Island on the Edge of the World

by Deborah Rodriguez

  32

  “Are you feeling all right, Madame Bea?” Robert placed his cool hand on Bea’s forearm.

  She felt goose bumps from his touch. “Of course I am. Why do you ask?”

  “I do not believe you’ve actually heard a word I’ve said.” He laughed.

  “Oh, I apologize, Robert. How rude of me. It’s just that Charlie got in so late last night, and I’m dead tired.” It was amazing how much the French loved to talk, she thought, with a yawn.

  “You must tell her not to go out alone at night,” the mambo said.

  “She is right,” Stanley added as he placed three glasses of rum punch on the table. Just a little aperitif before lunch, Robert had said when he ordered.

  As tired as she was now, Bea had been happy to stay behind while the others took off for the hospital. If they’d listened to her, they could have saved themselves a trip. She knew that baby was alive.

  “How dangerous can it be?” she asked. “Charlie grew up in the jungle, for god’s sake. With killer ants and poisonous snakes and piranhas and worms that crawl under your skin. And with a stepfather who was worse than all of them put together.”

  “It is a different kind of danger,” Robert said.

  “I was sort of kidding. But seriously, what are people so afraid of?”

  “It is probably no different from elsewhere,” the mambo said. “There is crime everywhere, am I right? You just need to be aware, keep your eyes open.”

  “I can assure you, Charlie’s eyes never close.” Not like my own, Bea thought as she sipped her punch. She put down the glass and rested her head against the back of her chair. “This drink’s about to turn me into a zombie.”

  “You should not say that around here,” Robert teased.

  “You’re probably right,” she laughed. “Zombies. Just another one of those crazy things people think goes on in places like this, right?”

  “Well,” Robert said after a beat, “not exactly.”

  Bea heard the mambo utter a dismissive little “shoop” in response, like she’d sucked in some air through the gaps in her teeth.

  “What? You don’t like to talk about zombies? I would think you’d know quite a bit about the topic,” Bea said.

  Robert laughed. “I think Mambo Michèle is probably tired of what everybody imagines, what everyone exaggerates about Haitian Vodou.”

  “They all think it is about dolls with pins, and bloody sacrifices,” the mambo said.

  “So there are no zombies?” Bea yawned again as the words left her mouth.

  “I did not say that,” the mambo responded.

  “I think what Mambo Michèle is saying is that zombification is more of a—how do you say—cultural practice, than a Vodou practice.”

  “So there are zombies.” Bea felt as though she were trying to keep up with a ping-pong game.

  “It is just part of the way we do justice here,” the mambo explained.

  “So the cops turn people into zombies?”

  Robert laughed. “Turning someone into a zombie is actually against the law, considered murder. But sometimes just the idea of the curse is enough to scare a person into behaving.”

  “To become a zombie is worse than death,” the mambo added. “Here in Haiti, there is no punishment as horrible as the idea that a person can cause you to die and come back as a slave.”

  “Wait a minute.” Now Bea felt wide awake. “You said ‘sometimes’, Robert. Does that mean there are times when a person actually is turned into a zombie?”

  Robert hesitated with his answer to Bea. “So they say.”

  “And how’s that supposed to work?”

  “They steal the soul,” the mambo said, as casually as someone explaining how a bicycle works, or how to core an apple.

  “It is complicated, and something of a secret.” Robert was clearly enjoying himself. “But imagine being drugged into a coma so deep that it looks like death, even to the doctors. Enough to be buried alive. Hours, or maybe even days after, you are dug up and revived with an antidote, but you are not the same as before. The poison has affected your body, and your brain, forever.”

  Bea shivered in the hot air.

  “But you must understand, Madame Bea, that zombies are usually not innocent victims,” he continued. “Their fate is most often revenge for ills they have caused in their community—like taking advantage of their neighbors, malicious gossiping, things that made them appear as though their good fortune was coming at the expense of others.”

  “Ha! Half my town would be zombies by now if that were the case.”

  All this zombie talk had Bea a bit jumpy. She reached for her rum punch. “Why aren’t they back yet?” she groaned, her thoughts coming out aloud.

  “Have patience,” Mambo Michèle added. “Things take time. Things take work.”

  “So much for the magic,” Bea said with a sigh.

  “Do you know that the magical procedures of Vodou are known as travay?” the mambo barked back at her. “It means ‘work’. That is because it is not just something you do, then wait for the miracles to happen. It is just a part of the effort. The Haitian people understand that if you want something in life, you have to work for it. The magic is a way to call on more hands to help.”

  “It is like what is on the Haitian flag,” Robert chimed in. “The motto says, ‘L’union fait la force.’”

  “Unity makes strength,” Mambo Michèle translated. “That is what Haitian Vodou is about. A practice united in strength.”

  Bea nodded her understanding. Nevertheless, she sure wished a miracle would happen, or maybe even a couple of miracles.

  “It is hard to lose someone you love,” Robert said, breaking a silence that had come over the table.

  “You mean Lizbeth? Or Senzey?”

  “I see it on your face, Madame Bea,” he said, his voice as warm as the midday air.

  “It’s Charlie I worry about, not me. I’m an old woman. I understand how these things happen, why people choose to do what they do. But Charlie, she’s just a girl. And a girl needs her mother.”

  “Perhaps,” he answered. “But we all yearn for what we have lost. Am I right, Madame Michèle?”

  The mambo’s answer was drowned out by the clatter of footsteps hurrying up the stairs to the veranda.

  “Welcome back, ladies,” Robert said. Bea heard his chair scrape back on the floor below.

  Lizbeth and Senzey responded in a jumble of words—riot, hospital, baby, truck, fire, liars—

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Bea pleaded.

  “The baby might be alive!” Lizbeth said, panting.

  “I could have told you that.” She was sure Lukson would have come through with Luke, during her reading, had he crossed over. But nobody had seemed to want to listen to what Bea had to say about that. “So where’s Charlie?”

  “Oh, she said to tell you.” Lizbeth paused to catch her breath. “She went back on up the mountain, to see her mom.”

  33

  A thousand scenarios were running through Charlie’s mind as she drove back up the mountain, none of them good. In one, her stepfather runs her off with a shotgun. In another he laughs in her face. And in yet another, her mother simply ignores her presence, not even looking her in the eye. Charlie had no clue how she was going to handle the situation, could not even fathom what she really expected to gain from a confrontation. All she knew was that it had to be done.

  Between the phony school and the sickening orphanages, Charlie had seen things that couldn’t be unseen. Things that her mother, obviously, had a hand in. She was no innocent victim as her grandmother had suggested. She’d chosen to go down this crooked road with Jim. The two of them probably had a whole empire of scams working down here. She had to see this through—for herself, for Bea, for all those desperate people breaking their backs under the hot sun day in, day out, and for all the little Luksons who had no voice of their own.

  She had reached the gates of Farming for Freedom before she real
ized how much ground she’d covered. The sun was setting, its rays reflecting in a perfect double rainbow. Charlie drove past the property and brought the Mitsubishi to a stop behind a thick grove of trees. She could detect no movement on the long driveway leading up over the hill toward the compound. Thankfully, her arrival seemed to have alerted no one. Charlie got out of the car and rested against the back bumper, thinking.

  She was struggling to come up with her next move when she noticed the yellow truck coming down the driveway, toward the gate, toward the road, toward her. And this time it wasn’t her mother behind the wheel, it was him.

  Charlie crouched down behind her car and watched as her stepfather stopped and got out to open the gate. He paused and turned his head from one side to the other, as if sniffing her presence in the air. Charlie held her breath until he was back in his truck, passing through the open gate before speeding away. She then ran down the bumpy road, slipping through with seconds to spare before the gate swung shut. She stood to catch her breath, scanning the horizon for the guard, Eddy, with his soldier-boy rifle and ridiculous Ray-Bans, but there was not a soul in sight. The air was thick with smoke, the odor of burning charcoal telling her it must be close to dinnertime for the people who had no choice but to call this place home.

  She forced herself forward, crossing the grounds with a will she knew could snap in two given the chance. Past the rotting Mapou stumps, past the decrepit shacks, the mud puddles and the trash piles, her strides lengthening at each turn.

  When she reached the white picket fence she stopped. The glow from a lamp inside gave the house the look of a warm country cottage. She could almost imagine her mother baking cookies inside. Charlie held tight to the fantasy as she shakily navigated the stone path that led through the soft, green lawn and up to the door. She took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock.

  The door swung open. “Kisa li yé—” Her mother stopped, seemingly mid-sentence. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost—pale, her arms trembling. Charlie feared the woman might faint. It crossed her mind that perhaps April was actually ill, that Bea’s dream had been right after all.

  “Charity?” April took a step closer.

  Charlie couldn’t speak.

  Her mother’s voice seemed to have abandoned her as well. “What’s going on? Why are you here?” she finally asked. “Is something wrong? Are you all right?”

  Charlie simply nodded.

  “Is it Bea?”

  Charlie noticed the dread suddenly clouding her mother’s face. “Bea’s fine.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you—”

  “We’re both fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Her mother’s faint eyebrows were raised toward the ceiling, her forehead pleated with wrinkles.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Charity,” she said, and repeated it again, as if saying the name out loud might make things feel more real. She reached out to touch Charlie’s face. “It’s really you.”

  Charlie jerked back a little, and watched as her mother’s hand slowly dropped to her side.

  “Why are you here, Charity? Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Bea made me come. She came to Haiti with me. She thought there was something wrong with you,” she said accusingly. Charlie’s eyes scanned the room behind her mother, taking note of the well-polished furniture, the book-lined shelves, the bone china tea set on the table.

  “Me?” Her mother seemed to melt with relief. “Why on earth—” She didn’t finish the thought. “Oh, Charity,” she said instead. “How I’ve missed you.”

  Charlie wanted to believe her. To surrender herself to her mother’s words, to lose herself in the comfort of her embrace after so many years of feeling as abandoned as the children in the orphanages. But at the thought of those hungry faces, Charlie found her resolve stiffening.

  “Missed me? You sure had a funny way of showing it. All those years, no phone calls, no letters, not even one stupid birthday card?”

  “But Charity—”

  “And my name isn’t Charity anymore. It’s Charlie. Plain old Charlie. Charity has never meant a thing to you, and obviously neither have I.”

  “But I did send you letters. Too many to count. I swear I did. And cards, every birthday, every Easter, every Christmas that I had to spend without you.”

  Charlie shook her head, refusing to believe her mother’s lies.

  “You never answered,” her mother continued.

  “You let me go!” Charlie shouted, suddenly unable to control herself. “You made a choice. You chose Jim.”

  Her mother shrank away a little. “You don’t understand, Charity.”

  “There is nothing to understand.” Charlie bit back tears. “And all this.” She pointed behind her. “This joke of a school. How could you?”

  Her mother didn’t respond.

  “And I saw you at that place, that ‘orphanage’. What’s going on? What the hell are you and Jim up to?”

  “You can’t be here, Charity,” her mother said, her voice suddenly panicked, her eyes wide with fear. “He’ll be back. Soon. You need to leave.”

  “I’m not scared of Jim,” Charlie said, desperately wanting to believe that was the truth.

  “Leave, now,” her mother begged. “I’ll come to you. I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”

  Charlie took a moment to really look at her mother, to see if there was a visible sign of why she had gone so wrong. But all she saw was a taller, younger version of Bea, her eyes deep and knowing, her silver-streaked, strawberry-blond hair and flowered dress worn loose and long, her ankles and wrists wrapped in beads and bangles whose purchase could have—and may have, Charlie liked to think—supported a few enterprising Haitians for months on end. Gone was the buttoned-up preacher’s wife. In its place, she now realized, was a sort of 1960s hippie version of the mother she used to know. It made no sense.

  “Explain it to me now, April,” she demanded. Her mother stiffened at Charlie’s calculated use of her name.

  “Charity, please. You know what will happen if he finds you here.”

  “He’s already found me here. I’ve spoken to him. He didn’t tell you about our lovely reunion?” she sneered.

  Again her mother looked horrified. “Charity—Charlie, please. Tomorrow. I promise. You’ll hear everything.”

  Charlie took one last look at her mother. “I’ll go,” she said finally. “We’re at the Abernathy. But don’t worry. You don’t need to make promises you won’t keep.” She turned away from the door and felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, the touch sending a jolt through her body. She resisted the urge to react, forcing herself to remain silent and still as her mother held on.

  “I love you, Charity. I hope you have it in you to understand. I’ll see you in the morning. Now go.”

  Charlie headed back down the stone path without a glance behind her, tears flowing furiously down her cheeks.

  34

  Bea had the ears of a bat. Or at least those of a good watchdog. So when Charlie tried to sneak in on tiptoe that night, she was wide awake in a flash, eager to hear everything her granddaughter had to say.

  But Charlie did not want to talk. Bea knew better than to push the girl. So she bit her tongue and sat in silence as Charlie brushed her teeth and dressed for bed. Goodnight, Bibi was all she said. And I love you.

  Bea had a tough time falling asleep, her imagination running wild with thoughts of what Charlie might have encountered up there on the mountain. If only she could see, Bea’s eyes would have surely told her something. But she couldn’t, and had only Charlie’s silence to go by. And when her thoughts turned into dreams, things became even more disturbing. Zombies and werewolves; a raft full of babies, drifting out to sea; a church on fire; hissing snakes. These weren’t the kind of dreams she’d share. Not with anyone. They were all so embarrassingly obvious, plucked straight from the headlines in her brain. Nothing for a psychic to crow about.

  The sun was barely above t
he horizon when Bea started slowly down the stairs to the veranda the next morning, one hand gripping tight to the wobbly railing.

  “Allow me to assist.” Robert’s rich, caramel voice drifted up toward her. “And how is everything this morning, Madame Bea? I trust that Charlie arrived back safely?” He helped her the rest of the way down and into a chair.

  Bea nodded. “She’s still asleep, which is not a good sign. She’s an early riser by nature. The only time I ever see Charlie sleep past dawn is when she’s upset. Didn’t even stir at those damn roosters having a party under our window.”

  “Let me get you some coffee.”

  Bea sat back and dabbed at the perspiration beading on the sides of her nose. Robert was such a calming presence, like a hot bubble bath on a cold day, or a double Scotch after a hard one.

  “I have added a little milk, just as you like it.” He placed her hand gently on the side of the cup.

  “Be careful, Robert. You’re spoiling me.”

  “You deserve to be spoiled, do you not?”

  Bea felt her face grow even warmer.

  “You are a special woman, Bea. I have not met many like you in my life.”

  “Oh, please.” She hid her face with her coffee.

  “Truly, most women—how should I say—women of a certain age, they lose their shine. Yet you, dear Bea, you are lit up from somewhere deep inside.”

  “It’s probably the mosquito spray I’ve got plastered all over myself.” She shifted awkwardly in her seat.

  “It is no joke. You are not a shy woman. Why are you so reluctant to accept a compliment?”

  “I don’t know, Robert. Maybe it’s because I just don’t know what to say.”

  “How about ‘thank you’?”

  “Well then, merci beaucoup, my friend. Compliment accepted.”

  “Do you know what the famous French writer Victor Hugo once said about compliments? He said, ‘A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.’”