The new location was not as propitious for his business as had been the Bethesda Shop; it was not as visible. The same tactics that had worked so well to draw clients to Bethesda would not work in this new location. Even though the new room was not as lucrative as Bethesda, he made the same amount of money in one month that he had earned in five months in the factory.
After a year, my father decided not to renew his lease on the room. Next door to it was an old workshop that was in financial trouble. My father saw this as his opportunity and bought it. He transferred his sewing machine to get started even though the building was still arranged to make aluminium pots.
Over time, Deland was able to transform the old workshop into a tailoring business.
It was 1999 and Cécile was pregnant for the eighth time. As she was anemic and had developed varicose veins, the doctors had warned her not to give birth again. But it was too late.
One morning, my mother sat before her laundry tub washing our clothes.
She called me over to tell me that I had to finish it because the time had come for her to give birth. She packed her bags and left for the hospital. She never returned.
I was sad and cried a lot. I went to a friend of my mother with tears flowing down my cheeks. I had thought that she would be sympathetic. Instead, she was harsh. “What are you crying about?” she demanded in a severe tone. I didn’t know what to answer because I thought it was obvious. “Your mother is gone now. You are still here. You have to learn to live without her, so get busy!”
On our lakou in Saut d’Eau, there is a big fig tree. My family used to worship it because the lwa lived in it. A fig begins its life by climbing up another tree. It is dependent on that tree. It leans upon it. As time passes, it outgrows its host tree. It leaves it behind as it stands on its own.
Cécile left my father with seven children. He and my mother had been leaning on each other. Now, Deland had to stand on his own, like me.
Deland spent everything he had, and went into debt, to pay for Cécile’s funeral. When it was over, he decided that he could not manage the family without Cécile, so he had to find places for us. The fourth child, Roselèn, went to live with her uncle in Delmas 4. I would soon go to live with my father’s sister in Delmas 33. Only James and Christla remained with my father in Simon. He sent the three youngest to an orphanage in Croix-des-Bouquets.
Gloria was the second-youngest child, smart and pretty. In the orphanage, there were malefactors — people who delight in doing evil and seeing others suffer — who came sometimes to prey on the children. They gave Gloria a dreadful illness. She would be overcome by seizures and fall unconscious to the ground wherever she happened to be standing, sometimes several times a day. When the directors of the orphanage saw that she had changed, they called my father to take her back. Back in Simon, my father went to the hospital to see if doctors could help her. They couldn’t.
When she was thirteen, my father sent her to Saut d’Eau to spend her vacation with her aunt. They left Gloria alone in their tikounouk. She was overtaken by her sickness and fell on a fire. Although her hand was directly in the fire, she was unaware that it was burning. However, when she regained consciousness, she felt her flesh burning and called out. Some neighbours came in to see that her hand was already burning. They called my aunt who was still within earshot. She took Gloria to Saut d’Eau on the back of a donkey to look for medical help. The doctor couldn’t do anything but bandage her hand. My aunt brought Gloria back to Simon to try to find help. But it was too late. My father couldn’t afford the medical costs to save Gloria’s hand.
Gloria spent all of her life with her sickness and her deformity. Her seizures led to nasty falls. Her face, arms, and legs were constantly bruised and cut. She was only aware of the pain when she recovered consciousness. But my father felt every pain when Gloria fell. She was constantly in danger and always in need. She took up much of my father’s attention. He always hoped that she would recover and become healthy and normal. Deep down, I think he knew that she would never be well.
chapter three
IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD, kids were expected to learn a trade even while they were still at school. There were lots of little businesses around us where the young could be taken on as apprentices: mechanics, furniture makers, ironworks, electronics stores, and, of course, tailor shops.
My parents had been arranging for James and me to learn trades even before my mother died. Our home had no furniture. And so, I thought it would be good for us if I could become a furniture maker.
One day, sitting in our barren room, I asked my mother which she would prefer, a china cabinet or an ofis, which was similar but does not have three doors in the upper section. I was dreaming, because I didn’t yet know the first thing about making furniture.
She replied, “My son, I will leave it up to you. You decide what would be better for us.”
I felt proud. She spoke to me as though I was already a furniture maker. And so I wanted to fulfil her confidence in me and become what she wanted me to be. I could imagine her pride in me as she opened her beautiful china cabinet filled with real tableware.
My father had already planned with the bosses in the local furniture and mechanic shops to teach my brother and me. He took James to the garage and then me to the furniture shop.
“I am leaving my son with you,” he said to the master cabinetmaker. “I hope that he will learn to be as skilled a cabinetmaker as you are.”
That day, I watched everything that was going on in the shop, but the boss gave me nothing to do except sweep the floors and keep the shop clean. And so it continued, day after day. What’s more, I soon found that, if I hadn’t been able to eat at home, I would pass the entire day with nothing in my stomach.
One day, I was overcome by stomach cramps. I had left home without even tasting some coffee. The boss had given me the job of drilling holes in the legs of chairs in order to fasten them to the frame with dowelling. When I felt the cramps strike, I told my boss that I couldn’t stay because I was in pain. He said that I could go home to see if the cramps would subside. I could return if I was feeling better.
So I went home. My mother was cooking. She asked what I was doing at home. I told her as I fell onto the bed in pain. My mother woke me up a short while later to give me a plate of mal moulen (cornmeal with oil and whatever vegetables and/or edible leaves are at hand). When I finished, the cramps disappeared and so I went back to the shop.
“Ah, you’ve come back then. You’re feeling better?” the boss mocked me.
I said, “Yes.”
“Did you eat at home?”
I told him that I had. The other workers in the shop all laughed, saying that it was a strange sickness that could be cured with a plate of mal moulen. I laughed along with them and went back to work. But my stomach and heart were not laughing. I decided that I would no longer work unless I had something in my stomach.
After a few weeks, the bosses taught me how to saw. My first effort was a mess. I was supposed to saw a straight line, but I couldn’t guide the saw and the result was a zigzag.
My progress was slow. Meanwhile, James was already making money as a mechanic. He was able to buy things for my mother and for our younger siblings. But I was bringing nothing home but myself. I started to feel that I must be a great disappointment for my mother. But my father kept saying that, in a few years, I would be a great cabinetmaker. He was the only one who had faith in me.
Deland bought me a plane, a saw, and a hammer. My boss had told Dad that it was the same as buying books and pens for students in school. But I left the tools at home where I could practice alone and keep them shiny and new.
I was now arriving at the shop at about ten o’clock in the morning, because I always waited until my mother had prepared something for me to eat at home. Even though we always got up before dawn, if we ate, it was in the mid-morning. One day, the boss sent me home for arriving late. He said that he would call me when he needed me.
/> I left and went to hang out in the other furniture shops in the district, without making it known that I was already an apprentice. The following day, I returned to one in particular and offered to help the furniture makers with sanding or other small jobs. No one asked me to come back. I just showed up every morning and made myself available. I started to bring the tools that my father had given me. Since my tools were brand new, the main boss, whose name was David, preferred them to his own. Maybe my tools were more welcome than I was.
I made a big mistake. I didn’t tell Dad that the master furniture maker that he had secured for me had expelled me from his shop. It was in passing one day that my parents saw me working in David’s shop. They were angry with me, but they didn’t force me to stop going.
The new master was an houngan. His mother and his sister were lougarou. Lougarou are humans that can transform themselves into other animals. Like vampires, they can fly and, at night, they suck the blood of babies. During the day, a lougarou looks for babies separated from their parents in order to pull a strand of hair from their heads. Along with the hair, the lougarou steals the soul of the baby who is thus doomed to die. Sometimes, they can innocently arrive at the home of a neighbour who has babies. They ask for matches or salt. Once these things are in their possession, they can use them to control the domestic life of the family from a distance. Lougarou do not act to enrich themselves, but simply to spread misery. Normal people can be inhabited by lwa that transform them into lougarou. A family can unknowingly have a lougarou in its midst.
David’s family appreciated me because I was polite and did whatever they asked of me. But my father was concerned. He knew that the family were malefactors and saw that I was becoming attached to them. I knew he was unhappy with my presence in their household, but somehow I couldn’t leave. Worse, the houngan didn’t pay me for the little jobs that I did for him around the shop. Sometimes, as an act of rebellion, I took my tools and returned home. I knew that the houngan’s tools were inferior. But, each time, I returned to offer him my tools again, never understanding why.
This houngan mixed magic with his work as a furniture maker. After he had taken money from clients for an order, he would use materials inferior to those he had promised and craft a piece smaller than that contracted. When clients came to pick up their orders, they were at first angry at the quality of the work. But, as they spoke, the houngan would put the client under his will until he accepted the work.
In the absence of David, clients came to argue with us, who were innocent. “I ordered a large china, and look at what you have made. This is a kokorat of a piece of furniture! I’m calling the police! I’m not leaving until I speak to David and we resolve this! I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”
We would say, “You’ll change your tune when David returns. Wait and see.”
They would argue even louder. But, sure enough, when David arrived, the clients would soften their tone. Although they might continue to complain, they argued with far less force. When he saw that, David would go on the offensive.
After my mother died, I worked all day every day in this shop. Even when David had no work, I visited to pass the day there sitting on a bench, as though I had been zombified.
My dad became increasingly anxious about the situation. He called his brother-in-law who was also a furniture maker, asking him to take me into apprenticeship. Dad’s only concern was to make sure that I was freed from David’s hold over me. My uncle had just opened a shop in Delmas 19 and had only one nephew to help him, but they couldn’t get along. They fought constantly. I was to take his place. My uncle was happy to find a replacement, so much so that he immediately got into his old Volvo and drove to Simon to get me.
As he spoke to Dad in our home, I was at David’s as usual. My Dad sent someone to get me and I told them that I would come home later. My father came himself to David’s workshop and grabbed me by the collar and handed me over to his brother-in-law. I was crying.
My uncle took over, “Why are you crying? You are going to be with your family now where you belong. Everything is going to be fine now.”
My Dad told my uncle that he would bring me to him the following week after we had made plans and prepared my clothes.
My uncle insisted that I leave then and there. I said that I had no shoes; he said that he would buy me some. He countered every one of my excuses.
“What do you know how to do so far?” he asked me.
I answered, “I know how to saw, to plane, to sand, and to connect joints.”
My uncle gleamed. He was saved.
In the presence of my father, he made a show of opening the door of his Volvo for me to enter. He appeared to be a chauffeur, waiting upon the pleasure of royalty. Clearly, he wanted to convince Dad that I would be in good hands. I got in and he closed the door on my former life.
On the way to Delmas 19, he bought two-by-fours, plywood, and a few planks so that I could start working as soon as we arrived in his little shop. He could see the tears falling down my face in his rear view mirror. He looked for words to calm me.
“Listen, if you stay in my shop, I will teach you how to drive. You will be the chief of the workshop because there are no others. You will be the boss!”
He miscalculated, thinking that I was ambitious for power. But his offer to teach me how to drive hit home. It was my dream to be able to drive a car. But, for the rest, I knew in my heart that my uncle was lying. I had seen enough of the world to know that people don’t take on little apprentices so that they can take control of their businesses.
When we arrived in Delmas 19, I saw his workshop made out of rusty sheets of metal. It was pathetic. He had me take the building materials inside the shop.
“Tomorrow, you will start working. Today you can rest.”
We sat together. He bought us each a plate of rice and a soft drink from a merchant close to the workshop. He wanted to make me believe that I was in good hands.
At sunset, we got into the Volvo again and went to the home of his wife, Dad’s sister, in Delmas 33. I felt uncomfortable. But my two little cousins were happy to have me with them. I ate and then went to sleep on a mat on the floor.
My uncle got me up at six o’clock. He told me to clean the Volvo before we left for Delmas 19. When we arrived at the workshop, he got me to start sawing the planks to make doors. The doors were not to fill an order, but just to sell to passersby. After we had made six doors, he put them outside on the side of the road. Each morning, my first job was to take the doors out to the road.
Every morning, my aunt would prepare a bowl of food for us. At work, my uncle would eat what was in the bowl and put a small amount on the lid for me. However, I was the one working. It was just as he had said: since I was the only worker, I was also my own boss.
As we climbed back to Delmas 33 that first day, he told me that I should carefully remember the route, because I would soon be going alone to the workshop … and on foot.
I soon discovered why. My uncle lived not only with my aunt and cousins. He also had an apartment where he lived with a mistress. When he was staying with his mistress, my aunt would give me the lunch for us both each morning and I would walk to the workshop in Delmas 19. My uncle would come from the other direction. He could arrive at any hour of the day because he used his Volvo as a taxi in the mornings. Sometimes, he was so late that the lunch had gone bad in the heat. But I had to wait until he arrived. If the lunch was still good, he gave me my part on the lid.
When I started to work at the shop, we were in the middle of the summer vacations. My Dad said that when school started again, I should attend during the afternoons. However, my uncle didn’t accept that part of the agreement. The moment that I started school, the workshop would suffer. He was obliged to accept the agreement, however. Se kondisyon ki bat kòk — you can’t change the rules in the middle of the game.
Nevertheless, my uncle arranged for my cousins to attend school, but not me. When all the other k
ids went to school, I continued to go to the workshop. So, I prepared my bags to leave my uncle’s house, saying, “Dad told me that I should return to Simon to go to school.”
My uncle got into his Volvo and drove to Simon where he asked Dad if this was so. My father replied no, but if there was a school in Delmas 33, I should attend it.
My uncle was obliged to agree to send me to school in Delmas 33. His intention, though, was that I work all day in his workshop as I had been doing throughout the summer. As he saw that I was determined to go to school, he decided to look for one close to the workshop.
So I began my new schedule. I worked at the shop in the morning and went to school each afternoon. Each day at noon, as I prepared to go to school, my uncle became angry. Needless to say, I was prohibited from doing my homework at the workshop, but there was no other time to do it. School ended at sunset and then I had to return home on foot to Delmas 33. Sometimes, I could barely stay awake on the way home.
My aunt was a street merchant. She would go to the big markets to purchase fig bananas that she resold in Delmas. It was my job to bring the sacks of bananas into the house when I arrived home. I had to clean my clothes at night by candlelight while everyone else slept. I slept on a carpet on the kitchen floor. There was no time to do all that was required of me. I was exhausted.
chapter four
MY UNCLE HAD TO LOOK for other workers to help make up for my absence at school in the afternoons. The first had been an apprentice in another shop. My uncle offered him a few little jobs. Josué believed that he would be able to make more money in my uncle’s shop. Moreover, it was very close to his home. But my uncle didn’t have too much confidence in Josué. His skills were not yet developed.
Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti Page 5
