Everything Inside

by Edwidge Danticat

  The terrace in the guest suite at the prime minister’s residence had a panoramic view of the capital city. On the outer limits of the city was the seaport. In the harbor was a cruise ship, which was the other way Callie had suggested for me to come. Not far from the seaport was the airport. Then the old city, where, Callie pointed out, Taino, Arawak, and Carib villages had been re-created, with replicas of round thatched-roof homes. In the old city were baroque- and Gothic-style forts from the colonial period when the island was ruled by Europeans of different stripes. Some of the old châteaus bordering once-thriving sugar, cotton, coffee, and tobacco plantations were in ruins, which tourists visited every day. In the newer parts of the city were the government offices, courts, hospitals, high-rises and fancy hotels, markets—both open and covered—and a basilica. On many of the hills surrounding the downtown area, tin shacks and finished and unfinished concrete houses were crammed next to one another. Their outer walls were painted in bright pinks, yellows, and greens, as if some effort had been made to turn them into a splashy collage meant to be admired from afar. On top of those hills were mansions, villas, palacios surrounded by glass-shard-capped walls.

  “So this is your country?” I said, remembering how she’d seemed insulted that I didn’t instantly realize when we met that she was from somewhere else.

  “Part of it,” she said.

  We walked back into the suite, which had a fireplace, bordered with frescoes depicting moments from the island’s history, including a scene at a slave port showing whip-wielding European traders next to a line of naked broad-chested African teenage boys and wide-hipped young women.

  “I believe he’s ready for you, madame,” the female security guard who’d carried my suitcase inside said.

  “I’ve arranged a treat for us,” Callie said.

  I followed her down a long hallway whose walls and ceiling were covered in gold leaf. Another suite similar to the one I was staying in was being used as Callie’s dressing room.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Callie said after we walked in. “I had my stylist bring some dresses for you. In different sizes, because I wasn’t sure.”

  A young man pushed a clothes rack forward and parked it between her and me. He began pulling out sequined and beaded evening gowns and holding them up against my body. I remembered playing dress-up with Callie during the time we spent together in Brooklyn. As we sipped pretend tea in my room, in my princess gowns, it was obvious even then that only one of us was playing at being a princess. Now it seemed as though we were playing dress-up again. I tried on gown after gown while she gave a thumbs-up or -down. I eventually settled on a formal yet comfortable black mermaid gown.

  “At the end of your essay ‘Seven,’ ” Callie said while I was twirling around in the mermaid gown, “you wrote that after we left New York, you stopped believing in princesses, castles, and fairy tales. Is that true?”

  I stopped twirling. I had hoped that she might read my essay, but I didn’t think it would lead to my being invited to the island to provide further clarification.

  “I’m not unhappy you didn’t use my name,” she said as I struggled to come up with an answer. “I’m glad you didn’t name the island. Only people who know can figure it out. But I’ll tell you right now, there was no fairy tale. My mother thought a lot of people wanted me and her dead as well.”

  I was starting to wonder whether she was upset about the essay, which was different from any writing I’d done for the online magazine. I mostly wrote reviews of live and recorded music, streamed and cable shows, movies, and some visual art. I had stepped out of my comfort zone to write that essay, which was part of a popular series on childhood.

  “Tell me, Cal, does your stylist have a few guys, too, in different sizes, lying around?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “We have a couple of ministers who are not old geezers,” she said. “The last of the single ones, though, is engaged to be married.”

  “What’s the engaged one minister of?” I asked.

  “Finance,” she said.

  After we ate—a huge, delicious chicken-and-mango salad—showered, and got our hair and makeup done by someone on her staff, Callie went downstairs to find her husband. I went back to the guest suite and googled Finance. Finance was one of Greg’s closest friends. He was short and brawny, like a bodybuilder. He was also one of the island’s most eligible bachelors, a national playboy. His last two semiserious girlfriends, before he got engaged, had been a singer from Barbados and an actress from Aruba. In all of his pictures, every coiled-hair strand was in place. He looked like he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror.

  * * *

  —

  The prime minister’s New Year’s Eve gala was held under a tent near the outdoor nightclub behind the residence. Callie and Greg were both dressed in white, him in an embroidered dashiki pant set, and her in an off-the-shoulder, toga-inspired gown, which in the intentionally golden lighting inside the tent made them both glow. As they welcomed the guests in the receiving line, Greg seemed to follow Callie’s lead, offering the same level of delight or coldness she did. She, then in turn he, would embrace some of the pairs warmly—they were mostly couples—then would barely wave to others.

  I watched all this from a few feet away, at the head table, which was smaller than the other hundred or so tables, which were all decorated with white candles and tall bouquets of white hibiscus. Scattered on the tables were also party hats, horns, and flutes. I was sitting next to the one other guest at the head table so far, Callie’s mother. She was wearing a black pantsuit, a pink conch-pearl choker with matching studs, and a large vintage filigree butterfly brooch.

  During their time in New York, I’d rarely seen Callie’s mother. She had mostly stayed inside Miss Ruby’s house. Whenever Callie came over to play, Miss Ruby was the one who brought her. I only heard Mrs. Morrissete speak briefly on their last night in Brooklyn, when Miss Ruby invited us over for a farewell dinner.

  At that dinner, Mrs. Morrissete said—in a hoarse voice, with a puffy face and red eyes that matched Callie’s—that she was returning to the island because that’s all she had left besides Callie. That night, as Callie ignored her dinner and sat watching teary eyed, I’d also learned, based on the questions my parents had gently asked Miss Ruby, that the Africans who’d been brought to the island by Europeans as slaves centuries before were mostly Ibo, Nago, Fula, and Dahomey. (I had listened closely so I could picture what my weepy friend was returning to.) I also learned that the unexplored land beneath the island was full of copper, silver, and gold. While Miss Ruby was talking, about midway into the meal, Mrs. Morrissete excused herself and retired to her room. Callie quickly followed.

  Mrs. Morrissete seemed no happier now than she had been in Brooklyn. Her slumped shoulders, quivering jaw, and alternating vacant stare and downcast eyes remained the same as they had been at dinner that night. I offered her my condolences about Miss Ruby, who, I’d learned in my e-mail exchanges with Callie, died a few years after they returned to the island. Callie had also shared in those e-mails that Mrs. Morrissete was living in the same suite in the prime minister’s residence that the three of them had occupied as a family, and that she rarely ventured out in public anymore, except once or twice a year.

  * * *

  —

  Finance arrived in a tuxedo with his fiancée, a four-time Olympian gold-medalist runner who was still considered one of the world’s fastest women. She was wearing a fitted silver gown and was so beloved that she got a standing ovation as she and Finance walked to their seats at the head table. Perhaps to not upset Callie and Greg, everyone remained standing until he and Callie also sat down.

  After the table filled up with Greg’s parents and a few older couples who were obviously important government officials or simply well-connected folks, Callie and Greg, Finance and the Runner, and I left Mrs. Morr
issete and the elders to their muted conversations and formed a kind of youthful clique, discussing everything from the latest worldwide music and dance crazes, to gossiping about sports celebrities the Runner knew, to discussing issue-oriented documentaries and podcasts, and rating popular movies and shows we’d binge-watched, me for work, them for fun.

  Every once in a while Greg and Finance would allow the rest of the table in and, once they’d gotten past the personal banter, lead their elders to issues they felt had been neglected in the past, like gender-based violence, gender equality, same-sex marriage, and marijuana legalization, which Finance thought could bring in much-needed revenue. One of the older men at the table abruptly told Greg that he would be better off trying to come up with a decent immigration plan.

  “Most immigration plans are essentially anti-immigration plans,” Callie, who had studied international affairs at university, said, defending her husband.

  “With all due respect, my dear lady,” the old man said, “we have to do something about all the Haitians who keep washing up on our shores.”

  “My friend Kimberly here is Haitian,” Callie said, cutting him off. “Her parents are from Haiti.”

  The table grew quiet. Everyone turned to look at me, as if to search in my face and demeanor for traces of whatever types of Haitians they were most familiar with.

  “Human beings have been migrating since the beginning of time,” I said, trying to sound as coolly authoritative as the old man, while picking up one of the New Year’s Eve party horns, which I wanted to blow in the old man’s face.

  “It’s of course not uncommon for people to look for better opportunities elsewhere,” I continued. “I bet some of your own people travel…when they want or need more than what they can get here.”

  “Forgive me for being crass,” the old man interrupted me. “But we need people who offer more as well. Not just those who take from us.” Then turning to Greg, the old man added in a tone that was meant to conclude the discussion, “If your wife’s emotions become the arbiters of your policy, then you won’t last very long in your current position.”

  I put the party horn down and tried even harder not to feel angry. After all, there were people like this everywhere who felt the same way about some group or other. But New Year’s Day is also Haitian Independence Day, so the old man might have focused on that instead.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to stay,” I said, doing my best to lighten things up a bit.

  Greg gave the old man a scolding glare, then motioned to someone on his staff to walk over to the bass player fronting the live band in a poorly lit side corner of the tent. The live band and a DJ were taking turns playing the party’s background music, and Greg now wanted the band to play.

  Callie and Greg got up to dance. My tablemates followed. The only people not dancing were me and Mrs. Morrissete, whose downturned mouth flowered into a delicate smile as she watched her daughter waltz across the dance floor with her tall and elegant husband.

  After their waltz, Callie, Finance, and the Runner sat down, and I ended up with Greg’s well-manicured hand extended toward me.

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t make you waltz,” he said.

  The DJ began playing a slow American ballad, one of those whose ubiquity we’d been criticizing earlier. I laughed at the coincidence. Or maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all.

  “I’m so glad you accepted Cal’s invitation,” he said. His accent, like Callie’s, blended many languages, but he sounded much more like everyone else on the island whom I’d heard speak so far.

  “I’m glad she invited me,” I said.

  “Cal’s been talking about you for years,” he said. “Even though you were together for such a short time, it marked her greatly.”

  I, too, had thought about Callie now and then, wondering how she’d fared after returning to her homeland. Right after Callie’s mother took Callie and Miss Ruby back to the island, my parents would call Miss Ruby once in a while, but after a few months either Miss Ruby’s number changed or she stopped responding. I once heard my parents say that they hoped Callie was getting the proper help and that her mother and great-aunt would not continue to act as though nothing life changing had happened to her.

  When I was in high school, my parents found a few pictures my dad had taken of me and Callie playing. They mentioned going on vacation to the island, but they never did more than talk about it. Callie crossed my mind again in college, but she was impossible to track. She had no digital footprint until her husband became prime minister.

  “I’m sorry about my countryman’s xenophobia,” Greg said while wrapping one hand around my waist and pinning the other to my shoulder blade. He looped me in a semicircle, then rotated back. I tried to let myself relax. He was a good dancer, the kind that does all the work.

  “Please just tell me that the guy who wants all my people out is not in charge of immigration,” I said. Our damp cheeks had to touch so he could hear me over the music.

  “He’s not,” he said. “He’s a friend of my parents.”

  I was about to ask if the Runner was also a family friend when he said, “I read your essay.”

  “You did?”

  “Cal showed it to me.”

  “What did you think?” Should I feel anxious about the piece, I wondered. My recollection of an old childhood memory seemed to mean even more to these people than I ever imagined.

  “I was still young when it happened,” he said, “but there were some terrible rumors within our very small circle about how Cal and her mum got off the island the day her father was killed.”

  I glanced over at the table, at the seat where Mrs. Morrissete had been sitting. It was empty. I looked around the tent trying to spot her, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

  “What kind of rumors?” I asked. I didn’t want to pry, but it seemed as though he wanted me to ask.

  “Cal’s father was betrayed even though he was a great prime minister.” He pulled me slightly closer, as though he did not want me to miss a word. “He lowered unemployment, increased tourism. He built more roads, schools, and hospitals than anyone had before him. Our goal is to follow in his footsteps.”

  “Was there more to his death than just the security guard?” I asked.

  “There were some rumors to that as well,” he said, “but only the guard was punished.”

  I looked over at the table where Callie was chatting with Finance and the Runner. I found the song her husband and I were dancing to rather long, then I realized that it had changed to another nearly identical ballad without my noticing.

  When the ballad ended, I heard the A section of a jazz tune, the sound of bass strings being plucked. We stopped dancing, as did everyone else on the dance floor, and turned our attention to the live band. The bass grew louder, then a snappy saxophone and sprightly trombone joined in. The bass hook returned as a bridge to the keyboard and drums until all the instruments sounded like a chorus of primal screams.

  “I requested that for you,” Greg leaned forward and whispered when the piece ended. “Charles Mingus’s ‘Haitian Fight Song.’ It’s my apology to you on behalf of my family friend.”

  Before I could say anything, the master of ceremonies, a local TV personality, announced that it was almost midnight. Servers appeared with Champagne bottles and flutes as ushers, dressed in the black and gold of the country’s flag, guided everyone outside to watch the fireworks. Greg quickly walked away. Other party guests kept stopping him as he tried to make his way back to Callie. I soon lost track of them both as everyone spilled out onto the lawn.

  At midnight came the sounds of horns blaring and corks popping and Champagne glasses clinking and the fireworks exploding in the sky while everyone shouted “Happy New Year.” I spotted Finance and the Runner and Callie and Greg up front, taking turns embracing one another. I wandered aroun
d the grounds until I found a quiet corner to call my parents to wish them a Happy New Year. No matter where I was, they always liked me to be the first person to speak to them on New Year’s.

  “Is Callie okay?” they kept asking after we’d quickly wished each other the best for the year ahead, and a happy Haitian Independence Day.

  “She seems fine,” I said.

  “And her mother?” my father asked.

  “She seems fine, too,” I said, though I wasn’t sure.

  “Oh good,” my mother said, sounding relieved.

  Somehow Callie appeared by my side after I hung up with my parents.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  * * *

  —

  The residence’s rooftop garden was bordered with concrete planters filled with red bromeliads, angel’s-trumpets, and birds-of-paradise. The lingering smoke from the fireworks filled the air, intermingling with the more pleasant scent of the flowers. At every turn was some telltale sign of Callie’s taste, which I now recognized from all my reading about her new life since I had accepted her invitation. Maquettes and kinetic sculptures followed by rows of rare orchids. A hand-carved bar with hammocks and cabanas, and under a light-strung canopy a long rosewood dining table positioned for the most far-reaching views of the city.

  Two men in tuxedos were following us. They tried to be discreet, but their constant whispering into their cuff links gave them away. They even followed us to the waist-high glass railing, which made it appear as though there were no barriers between us and the view.

  I was going to ask Callie about her mother when she said, “I want you to see this.”