See that man? Souvenir said to Natasha, pointing into the blackness where sobs flowed like beat-boxing. That man buried fourteen family members with his own hands over two days after goudou-goudou. Wife, children, nieces, uncles, and his parents.
Natasha, an orphan, stared at the darkness and tried to imagine what having fourteen relatives to love and live near could be like, and how horrible having to bury them all at once could feel. She almost fainted.
The next morning, the brilliant heat of the sun stunned Natasha awake despite the fact that she slept under a pew with her forearm shielding her face. You think you miss not having a roof over your head when it rains? When you’re trying to sleep in after a long night of dreaming of hurriedly discarded dead bodies, not having a roof sucks almost as bad. Around Natasha, the guys were awake too. But they looked like they’d had the good night’s sleep Natasha wished she’d had. Their energy was high, in midday form. Clean-shaven, showered, and pumped from performing push-ups and crunches, not smiling but faintly upbeat, they were gentlemen who tried not to look at the train wreck Natasha no doubt looked like. In the bathroom—yes, the bathroom had no roof, yet, oddly, the toilet still flushed—Natasha took stock in the mirror. She did indeed look like shit. Her hair went everywhere and nowhere and begged for the mercy of a drop of shampoo. The rest of her could use a proper, long, and languid wash too instead of the splashes of cold water and the touch of a microcube of soap. This is not how you want to look when you’re going to see the man who could have been your father-in-law on the day of the memorial of his son’s death, Natasha thought. At least her clothes were relatively clean, her breasts firm and high, and her face unblemished, chocolate skin looking brand-new. She checked in on Monsignor Dorélien. He was enjoying having the gravediggers around.
In many ways we are in the same business, he said.
A few of them listened to him intently as he talked about the importance of honoring the dead and how they shouldn’t make much of the absence of the rituals of service he specialized in for the dead. My work was elaborate and a welcome succor in normal times. In these times, these men will have to count on the purity of the love in their hearts and the talent they pour into their work to stand as the symbol of the rite of passage for those thousands of folks who have gone on to meet their maker without the comfort of a coffin and a tombstone. Before they left, they all closed their eyes, and Monsignor Dorélien blessed them and their families for their courage and faith. Natasha watched the men stream out of Monsignor Dorélien’s small office with chins high. Today was the national day of mourning for the victims of goudou-goudou. The government had declared a weekend period of memorial. Millions were expected to converge on the National Palace and the Champ de Mars to sing and pray and cry for their collective and individual losses. A nation of stoics was about to have a very public mass catharsis. The gravediggers were eager for it. Most people were. Natasha was too. They, the living, wanted to touch and to be touched. Mourning was such a lonely business. Today, sorrow would be shared. Natasha planned to pay her respects to the dead by visiting an elderly couple she knew to be too old to make the trip from their hilltop home to the Champ de Mars.
Are you sure about this? Jean-Richard asked for the fifth time.
They were standing on the steps of the National Cathedral. His confreres stood a few meters away. They were all clean and eager to join the ceremonies, which, Haiti being Haiti, would have a carnivalesque flair. Natasha would be going in the opposite direction, in a car provided by her new friends. You’re not even going to wait for your security guards to come take you? Jean-Richard asked. Is that wise?
This is not an affair of state, Natasha said. Everyone has the right to mourn their dead this day their own way. Besides, with everyone downtown today, going the opposite direction will be the safest direction to go in the entire city.
All right, Madame Robert, he said.
Natasha, she said.
Madame Natasha, he said with a smile.
They hugged farewell. The man was all muscle, Natasha thought, her chin on his shoulder. Thanks for everything, she said. Squinting into the morning sun, she waved good-bye to the rest of the fellas. Au revoir, they said, et merci! She watched them join the crowd one by one, brown heads and arms bobbing, red, yellow, black, green shirts and dresses, hats and caps and fans a-waving. The gravediggers could be anyone now, lost among the living. They couldn’t be happier. She was happy for them.
The car was old and looked unsafe. It may have been yellow once. Today the car was a sickly beige-and-white with echoes of a mustard past. There were no windows but there were a windshield and leather seats. Very hot leather seats. Took a while for the car to start, a dozen tries of the ignition, enough to make Natasha’s wrist sore. The engine wheezed and seemed to ask why Natasha wanted it to make the effort of waking up. Like a metallic wounded horse, the car seemed to want to sit there, ready to be put to sleep or somehow be nursed to health.
Come on, car, Natasha said. I don’t have all day.
The crowds walking by the car toward the Champ de Mars grew thin. Songs and prayers began to waft along the morning breeze from down the street. The festivities were off and running. The dead were no doubt smiling. Some of them in heaven were probably pointing fingers at Natasha and having a laugh. Some people looked into the car and at Natasha and then asked her if she needed help, a push, something. No, no, she said, waving them off.
After a while people looked at her like she was crazy to believe the car would start at any point that day or crazy to want to drive the vomit-colored pile of junk in the first place. Miracle of miracles, the car started. Easing into the street, Natasha saw fewer and fewer people. Fort National had been severely hit by the earthquake. Buildings looked like bombed-out skeletons. Natasha could see dead bodies inside them. Corpses propped up to sitting position. By who? For what? In front of some other buildings, she saw corpses in the usual positions, flat on their backs and wrapped up, mummified. She sped up. In front of the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, off the Champ de Mars, she saw mothers and grandmothers and fathers and sons and daughters embrace. Everyone, it seemed, had an arm wrapped over another’s shoulders, eyes shut tight in prayer. After a while, she turned onto Avenue Ducoste. Where the Air France store once stood as a symbol of the great world off the island, Natasha saw only two stories of gray rubble. She also saw a woman on her knees praying to the sky with two plane tickets in her hands. Natasha crossed herself. There but for the grace of God go I, she said. She dared not imagine how those tickets, Air France, and the earthquake had hurt that woman. She dared not. Before long, Natasha had to make a left turn on Chemin des Dalles, and then a right turn on Avenue John Brown. Big like its namesake, Avenue John Brown was orderly this day. Some foot traffic headed toward the Champ de Mars. Most people sat pensively on wooden chairs at storefronts. Not for the first time, Natasha noticed the Haitian flags. They were everywhere and bigger and, for some reason, redder, whiter, and bluer than she ever remembered. Avenue John Brown was also called Lalue, and it was where Natasha and Bobo had seen the fearsome crowd and tried to rescue the small boy from getting trampled. What happened to you, young man? Natasha thought. Where are you now? I hope you’re safe.
Lalue then went through Bourdon, an upmarket neighborhood. Stalls selling sculptures made of cans and hubcaps lined the sidewalk behind which was a deadly cliff. Natasha couldn’t help naming the streets and took pleasure in the bumps and grinds of their potholes, as if for the first time. She was renewing her relationship with the street, the city, the earth, and so far, so good. You only get one hometown, she thought. You should be grateful to be alive in yours, Natasha. Turning left on rue Marcadieu, she soon reached Delmas 40B, and then she couldn’t help egging the Datsun to go faster eastward, toward Pétionville. Around Delmas 95, she got stuck behind a giant United Nations peacekeepers’ tank. The destroyed Caribbean Market came up on her right. Since goudou-goudou, people couldn’t stop talking about the destruction o
f this grand institution, although most Haitians couldn’t afford to shop in it. Despite her efforts, Natasha couldn’t help but imagine the serene scene inside the supermarket the minute before goudou-goudou. A supermarket late in the afternoon in any decent neighborhood in the world is a cool buzz of active mothers and fathers and children picking up vegetables, drinks, condiments, and cereal for the night’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast. It’s adults forgetting the stresses of the day in favor of prosaic issues like sex and good meals and homework and trifling TV sitcoms. It’s children enjoying a break between the tyranny of school and homework to release pent-up energy in slick aisles while begging for candy and cookies and looking forward to riding a sugar high home. All those people were completely crushed by the supermarket and buried inside it because of the earthquake. When people talked about the many iconic buildings ground to dust by the earthquake—the Palais de Justice, the midwives’ school, the National Palace—they rarely failed to note that the supermarket had to have been at full capacity when goudou-goudou came.
At the corner of Delmas where Pétionville started, Natasha saw the old cemetery, the one that was destroyed, not by Mother Nature, but by mother mayor, a public servant with oversized renovation plans. Rue Metellus was empty. Some storefronts had their usual crowds. Where would men hang out in the middle of the day if they couldn’t hang out at garages? But most shops and restaurants were closed for the day, a strange sight, for this was usually a very busy intersection. I guess people really needed that day off, Natasha thought. God bless them.
At Place Boyer, she had to slow down and start looking for a parking spot. Poking her head inside Brasserie Quartier Latin, the fancy restaurant favored by foreigners, Natasha saw a group of them drinking and laughing at a table on a veranda. Why should they be mourning anything? Natasha thought. To hear Jean-Richard tell it, Haiti’s disaster answered many of their prayers for wealth, international adventure, and temporary sanctity. They tended to work in Haiti mostly on three-month assignments, so most of them would be returning to their less sanctimonious selves soon enough. That’s what happens to people when they go home. Nothing humbles like home.
The villa on Place Boyer where Alain Destiné was born and raised by his doting father, Villard, and his artist mother, Katherine, was not necessarily the grandest villa by Pétionville’s standards, but it was stately, with towering hedges of hibiscus and looming centuries-old almond trees, a riot of fragrant reds, pinks, and greens. Its most famous feature, of course, was the bookstore on the corner, Librarie Sidney-Nina. Named after dear expatriated cousins of Katherine’s, the store featured the smartest collection of books by Haitian authors in English, French, Spanish, and even Creole in the city, as Alain had once bragged to Natasha. Everyone from Jacques Roumain to Georges Anglade to Dany Laferrière not only had his entire bibliography stocked there, the authors also visited often, mainly to chat with Alain’s dad. A voluble raconteur with more than a passing resemblance to Harry Belafonte, Villard Destiné knew everything about everything in Haiti’s cultural history. If he liked a customer well enough, he might break out a bottle of five-star Rhum Barbancourt to share a drink or five and insist that customer take the books he was browsing home as a gift. On this day, Librarie Sidney-Nina was closed.
The green gate of the villa creaked after Natasha pushed it in. The driveway had a black Range Rover that, judging from its blanket of white dust and dry leaves, had not been driven or cleaned in a while. The windows on the second and third floors of the villa were filled with cobwebs. Natasha was nervous. Unsure what kind of welcome she’d get from Alain’s parents, she walked carefully.
Allo? Allo? She said.
Go away!
Natasha saw Alain Destiné’s father looking down on her from the first-floor balcony, and Villard was pointing a gun at her.
Get out of here! he said.
Mr. Destiné? she said. Mr. Destiné! What are you doing? Put the gun down.
What am I doing? I’m getting ready to shoot me a looter trespassing on my property. That’s what I’m doing. The question is, what the fuck are you doing here? You’re not welcome here.
I came, I came . . . to pay my respects, sir. I loved Alain too.
Alain’s dad shot Natasha. And missed. Natasha screamed and ducked and ran around the driveway frantically, looking for cover. Natasha crouched behind the Range Rover on her knees and prayed to God and Jesus her savior to save her one more time, to tell her what to do with her life, how to make things right in her fucked-up life. Then the answer came. Villard shot two more times, missing widely.
Villard! Qu’est-ce que tu fais?!
It was Katherine, merciful, sweet, even-tempered Katherine, Alain’s mom. Still hiding behind their car, Natasha heard Katherine try to calm her husband down. It’s that bitch’s fault we lost him, Villard said, crying. If it wasn’t for her, he’d still be alive.
That’s no reason to go lose your head like that, Papa, Katherine said softly. No reason at all.
That bitch . . .
I know . . .
That bitch . . . I told you she was trouble. I told you . . .
I know, Papa, I know, but Alain was in love with her. What could we do? You remember how you were at that age, when you were in love. You wanted to die for it too.
Your father almost killed me for it.
My mother wanted to poison your food.
Katherine, I’m sorry . . .
The couple embraced. They stood on the balcony holding each other for a long time in hushed silence. No parent should ever have to bury a child or have a child disappear without a trace during a sudden disaster. In the volcanic fire of his grief for his only son, Villard Destiné remembered how he’d told Alain over and over, all his life, that no matter what bad things happened to him, he was one of the lucky ones. They were a very fortunate family in a society where fortune favored precious few families. You must take the bad with the same equanimity that you take the good things that happen to you, son. No matter when you die, he often told his son, you’ll have lived a happier and more fully loved life than most people your age in Haiti or most anywhere else in the world. Such a sentiment was much easier to say than to live, Villard had realized since the earthquake, for grief had taken hold of his overachieved and exhausted soul, and he found his rage against the machine of fate hard to shake.
Villard stopped aiming his gun at his son’s girlfriend and squeezed his wife closer into his body. Villard and Katherine watched Natasha walk to her car, slowly, almost as if she welcomed a bullet in the back of her head. She looked up briefly. In the unforgiving noon sun, they saw her young face. It was an unrecognizable mask of misery and tears. They waved good-bye to her, as if to say, You’re forgiven.
Natasha nodded at them with a broken heart darted by gratitude and slid into her car. With shaking hands, she fumbled for a piece of paper in her bag. The address on it calmed her heart and reduced the tears streaming down her face from a shower to a sprinkle. She was going to go to the place she believed she should have gone years ago. She was going home. The address on the piece of paper was scribbled in Monsignor Dorélien’s hard-to-read chicken scratch. It read: The Convent of Cinq Coins, Kenscoff.
HOMECOMING
The mother superior opened the door of the Convent of Cinq Coins and sighed. Natasha looked a wreck, like someone who had been crying nonstop for a couple of hours, but the mother superior had known her for as long as Natasha had known Monsignor Dorélien, and she took her in with a sea of wordless warmth. She had a nun, Sister Hopstaken, show Natasha to her room and told Natasha to make herself at home. The room was down a long blue hall and up a few wooden stairs. Natasha came to the convent expecting to live in a cell worthy of one of America’s nightmarish prisons. Instead, she got a room with a small wooden desk topped with a black leather King James Bible and a bed with simple linens. Her new nun’s robe hung on a hanger in a closet, and she began to change clothes. Outside her window, the view of Port-au-Prince was spectacu
lar. On the best days, like today, Kenscoff was almost an hour’s drive on top of Pétionville. The quartier was the last posh neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, famous for its five-star restaurants and cold nights. It had been known to snow there. Kenscoff sat on a mountaintop overlooking lush rolling hills and plains. Looking through the window from her room, Natasha could see only a sea of white clouds this day, with glimpses of mountains and a smattering of houses that looked like tiny thatched huts. The Convent of Cinq Coins seemed to be located at the highest point of Kenscoff. The view was breathtaking and gave Natasha the feeling that she was floating above the earth, as if she had ascended to heaven without going through the messy convention of death. The only thing she heard in the house and outside was silence. Intense, monastic silence. For a girl from downtown Port-au-Prince, which was loud and rowdy even on Sunday mornings, the concept of silence—sustained, musical, opaque—was a rumor, a myth, too beautiful to ever believe it could exist in the city.
Of course, a knock at the room’s door soon interrupted Natasha’s reverie. The knock was soft. That was a distinction rarely lost to Natasha and completely appreciated.
Are you ready? the voice behind the door said.
Yes, I am, Natasha said.
Before she opened the door, Natasha tried to smooth out her look. There were no mirrors. She was a novice nun, and during her period of novitiate, she shouldn’t have been allowed to wear the full nun’s habit, but the convent seemed to have put her on a fast track, partly out of familiarity with Natasha’s relationship with the Call, but mostly out of convenience. These were painful times for the community the Catholic Church in Haiti had dedicated itself to. A war for the country’s soul could erupt if the church’s work did not hold its own alongside the work being done by all the other stakeholders, old and new, that abounded in the country. Also, the convent had no alternative, intermediate clothing available for Natasha, so she wore the outfit of a full-fledged sister, and she couldn’t help hoping she looked good in it. The black robe had to make her look skinnier at the very least. The white scarf made her look younger, like a child. Innocent. Mortal. A child in the service of the Lord.
God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Page 16
