by Roxane Gay
We lie down, together. She covers her hand with mine. I fall asleep before I can tell her I love her, listening to the sound of her beating heart and rushing blood. I cannot tell her that she should leave before dawn arrives. I am too tired and too satisfied to be afraid. In the morning, my mother will find us like this, limbs entangled, bodies as one, breathing each other’s breath. My mother will think she is seeing ghosts or perhaps shadows. She will be right.
A Cool, Dry Place
Yves and I are walking because even if his Citroën was working, petrol is almost seven dollars a liter. He is wearing shorts, faded and thin, and I can see the muscles of his thighs trembling with exhaustion. He worries about my safety, so every evening at six, he picks me up at work and walks me home, all in all a journey of twenty kilometers amid the heat, the dust, and the air redolent with exhaust fumes and the sweet stench of sugarcane. We try to avoid the crazy drivers who try to run us off the road for sport. We walk slowly, my pulse quickening as he takes my hand. Yves’s hands are what I love best about him; they are callused and wrinkled, the hands of a much older man. At times, when he is touching me, I know there is wisdom in those hands.
We have the same conversation almost every day—what a disaster the country has become—but we cannot even muster the strength to say the word disaster because the word does not describe our lives. There is sadness in Yves’s face that also defies description. It is an expression of ultimate sorrow, the reality of witnessing the country, the home you love, disappearing not into the ocean but into itself.
We stop at the market in downtown Port-au-Prince. Posters for Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas are all over the place even though the elections, an exercise in futility, have come and gone. A vendor with one leg and swollen arms offers me a package of Tampax for twelve dollars, thrusting the crumpled blue-and-white box toward me. I ignore him as a red-faced American tourist begins shouting at us. He wants directions to the Hotel Montana, he is lost, his map of the city is wrinkled and torn and splotched with cola. “We are Haitian, not deaf,” I say. The American smiles, relaxes into the comfort of his own language.
Yves rolls his eyes and pretends to be fascinated with an art vendor’s wares. He has no tolerance for fat Americans. They make him hungry. Hunger reminds him of the many things he tries to ignore. Yves learned English in school. I learned from television—I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, and my favorite show, The Jeffersons, with the little black man who walks like a chicken. When I was a child, I would sit and watch these shows and mimic the actors’ words until I spoke them perfectly. Now, as I tell the red-faced man the wrong directions, because he has vexed me, I mouth my words slowly, with what I hope is a flawless American accent. The man shakes my hand too hard, and thrusts five gourdes into my sweaty palm. Yves sucks his teeth as the man walks off and tells me to throw the money away, but I stuff the faded bills inside my bra. We continue to walk around, pretending we can afford to buy something sweet or something nice.
When we get home, the heat threatens to suffocate us. It always does. The air-conditioning window unit is not working, because it has been defeated by the on and off of daily power outages. The air is thick and refuses to move. I look at the rivulets of sweat streaming down Yves’s dark face. I want to run away to someplace cool and dry. My mother has prepared dinner, boiled plantains and legumes, a beef and green bean stew. She is weary, sweating, bent, nearly broken. She doesn’t speak to us as we enter, nor do we speak to her. There is nothing any of us can say that hasn’t already been said. She stares and stares at the black-and-white photo of my father, a man I have little recollection of. He was murdered by the Makoute, the secret military police, when I was only five years old. Late at night, I dream of my father being dragged from our home, of his body beaten as he was thrown into the back of a large green military truck. He was the lucky one. Sometimes, my mother stares at my father so hard that her eyes glaze over, and she starts rocking back and forth. I look at Yves. I know should anything happen to him, it will be me holding his picture, remembering what was and will never be. I understand our capacity to love.
We eat quickly and after, Yves washes the dishes outside. My stomach still feels empty. I rest my hand over the slight swell of my belly. I want to complain I am still hungry, but I do not. I cannot add to their misery. I catch Yves staring at me through the dirty window as he dries his hands. He always looks at me in such a way that I know his capacity to love equals mine. His eyes are wide, lips parted slightly as if the words I love you are forever resting on the tip of his tongue. He smiles, but looks away quickly as if there is an unspoken rule forbidding such impossible moments of joy. Sighing, I stand and kiss my mother on the forehead, gently rubbing her shoulders. She pats my hand and I retire to the bedroom Yves and I share. I wait. I think about his teeth on my neck and the weight of his body pressing me into our bed. Sex is one of the few pleasures we have left. It is dark when Yves finally comes to bed. As he crawls under the sheets, I can smell rum on his breath. I lie perfectly still until he nibbles my earlobe.
Yves chuckles softly. “I know you are awake, Gabi.”
I smile in the darkness and turn toward him. “I always wait for you.”
He gently rolls me onto my stomach and kneels behind me, removing my panties as he kisses the small of my back. His hands crawl along my spine, and again I can feel their wisdom as he takes an excruciating amount of time to explore my body. I arch toward him as I feel his lips against the backs of my thighs and one of his knees parting my legs. I try and look back at him but he nudges my head forward and enters me in one swift motion. I inhale sharply, shuddering, a moan trapped in my throat. Yves begins moving against me, moving deeper and deeper inside me, and before I give myself over, I realize that the sheets are torn between my fingers and I am crying.
Later, Yves is wrapped around me, his sweaty chest clinging to my sweaty back. He holds my belly in his hands and I can feel the heat of his breath against the back of my neck.
“We should leave,” he murmurs. “So that one day, I can hold you like this and feel our child living inside you.”
I sigh. We have promised each other that we will not bring a child into this world and it is but one more sorrow heaped onto a mountain of sorrows we share. “How many times will we have this conversation? We’ll never have enough money for the plane tickets.”
“We’ll never have enough money to live here, either.”
“Perhaps we should just throw ourselves in the ocean.” Yves stiffens and I squeeze his hand. “I wasn’t being serious.”
“Some friends of mine are taking a boat to Miami week after next.”
This is another conversation we have too often. Many of our friends have tried to leave on boats. Some have made it, most have not, and too many have turned back when they realized the many miles between Haiti and Miami are not so few as the space on the map implies. “They are taking a boat to the middle of the ocean where they will surely die.”
“This boat will make it,” Yves says confidently. “A priest is traveling.”
I close my eyes. I try to breathe, yearning for just one breath of fresh air. “Because God has done so much to help us here on land?”
“Don’t talk like that.” He is silent for a moment. “I told them we would be going, too.”
I turn around and try to make out his features beneath the moon’s shadows.
Yves grips my shoulders. Only when I wince does he let go. “This is the only thing that does make sense. Agwé will see that we make it to Miami and then we can go to South Beach and Little Haiti and watch cable TV.”
My upper lip curls in disgust. “You will put your faith in the same god that traps us on this godforsaken island?”
“If we go we might know, once in our lives, what it is like to breathe.”
My heart stops and the room suddenly feels like a big echo. I can hear Yves’s heart beating where mine is not. I can imagine what Yves’s face might look like beneath the Miami sun. I will follow hi
m wherever he goes.
When I wake, I blink, covering my eyes as cruel shafts of sunlight cover our bodies. The sun never has mercy here. My mother is standing at the foot of the bed, clutching the black-and-white photo of my father.
“Mama?”
“The walls are thin,” she whispers.
I stare at my hands. They have aged overnight. “Is something wrong?”
“You must go with Yves, Gabrielle,” she says, handing me the picture of my father.
I stare at the picture trying to recognize the curve of my eyebrow or the slant of my nose in his features. When I look up, my mother is gone. For the next two weeks, I work and Yves spends his days doing odd jobs and scouring the city for the supplies he anticipates us needing. I go through the motions, straightening my desk, taking correspondence for my boss, gossiping with my coworkers. I am dreaming of Miami and places where Yves and I are never hungry or tired or scared or any of the other things we have become. I tell no one of our plans to leave, but I want someone to stop us, remind me of all the unknowns between here and there.
At night, we exhaust ourselves making frantic love. We no longer bother to stifle our voices. I do things I would have never considered before, things I have always wanted to do. There is a freedom in escape. Three nights before we are to leave, Yves and I are in bed, making love. We are neither loud nor quiet. Gently, Yves places one of his hands against the back of my head, urging me toward his cock. I resist at first, but he is insistent in his desire, his hand pressed harder, fingers tangling into my hair and taking firm hold. It becomes difficult to breathe but it also excites me, makes me wet as he carefully guides me, his hands gripping harder and harder, his breathing faster. Suddenly, he stops, roughly rolling me onto my chest, digging his fingers into my hips, pulling my ass into the air. I press my forehead against my arms, gritting my teeth. I allow Yves to enter me, whispering terrible words into the night as he rocks me. I feel so much pleasure, so much pain. The only thing I know is I want more—more of the dull ache and the sharp tingling, more of feeling like I will shatter into pieces if he pushes any further—more. Yves says my name, his voice so tremulous it makes my heart ache. It is nice to know he craves me in the same way, that my body clinging to his is a balm.
Afterward, we lie side by side, our limbs heavy, and Yves talks to me about South Beach with the confidence of a man who has spent his entire life in such a place: a place where rich people and beautiful people and famous people dance salsa at night and eat in fancy restaurants overlooking the water. He tells me of expensive cars that never break down and jobs for everyone, good jobs where he can use his engineering degree and I can do whatever I want. He tells me about Little Haiti, a neighborhood just like our country, only better because the air-conditioning always works and we can watch cable TV. The cable TV always comes up in our conversations. We are fascinated by its excess. He tells me all of this and I can feel his body next to mine, tense, almost twitching with excitement. Yves smiles more in two weeks than in the three years we have been married and the twenty-four years we have known each other and I smile with him because I need to believe this idyllic place exists. I listen even though I have doubts and I listen because I don’t know what to say.
The boat will sail under the cover of night. On the evening of flight, I leave work as I always do, turning off all the lights and computers, smiling at the security guard, saying I will see everyone tomorrow. It is always when I am leaving work that I realize what an odd country Haiti is, with the Internet, computers, fax machines, and photocopiers in offices and the people who use them living in shacks with the barest of amenities. We are a people living in two different times. Yves is waiting for me as he always is, but today, he is wearing a nice pair of slacks and a button-down shirt, and the black shoes he wears to church. This is his best outfit, only slightly faded and frayed. The tie his father gave him is hanging from his left pocket. We don’t talk on the way home. We only hold hands and he grips my fingers so tightly my elbow starts tingling. I say nothing, however, because I know that right now, Yves needs something to hold on to.
I want to steal away into the sugarcane fields we pass, ignoring the old men, dark, dirty, and sweaty as they wield their machetes. I want to find a hidden spot and beg Yves to take me, right there. I want to feel the soil beneath my back and the stalks of cane cutting my skin. I want to leave my blood on the land and my cries in the air before we continue our walk home, Yves’s seed staining my thighs, my clothes and demeanor hiding an intimate knowledge. But such a thing is entirely inappropriate, or at least it was before all this madness began. My face burns as I realize what I am thinking and I start walking faster. I have changed so much in so short a time.
My mother has changed as well. I would not say she is happy, but the grief that normally clouds her features is missing, as if she slid out of her shadow and hid it someplace secret and dark. We have talked more in two weeks than in the past two years. We will write, and someday Yves and I will save enough money to bring my mother to Miami, but nothing will ever make up for the wide expanse between now and then.
By the time we reach our home, Yves and I are drenched in sweat. It is hot, yes, but this is a different kind of sweat. It reeks of fear and unspeakable tension. We stare at each other as we cross the threshold, each mindful of the fact that everything we are doing, we are doing for the last time. My mother is moving about the kitchen, muttering to herself. Our suitcases rest next to the kitchen table, and it all seems rather innocent, as if we are simply going to the country for a few days, and not across an entire ocean. I cannot rightly wrap my mind around the concept of crossing an ocean. All I know is this small island and the few feet of water I wade in when I am at the beach. Haiti is not a perfect home, but it is a home nonetheless.
Last night, Yves told me he never wants to return, that he will never look back, and lying in bed, my legs wrapped around his, my lips against the sharp of his collarbone, I burst into tears.
“Chère, what’s wrong?” he asked, gently wiping my tears away with the soft pads of his thumbs.
“I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
Yves stiffened. “I love my country and I love my people, but I cannot bear the thought of returning to this place where I cannot work or feel like a man or even breathe. I mean you no insult when I say this, but you cannot possibly understand.”
I wanted to protest, but as I lay there, my head pounding, I realized I probably couldn’t understand what it would be like for a man in this country where men have so many expectations placed upon them that they can never hope to meet. There are expectations of women here, but it is, in some strange way, easier for us. It is in our nature, for better or worse, to do what is expected of us. And yet, there are times when it is not easier, times like that moment when I wanted to tell Yves we should stay and fight to make things better, stay with our loved ones, just stay.
I have saved a little money for my mother. It started with the five gourdes from the red-faced American, and then most of my paycheck and anything else I could come up with. This money will not make up for the loss of a daughter and a son-in-law but it is all I have. After we leave, she is going to stay with her sister in Petit-Goâve. I am glad for this. I could not bear the thought of her alone in this stifling little house, day after day.
I walk around the house slowly, memorizing each detail, running my hands along the walls, tracing each crack in the floor with my toes. Yves is businesslike and distant as he remakes our bed, fetches a few groceries for my mother, hides our passports in the lining of his suitcase. My mother watches us but we are all silent. I don’t think any of us can bear to hear the sound of each other’s voices. I don’t think we know why. Finally, a few minutes past midnight, it is time. My mother clasps Yves’s hands between hers, smaller, more brittle. She urges him to take care of me, of himself. His voice cracks as he assures her he will, that the three of us won’t be apart long. She embraces me tightly, so tightly that again my arms go num
b. I hold her, kissing the top of her head, promising to write as soon as we arrive in Miami, promising to write every single day, promising to send for her as soon as possible. I make so many promises I cannot promise to keep.
And then, we are gone. We do not look back. We do not cry. Yves carries our suitcases and quickly we make our way to a deserted beach where there are perhaps thirty others, looking as scared as us. There is a boat—large, and far sturdier than I had imagined. I have been plagued by nightmares of a boat made from weak and rotting wood, leaking and sinking into the sea, the only thing left behind, the hollow echo of screams. Yves greets a few of his friends, but stays by my side. “We’re moving on up,” I quip, and Yves laughs, loudly. I see the priest Yves promised would bless this journey. He is only a few years older than us. He appears painfully young. He has only a small knapsack and a Bible so worn it looks like the pages might fall apart at the lightest touch. His voice is quiet and calm as he ushers us onto the boat. Belowdecks there are several small cabins, and Yves seems to know which one is ours. I realize Yves has spent a great deal of money to arrange this passage. He stands near the small bed, his arms shyly crossed over his chest, and I see an expression on his face I don’t think I have ever seen before. He is proud, eyes watery, chin jutting forward. I will never regret this decision, no matter what happens to us. I have waited my entire life to see my husband like this. I see him for the first time.
Later, I am abovedecks, leaning over the railing, heaving what little food is in my stomach into the ocean. Even on the water, the air is hot and stifling. We are still close to Haiti. I had hoped the moment we set upon the ocean I would be granted one sweet breath of cool air. Yves is cradling me against him between my bouts of nausea, promising this sickness will pass, promising this is but a small price to pay. I am tired of promises, but they are all we have to offer. I tell him to leave me alone, and he is hurt, but I can’t comfort him when I need to comfort myself. I brush my lips across his knuckles and tell him I’ll meet him in our cabin soon. He leaves, reluctantly, and when I am alone, I close my eyes, inhaling the salt of the sea deep into my lungs, hoping that smelling this thick salty air is one more thing I am doing for the last time.
