“Okay. If that’s your decision, you’ll have to carry out that plan alone. I don’t see it as a solution.”
Pierre left disappointed that he and Marie could not agree on a plan together.
Marie continued to work at Sonapi. Pierre worked on his studies, paid for by his sister.
Marie worked hard, motivated to prove to Pierre that he was wrong and that her work in the factories would allow her to launch a business of her own. But no. Pierre had calculated correctly: when your salary cannot pay for your food and lodging, then you will never be free of it. She made sacrifices, secretly putting aside a few gourdes each week into a box that she kept hidden. Unfortunately, from time to time, she was forced to take out everything when her mother’s health declined. She was always starting from zero. She went to Pierre to tell him how badly things were going.
For a second time, Marie and Pierre expected a child. Pierre was upset. He said that if Marie had just gone to Jeremie as he had suggested, then everything would have been different. Not only was Marie always starting over trying to save a few gourdes, but now they found themselves where they had been with the first pregnancy. There was no sign that this one would be different.
“I’m still at school. I have no money to help with a child. You’re going to figure out how to get out of this,” Pierre said. “Do what you can to take care of yourself during the pregnancy. When the child is born, I’ll have to leave my studies to find a job.”
Marie went home. It was hard to tell her mother this news for a second time. But a pregnancy can’t be kept secret. In fact, it was her mother who told Marie that she was pregnant. She was angry to the point of throwing Marie’s things into the street. But when she reflected on the help that Marie had offered her during her illnesses, she softened.
Marie continued in SONAPI. She was ashamed before of her coworkers, who already knew of her situation. Some were sympathetic, others gossiped. Under that added stress, Marie wanted to die. She couldn’t see another way out.
Although Pierre had very little money, he would come to the Industrial Park from time to time to pass along a few gourdes. These little gestures helped Marie out of her depression. She made it through and delivered a healthy little boy. She left her job to take care of her baby for a few months.
Pierre was true to his word. When the baby was born, he left his studies and found a job in a store that sold soft drinks. He put aside a part of his paycheck for Marie. He didn’t make enough money to support a family. Far from it.
The little shack that Marie and her baby shared with her mother had a roof of old sheet metal with many holes. When the rain came, she had a difficult time finding a dry place for her baby. The rainy season arrived two months after the birth. Marie spent most of her time squished into a corner with her baby on a drenched bed. Sometimes water would pour into the tikounouk by the front door. There was a gap between the bottom of the door and the ground. When the water flowed, Marie’s home put up no resistance. Since Marie’s mother slept on the ground, the rainy season meant that she hardly slept at all. Rather, she tried to keep as much water and mud as possible out of her little house.
Marie’s mother tried to figure out how to escape from the worst of their troubles. Bourik fè pitit pou do li pose — a donkey has foals to lighten its load. In this case, there was no rest for either the bourik or the pitit. Marie, in her corner protecting her baby from the rain dripping through the roof, listened as her mother complained while sweeping water and mud back into the street. Marie wanted to leave, to be anywhere rather than listening to her mother’s complaints.
When the baby was three months old, Marie returned to the factory. Pierre came by to offer just enough help to take care of the baby. Marie’s salary continued to pay for herself and her mother.
Marie changed from factory to factory, looking for one that might pay a little better or help her somehow. But they were all the same. Only the personnel and the work varied. The conditions and the pay were the same.
When the baby was two years old, Pierre paid for daycare in Simon. When he lost his job, he decided to return to Jeremie. That meant that things were even more difficult for Marie. She worked all the time. Sometimes, she asked for help from the church or from friends to pay the school fees for her son. She applied for scholarships to help defray the expense of educating him.
Marie tried to get fired from SONAPI. She had worked there long enough that she might qualify for a small severance payment. So she tried to provoke the bosses to fire her. But nothing worked. They were used to that strategy and overlooked her provocations.
A few times, she organized her co-workers into unions. Although some of the workers that she organized were fired, the bosses left her alone. They fired those who would not cost any severance.
She never heard any more from Pierre. After a number of years, she learned that he had a child in Jeremie.
Each year, Marie promised her son that if he succeeded in his exams, they would celebrate. My brother James and I grew up with Marie’s son, Lòlò. Since our parents had seven children, they couldn’t reward our successes in the same way that Marie could honour her only son. But we conspired with Lòlò to get what would serve us all. For instance, we told Lòlò that he should ask for a television if he passed his year. James and I were genuinely happy for Lòlò. His success was, literally, our success.
In Simon, electricity flowed erratically, but still more than in most neighbourhoods. That was because Simon was next to the factories that the electricity had been installed to serve. Like all neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince, you know when there is current by the spontaneous cheer of the children playing in the streets. “Yahoo!” Then they rush to the home of whoever has a television set. In our area, Lòlò was on the cutting edge of technology as a result of his good grades. Sometimes there were so many of us in the room where Lòlò lived that Marie and his grandmother could not enter. We watched each film carefully, especially the Chinese kung fu movies. When they were over, we all poured into the streets and practised the moves that we had watched, trying to take each other’s heads off with karate chops. Once, James struck Lòlò in the mouth during their kung fu battle and knocked out his front tooth. When Lòlò appeared with a handful of blood and a missing tooth, our father beat both James and me without the benefit of any kung fu training.
We grew up together. We watched Marie go to the factory before dawn and return at dusk. We watched her hair go from black to white. Marie put all her life into Lòlò. His education became Marie’s reason for living. He grew tall and strong like his father. Lòlò finished his secondary education.
The tikounouk and his grandmother aged together. The walls and roof were barely enough to protect the television and other testaments to Lòlò’s academic success. When we entered our adolescent years, we used to sit together and talk about our plans and our hopes. Lòlò always had the same priority. When he was finally able to earn money, his first priority would be to liberate his mother from the factories at SONAPI. His grandmother would not die in the same squalor that they had known.
When I had left Simon, after my mother’s death, I returned every Sunday to visit my family and friends. Lòlò remained a wise young man. He kept himself apart. He was in the service of his grandmother who had become weak in her old age.
MINUSTAH arrived in 2004 and intensified the violence in Simon. From time to time, they would mount their assaults against us. They would arrest gangsters and others who had nothing to do with the gangs. They were as erratic as the electricity. But they could never find any cause to harass Lòlò, much as they might have liked to. Lòlò was a tall, strong young man, the type they saw as a threat. But he was focused on caring for his grandmother and mother and succeeding in his studies to help them permanently.
It was a rare event for a boy from Simon to finish his secondary education. But Marie and Lòlò had succeeded.
However, Marie could not find the money to pay for university for Lòlò. The factories
didn’t pay nearly enough. Because she had worked there for so long, Marie asked the directors to help her find a scholarship for her son. Despite her decades of service, the director dismissed the idea out of hand.
In 2008, a friend of Marie offered to pay half of the fees for Lòlò to attend a vocational school called Saint Gerard, a building five stories tall. Marie continued in the factory to pay the other half. Lòlò chose a two-year course in automotive mechanics. Marie was happy to have found a vocation for her son. Her mother was now aged and she was ageing. Both put their hopes in Lòlò for a future better than their pasts.
Lòlò always reassured them. “The day that I get a job, we’ll leave this place. We’ll be comfortable.” Each time that he picked up his backpack to go to Saint Gerard, his grandmother was proud and hopeful. The hope was not for her, it was for her grandson. For her, four years was no different than four weeks. Things were heading in the right direction for her grandson. They had suffered their entire lives to live decently. Lòlò was as solid and reliable as the ground under their feet.
Marie sacrificed her own comfort for Lòlò. She lived as minimally as possible. She spent her money so that Lòlò could wear the best pèpè. She neglected meals at the factory so that Lòlò could eat well at home. His grandmother bought bread for Lòlò. Lòlò was like a tree that was still not providing fruit. But the tree was being fertilized, and pruned, and watered. The harvest would justify the cultivation.
Lòlò finished his first year with great success. He was the top student in his class. Marie started to look for contacts so that he could find a good job immediately upon his graduation. A couple of contacts agreed to accept Lòlò when he arrived in the second year. He could work part-time in their businesses while he finished his program.
Marie bought Lòlò a toolbox and began to buy the tools to fill it.
On 6 January 2010, Lòlò returned to school after the holidays. His exams to complete his second year were scheduled for 10 February. The course at Saint Gerard took place on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons, from two o’clock to five o’clock.
Early on Tuesday morning, 12 January, Lòlò asked his mother for the money to take a taptap in the afternoon to Saint Gerard. Marie gave him the money. Lòlò was approaching his second-year exams. He would start working the following month.
“Ah Manman, you already know that I am going to be at the top of my class. I work as hard as I can. We will get out of this hole. I only have three people in my family: you, me, and grandma. Before grandma dies, I’ll pay her back for her patience with us.”
“Okay, I’m leaving it up to you.” And she left for SONAPI, smiling about their good fortune after all these years. She walked into the factory on top of the world, realizing that her years there had not been for nothing.
Marie spent the entire day in the factory. She didn’t go outside for lunch. She spoke to all her friends about her son’s success. They were used to her story, but Marie was now telling it with more conviction than ever. And her co-workers believed that her days in the factory were coming to an end.
At four o’clock, Marie started to feel unwell. Others replied that they too felt ill at ease, that there was something strange about the day. People guessed about what might be coming. Was it here in the factory? Would it be at home?
At a quarter to five, they heard a sound, like a breeze, outside. They sensed the earth begin to tremble. They weren’t too worried. SONAPI is next to the road. Everyone thought that bulldozers were passing. Moments later, the real shocks arrived. People working on the industrial sewing machines were jostled; some got their hands caught. Those who were working upright fell to the ground. Boxes full of fabric fell upon them. Things fell off the walls.
“Jezi! Jezi!” people yelled.
Marie called, “Jezi! Lòlò is dead!”
Despite the shocks that rocked her from side to side, she tried to keep her balance so she could get out of the building.
She ran down the street. She saw nothing around her. All she could see was in her mind’s eye: the vocational school, Saint Gerard, collapsing to the ground. Lòlò was on the second floor.
She panicked. She ran like a crazy woman. There were no taptaps running. There was no way to get to the school.
She went to Simon to check on her mother. Since their shack was made of sheet metal, she was not too worried. Her mother was lying on the ground, crying. She was crying for Marie whom she assumed was dead.
“Manman, I’m here. Lòlò! What about Lòlò? Have you heard from Lòlò?”
They each took a shirt belonging to Lòlò and tied it around their waists. They left the house and wandered the neighbourhood, mourning his death. But their neighbours encouraged them. “No, no. Don’t say that. He’ll be okay.”
While they were crying, a friend of Lòlò came up to them. He and Lòlò often took the taptap together, since their schools were close by. He was white, painted by the dust from the rubble of a collapsed building.
When she saw him, Marie ran to him. She grabbed him by his shirt, “Where is Lòlò?! Give me Lòlò!?”
The young man was crying, “My school is destroyed. In my class, there were fifty students. Only ten of us lived and most of them have broken arms and legs. We were buried. We managed to dig our way out. We called out. Some people from the outside came to help dig a passage from the other side to get us out. In the other stories, no one escaped alive.”
“Tell me! Lòlò!?”
“I passed by Saint Gerard,” he acknowledged. “It was reduced to rubble. We tried to dig, but there was no sound from inside. We found only dead bodies. For someone to be saved, he had to be outside of Saint Gerard.”
Marie fainted and fell to the ground. She lay there as though dead. Her mother couldn’t speak. She was dumb with shock.
Some of the neighbours found alcohol to place under the nose of Marie to revive her. They used a spoon to try to unlock her jaw that was locked shut.
Finally Marie awoke. She arose and started running … nowhere. People thought she was crazy. Some people ran after her and brought her back, making a clearing in the crowd to create a little calm for her.
Two weeks later, all of the factories were up and running. Marie returned to work. She told the director that her only son was dead. He advised her to take some time off. She kept coming anyway.
Even the workers whose homes were still standing were afraid to sleep in them. A large number of tents were delivered to the Industrial Park after the earthquake. The tents didn’t go to people like Marie. Instead, the workers saw them piled into big trucks inside the Park and taken away.
Marie continues to get up at dawn to work until dusk. Her mother no longer takes in laundry. On her eighteenth birthday, Marie’s first daughter returned to live with Marie and her mother. After her years in the orphanage, she helped her mother and grandmother heal from the loss of their son with the return of their daughter.
chapter nineteen
TUESDAY, 12 JANUARY 2010, I passed half the day in Delmas 19 in the courtyard where I lived with Jelo. I was thinking about my future and it had drained all the energy out of me. The future was nothing but a word with nothing inside of it.
My church had a Bible study group that met at five o’clock each Tuesday evening. As I had nothing to do at home but mope, I left to arrive an hour ahead of schedule at the house where my girlfriend Annie lived with her elder sister, Mme Bolivar. Together, we would walk to the church that was just a few minutes from her place.
I was playing with the kids of the house. That always lifted my spirits. Then, since there was power that afternoon, I went to watch television until it was time to walk over to the church. Annie was taking care of Lucy, her three-year-old niece. I was lost in a war movie. During a gunfight on the television, I heard a little noise outside like a bulldozer passing. The house was far from the road; it was built into the hill with only little alleyways running through the neighbourhood. I didn’t think further about it because my
concentration was taken up by the film. The gunfight on the television intensified at the same time that the house began to shake. I was so into the film that the shaking seemed normal — but in the context of the film, not in real life in Delmas 33. My chair started to shake. Finally, I separated the film from my life. The entire house was rocking from side to side. Even the characters in the film finally joined real life, when the television fell to the ground.
I heard Annie cry outside. “Oh Jezi! My head, my head!” As the ceiling came down, a piece of concrete had struck her on the head.
Lucy heard her aunt scream and she imitated her, yelling, “Jezi, Jezi,” and swayed her arms in the air.
Outside, everyone was yelling the same thing, “Jezi! Oh Jezi!” It was as if all the voices in the neighbourhood came together in one thought, one sound.
I did everything I could to get out of the room where the television was now crashed on the floor. I was trying to get to where Annie and Lucy were calling. But I was in the back of the house and the only way out was the hall. I called to them to stay calm. I tried to negotiate the hallway as the house swayed, balancing myself with outstretched arms on the walls on each side.
For a second, the earthquake calmed and I was able to get to Annie and Lucy in the hallway. Annie was crying. Lucy too was crying tears, in every way imitating her aunt Annie.
I told them, “Listen, it’s not over yet. We have to find the other kids and leave the house.”
When we got to the gallery, Annie’s three nephews appeared on the stairway from the roof and joined us to leave the house. We didn’t have time to listen to their stories. The important thing was that everyone in the household was accounted for. We all left together.
Standing on the pathway that led to the road, we were not yet safe. The houses rose on each side. We were still perilously close to them. So we descended the pathway to reach the road. There, we saw all the neighbours who had escaped assembled together. Everyone had come instinctively to this open place. Everyone was white with powder. All that was visible was the black of their eyes. Those who were weak were lost in their tears. Others thought of how they might help those who were trapped.
Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti Page 16
