A number of different craftsmen can work on any one piece of furniture. Josué was expert at sanding and varnishing. My uncle employed certain sculptors to carve designs in the furniture once the form was complete. Sometimes, I would design furniture on paper just for fun. My uncle asked me if I would really be able to build the things that I was sketching.
When my uncle was out driving his Volvo as a taxi, I traced designs in the wood and then sculpted them. Like that, I designed and finished a buffet. When my uncle saw the designs that I had carved into my buffet, he asked who had done that. When he found out that it was me, he was upset rather than complimentary.
“Oh! You know how to sculpt like this and yet you let me waste my money hiring outside people to do it?! From now on, you do the sculpting.”
It was understood, of course, that I would not see the money my uncle saved on outside sculptors. I was simply taken for granted. Worse, I got into trouble for not allowing him to exploit me more effectively.
From then on, he had me decorate every piece of furniture that he made from my designs. Although I was not compensated at all, I was happy that my skill was being recognized, albeit begrudgingly. Moreover, I was now able to practice my talent and passion for design. My uncle’s exploitation would ultimately be to my advantage. My uncle was not talented in designing the pieces he built. That was my strength. I loved to imagine different pieces of furniture and always kept my sketchbook by my side.
In the workshop, there were several catalogues of furniture of different styles. Clients would browse the catalogues and point to a piece that they liked. Before he continued with the contract, my uncle used to come to me to quietly ask if we could do it. Then, he would go back and repeat what I had told him word for word. His methods were reasonable. Since I would do the work, he knew that if he accepted an order that I could not build, he would be stuck with a dissatisfied client.
Josué was not a regular employee, but was brought in to do the sanding and varnishing when my uncle needed him. So, most often, I worked alone. One day, I was building a china cabinet. As I was sawing planks of wood, the saw flew from its path and cut through my hand, almost detaching my thumb. The neighbours heard my scream and ran to help me. They poured alcohol on it. It was extremely painful. Like me, they were shocked to see the thumb of my left hand mostly detached. They told me to wait. When my uncle returned, they said, he would take me to the hospital for stitches, since the gash was deep. It was clearly beyond bandages.
My uncle did return. He looked at the little progress that I had been able to make on the china cabinet rather than looking at me. “What have you been doing all morning!?” he bellowed. “You’ve hardly done anything since I left!”
I held up my left hand so that he could see the extent of my injury. I had thought that even my uncle would soften his tone in the face of my pain. But no. He offered only a dismissive gesture, as if I was faking. Meanwhile, I was in real danger of losing my thumb.
“Se sòt k’ap soti, lespri ap antre,” he said: my “cut” would allow the idiot in me to exit my body, and wisdom to enter. It was a callous use of a good aphorism. The neighbours who had come to my aid earlier called themselves into my service once again, saying that it was abominable that an uncle should treat his nephew in such a manner.
I hadn’t said one word since he returned. Now, I went into a corner to try to think and to cry. My uncle left the shop.
My uncle’s reaction reminded me of the time when Haiti was a French colony. The slaves were brought from Africa and were treated as pieces of property. My uncle behaved as I imagined a slave-owner would have responded to the loss of a slave from an accident. But now, slaves were brought from Site Solèy to Delmas. I was of the poor race of Haitians. Now, the slave-owners like my uncle had only to wait for us to fall into their hands.
Two different ideas battled inside of me. One voice told me to leave the workshop; my uncle was a brute and I should simply escape. The other was aware of the crowd around me that was ready to take up my cause. How much could I rely on them? In the time of slavery, there were mawon who sought to flee and live in the mountains of Haiti, free from the French plantation owners; there were also revolutionaries, who sought to inspire their fellow slaves to defeat their masters. To fight or to flee: both strains existed in me as I sobbed in the corner.
Sometimes the mawon gave up their solitary existence in the mountains and came back to live on the plantations. Sometimes, they were caught and forcibly brought back. In either case, they were treated harshly for their rebelliousness. They could have a hand cut off, for example.
While still waiting in the corner, I decided to remain in the shop. But I would not forget this. My uncle would pay somehow.
Eventually, my uncle returned. He didn’t ask me about my injury, but he told me to take some window panes back to Delmas 33 that he wanted me to install in his house. Then he left in the Volvo. He didn’t offer to take me or the window panes in the car. He expected me to carry them back to his home on foot.
By now, my left hand was very swollen. There was no way that I would be able to carry the tools I would need to install the windows, even if I could carry the windows in my right hand.
All of this was taking place while I should have been in school. There was only one reason that I was not in school and that was my injury. In profiting from my absence from school to assign me work, my uncle implicitly acknowledged its seriousness. But he just as quickly denied it in order to get more work out of me.
In any case, I left the tools behind, thinking that I could return early the next morning to fetch them so that my uncle could install the windows. I had to walk to Delmas 33, because I had no money for a taptap.
As soon as I had put the window frames in the house, I went to the market to find my aunt. When I found her selling her bananas, I showed her my hand. She was shocked. She could see the exposed flesh. All of the merchant women gathered around us to look at the wound. They assumed it had been made by a machete.
“But what did my husband do?” my aunt asked me. “Didn’t he take you to the hospital to have them stitch it?”
When she heard my answer, she passed her kerchief across her forehead. “You should go to the hospital. But I don’t have any money,” she fretted. “I have spent the whole day here and I have sold almost nothing.”
We went home together. My uncle had already arrived and was in bed. We all turned in. Even though my thumb throbbed, I managed to sleep. Domi pa konn mizè malere — the wretched can sleep anywhere.
The next morning, my uncle asked me where the tools were to install the windows. I told him that they were still in the shop, since I hadn’t been able to carry them. He was livid.
“What!” he yelled. “All you had to do was bring a few tools. What kind of weakling are you?!” He treated me as though I was not suffering from a serious injury.
I put on my shoes and ran to Delmas 19 to get the tools as fast as I could and bring them back to Delmas 33.
I returned in no time with the tools. He grabbed them from my right hand and gruffly told me to return to the workshop and continue sanding the base of the china cabinet I was building and apply a coat of zincromat, a product that protects inferior wood from being infested by insects.
At the shop, I was so out of my mind that I did the opposite: I gave the china a coat of zincromat first, and then prepared to sand it.
While I was looking for sandpaper, my uncle showed up in the workshop. He saw that I had already given a coat of zincromat to the base of the china. He bellowed, “What am I going to do with this piece of shit! This pig!” He was referring to me rather than the china cabinet.
Some neighbours were in the workshop. I felt ashamed. I couldn’t look anyone in the eyes. If I didn’t respond to my uncle, then the crowd would have categorized me as a restavèk who had had his own will beaten out of him. I stared at my hand.
“Look. I have been injured working for my uncle. I am still working. But in return
, he calls me a pig. It takes a lot of courage to respond to my uncle.” Then, turning to my uncle, I said, “It would be best that pigs remain with pigs, and human beings with human beings.”
Without waiting for any response, I left the workshop. He had mistreated me in order to show others the power that he had over me. Since I had talked back, he seemed to have lost the power that could only come from my submission. Now, my uncle was ashamed in front of the neighbours. I could hear him running behind me.
“Get back to the workshop! I’ll give you the cane for that demonstration.”
But I kept walking forward, refusing to acknowledge the barrage of venom that he was hurling at me. I was so determined that it may have looked as though I knew where I was going. In fact, I only knew that I was not going back to the workshop.
As I walked along, my mind was overwhelmed with worries about what I would do and even where I was going. I seemed to be burning a bridge from a place I did not want to return, but there were no others to take me somewhere better or worse. I decided to go to my aunt in Delmas 33 and to explain to her what had happened.
“My aunt, I have tried to behave correctly with my uncle and to respect him. But I can no longer accept the abuses that he has forced upon me. In public, he called me a pig. I can no longer stay if I want to retain my dignity.” My aunt claimed that she was surprised to hear this. But, as we talked, it was clear that she was afraid of him and was really not surprised. With the humiliations that he forced upon her every day, how could she expect him to treat me well?
She advised me to stay home with her until I could make plans.
“You are kind,” I replied. “But we know that men are the kings of their castles. He is really angry with me. When I am not working in his shop, he won’t allow me to stay here.”
But she surprised me, “No. You are my nephew. He cannot stop me from allowing you to stay here if I invite you. I paid for this land with the profits from my work as a vendor. I am the one who can say who can stay here and who cannot.”
I said, “Okay. But I don’t want to be the source of trouble in your home.”
But she insisted, “No, no. It is thanks to your father that I am here in the capital. Deland helped me get started here. So it would not be decent for me to leave his son when he needs me. If my brother were to die before me, then I would feel responsible for his children.”
“No, my aunt. A family is a family and a household a household. You already have two children. Your nephew should not be disturbing your lives here.”
She started to cry. She called on some of her merchant friends to complain about her husband. She showed them my hand as proof of her husband’s brutality. They all agreed that he was a brute. I was the centre of their pity. That was kind of nice.
After awhile, I said that I had to go. They wanted to know where I was going. “Are you going to Simon? To your father’s?” I said no. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go.
My aunt insisted that I give her my coordinates. All I could tell her was that I would be in Haiti. I would manage to survive. But my voice was shaking. I was really afraid, because I knew that I was going to join the kokorats for the first time. Kokorats are homeless kids who live on the streets of Port-au-Prince. They are like feral human beings.
I didn’t want my aunt to be angry with me. She told me to come by whenever I needed something and she would help me.
The days were not a problem. I hung out in Delmas 33. I talked with people, watched soccer games played in the field, and just walked around. But as night approached, my stomach started to feel queasy. I did not want people to know that I had fallen out with my family. I didn’t want them to know the state to which I had fallen. I would check out the abandoned cars for the possibility of sleeping in them. I found a taptap that had been abandoned in an intersection. An intersection, or kafou, is especially meaningful for Vodouists. Many of their ceremonies take place there during the night.
There is a group of Vodouists called san pwèl. They come out at night. Sometimes, they transform themselves into animals. Haitians who find themselves out in the middle of the night are very cautious to avoid all animals. A hen and her chicks crossing a kafou at night are most probably a group of san pwèl, with the queen presenting herself as the mother hen. A fool may make the fatal mistake of taking the hen for his pot. Foreigners can foolishly pick up a chick, thinking it a fluffy little innocent. But nothing is what it seems to be. The san pwèl also have the ability to transform any human being walking the streets into an animal by lassoing him or her with a mystical cord. The person is then fated to continue his or her existence in that form. The san pwèl emit an invisible breeze, called a kout lè. If a human comes into contact with a kout lè, he is in serious danger of dying. Or they can flash their victim from a distance. They have a kind of flashlight that sends out more than rays of light. If the san pwèl succeed in flashing a victim, he is doomed. However, an houngan or mambo can counter the spells cast by the san pwèl. The san pwèl, like lougarou, are nasty. There are many people and spirits who prefer to not be seen. In Haiti, with no streetlights, the nights belong to them. Policemen stop anyone who is out at night, assuming that all decent citizens are safe at home.
Every one of these dangers terrorized me as I entered the back of the taptap for the night. On top of that were the human malefactors: thieves and murderers. I had no other choice. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep in the back of the taptap. I awoke whenever I heard footsteps or packs of dogs running across the kafou. All over Port-au-Prince, the dogs that lie around in the heat during the day come together to form packs at night. Needless to say, my heart would beat double-time and I always longed for the sunrise. I laid face down on the wooden bench in the back of the taptap with my hands over my ears, not wanting to see or hear all the dangers that surrounded me. Every morning, at four-thirty, I was awakened by an early mass that was celebrated at a local church. They had loudspeakers that publicized the prayers inside. As soon as I heard them, I arose and stayed inside the church until sunrise.
Once inside the church, I used to kneel in order to give the appearance that I was particularly devout. I put my head in my hands as though I was deep in prayer. In fact, I was fast asleep, knowing that, although I was not comfortable, I was safe. In fact, I always overslept the mass. I would awake alone in my pew with my head in my hands resting on the bench in front of me.
I spent days eating nothing at all. In my pocket was a handful of salt. Each time I felt weak, I would put a few grains on my tongue. My main prayer was that I not allow my hunger to drive me to steal. Sometimes, it passed my mind to ask people for money, but I was too proud. Instead, I would just drink water dripping from the pipes that I could find. Sometimes, I visited my aunt to find bananas that were overripe and could not be sold. They were my staple.
One day, I went to visit her in the market where she sold her bananas. She alone knew my secret that I was living on the streets. She asked me how I managed, what I ate, and so on. She said that my uncle asked about me. Each time I went, she tried to get me to come back to live with her family. She said that my uncle would be different now that he had seen my reaction.
Finally, I gave in to her. In part, because she was my aunt and I owed her respect, but also because I had to do something. Her supplications were a relief to me. I spent several days back in her home. I didn’t like the idea of living there without contributing to the household any more than I had liked being exploited. I was ready to start at the workshop again.
My uncle made the first move. He said that I could come back to work. I decided to forgive his past behaviour. At the same time, I didn’t want to forget what he was capable of. If he treated me as before, I would have to leave for good.
The first week back in the shop was uneventful. My uncle made an effort to treat me better. However, I could not trust him. I liked to joke with the neighbours who hung around, but the moment that my uncle joined us, I stopped laughing. He avoided humiliating me i
n public and overtly treating me with disdain. But my uncle did not pay me. On Saturdays, he would give the workers a very small sum of money that we could not stretch to the end of the day.
He accepted that I should go back to school. But I couldn’t pay the fees and my uncle wouldn’t. The director would sometimes visit our class to announce the names of those students who hadn’t paid their tuition. When he finished, we were sent out of the classroom. But we just hid until we saw him leave the class and then we would sneak back in. I was working hard at my studies and wanted to continue.
One of the neighbours of the shop saw my dedication to the work and was aware of my uncle’s nature. He asked me often why I remained working there. I had to reply that, in order to flee, you needed a destination and the means to get there. I had nothing and nowhere to go.
This neighbour, Jelo, worked as the guard of a property owned by a doctor who lived in Thomassin. The doctor did not live in the house, but left the management of the entire property to the guard. In the courtyard was a large reservoir of water. Jelo used to let me bathe there in between working in the shop and going to school and, sometimes, after school before returning to Delmas 33.
When my uncle saw Jelo visiting me in the workshop, he would be angry. He feared that it might take me away from my work. Moreover, he wasn’t sure what influence the guard might be having on me. What did he want? In the courtyard of the doctor’s property were a number of fruit trees, including some mangoes. Jelo would bring some mangoes to me as a gift. I appreciated them of course. And although my uncle did not like to see the guard around the shop, he ate the mangoes. So he didn’t protest the guard’s presence too severely. Besides, as long as someone else was feeding me, he didn’t have to.
chapter five
Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti Page 6
