The meat was delicious, Charlie had to agree. They dined under the stars, cracking and picking and sucking every last bit from the shells, their chins dripping with butter, until their plates resembled little crustacean boneyards. Even the two Dobermans—who had been lurking behind a hedge, panting, all throughout the meal—had given up hope of snagging a taste. Charlie had seen them trotting off together into the shadows, like a pair of sleek wolves on a hunt.
Now Bea and Lizbeth had gone to bed. Mackenson had taken the car, off to visit a cousin who lived in Jacmel, promising to pick them up in the morning to return to town and resume their hunt for the mother and baby.
Charlie was beginning to think that, in believing she was doing the right thing for the woman, she may have made a mistake in leading Lizbeth on with all this. Mackenson, in private, had shared his suspicions about Senzey with her. He sounded like Lizbeth had sounded at times, questioning the relationship between Senzey and Luke, questioning the baby’s paternity. In the meantime, Lizbeth seemed to be getting more committed by the hour to tracking down the child. And exactly what, Charlie had to wonder, was she planning on doing if and when she found the baby? And Bea—had it been a mistake to lead her on as well, getting her hopes up about reuniting their broken little family? Maybe they should head back to Port-au-Prince first thing in the morning, before any more disappointments came their way. Besides, she’d already been away longer than she’d intended. She shuddered to think about the mess of appointments that would be waiting for her when she returned to Carmel.
Charlie closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the symphony of crickets and tree frogs blasting from the greenery around her. It reminded her of the jungle, which, of course, made her think of her mom. Sometimes, late at night, Charlie would find memories clawing to the edges of her consciousness, fighting to be recognized. She’d see her mother clear as day, her long hair loosely knotted on the top of her head to alleviate the heat, a ready kiss on her lips to chase away the scrapes and bruises that were the jungle’s revenge on a curious Charlie. She remembered her mother’s humor, like the time when, faced with an invasion of army ants that came marching across their dining room table one day during lunch, she turned the whole thing into a game. Charlie had panicked, knowing how hard the ants could pinch, knowing they could hold on so tight that when you flicked them away only their bodies would fly off, leaving the heads and pincers to fester under your skin. But her mother had cheered the army on, humming the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as they made their way in formation over the plates of chicken and rice. Later she’d explained to Charlie that the army ants were her heroes, as they obliterated every tarantula, cockroach, grasshopper, and daddy longlegs in their wake.
One recurring image was the time she surprised Charlie with a gift for no reason whatsoever. It wasn’t Christmas, or her birthday. So when her mother revealed the Polly Pocket toy she had hidden behind her back, Charlie had almost cried. She could still remember the feel of the smooth plastic case that opened to reveal the country cottage the tiny doll lived in with her dog. It was pink, and shaped like a heart. Her mother had to have planned this months, perhaps years, in advance, in order to include the doll in the barrels of supplies that were shipped down during each furlough, tucked away among the clothes, the underwear, the generators and chainsaws they could only get from the States. There was an empty slot in the heart-shaped case where Polly’s cat was supposed to sit, telling Charlie that the toy was a used one, no doubt donated by some church member. But Charlie didn’t mind. She spent countless hours playing with Polly, escaping into a fantasy world far away from the one she lived in, stopping only when she’d hear her stepfather nearby. Then she’d slip the doll into her actual pocket to protect her from Jim’s judging eyes.
That was all long before Jim’s poison had seeped so deeply into her mother’s soul. And allowing those memories to surface only made everything hurt more.
Now she thought about what she’d said to her grandmother earlier, on the beach, about wanting to grieve. A good, old-fashioned jungle funeral would do just fine. There, in the Amazon, the women really let it all out—wailing, mixing their tears with dirt and rubbing the mixture onto their cheeks to turn the grief into a thick, dark badge they’d literally wear on their faces. And then it would be over.
Charlie applied a fresh layer of insect repellant over the one that had already left her limbs sticky and smelling like a chemically reproduced eucalyptus grove, and slipped a couple of Lizbeth’s plastic mosquito bracelets onto her ankles. Across the water, a trio of white lights winked back at her. Fishing boats, Charlie imagined. How serene it all seemed, at least from an inky distance.
A rustle in the bushes suddenly brought her attention closer to home, to where two pairs of eyes were glowing in the dark, looming larger as they approached her chair, accompanied by the pungent smell of cigar smoke.
“Bella! Hans!” a man shouted. “Leave it! Calm!”
All four eyes disappeared for a moment, only to reappear two by two on either side of Franz, who had taken hold of the collars of the Dobermans. “Sit!” he commanded them, waiting for an invitation from Charlie for him to do the same.
“A lovely evening, is it not?” he asked, running a hand through his snowy white hair.
“It is,” Charlie agreed.
“Did you enjoy your dinner?” He helped himself to the chair next to her.
“Delicious. Thank you.” Charlie had hoped the man would offer a polite goodnight and continue on his way, but for now it seemed as though her book would have to wait. “You have a lovely hotel.”
“Thank you. It is mostly my wife’s doing.”
“Well, bravo to you both. How long have you lived here, in Jacmel?”
“It has been thirty-eight years since I came from Austria.”
“Wow. I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of change since then,” she said, at the risk of opening the door to an answer longer than she needed, or wanted.
Franz shrugged his shoulders. “Not really. Maybe some facades have been fixed up, and fake cobblestones put on the streets, but the mentality hasn’t changed.”
There was something about this man that made Charlie wary. Perhaps it was his military-straight posture, or that big cigar he carried around like a nightstick. Or perhaps it was those two dogs, which followed him around like a couple of bloodthirsty bodyguards. Still, she was curious. She turned her eyes to the night sky as she spoke to him. “So you think things are hopeless down here?”
“Haiti hasn’t changed in my time here, and it never will.”
Charlie turned toward him and raised her eyebrows.
“In my opinion,” Franz continued, “it all comes down to the Vodou. It is a country running on fear. It is fear that keeps the Haitians from success. And those outsiders who tried—who still try—to abolish Vodou, they’ve made it even worse. Because if you are fighting against the devil, then you only make the devil more real.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, drawing out the word as he paused to puff on his cigar. “So you don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to help?”
“There is a welcome dependency.” He blew a thick cloud of smoke into the air. “Foreign aid is respected. But it is resented at the same time. The people are used to it, and the government welcomes the money it brings in. It is a vicious cycle. And in the end, it is like putting a band-aid on a cancer.”
Charlie found herself wincing at his attitude. “So if you find things so dismal here, why do you stay?”
“I will never leave. What can I say? We took a paradise and we turned it into a latrine. But it is our latrine.” The two dogs suddenly leaped up and began to bark wildly, tearing toward the thick wall separating the hotel from the street. “And you”—he smiled, as if he hadn’t even noticed the dogs’ activity—“how are you finding Jacmel?”
“Well, from what I’ve seen, I like it very much. So peaceful. It’s nice to be able to stroll around so easily, especially after being in Port-au-Princ
e.”
“You should see it at Carnival time.” He cackled.
“Maybe someday I will,” Charlie said, deliberately ignoring the derision in his voice, and knowing full well she’d never be able to bring herself to set foot in Haiti again as long as her mother and Jim were here.
“And have you had the chance yet to purchase any art?” Franz asked.
Charlie had been awed by the art they had seen even in their brief time in the city. Especially the papier-mâché roosters and horses, painted with a fine hand to make them appear as if they had been showered with flower petals, their lips a ruby red, their wide eyes lined with gold.
“We did see some, but we’re not really here on vacation,” she said.
The man raised his thick eyebrows. “Missionaries?” he asked.
Charlie laughed. “No, not us. We’re here looking for someone. A girl. And a baby.” The man was not giving any indication that he planned to get up and leave any time soon, so Charlie took a deep breath and gave him the short version of the story behind their hunt for Senzey.
“And have you met Martine?” he asked, once she was finished.
“We tried, but nobody was there. You’re not the first person to suggest that, though. Why?”
“Everybody knows Martine. She is one of the best painters in Jacmel. In my opinion, one of the best in Haiti. If you come up to my house tomorrow, I will show you some of her work. Very original, yet with the traditions of Haitian art still visible. And I have bought too many pieces from her. I think they will become quite valuable, someday.”
“But why is everyone telling us to go see her about Senzey?”
“Because she helps women. Martine is a kind of activist, even more an activist than an artist. She takes the girls who are in trouble—prostitutes, abused women, those running away from a father or a husband—and tries to teach them a way to earn money by making crafts, by doing art.”
“Ah, I get it. If Senzey is here, Martine would know.”
Franz shrugged. “Of course she would know. You go there tomorrow, you ask her about her art. You buy some of her art. Then you ask her about your girl. You will find her, I’m sure.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, the word muffled by a yawn as it left her mouth.
“Hans! Bella! Come!” Franz stood, and extinguished the tiny butt of his cigar on the concrete ledge beside him. “Best of luck to you tomorrow.” He waved as he retreated toward his house, the two dogs by his side. “I’m sure it will be a most interesting day.”
23
Franz had been right. The next day was interesting. But not exactly in the way that Charlie had expected.
They arrived at the gallery at ten, as arranged. But the door remained boarded up, the gallery shut as tight as it had been the day before. The four of them waited in the car for a good forty-five minutes, with the air conditioner blasting. Bea suggested they go for coffee, but Lizbeth was too keyed up, and didn’t want to miss Martine should she appear. Charlie was concerned about Bea. The day could turn out to be a long one, and the heat was worse than ever. But her grandmother had insisted on coming along. “What?” she’d said when Charlie had suggested she stay behind at the hotel. “And miss all the excitement?”
“Let’s give her a call,” Lizbeth urged. “See what’s holding her up.” Lizbeth was convinced that today was going to be the day. Charlie was more worried than ever that she was setting herself up for disappointment.
Mackenson dialed and the three women waited as he offered greetings in Creole, the kind of endless back and forth that Americans never seemed to have the patience for.
“Tell her we’re looking to find someone,” Lizbeth prompted from the back seat. “Ask her about Senzey.”
Charlie waved her arms in Mackenson’s face, shaking her head no. “Tell her we want to buy some of her paintings,” she suggested, remembering Franz’s words from last night.
“What the heck?” Lizbeth grumbled.
After more discussion, Mackenson put down his phone. “She says we should come to her atelier,” he explained. “Her studio. She is sending a boy down to show us the way.”
It was another three quarters of an hour before the kid, a skinny teenager with a warm smile, showed up and squeezed into the back seat with Bea and Lizbeth to point out the route. The car climbed through a maze of narrow, rocky streets. Charlie could hear grunts and groans from the others as they were bounced around in their seats like cowboys at a rodeo. It wasn’t long before she noticed that theirs was the only car amid a sea of motorbikes, two wheels obviously being better than four to navigate the ruts and ditches that only deepened as they ascended. This was a completely residential area, save for the lottery stands that popped up around every corner. Laundry hung on lines, or was laid flat to dry on corrugated tin roofs. A man waved hello to his neighbors from a moto-taxi, two kids sandwiched between himself and the driver. There were plenty of homes, but many appeared half-built, with twisted rebar sprouting from graffitied concrete, and piles of cinderblock that sat baking under the midday sun. But despite all those signs of progress, there was not a hint of activity, not a soul in sight with a hammer or a ladder or a trowel or a saw.
“Are y’all sure we’re headed in the right direction?” Lizbeth asked from the back seat. Charlie was beginning to wonder the same thing herself. It seemed to be an odd spot for a studio.
Finally the boy gestured for her to make a U-turn. She slowed to avoid three goats grazing on garbage in the gutter, then pulled the car up onto the side of the road. The boy hopped out and pointed toward a narrow dirt path zigzagging through a maze of worn-out shacks. Again Charlie worried about Bea, but it was way too hot to even think about leaving her in the car. So, with Mackenson’s encouragement, the odd little group followed single file behind the boy, Charlie steadying her grandmother from the rear as Bea held fast to the back of Lizbeth’s floral-print blouse.
The boy shouted out a greeting as they approached the end of the road, where a row of cinderblock homes stood, separated one from another by shared, crumbling concrete walls. From the darkness of an open doorway a woman emerged, dozens of long, skinny braids falling from her head, a strappy dress billowing around her thick torso like a parachute, and a display of bling—trailing from her spangled ears down to her sequined toenails—that rivaled Bea even at her most bejeweled.
“Bonjou,” the woman said, holding out a hand dappled with paint, sparkling with stacks of silver rings piled up to the knuckles of each finger.
“Hello!” Lizbeth cried out from the front of their little conga line, her floppy straw visor and oversize sunglasses making her look like a lost tourist. She stopped at the bottom of the two cracked stairs leading up to the doorway and began to dig about in her bulletproof purse, as Charlie liked to call it, for the photo. Charlie scrambled around Bea to grab Lizbeth’s arm.
It was then that she noticed the paintings. There were tons of them—some tacked on to the walls, some set out to dry under the sun, others hanging on clothespins from the branches of trees, and even more piled high in the corners by the doorway. One, half-finished, rested on a paint-splattered chair, sharing the wicker seat with a palette where pinks and greens and purples and shiny golds butted up against each other in blazing harmony. To Charlie, it looked like a plate of melted candies.
These weren’t the usual harvest or market scenes, the same old cats and tigers in the wild she’d spotted everywhere in Jacmel. These were portraits, pictures of women, outlined in a somewhat primitive style, yet with their bodies, limbs, and digits intricately adorned, like Martine herself. Their necks shone with glassy beads, their hair sparkled with glitter, the plastic buttons on their dresses were as real as the ones down the front of Lizbeth’s blouse. But it was their faces that spoke to Charlie, specifically the eyes. They were eyes that told a million stories.
Charlie turned to Mackenson. “Please tell her I think her work is amazing.”
Mackenson interpreted, and Martine immediately began to p
ull paintings from the stacks, fanning them across the dirt in front of her stoop. Then she cleared off the chair that made her makeshift easel, handing the work in progress to Charlie. “Chita, Mami.” She helped Bea up the two stairs to sit.
“This one’s beautiful,” Charlie said. Even though only halfway completed, the piece in her hands was truly a unique work of art. It was a woman, like the rest, but this one held a small child high in the air, their faces tilted toward each other in pure joy.
Martine spoke in Creole. “She says she will finish it for you, if you like,” Mackenson told Charlie.
“Pardon me,” Lizbeth interrupted, “but do you think we could get down to doing our business?”
“In a minute, Lizbeth,” Charlie said. “I’m just trying to be respectful here.”
“She says she has more,” Mackenson added.
In a blink Martine was in and out of the doorway, bearing an armful of canvases for Charlie’s perusal. She paged through them with a thumb, pausing whenever she sensed Charlie’s interest in a particular piece.
“Ask her, Charlie,” Lizbeth pleaded.
“I will,” Charlie promised. “Just give me a minute.”
“What is it you want to ask me?”
Charlie looked up from the paintings. “You speak English?”
“Some.” Martine shrugged. “Is it my prices you want to know?” Her eyebrows rose into two eager arches.
“No,” Charlie said. “I mean yes! I am going to buy something. But what my friend here is talking about is a girl. We’re looking for a girl.”
Martine’s face turned to stone. She busied herself restacking the canvases and shook her head. “I don’t know about any girls.”
Lizbeth pulled out the photo and held it in front of Martine’s face. “It’s one girl we’re looking for. Her name is Senzey.”
Again Martine shook her head.
Charlie watched as Lizbeth’s body seemed to deflate like a popped balloon. “She’s an artist,” she tried.
“A young girl, with a baby,” Bea added.
Island on the Edge of the World Page 14
