean sheets from his wife’s armoire and placed him in the casket. The señor was wearing his ceremonial khakis with his cap set in perfect alignment with his seashell-shaped ears. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to see Juana and me standing there.
“You have not slept at all, Señor,” Juana reminded him.
“You should wake the señora now,” he said.
Señora Valencia got up to drape a web of fragile lace over her son’s colorfully painted coffin. Papi and one of the señora’s maternal relations held the other end of the heirloom lace-bordered sheets, helping her to fold the cloth small enough to cover the casket without trailing onto the ground.
Señora Valencia bent down to kiss the coffin through the sunflower design of the lace and then walked back to her room. Her daughter was sleeping in her cradle. She picked her up and took her to her bed.
Señor Pico and Papi together carried the coffin away.
Once the casket was in the first automobile, Señor Pico came back to the bed where his wife sat with her daughter cradled against her chest. He removed his cap and placed it between his right armpit and elbow. Brushing his lips against his wife’s forehead, he avoided his daughter’s tiny hand, which she intuitively held out towards her father a
s if in recognition of his face or to ward off the stinging expression of disfavor growing more and more pronounced on it each time he laid eyes on her. Her gesture was like her own way of making amends for having lived in her brother’s place, as if to say that she, too, wanted to be present for the burial and watch her brother’s descent into the nothingness they had once shared as two.
“Don’t be anxious, everything will go perfectly well,” Señor Pico assured his wife as though he was discussing yet another military operation.
Señora Valencia watched her husband march out of the room. As his Packard pulled away, she covered her ears with both hands to protect herself from the noise. She then raised her daughter’s face to her chin, closing her eyes to feel the child’s breath against her cheek.
Once Juana took over the care of Rosalinda, Señora Valencia defied Juana’s commands to lie in and rest and went out to sit on the rocker on the verandah outside her room. The sun had just risen over the valley, the dew still lingering in the curved petals of Papi’s prettiest red lantern orchids. On the balcony, Señora Valencia made an altar for her son with two handfuls of white island carnations—which she chose and I fetched for her from her father’s garden—and an unlit candle, which she had been saving to light in church, after a Mass.
We watched as Father Romain hurried past the house, as though on his way to administer last rites somewhere. Soon after him, my friends came drifting by on their way to the fields. Kongo led the group as usual, with Sebastien and Yves close behind.
Señora Valencia leaned forward on the balustrade as if to better see the orchids down below.
“Amabelle, you know some of the cane people?”
“Yes, Señora.”
“Go and ask them—the ones who just walked by—to come and have un cafecito with us.”
“All of them?”
“As many as will come.”
I was breathless when I reached the almond tree road. A few ripe almonds had fallen off the branches. The seeds were cracked open, half buried in the soil. The broken fruits oozed a ruddy juice, which made it seem as though the ground was bleeding.
“What’s chasing you?” Sebastien asked.
“The mistress of the house wants all of you to come for un cafecito with her,” I said.
“Your mistress?” Sebastien asked.
“Señora Valencia.”
Kongo raised his hand over his eyes and looked up at the house.
“It is not a place where we want to go,” Sebastien shouted into the hollow of Kongo’s ear.
Word of Señora Valencia’s invitation passed from mouth to mouth in the group. Shoulders were shrugged. Eyebrows were raised. Burlap sacks and straw hats were removed from heads for a better look at the house. Discussions began and ended in the same breath. What did she want with them anyway? Maybe they were all going to be poisoned. Many had heard rumors of groups of Haitians being killed in the night because they could not manage to trill their “r” and utter a throaty “j” to ask for parsley, to say perejil. Rumors don’t start for nothing, someone insisted.
A woman began telling stories that she’d heard. A week before, a pantry maid who had worked in the house of a colonel for thirty years was stabbed by him at the dinner table. Two brothers were dragged from a cane field and macheted to death by field guards—someone there had supposedly witnessed the event with his own eyes. It was said that the Generalissimo, along with a border commission, had given orders to have all Haitians killed. Poor Dominican peasants had been asked to catch Haitians and bring them to the soldiers. Why not the rich ones too?
“Tell me again the name of your mistress,” Kongo said.
“Señora Valencia,” I said. “Her son is being buried this morning, so she may not be fully well.” I tapped my temples to explain any rifts in the señora’s reasoning.
Kongo dug his broom handle into the red dirt and started towards the house. Most of the cane workers continued on to the fields, but some—at least twenty or so—were curious enough to follow us up the hill.
They crowded onto the porch, into the garden, any place where there was room to either lean or sit down.
Señora Valencia kept Rosalinda inside while Juana and I followed her orders. We poured coffee into her best European red orchid-patterned tea set and passed the first cups to Kongo, who handed them to the youngest in the group. Among the children was the boy I had given the goat bones to the night before. I poured him a full cup and then moved on to the others. Juana had rationed carefully, controlling the supply so everyone who wanted to could have at least a sip.
“We’ll have the day’s wages taken away if we don’t go soon,” Sebastien said. He did not want to participate in the señora’s feast.
As Juana was handing out the last cups of the coffee her sisters had sent her, Kongo moved away from the others and walked boldly into the parlor where the señora was sitting with her daughter. Kongo leaned over to peek at Rosalinda’s bronze face; he held out his hand as if to touch it. Señora Valencia reached up and blocked Kongo’s hardened old fingers. Kongo grabbed Señora Valencia’s extended hand and kissed the tip of her fingernails; Señora Valencia’s face reddened, as though this was the first time she’d ever been touched so intimately by a stranger.
“My heart is saddened for the death of your other child,” Kongo said in his best Spanish. He released her hand so that she could better grasp her daughter. “When he died, my son, the ground sank a few folds beneath my feet. I asked myself, How can he die so young? Did the stars visit him upon me in caprice? To teach me that a lifetime can be vast as a hundred years or sudden as a few breaths? Enjoy this one you have left. It all passes so fast. In the time it takes to draw a breath.”
Señora Valencia watched as Kongo walked out. I followed him with my eyes as he strolled down the hill. He laid his hand on Sebastien’s shoulder as if to summon the strength for one more step.
After everyone was gone, Señora Valencia went back to her bed and lay silently awake, watching her daughter sleep at her side. It seemed that she might have regretted exposing herself to the damp morning air and her daughter to outside forces that Kongo and the others might have brought with them, but her son’s death had made her heedless and rash.
When her husband returned, before he could tell her anything about the burial, she told him what she had done for the cane workers.
He did not scold her, but once he discovered that she had used their imported orchid-patterned tea set, he took the set out to the yard and, launching them against the cement walls of the house latrines, he shattered the cups and saucers, one by one.
21
At Christmas, the hills beneath the citadel are full of lanterns. Parents and children join hands to light each other’s faces by the glow of fragile paper shaped to the desires of their hearts. A fanal, a lantern, is like a kite, my father says, a kite that glows but does not fly.
My father always made me lanterns shaped like monuments, a task that took longer than most, the lantern of La Place Toussaint Louverture with a candle glowing inside, the plumed feather-capped hat of General Toussaint, the Cathedral of Cap Haitien with one set of paper used to dye another to look like stained glass, and of course the citadel, which takes twelve months of secret work.
I say to my father, Make me a lantern of your face to carry with me the whole year long.
He laughs, a chortle of paternal pride. It would be too vain, he says, to spend more time than God reproducing one’s self.
22
Rosalinda’s baptism took place only after Señora Valencia’s period of lying in had formally ended. On the baptism day, at the chapel, the pews were filled with a waiting brood of mothers, fathers, godmothers, aunts, and uncles. They had brought their children to Father Vargas for a group baptism. Many of the children were already six or seven years old and were being rebaptized so the Generalissimo could now become their official, albeit absent, godfather.
Señor Pico forced his way past the crowd spilling over out
side as his wife carried their daughter to the front row, which was reserved for the more privileged families.
Señora Valencia wore a pale cream dress with a mantilla bordered with the same Valenciennes lace as the tablecloth that had been buried with her son. Papi followed behind her, then Doctor Javier, and Beatriz.
I watched from a distance as Father Vargas poured holy water on Rosalinda’s head welcoming her into the Holy Catholic Church.
After the baptism, I gave my space to the family of a nearly grown boy whose name was about to be changed to Rafael in the Generalissimo’s honor.
Outside the chapel, the valley peasants waited for their turn before the altar. A few playful toddlers chased a baby goat around the church. Their mothers shouted threats that went unheeded. No supper for the rest of their lives. No sweets. No love, never again. The children, with the dust like a flying rug at their heels, were willing to hazard anything that might only be taken away from them later.
When they came out of the chapel, Señora Valencia held Rosalinda out to me for a baptismal kiss.
“Amabelle, when you last saw her, she was a Moor,” she said. “Now, I bring you a Christian.”
I leaned forward and grazed Rosalinda’s cheeks with my lips. Her forehead was still wet where the priest had doused it with the holy water. Señor Pico yanked his wife’s arm and pulled her away, almost making the señora drop the child. Rosalinda was startled by the abrupt movement and began to cry as they piled into the automobile for the short journey to the house.
Juana cooked a giant baptism feast. We spent the afternoon serving the neighbors, those who came into the house and others, the valley peasants, who gathered outside in curiosity and hunger.
The celebration was stilled by the memory of Rafi, whose shadow would no doubt follow his sister all her life.
That night, after the baptism celebration, Kongo came to find me. He was wearing the yellow shirt and black pants that Sebastien had given him to dress his son for burial; the clothes fit him as though they had been cut and sewn for his body.