Haiti Noir

by Edwidge Danticat

  Solange was grateful that her brother and his wife had been wise enough to leave the child with her. Having never married and with no children of her own, she saw it as a sign that she was meant to look after the girl for the rest of her life, which is why Rosanna’s sudden desire to go on a trip alone to Les Cayes to research her mother’s roots alarmed Solange to no end. When Rosanna’s parents died, everyone had agreed that Solange was the best person to raise the girl. But now that she was a stunningly beautiful young woman—as beautiful as the corpulent nudes by Solange’s famous painters—everyone would want to claim her, including her mother’s family, who had barely even visited during the twenty-one years that Solange had been taking care of her.

  Simply looking at Rosanna was a pleasure for Solange. The girl had her father’s smooth black skin and her mother’s brown-streaked curly hair, making her what in Haiti they would call a marabou, the kind of dusky beauty who poems are written about. Even when she was just a teenager, grown men would admire her as she strolled down the street, and Solange often got the impression watching her niece that an invisible orchestra was playing just for her. Solange was very proud of the job she had done raising Rosanna. The fact that Rosanna even desired to make this visit to Les Cayes to see family members who had shown little interest in her was proof of it. Very simple pleasures, not Solange’s wealth, were what had always seemed to appeal to Rosanna; she preferred swimming in rivers to swimming in pools, gorging herself on mangoes and avocados to sushi and foie gras. And Solange could tell that even while inhaling her favorite omelet, Rosanna was itching to head to the Portail Léogâne bus station to catch a camion—as she had begged her aunt to let her to do—on her own.

  “It’s the best way for me to see the country,” Rosanna had successfully pleaded her case the night before. “I want to travel like the regular people of this country do. That’s what my mom would have done.”

  Solange did not want to smother the girl any more than she already had, but she was nonetheless worried about her. Still, she did not want to seem as though she was jealous of Rosanna’s mother’s family and trying to keep the girl for herself.

  “Davernis can at least drive you to Portail Léogâne, right?” Solange asked.

  “And my mother’s brother and sister will be there to meet the bus,” Rosanna completed what she thought would be her aunt’s next sentence.

  For lack of more elaborate stories, Rosanna had invented a whole slew of fantasies about her mother. Everything Rosanna wished she were, she imagined her mother to have been. In reality, her mother was simply a pretty girl from a poor peasant family who, because of her mother’s acquaintance with some powerful henchmen in her area, had been given a scholarship to a fancy university in Port-au-Prince. This is what had put her in the path of Solange’s brother. There was no point in telling that story to the girl, however. She would soon find it out for herself, and from the horse’s relatives’ mouths, so to speak. Besides, in death everyone is equal, and Rosanna’s mother and father certainly were equal now. But Solange could not lie either, so rather than say anything she remained silent, allowing Rosanna to nurture as many illusions as she could muster about her mother.

  While Solange and Rosanna wrapped up their breakfast, Davernis made his way into the dining room. He was a tall, muscular young man. He was twenty-one years old, like Rosanna, and in another type of house they might have been raised like brother and sister. Instead, she was the princess of the house, as the servants liked to refer to her, and he was the driver. That morning, he was wearing a simple watch that Rosanna had given him as a gift, hoping that he would take the hint that he no longer had an excuse to be late, as he often was when she needed him to take her to a friend’s house, to a party, or shopping. Davernis also worked as a messenger in Solange’s stores, which sometimes contributed to his lateness.

  Before he was promoted to driver, Davernis had been a rèstavèk, an unpaid child laborer at Aunt Solange’s house. Rosanna could still remember the day that Davernis’s mother had brought him to the house. He was twelve years old. Davernis’s mother thought he could be of use around the house, and maybe in return Solange could send him to school and, when he was a grown man, give him a job.

  Aunt Solange had resisted at first.

  “I am raising a young woman here,” she had told Davernis’s mother, a skinny toothless woman who sold mangoes at the market. “I can’t have some wild young man here.”

  “He will be very good,” the woman had insisted. And Davernis had certainly been good. He had been running chores for Solange both at the house and the store since he arrived and had been one of her drivers for two years now. He lived with the other servants on the property, in a big concrete house that Solange had a well-known architect build for her staff. He had never been in an accident, a major feat in Port-au-Prince, and treated the vehicles like they were precious jewels, often cleaning and polishing them in his spare time.

  “You know that Davernis is taking you to the station,” Solange repeated.

  “Yes, Tatie,” Rosanna answered, considering this a great concession indeed. She had expected her aunt to find some way to thwart her plans, perhaps asking Davernis to go with her to Les Cayes.

  “My dear, you must be very careful,” her aunt was saying now. “There are so many thieves on these buses.”

  “There are thieves everywhere, Tatie,” she countered.

  “Davernis will accompany you to the station and he will help you buy your ticket.”

  “Yes, Tatie.” Rosanna reached under the table and, for her aunt’s amusement, pulled out a massive straw hat that she had bought on the street the day before so that she might blend in better on the public transportation. She checked her purse for her camera and the micro tape recorder that she hoped to use to interview her relatives for details about her mother’s life. Her suitcase, a small black roller bag, was waiting by the front door and Davernis grabbed it with one hand and started dragging it away. Rosanna and Solange followed him toward the gravel driveway where the Mercedes was waiting. By the time they reached the car, Davernis was already sitting behind the wheel. Her bag, Rosanna assumed, was in the trunk.

  Rosanna kissed her aunt goodbye and Solange hugged the girl tightly, as though she had just dropped her off at college or surrendered her to some young man at the altar. When their embrace grew longer, Davernis stepped out of the car and opened the door, motioning for Rosanna to step in. He waited for her to settle in the back before starting the engine. Then, before she knew it, she found herself waving goodbye to her weeping aunt as the car slowly pulled away.

  The moment they left beautiful Pacot, Rosanna and a quiet Davernis entered the real Port-au-Prince. Both sides of the streets were filled with desperate vendors proclaiming in singsong the miraculous virtues of their produce. There were beggars at every intersection, their hands outstretched, pleading, “Please, give what you can! I am dying of hunger!”

  Bones barely covered by skin jutted out from holes in their torn clothes. Red eyes peered out from behind the tears streaming down their faces. One of them was holding a halfnaked child in her arms, and through the glass window she bore down on Rosanna with her eyes while shouting, “For the love of God, please, help me!”

  The child’s reddish hair was a sure sign that he was suffering from malnutrition. The woman continued pleading with both her eyes and words as they sat stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic leading toward downtown Port-au-Prince.

  “God who is in the sky,” the woman was saying, “look at such a beautiful young woman sitting in such a beautiful car. Wouldn’t you ask her to help? Please, God!” The child began to cry then too, and a yellowish liquid flowed from his nostrils. “Beautiful woman, please help me, please! We have no place to stay, no food to eat, and no water to drink! Please, help!” A great sadness emanated from the child’s face. His hollowed eyes touched Rosanna to the core.

  “Mademoiselle, the baby hasn’t eaten for three days!” the woman shouted. “Please, hel
p me. Throw a few pennies in my hands, I beg you, mademoiselle!”

  Having spent the first twelve years of his life amidst similar poverty, Davernis was accustomed to this kind of blackmail from street beggars. Eager to drown out her voice, he yelled angrily at the woman: “Goddamn, leave us alone!”

  The child was seized with fear and began to cry once more.

  Rosanna intervened and said, “No, Davernis, at least have some pity for this child!” Then she took a Haitian twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, rolled down the window, and handed it to the woman. As their fingers met, Rosanna could see the layer of grime and mud on the woman’s hands. No matter how often she was part of such a transaction, it never ceased to make her feel guilty for the way she grew up. If Aunt Solange hadn’t taken her in, perhaps she too could have been on the street, hungry, begging.

  Rosanna slowly rolled up the window as the woman cried out a loud and jubilant “Mèsi!” Thank you! The child, too, as if connected in every way to the woman, perked up.

  “God will reward you,” added the woman, as the car in front of them finally began to crawl forward.

  “Mademoiselle Rosanna,” Davernis said once they had cleared the worst of the traffic and were on their way toward Portail Léogâne, “I know you are a good person with a good heart. I’ve told you this many times before but you never want to listen. If you continue like this, people will always try to think of new ways to take money from you.”

  At the Portail Léogâne bus station, Davernis lined up the Mercedes behind a swarm of vans, trucks, buses, taxis. A sea of people was waiting to board the buses for the countryside and horns were honking all over. Rosanna’s excitement at the possibilities for the trip was growing.

  She waited for Davernis to step out of the car first, then took a deep breath and followed him. Thousands of people were going in all directions, buying last-minute things, corralling large animals, which would share the camion with the human cargo. Dogs were barking right and left. Goats were baying tirelessly, and if you weren’t careful, the cows roaming freely in the streets could poke you with their horns. One had to squeeze and dance like a matador around bulls to avoid being gored. Women held tightly to their handbags to elude pickpockets.

  “Driver!” Davernis called out to one of the safest-looking camions at the station, a colorfully painted monster that was blasting reggae music to attract passengers. The camion was called Fate.

  “We need the front seat for this beautiful young lady,” Davernis told the driver.

  “The front seat is more expensive,” the driver replied, leafing through his ticket book. “If she wants to pay the difference, no problem. We leave in half an hour!”

  With Rosanna’s cushioned leather front seat reserved, they had thirty minutes ahead of them. Davernis’s order from Aunt Solange was to not leave the station until he had seen Rosanna’s bus leave. But waiting in this torrid heat in the middle of the chaos at the station was tough, especially for Rosanna. In no time, she was surrounded by a horde of merchants pleading with her to buy everything from water and juice to plantain chips to cigarettes to painkillers. People were getting so close that she could barely breathe. The people’s voices blended with the reverberating sounds of the horns blowing from a multitude of buses arriving and leaving. It was all getting on her nerves. More vendors approached offering kolas, patties, candy, and chewing gum. Even though she would never admit it to Davernis, Rosanna’s head was spinning. Never in her life had she been so physically close to so many people all at once. As the crowd moved in on her, she searched their faces for Davernis, but could no longer see him.

  “Davernis!” she called out.

  “Mademoiselle!” She could see his head peering from somewhere behind the perimeter.

  Turning to a roaming pharmacist in the mob around her, she asked, “Do you have aspirin?”

  “Five dollars,” the small man said, lowering the bullhorn he used to advertise his wares as he reached into a small black pouch for the aspirin.

  To get the five dollars—an exorbitant price—Rosanna had to open her purse in front of everyone. She reached in awkwardly, and in doing so a bunch of Haitian dollar bills that Aunt Solange had secretly stuffed in her purse rose to the surface, looking like a flush in a game of poker.

  “Mademoiselle!” Davernis gasped from where he was standing, the crowd now seeming to push him back to purposely keep them apart. The people around Rosanna couldn’t help but notice the bills. Even Rosanna seemed shocked to see them. She was now an even bigger magnet. A group of beggars pushed in, landing on her like flies. Their hands stretched out toward her, they pleaded for help.

  Now deciding to forsake the aspirin, Rosanna shoved Aunt Solange’s surprise deep into her purse. There must be at least a thousand Haitian dollars there, she thought.

  Then, out of nowhere, two well-built men, men who looked like they might belong to a SWAT unit, approached her. “Get out of here! Get lost!” they ordered the group of people surrounding her. “Leave this beautiful lady alone!” They shouted at the beggars as they chased the crowd away. They were responsible for security in the area, they told her.

  “We’ll hang around and look after you,” they said, “until you board your bus.”

  “You are very kind,” Rosanna answered, relieved that they were there, since Davernis had simply disappeared, “but I really don’t need protection. I’m expecting a friend.”

  Hardly had she uttered the words when one of the alleged security officers grabbed her arm as the other pushed a small handgun into her spine. The one who grabbed her arm picked her up off the ground and carried her away, with the other one trailing behind. The crowd quickly scattered, and even though the first man was carrying her, he ran faster than the second one with the gun.

  “Don’t say a word,” she heard the one carrying her say. “If you cry for help, we’ll blow your head off. Do you hear?”

  An intense fear invaded her, causing her to feel even dizzier. She was much too afraid to yell. Besides, everything was happening so fast that she had trouble concentrating on any one thing.

  Soon she was in the back of a jeep with darkened windows. The man threw her in headfirst and quickly placed a dirty black rag over her eyes. He turned her on her belly and tugged at both her arms, forcing them behind her, ripping the sleeves of her blouse in the process. She could hear the tearing of duct tape, which he used to wrap her arms and hands together. Then he turned her on her back and placed a strip of tape over her mouth.

  When the door slammed shut and the car barreled away, she fell on the floor between the front and back seats— cracking, she was almost sure of it, one of her ribs. Only as the sharp pain of the fall shot through her body did she realize fully what had happened. She was barefoot. Her shoes and her purse were gone. Over the hum of the car engine beneath her and the bounce of the bumpy road, she heard the loud chatter of commerce at the port and realized that they were driving along Bicentennial Road.

  She had been kidnapped, she could now fully admit it to herself. On Bicentennial Road, at the seashore, albatrosses and pelicans used to glide low over the waves as large vessels approached the port. This, of course, was during another time, when she was free.

  A shudder ran through Rosanna’s body when they arrived at what she imagined was the hideout. They removed the tape on her legs so that she could walk but kept the blindfold on her eyes and the tape on her mouth. One bandit placed her hand on his shoulder so that she could follow him like a blind person with a guide. Underneath her feet were muddy rocks and puddles. Then there was a stretch of dry earth. She heard the unlocking of a padlock and felt a shove on her back: she was being pummeled against what felt like an unfinished concrete wall. She hobbled along a corner, offering her now severely aching back some support. Nearby, as if in the next room, she heard some dogs barking. They sounded like hungry dogs, she thought, her heart racing. She wondered if eventually they would use these hungry dogs against her. She pushed her back deeper into the wall
and tried to remain still.

  A rancid smell hung in the air as the men paced back and forth around her. One was wearing boots, she could now tell by the way his feet hit the concrete on the ground. The other was wearing regular shoes, fake leather loafers, it sounded like to her. There was no air passing through the room. Perhaps there was no window.

  “Now,” the man with the boots said, “let’s get started with the important part!”

  It seemed that their plans for a ransom demand had already been set in motion. The one with the boots would make the call, they decided, while the other one remained in the room guarding Rosanna.

  Before he left, the one with the boots ordered Rosanna through clenched teeth, “Don’t cause any trouble and you won’t get hurt.”

  Rosanna tried to anchor herself against the wall, which was hard with both hands taped behind her back. She thought of Davernis who might be looking for her, of Aunt Solange who had not wanted her to take the camion in the first place, but had given in to make her happy. She thought of the stories of other kidnappings she’d heard in the past. The men were always beaten badly. The women were often raped. Some small children had been killed when the ransom was not paid. She thought of the shock that this could cause Aunt Solange.

  Davernis drove back home as fast as he could. He was screaming like a madman when he got to the front door of Solange’s compound. From the slew of words that came out of his mouth, the only ones Solange could understand were: “Rosanna has disappeared!”