by Ted Oswald
She set out after a breakfast of stale bread and morning chores to discover more about the stolen girls. Her investigation was not sophisticated. She started by simply asking around for the names she had heard: Patricia, Ti Joassaint, Jesula, and Nathalie. Posing as a worried relative looking for a missing cousin worked well; people were quick to speak to a desperate little girl.
What she discovered was not too helpful. Jesula was about 20 years old and was very pretty, the missing woman’s immediate neighbor Madeleine said. She last saw Jesula as she was heading out to a club, about three weeks ago. Madeleine believed it was actually a brothel but never raised the question. No one had missed Jesula at first because she was sometimes gone a day or two at a time. Madeleine reported her absence to the police who regularly drove through the camp, but she had heard nothing since. Libète asked to be directed to the missing woman’s tent, but the neighbor sighed. Both the tent and possessions had been raided. Libète thanked the weary woman and moved on.
Ti Joassaint was staying with a man named André, and a string of inquiries helped her locate their shared tent. She came upon André sitting on an upturned milk crate, sharpening a knife. He wore a yellowed tank top and had bulging muscles and several pieces of ostentatious gold jewelry. Surely fake, Libète thought. She set to asking him questions about his missing “friend.” All he offered in return were evasive answers followed by a few choice words. She soon shuffled off. The thought of cursing back crossed her mind, but his gleaming knife made it clear this was a bad idea.
Libète was disturbed to learn that Patricia’s shelter was a stone’s throw from her own. It sat removed from the others, on the outskirts of the encampment. Patricia had only moved there a week before being taken and was staying with two other women, distant cousins. She came upon them laying in their sweltering tent. Libète peeked inside and saw that their space was a mess, littered with cigarette butts and slop. Bottles of alcohol were strewn about too, and she saw several used condoms wallowing in the mud near the entrance. She stirred the two women, and one got up to shoo her away. The cousin’s eyes were distant, like her Uncle’s after a night of drinking, and her words came in labored clumps, nearly unintelligible. When asked about the missing girl, the other began to sob. Libète let them be.
Nathalie’s circumstances were different. Libète already knew that the girl had been living in her own tent down in a small camp that had sprung up in Bwa Nèf, this information thanks to Davidson. He was still distraught over his friend’s abduction.
Before heading to Nathalie’s camp, she decided to take a detour to first visit the girl’s family, her former neighbors from the row of homes. She mulled over what she had gleaned along the way. All of the victims were young and pretty by most accounts, and in their mid-to-late teens. They all lived in precarious situations in the camps. Some might have been selling themselves, or more charitably put, relying on sex to survive. But could it really be the same person or people behind each abduction?
— Wait! Libète! My daughter! Stop!
The call drew her out of her thoughts. She recognized the voice before she saw its owner, dismayed to see spindly-limbed René, her Uncle’s friend. He broke off a conversation with another man and made a short sprint to meet her. She stepped back two steps to keep him from coming too close.
— Libète, my dear, what are you doing here? So far from home in Twa Bebe?
— Bwa Nèf is my home. Twa Bebe is where I stay.
— Ah, of course, of course. Here, let me take your picture, child. You see, I am working for one of the ONGs — he tapped an ID badge clasped to his shirt — and they are having me get photographs of children. Eligible children! He lifted his wrist to highlight the compact camera dangling from it.
— Eligible for what?
— For school! For scholarships! This big foreign organization wants to send more girls to school. I tried to come by your Uncle’s tent earlier when I was in Twa Bebe, knowing you’d be interested, but you were out doing whatever it is you do. What good fortune you have! I can still take your picture and register you! Here, sign your name if you know how. He handed her a clipboard with several sheets of paper.
She suppressed a grimace. Of course I can sign my name. The top page was a list of names and ages. She saw many cursive signatures and many “Xs,” substitutes for those who still could not write. Thank you for thinking of me, she said with some sincerity as she scribbled her information. When will we have word if we are to go to school?
— Probably in a week or two. I’ll come around and let you know the results then.
René took a quick picture that captured her unsmiling face. He showed her the digital display, coming uncomfortably close to do so. Still, Libète marveled at the image. How grown she looked, and yet, waifish.
She thanked him as she stepped away, and he gave a small bow before heading the opposite direction.
To be in school again! She appreciated Elize’s lessons, and was glad their reconciliation meant they would resume soon, but it was not the same as being in the classroom with friends. I could always do both, she thought. Going to class in the morning, and Elize’s in the afternoon. This buoyed her spirits but also distracted her from her original weighty purpose. Refocusing, she continued on to the camp to find Nathalie’s family.
The first member she laid eyes on was its youngest, the small boy Ti Gaston. Now around three and a half, he was larger than when Libète had last seen him before the quake. His preoccupation with tormenting animals was unchanged. This time, instead of crushing ants, he ran about wildly, chasing a chicken with a stick, shouting, I’ll kill you!
— Gaston! Libète hollered. The boy stopped and looked alarmed, as if caught committing a crime.
— Wi?
— Where is your home? Where is your mother? The boy pointed nervously to a white tent at the end of a short, uniform row. Libète thanked him and walked toward it, the boy’s mother soon popping into view. Gaston, pleased to learn he was not in trouble, raised his stick high and began chasing the terrified hen once more.
— Manman Nathalie, Libète called, raising a hand and waving as she approached. The woman was cleaning ears of corn, dropping the husks into a black plastic bucket. She acknowledged Libète with a slight nod before pausing her work.
— I’ve come to speak with you. About your daughter. About Nathalie.
Her eyes filled with hope. Have you seen her, Libète? Do you know anything about her?
Libète looked to the ground, shifting the mud with the lip of her sandal.
— I am sorry, but no.
The wounded mother gruffly resumed her shucking. I haven’t seen you since the earthquake. Why did you come if you have no news?
— I’m trying to find out more about what happened. We were all so sad to hear that she was…
Libète hesitated. She was not so good at discussing hard things.
— Taken?
— Yes, madam. Taken.
— Well I know nothing. Her words dripped like a bitter sap. She and I had not been speaking, you see. She was “her own woman,” she would say. “Going to live how she wanted,” she told me. I tell you, she changed. Lived only for boys—couldn’t care less about the rest of us. Flirting, riding around on motos, going to restaurants—sleeping in different tents. At sixteen, no less! Still a girl!
More husks were pulled and dropped in the bucket.
Libète didn’t know what to say. She wondered if the mother’s bitterness was because Nathalie was doing these things or if it was because her mother could no longer do them. Her weary body sagged from bearing a small army of children and the toll of decades’ worth of daily labor in the slum. Libète still saw glimmers of her past beauty. It wasn’t hard to imagine her looks rivaling those of her now-missing daughter.
— What was the last thing you two talked about? Libète blurted awkwardly.
She paused her work again, her nostrils flaring as she rifled through past memories. It was some weeks ago. She
came home with these nice used clothes, these Kennedys, and we fought over it. I wanted to know where she got the money for them. She lied. Said something about a friend giving them to her. I said if she was holding out money from the family, then I would hold out a home for her. She wouldn’t tell the truth so I kicked her out.
— You did?
— I did. She left. I didn’t expect her to stay away—I thought she would be back the next day. But she didn’t come. I tell you, she changed. Was more aggressive. More manipulative. I was sick of her coming and going in the night. She stopped caring for us — her voice cracked — so I stopped caring for her…
The tirade trailed off, and she now stared into open space.
Libète realized these were the words of a guilt-ridden mother.
— It wasn’t your fault, Libète said quietly. She was taken from the street. It wasn’t her choice to leave you.
— I’m not stupid! she snapped. I know that. It was something she had gotten into, something she wouldn’t talk about, something with those men. Men like your cousin and his friends! She had been hanging about them, like a bee drunk on a flower’s pollen.
— My cousin?
— Yes. He’s been through here with his friends, you know, drumming up support for his “kandida.” Nathalie followed them around. Libète pondered this, the mother soon interrupting her thoughts. Why are you doing this, Libète? I remember you always getting into others’ business, but why this, why now?
She breathed deeply before locking eyes with the woman.
— An attack upon one girl, I think, is an attack upon the community. An attack against four women, well, that’s seems a war against us. So I’m choosing to get involved. Because I can. And because I should. Doing nothing, she sighed ruefully, that would mean giving up the fight.
— I’m going to teach you one of the most important things I can today, Elize says with more solemnity than usual.
Libète sits, her two fingers doing a nervous dance on her knee. He paces back and forth in the outside Sun, relying upon his cane to pivot.
— It starts with a simple phrase: “I am because we are.”
He lets the words leap into the air and hover there for Libète to consider.
She slumps, her disappointment manifest.
— While simple, Libète, it has great depth. What do you think it means?
Libète shifts on her stool in the shadow of the shack, slate in lap. She writes the words on it and looks at them. She repeats them, murmuring under her breath. Titid lays at her side, his body inflating and deflating with quiet breaths, like a balloon.
— I am…because we are. I’m not sure. Because we are, she repeats to herself. Because we are…what, Elize? What is the what?
— It is an ethic. Do you know what an ethic is?
She shakes her head.
— A moral principle. A way of ordering life.
She gives a dismissive shrug. I don’t understand. That means nothing to me.
— Let’s step back before we step ahead. Though we are Haitian, our heritage connects us to a much larger people. Which is that?
She touched her piece of chalk to her chin as the question rolled around her head.
— We are African.
— Exactly! Very good. This ethic is a simple summation—
— A what?
— An easy way to remember a much bigger idea. There is an African philosophy to which I subscribe, that I take as if it were my very own. It is called “Ubuntu.”
— What does that have to do with the phrase?
— Be patient, Libète. First, an example. When our forefathers and mothers lived in Africa, before those from Europe came, many lived by Ubuntu even if they called it by another name. Say a man in Guinea saw a wandering stranger on the road. What does our Guinean friend do? Give him food and drink, show him kindness, and wish him well on his journey. This same man valued peace in the community, and when there was a dispute he would always choose conciliation over violence. When a fellow villager stole from another, instead of casting him out he would seek to restore the wrongdoer, because he knew cutting him off would destroy his very soul. But this all changed.
— When the slavers came.
— Ah! Excellent. And what do you think happened when they arrived?
— They broke the community. They mixed peoples up. They put them — she butted her fists — against one another.
— You’re too right. So our Guinean friend, when captured and brought to Saint-Domingue, what would be Haiti, was made a slave. He was sold. He was told to work because of fear. If he cared for the needs of others at cost to himself, he himself would die. So his heart hardened. He hoarded so that he might suffer less. But this scarcity was artificial, imposed by the owners. Slavery made so many Africans forget from where they came. For hundreds of years, systems of domination created distrust. Man and woman feared their neighbors instead of embracing them, feared each other. While Ubuntu suffered, it did not die. Deep down the people still knew it to be a better way.
He took a breath and shifted his weight to his club.
— When independence came in 1804, it was infected with the individualism of the enlightened French. The Haitians who took control assumed the colonial mindset. They pushed out plantation owners and all other blan and substituted themselves in their place. Power, wealth, individual enrichment—these became their ends. They lived, and their heirs continue to live, by a different ethic: “I am because I am.”
— I see, Libète murmured. “I am because we are.” The two ideas—they’re against one another.
— Right! Right again. It is a battle. Every action can be weighed against these two ethics. Does this thing I do bring me closer to benefitting others or benefitting myself?
Elize was becoming caught up in his own words, and Libète watched his passion take over in wonder.
— What is beautiful is that Ubuntu is alive in Haiti, no? Maybe you saw this when you lived in La Gonâve as a child, or maybe here in Cité Soleil. I have been all over our country, and know it still exists. Where there is poverty and despair, it remains a necessity. Wealth isolates us from one another, breaks apart a society. It runs on the belief that says, “Maybe I too can reach such heights and that power can be mine.” It is insatiable unchecked. And trust breaks down. In times of scarcity and poverty, two things happen.
He held up an index finger. People find wellness through the community…
And an accompanying middle finger.
— …or destruction through individualism. Because the fates of the powerful are not tied to one another, they don’t care about the consequences of idolizing the individual. So be it if they bring violence and poverty upon the community—they must secure their own.
Elize stopped. Libète sat on the edge of the stool, attention rapt, trying to absorb every word her teacher shared. Elize smiled, taking long breaths.
— A simple phrase, but deep! At its essence, Ubuntu says my humanity is tied up with your humanity. It says that if a part of the community is suffering, then I am suffering. Solidarity means if I am higher, I lower myself, so that you may be lifted up and we can stand together.
— But how—how does this work for me? I’m only one child, and I am low. If I live by this—this—ethic, and I’m alone in doing so, it won’t matter!
— If that is so, we are hopeless, and if hopeless, dead. It’s true—you can’t change our country alone. But you mustn’t forget the thousands of others who are willing to sacrifice with you rather than choose power, fame, and wealth—to choose themselves. You are not alone. You have been placed by God where you are for a reason. Don’t forget this. You can always choose to love your neighbor rather than hate him. You can care for the sick in your midst. You can share the little food you have with the one who has even less. Even in our misery and pain, we can’t forget the need to ease the misery of others. This makes us truly human. But you must choose to do so, Libète. If you are forced to live this way, we
ll, things fall apart.
**
The rains fell heavily that night, the patter of rain on canvas keeping Libète awake. She lay in her tent tossing, thinking over Elize’s challenge. His code seemed the opposite of the one her cousin and friends imprinted upon her three years ago. Her experience showed sacrificing for others was just as dangerous as standing up for one’s self. It was hard to imagine what things Libète could do to lessen others’ misery with her few years, small stature, and empty pockets.
It was late when her Uncle crashed into the tent, wet and covered in mud. She feigned sleep to avoid talking to him. Without a word to Libète, he collapsed on his mat and began snoring. She swore at him quietly before retreating into sleep herself.
When she awoke the following morning, Libète was about to leave to meet Elize. As she lifted the tent flap, light broke inside and played across her Uncle’s face. His eyes shot open. Libète swore again, this time not so quietly.
— You, Libète. Stop. You must clean, he stammered. Clean up my clothes. His words fell out of his mouth, clumsy and hard. He still smelled of liquor and likely his own piss. He had shed much of his coat of mud, the clumps of which Libète now saw dirtied the floor.
— But I have my lessons! I’ll do it later.
— You’ll do it now! he shouted. And make me some food. My stomach needs settling.
He was fortunate not to hear the verbal daggers Libète used to stab him in her mind.
Fuming as she filled a basin full of water, she threw a handful of detergent in, bubbles forming on the surface. He had begun to stir and was stripping down to his tattered, yellowed underpants. He piled the rest of his sorry rags at the mouth of the tent.
— You’re sickening, she hollered back inside. You hear me? Pathetic!
— Shut up and get me some bread! he growled as he looked about for his other pair of trousers.
— I’ll wash your damned clothes, but I can’t make you any food because we don’t have any! You gamble our money away, barter our oil for rum, trade our rice for cigarettes. Pathetic!
