A Wedding in Haiti

by Julia Alvarez

  The crowd, mostly men, shout advice or look on, shaking their heads. Behind us, cars and motorcycles pile up, and we can see the same stopped traffic on the other side. How will any of us get to where we are going tonight?

  Piti, our diligent problem-solver, starts asking around, but there seems to be no other road to Bassin-Bleu. A half hour goes by, an hour. Evening is coming on. The only solution I can see is to head back to Gros Morne and ask Eseline’s godmother if we can crash at her house. Not a great solution once I do the math: one bed divided by too many of us.

  A heavyset guy with a big voice has taken charge. He issues instructions to rock the two trucks in order to disengage them. To no avail.

  I decide to ask him if there isn’t some local authority we can call on. “Police?” I ask. A stupid question.

  The man looks at me for a long moment. “Polis?” he finally snorts, rubbing his fingers together. Money is the only thing that will draw the police anywhere. “Polis,” he keeps repeating, more angrily each time. Then he points upward and pronounces, “Bondye.” God is the only one who can help us.

  So maybe this is the message? Connect to a higher power. I head back to the pickup, whose four doors have been thrown open to air out the inside. In the backseat, Eseline couldn’t wait for her first taste of home cooking. She has raided the pot her godmother gave her. I’m about to remind her that she shouldn’t eat or she’ll get carsick. But that’s right, we’re not going anywhere.

  Mikaela has followed me back to the pickup. On the road for hours, we’ve talked about any number of things, including yoga and meditation. Mikaela has expressed an interest in learning how to meditate. “We could try now,” I suggest. Never mind that this is the worst of circumstances: surrounded by a noisy, frustrated crowd, with thunder rumbling in the distance, fears of flash floods in at least one of our heads. I walk Mikaela through the basics: close your eyes, follow your breath, as thoughts enter your mind, observe them, let them go.

  We do maybe ten minutes of this before we’re interrupted by the men coming back to the truck. Piti has found a guide who says he can show us a detour to the other side of the road. But I thought there were no other roads? This young man says there is a way to get there from here. The caveat is that Piti does not know him, and so we might possibly end up stuck somewhere else, or, worst-case scenario—courtesy of my own runaway thoughts—we might be led into an ambush. I look Piti in the eye. It’s that moment when you let a grown child know that the roles have reversed. He will now take care of you. “Piti, whatever you think. I trust your judgment.”

  “I checked his identification. He used to be a chauffeur. I think he can help us.”

  And so it is that after an hour of waiting, we climb into the pickup, the young sweet-faced guy coming inside with us, Piti translating. We make a U-turn and head back toward Gros Morne, until we come to an almost dry riverbed we crossed earlier. There, we veer off the road, down the side of a bank, and into the riverbed. We drive on it, twisting where it twists, for about three kilometers. If those thunderclouds let loose, we are in big trouble. In fact, it’s how flash floods happen: dried-up riverbeds suddenly flooding with waves of churning, muddy water, carrying everything in their path. (I’ve seen them on the Weather Channel.) I remind myself to breathe.

  Only when we see a truck coming toward us in the opposite direction, a truck Mikaela recognizes as having been on the other side of the two-truck roadblock, do we let out a sigh of relief. If that vehicle has made it here, then we can get there, and vice versa. We blink lights, each the other’s good-luck harbinger.

  Finally, our guide directs us to turn away from the river­bed and up the bank to a narrow footpath. We thrash our way through cacti and branches until, sure enough, we come out on the road to Bassin-Bleu! We tip our guide, and before letting him out, we all insist on shaking his hand.

  Now it’s a race against time, and yet how much speed can you pick up on a very bad road? Bill is determined to show us. “Please, honey,” I keep pleading with him.

  “I’m not going fast.” And he’s right: sixty kilometers is nothing, under forty miles, if you’re on a decent road. The guys in the back are holding on for dear life. “They’re not complaining,” Bill points out. Of course, they’re not going to complain to the guy giving them a free ride home to Haiti.

  And so we hurtle toward Bassin-Bleu. At Trois Rivières we make a brief stop to fill up two empty five-gallon bottles with water for washing ourselves. And then the rain starts, a soft, misting rain. A little ways down the path on the other side of the river, we stop to let Wilson off in front of a dilapidated wooden shack.

  Next stop, Charlie’s, or bust! But every time we clear a hurdle, along comes another one. This is the moment when we meet the young man, carrying a bed frame home to his bride in the rain. How can we not help him? Several kilometers after dropping off man and bed frame, and almost a full hour since we crossed Trois Rivières, we arrive at Charlie’s house, cloaked in darkness.

  Charlie’s family has been on the lookout for us, including little Soliana, sadly parted from her older sister Rica, who is now studying in Gros Morne. (The start of a glorious trend in rural Haiti: young girls getting an education?) One of Charlie’s sisters, Roselin, whom I do not remember from last year, joins the greeting party. She’s tall, pretty, and worried-looking. We soon find out why. Her sickly baby is wailing inside the house. He has had diarrhea for days, won’t keep anything down. Her four-year-old, Rachel, peers from behind her mother’s skirt, mesmerized: white people with suitcases, backpacks, flashlights, digital cameras. Best of all: sack after sack of staples.

  We quickly unpack the back of the pickup. Everything has to be carried inside, out of the rain. Piti hurries to help us all get settled, including Eseline, who will be spending the night in Charlie’s house with Ludy. It’s too dark, on this overcast night, for her to be hiking anywhere with a baby. Once we’re ready to sit down and eat, Piti excuses himself from supper. He needs to get going. He has to walk up to his mother’s house and then hike over to Eseline’s to inform them of our visit tomorrow—a mission of several hours.

  Before we bed down, Roselin motions for me to come look at her sickly baby. Jean Kelly lies on a bed in a narrow back room with Rachel bent over him. His sad, dark eyes look huge in his gaunt little face. Maybe because he reminds me of the toddler at Hôpital Sacré Coeur yesterday, I get this awful sense that Jean Kelly is not long for this world. This is what a sixty percent infant mortality rate looks like face-to-face: one anguished mother and her unhappy, feverish baby.

  Roselin’s worried eyes search mine. A look that assumes I know what can be done to save her baby. What do I tell her? I could point upward like the angry man at the roadblock this afternoon. Only God can help you. Money could also help, if there were a drugstore nearby with medicines she could buy. Little Rachel watches me with curious eyes. Why is the blan lady tearing up? This is everyday life in Haiti. There is nothing—and everything—to cry about.

  As we are ready to crawl into bed, Charlie’s sister, Tanessa, whom I do recall from last year, enters with two bedpans, one for Mikaela, one for us, to put under our beds. No doubt she remembers that one of the guests last summer peed in their front yard. “Mèsi,” I say, incriminating myself with an embarrassed smile.

  And while we’re saying thank you, I remember to tell Bill that he did a great job getting us here safely. Eleven hours on the road, and not one mishap that we could call our fault. One more thing. “You were right about the mango ladies,” I finally concede. Why does it take a baby at death’s door for me to give up being petty?

  All night, on and off, I wake to Jean Kelly’s wailing. Let him make it, I find myself praying. And as if any god worthy to be God would engage in such transactions, I offer to trade him any number of downpours for Jean Kelly’s recovery.

  July 7, a day (and a night) in the life of Moustique

  Infancia’s question

  Toward morning, the baby stops wailing.
But instead of taking this as a good sign and sinking into welcome sleep, I start worrying that something has happened to Jean Kelly. I decide to get up and inquire how he is doing.

  Outside, not only is the sun shining, but Roselin is sitting on a cane chair, bouncing Jean Kelly on her lap. His fever has broken! His mother shows him off proudly. He is a beautiful baby.

  We hang out in the yard, drinking coffee Bill makes with a colador, a cloth sieve he brought from the DR. It occurs to me that we haven’t seen any sign of Daddy. When I ask after him, Charlie responds, “He is gone to his home.” Maybe because of my worries about Jean Kelly, it occurs to me that Daddy might have died. “Is Daddy okay?”

  “Daddy is very okay,” Charlie replies.

  The word must have gone out that I was asking after him, because a few minutes later, Daddy appears, looking very okay indeed, lean and tall and handsome like his son. But—and I remember this from before—Daddy seems a little lost in this world. He is probably still grieving over his wife, who died two years ago. She must have been a beloved matriarch. At the mention of her name, a pall of sadness descends on all members of the family.

  Our first task after breakfast is organizing the supplies we stacked on every available surface last night in the dark. Piti and Eseline sort through the sacks of rice, beans, sugar, oil, making three piles. We thought there would be only two lucky recipients of our gifts: Piti’s mother and Eseline’s family. (Our arrangement with Charlie is to pay him cash, as we would a hotel.) But how can Piti and Eseline pile up their abundance in front of so many needy faces and not share? The third pile is for Charlie’s family. Everyone looks on, smiling.

  Midmorning, we drive uphill on the dirt path to Piti’s mother’s house. “I can’t believe you walked all this way last night,” I say, shaking my head. Piti grins in reply. I can tell he’s often amused by my surprise at what he takes to be just a matter of course.

  The path ends, and we climb out of the pickup to walk the rest of the way. Eseline takes the lead. Suddenly, she lets out a cry, and runs off the path, thrashing through the cornfield. It takes the rest of us a moment to spot the tiny woman working in the middle of her patch.

  Eseline pulls her mother-in-law by the hand toward the path to meet us. But Piti’s mother is holding back, pointing to her dirty dress, her muddy bare feet. Later, she will explain to Piti that she was all set to receive us early this morning. But when we didn’t appear, she figured we had changed our plans. Besides, she had work to do.

  Well, two mountains cannot meet, but two people can. Bill and I trek into the field to greet her. She grabs each of us in turn, rocking us in her arms, as if we, too, are her children who have come home.

  Mama Piti joins us on the path, drawn by the bait of her little granddaughter asleep in her father’s arms. Piti lifts the facecloth draped over Ludy’s face to keep the sun from her eyes. Mama Piti has been grinning since we met her, lips pressed together, as if trying to suppress a smile. But now, she lets loose and smiles widely. I see what she’s been hiding: her front teeth are missing.

  We walk down toward the house, the path too narrow for keeping our arms around each other, though we keep trying. In the hollow sits the small house, the metal roof rusted, the mud walls cracked and crumbling in patches—the house of an old woman whose children have grown up and moved away. In fact, four of her five sons have gone to work in la République. In a plaintive moment, she asks me something that at first Piti is reluctant to translate. “Why have you taken all my sons?”

  Mama Piti disappears inside her house. I assume she’s getting us some coffee or some chairs to sit on. But as we tour her garden with Piti, we find her in the backyard just finishing up washing her feet and changing into her company outfit: a faded red-and-white print dress with a black belt. Her straw hat is gone, and instead she has donned a fresh kerchief tied around her head.

  We stand around for a while—chairs seem scarce here—watching Ludy and her grandmother get acquainted. It’s hard to visit when you don’t share a language. Piti translates into Kreyòl, then back to Spanish, then to Kreyòl again. At one point, I ask for his mother’s name so as not to keep referring to her as Mama Piti. Infancia, a funny name for an old lady, Infancy. As for her age, she is not sure. Maybe she is seventy? Her response is a question, as if her age were up to us to determine.

  It occurs to me that in our excitement to get going, we forgot his mother’s pile of staples back at Charlie’s house! Piti translates for his mother—her gifts are coming later: rice and beans and sugar, cans of tomato paste and sardines, boxes of chocolate and spaghetti. Infancia smiles widely. There have to be some perks to having sons working in la République.

  It’s closing in on noon, and we still have the longer outing to Eseline’s family to deliver her and the baby. Infancia walks us back to the truck. As we say our farewells, I can’t help feeling that, while I’m not responsible for all her sons, I am accountable for one of them being gone. I know no way to make it up to Infancia except to promise that I will take care of her son. Piti translates my words. I look in her eyes, trying to say what can’t be put into words, even if we did speak the same language.

  She gazes back at me. Her eyes are her son’s eyes, which I’ll get to see much more often than she will.

  The great problems of the world

  We wolf down lunch—our standard quick meal on this trip: casave and cheese, and whatever fruit is on hand—then pile up the gifts in the back. It would be a heavy load to try to carry to Eseline’s house. But Piti assures us that Eseline’s family has been forewarned and will be waiting for us on the road with their donkey.

  We are all feeling excited for Eseline, reuniting with her family after almost a year away. But also for Charlie, who’ll be making a formal petition to Rozla’s parents to marry their daughter. I’d be sweating bullets, but Charlie looks his usual unflappable self, in his yellow polo shirt and reflector sunglasses. Although it has been a long time since I was that young, I have to confess that every time I’m around him, I feel like I’m back in high school. Charlie is the kind of totally cool guy who was nice to everyone, but we all knew we were way over our heads in his presence. I don’t know what the equivalent is in Moustique, but I can’t imagine that Rozla’s parents will find fault with him.

  Actually, come to think of it, those cool high school studs were precisely the guys our parents did not want us to date. Charlie’s coolness could work against him. By Eseline’s own admission, her father is not easy. With six daughters, and only one son, Papa keeps a tight rein. Look at the hard time he gave Piti because the poor guy couldn’t come up with a pair of earrings! If Eseline’s father found fault with Piti, he’ll find fault with anybody. Charlie might well be sent packing.

  I wish I had the familiarity with Charlie that I have with Piti, so I could give him a little coaching. The reflector glasses should go. The kerchief he likes to tie like an ascot around his neck—it sends the wrong message. The kind of thing that might fly in a resort in the Bahamas, but not with Papa Eseline, who is, after all, a dirt farmer, a man who wore his work clothes to his daughter’s wedding.

  But I’m not that close to Charlie, and besides, who knows how the marriage brokerage system works here. What asset trumps what flaw. Rozla’s parents might well be impressed by Charlie’s credentials: his work sojourns in the Bahamas and in the Dominican Republic. His nice house with a concrete foundation and a zinc roof. His little English and Spanish. What I can do is put in my two cents whenever I get the chance. Using my minimal French and my increasingly evolving mime skills, I’ll let Eseline’s parents know that Charlie est très bon, très intelligent, très très magnifique. Haiti has brought out the Yenta in me.

  Piti had told his in-laws that we would be at the spot where the path meets the road at noon. But it’s past one o’clock by the time we pull over. We’re happy to see that the welcome committee has not given up: three of Eseline’s sisters and a tiny donkey are waiting for us. Eseline throws open the
back door before the pickup has stopped moving and jumps out to greet them. The sisters all hug each other, exclaiming and giggling, like a bunch of cheerleaders. My heart feels as if it has sprouted wings, beating at the doors of my rib cage, wanting to soar above this happy scene. I make the mistake of looking up, only to see thunderclouds moving across the sky toward us. I remember the deal I made last night and shudder.

  Once we start unloading the back of the pickup, I’m thinking, no way that poor donkey can carry all this stuff in its two saddlebags. The older of the three waiting sisters, Lanessa, takes charge. She is a tall, slender girl in her teens, the daughter who comes after Rozla. Lanessa begins loading the saddlebags until they are stuffed. The poor donkey grunts under the weight of it all. At moments like this I find myself revisiting the idea of reincarnation. What brutish dictator, or cruel warrior, has come back to pay his dues?

  Lanessa finally loops the rope around the top of the load and around the donkey’s middle and pulls tight, leaning back on her heels. The donkey rocks as if it is going to fall over. Finally, the load secured, we are on our way, Lanessa leading the donkey, rope in hand, gifts piled high. Her red T-shirt reads SANTA LOVES ME. Today, it seems, he does.

  We climb up and down hill, single file on the narrow path, a reminder of last year’s journey: the wedding party accompanying the young bride, who was departing for what must have seemed a far-off land. Now we are bringing her back.

  As we clear the top of another hill, the donkey starts trotting, and Eseline picks up her steps. Sure enough, there below is her parents’ house in the clearing. A bunch of little girls and one lone boy race uphill to meet us. Behind them, an older woman—probably all of forty or younger—throws her arms out in joyous welcome. There are howls of happiness as mother and daughter fall into each other’s embrace.