Just before he leaves, we hear something drop with a bang like a firecracker. “What was that?” I say, startled.
“The anacahuita tree,” Ignacio explains. “There’s a great big one right next to the grave.”
The pods of the anacahuita are known for exploding when they hit the ground. Oh dear, I think, there goes my peaceful eternity!
When he has gone, the silence is so profound, I wonder if perhaps I have already died. But soon enough, the sound of traffic starts up as the city wakes to work. Horns blare, annoyed cars navigating the piles of garbage on the streets. An occasional siren wails. A woman calls out for Juan to remember the mangoes on his way home. Early Friday morning in the land where I was born.
I lean forward, my hands out, to find my stone and check the name. But the bench is placed too far from the graves, and I almost fall over on my face. Just as I regain my balance, I sit up, tense and listen. There is a stirring nearby. Someone is approaching furtively, and suddenly I wonder if it was foolish after all to let Ignacio leave me alone in a deserted cemetery in a capital city increasingly known for its crime.
“Who is there, please?”
“It’s just me, doña,” a boy’s voice calls out. He introduces himself: José Duarte Gómez Romero.
“They call me Duarte.” Duarte is from Los Millones, a nearby barrio, named not for the millionaires who do not live there but for the million poor who do. He comes here by foot every morning, weeding grave sites for small change. “Would you like me to do your plot?”
“Are there weeds here?”
The boy is silent. No doubt, he thinks I am tricking him with my silly question. He has not registered that I cannot see very well. He comes closer. “Can’t you see, doña?”
“Not as well as I use to,” I explain to him. In some respects, I might add, much better than I used to. “I would like your help, Duarte. The stone on the left there at the bottom. What does it say?”
Again he is silent. “The one at the very bottom on this side,” I say, waving my left hand. Not a word from him. Finally, it dawns on me. In Cuba, he would know how to read. He would not be picking weeds on a schoolday. “Put my hand on that stone,” I tell him, rising and coming to kneel by him. How I will get back up is anyone’s guess. “The one at the bottom there.”
His smaller hand closes over mine and he leads my fingers over the cut letters. I feel the satisfying curves of my full name. My nieces kept their promise!
The boy has guided my hand, and now I put my hand over his. “Your turn,” I say to him. (My José Duarte in Los Millones!) Together we trace the grooves in the stone, he repeating the name of each letter after me. “Very good,” I tell him when we have done this several times. “Now you do it by yourself.
He tries again and again, until he gets it right.
Salomé Camila Henríquez Ureña
9 April 1894–
12 September 1973
E.P.D.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO acknowledge the many people who made this book possible. Helpers and colleagues in Middlebury College, Vassar College, New York, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic offered their books, knowledge, comments, insights, memories. To all of you, mis gracias and heartfelt thanks. Never has it been truer that without your help, I could not have written this book.
But every book has godparents, and these I will mention by name:
Gracias to the padrinos: José Israel Cuello, who one day invited me over to his house for una sorpresa and handed me the original diary that Pedro Henríquez Ureña kept after his mother’s death with the full history of the family, and told me, with that incomparable Dominican generosity, that I could borrow this treasure until I needed it no longer. And gracias, too, to Arístides Incháustegui, opera singer turned historian, who gave generously of his time, his research, his insights into the figures of the past. And to Ricardo Repilado, now in his nineties, living in Santiago de Cuba, who brought the young tutor, Miss Camila, to my imagination, including her slightly “nasal” voice that always quavered with strain, and who before my departure gave me another treasure, the 1920 edition of Salomé’s poems, because, he said, “I am an old man, soltero, sin hijos, and when I die, no one will end up with this book that will get as much pleasure from it as you.” Finally to Roberto Véguez, colleague at Middlebury College, whose help ranged from details of Spanish punctuation to the names of streets in his hometown of Santiago de Cuba. Mil gracias.
And to the madrinas: Chiqui Vicioso, who five years ago, just after I finished In the Time of the Butterflies (the ink was not yet dry!), sat me down in her apartamento in Santo Domingo and loaned me her copy of the just-published Epistolario of the Henríquez Ureña family, and a copy of the poems of Salomé, and like some bossy musa said, “Your next book, Julia!” (Chiqui went on to write her own prize-winning play about Salomé, Cartas a una ausencia.) And to the other madrina, Shannon Ravenel, who encouraged me every step of the way. Gracias for the faith and the excellent “invisible” help throughout.
As always, my thanks to my agent, Susan Bergholz, indefatigable luchadora and guardian angel at the writing door who protects the space and time to do the work.
Finally, my deepest gracias are reserved for my compañero Bill, who has accompanied me over the years through a thousand and one and more pages that I could not have written without his help, his photographs, his sense of adventure, his faith, and his wonderful home-cooked meals.
In writing my book, I read and reread Salomé Ureña’s poems, gathered together in several editions: beginning with that first publication of her youthful poems, Poesías de Salomé Ureña (Santo Domingo: Amigos del País, 1880); followed by Poesías, compiled by her son Pedro (Madrid: 1920); then the first complete, centennial edition, Poesías completas (Ciudad Trujillo: Impresora Dominicana, 1950); a later edition, Poesías completas, collected with an introduction and excellent notes by Diógenes Céspedes (Santo Domingo: Editora Corripio, 1989); and most recently, Chiqui Vicioso’s own edition, Poesías completas (Santo Domingo: Comisión Permanente de la Feria Nacional del Libro, 1997). In addition to these editions, the two-volume Epistolario, containing much of correspondence of the Henríquez Ureña family, provided enormous insight into Salomé’s relationship with Pancho and the dynamics of this talented, complicated family (Santo Domingo: Editora Corripio, 1996). My translations of Salomé’s poetry are approximations/improvisations in English of her own words in Spanish.
Every one of these texts and each one of these helpers, as well as many left unnamed, enabled me to recover the history and poetry and presences of the past. But in thanking them, I would stress that all inventions, opinions, portrayals, errors in this book are my sole responsibility. This is not biography or historical portraiture or even a record of all I learned, but a work of the imagination.
The Salomé and Camila you will find in these pages are fictional characters based on historical figures, but they are re-created in the light of questions that we can only answer, as they did, with our own lives: Who are we as a people? What is a patria? How do we serve? Is love stronger than anything else in the world? Given the continuing struggles in Our America to understand and create ourselves as countries and as individuals, this book is an effort to understand the great silence from which these two women emerged and into which they have disappeared, leaving us to dream up their stories and take up the burden of their songs.
Virgencita de la Altagracia, gracias por acompañarme, paso por paso, palabra por palabra.
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2000 by Julia Alvarez. All rights reserved.
This work of fiction is based on historical facts referred to
in the author’s Acknowledgments on pages 355
–357.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN 9781616201036
We hope you enjoy this special preview of Julia Alvarez’s latest book,
A Wedding in Haiti,
coming soon in paperback from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Author’s Note
In telling this story, I am not claiming to be an authority on Haitian matters. This is a book about a friendship with a young Haitian, Piti, who happened into a farm and literacy project my husband and I set up in my native country, the Dominican Republic. Through that friendship has come an opportunity to discover my neighbor country, who was and still is “the sister I hardly knew.” But these two journeys to Haiti are only the beginning of an evolving relationship, which has deepened with the writing of this book. My friendship with Piti and Eseline and little Ludy and their extended families and friends back in Haiti also continues to evolve and teach me how much is possible when we step outside the boundaries that separate us one from the other.
Julia Alvarez
September 2009–October 2011
con la Altagracia a mi lado
ONE
Going to Piti’s Wedding in Haiti
Circa 2001, the mountains of the Dominican Republic
My husband and I have an ongoing debate about how old Piti was when we first met him. I say Piti was seventeen at the most. My husband claims he was older, maybe nineteen, even possibly twenty. Piti himself isn’t sure what year we met him. But he has been working in the mountains of the Dominican Republic since he first crossed the border from Haiti in 2001 when he was seventeen years old.
Bill and I might have forgotten the year, but we distinctly remember the first time we met Piti. It was late afternoon, and we were driving past the barracks-type housing where he lived with half a dozen other Haitian workers on a neighboring farm. On the concrete apron in front, the group was horsing around, like young people having fun all over the world. Piti, whose name in Kreyòl means “little one,” was the smallest of the group, short and slender with the round face of a boy. He was putting the finishing touches on a small kite he was making.
I asked Bill to stop the pickup, as I hadn’t seen one of these homemade chichiguas since I was a child. I tried to explain this to Piti, who at that point didn’t understand much Spanish. His response was to grin and offer me his kite. I declined and asked if I could take his picture instead.
On the next trip, I made a point of finding Piti so I could give him the photo in the small album I’d brought as a gift. You’d have thought I was giving him the keys to a new motorcycle. He kept glancing at the photo, grinning and repeating, “Piti, Piti!” as if to convince himself that he was the boy in the photo. Or maybe he was saying thank you. “Mèsi, mèsi” can sound like “Piti, Piti,” to an ear unused to Kreyòl.
A friendship began. Every trip I sought him out, brought him a shirt, a pair of jeans, a bag in which to cart his belongings back and forth on his periodic and dangerous crossings of the border.
What I felt toward the boy was unaccountably maternal. Somewhere in Haiti, a mother had sent her young son to the wealthier neighbor country to help the impoverished family. Maybe this very moment she was praying that her boy be safe, earn good money, encounter kind people. Every time I spotted the grinning boy with worried eyes, I felt the pressure of that mother’s prayer in my own eyes. Tears would spring up and a big feeling fill my heart. Who knows why we fall in love with people who are nothing to us?
A coffee farm or a mistress?
Over the years, Bill and I got to see a lot of Piti. Whenever we could get away from our lives and jobs in Vermont—short trips of a week, longer trips of a few weeks—we headed for the Dominican mountains. We had become coffee farmers.
Every time I get started on this story, the curtain rises on that vaudeville act that long-term couples fall into: who did what first and how did we get in this fix.
It began in 1997 with a writing assignment for the Nature Conservancy. I was asked to visit the Cordillera Central, the central mountain range that runs diagonally across the island, and write a story about anything that caught my interest. While there, Bill and I met a group of impoverished coffee farmers who were struggling to survive on their small plots. They asked if we would help them.
We both said of course we’d help. I meant help as in: I’d write a terrific article that would bring advocates to their cause. Bill meant help, as in roll-up-your-sleeves and really help. I should have seen it coming. Having grown up in rural Nebraska with firsthand experience of the disappearance of family farms, Bill has a soft spot in his heart for small farmers.
We ended up buying up deforested land and joining their efforts to grow coffee the traditional way, under shade trees, organically by default. (Who could afford pesticides?) We also agreed to help find a decent market for our pooled coffee under the name Alta Gracia, as we called our sixty, then a hundred, and then, at final count, two hundred and sixty acres of now reforested land. I keep saying “we,” but, of course, I mean the marital “we,” as in my stubborn beloved announces we are going to be coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic, and I say, “But, honey, how can we? We live in Vermont!”
Of course, I fell in with Don Honey, as the locals started calling Bill, when they kept hearing me calling him “honey, this,” “honey, that.” The jokey way I explained our decision to my baffled family and friends was that it was either a coffee farm or a mistress. Over the years, I admit, I’ve had moments when I wondered if a mistress might not have been easier.
We were naïve—yes, now the “we” includes both of us: We hired a series of bad farm managers. We left money in the wrong hands for payrolls never paid. One manager was a drunk who had a local mistress and used the payroll to pay everyone in her family, whether they worked on the farm or not. Another, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who we thought would be safe because he wouldn’t drink or steal or have a mistress, proved to be bossy and lazy. He was el capataz, he boasted to his underlings, the jefe, the foreman. He didn’t have to work. Every day turned out to be a sabbath for him. His hands should have been a tip-off, pink-palmed with buffed nails. Another manager left for New York on a visa I helped him get. (Like I said, it takes two fools to try to run a coffee farm from another country.)
Still, if given the choice, I would probably do it again. As I’ve told Bill many a time—and this gets me in trouble—even if in the end we’re going to be royally taken, I’d still rather put my check mark on the side of light. Otherwise, all the way to being proved right, I’d have turned into the kind of cynic who has opted for a smaller version of her life.
And things have slowly improved on the mountain. Over the years, the quality of the coffee being grown in the area has gotten better. Local farmers are being paid the Fair Trade price or higher, and the land is being farmed organically. We also started a school on our own farm after we discovered that none of our neighbors, adults or children, could read or write. It helps that I’m associated with a college, with ready access to a pool of young people eager to help. Every year, for a small stipend, a graduating senior signs on to be the volunteer teacher. Recently, we added a second volunteer to focus on community projects and help out with the literacy effort.
During the tenure of one of the better managers, Piti was hired to work on the farm. It happened while we were stateside, and when we arrived, what a wonderful surprise to find him at our door. “Soy de ustedes.” I am yours. “No, no, no,” we protested. We are the ones in your debt for coming to work at Alta Gracia.
Piti later told me how it had happened. His Haitian friend Pablo had found work on a farm belonging to some Americanos. (Because I’m white, married to a gringo, and living in Vermont, I’m considered American.) It was a good place: decent accommodations, reasonable hours, Fair Trade wages “even for Haitians.” Piti put two and two together. The chichigua lady and Don Honey. We were not in country at the time, so Piti applied to the foreman, who
took one look at this runt of a guy and shook his head. Piti offered to work the day, and, if at the end, he hadn’t done as much clearing as the other fellows on the crew, he didn’t have to be paid.
Piti turned out to be such a good worker that he became a regular. His reputation spread. After several years at Alta Gracia, he was offered a job as a foreman at a farm down the road. Piti had become a capataz! One with calloused hands and cracked fingernails who could outwork any man, Haitian or Dominican.
He was also a lot of fun. Nights when we were on the farm, it was open house at our little casita. Whoever was around sat down to eat supper with us. Afterward came the entertainment. At some point, a visiting student taught Piti and Pablo to play the guitar, then gave it to them. A youth group left a second guitar. Bill and I bought a third. Then, like young people all over the world, Piti and Pablo and two other Haitian friends formed a band. Mostly they sang hymns for their evangelical church. Beautiful, plaintive gospel songs à la “Amazing Grace,” in which the down-and-out meet Jesus, and the rest is grace. We’d all sing along, and invariably, Bill and I would look at each other, teary-eyed, and smile.
And so, the curtain falls on the coffee-farm vaudeville act.
It was on one of those evenings that I promised Piti I’d be there on his wedding day. A far-off event, it seemed, since the boy was then only twenty, at most, and looked fifteen. One of those big-hearted promises you make that you never think you’ll be called on to deliver someday.
© 2012 by Julia Alvarez. All rights reserved.
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
The photographs in this book are credited as follows: Isaías Orozco Lang, page 3; Nicole Sánchez, page 10; Bill Eichner, pages 38, 39, 74, 82, 83, 100, 200, 216, 219; Homero, pages 54, 55, 66, 67, 69, 104, 123; Carlos Barria (Reuters), page 143; Mikaela, pages 199, 207, 210, 235; Ana Alvarez, page 173; Thony Belizaire (AFP/Getty Images), page 242. All others by the author, except for page 25, from the author’s collection.
In the Name of Salome Page 34
