Did the zombie mothers fight? Indeed they did. They wrapped their hands around their bodies, and tightened their stomachs with layers of cloth in order to press the pain inside. They stuck wire hangers inside their young daughters and scraped the evil out. They fought with their heads lowered, their eyes fixed on the ground, using as weapons plaited hair, bright satin ribbons, dresses layered in taffeta and lace.
Our nightmares became our zombie calls. We told ourselves tales of little girls who were taken by evil spirits and never seen again until they returned as skeletons, walking, tiptoeing, dancing with their families' lies. "Aba Duvalier!" they shouted even as the cries of so many little girls went unheard at night.
Now I know why I dreamt of covering the dead crow with my mother's dress after it died. Now I know why even my mother's large beautiful skirt could not contain the blood. Now I know why Gendarme Janeau could smirk and force me to hide. He knew then what I didn't know. There was no place to hide.
So now in my dreams, the dead crow killed by Gendarme Janeau resurrects itself over and over again as all spirits do. Roaming endlessly, it will not die, but will try to settle near yet another black oak, seeking peace.
MIGRATION
ANOTHER ODE TO SALT
Danielle Legros Georges
We navigate snow not ours
but grown used to, one cold foot
over another, adopt accoutrements:
a red scarf, wind-wrapped and tight,
boots, their soles teethed like sharks,
shackling our ebon ankles, the weight
of wool coats borrowed
from our ancestors, the Gauls.*
Masters at this now,
we circumvent ice
as we do time, reach home.
The salt you bend to cast
parts the snow around us.
I bend and think
of a primary sea,
harbors of danger and history,
passing through the middle
in boats a-sail in furious storms,
cargo heavy,
of mysteres, renamed,
submerged and sure,
riding dark waves,
floating long waves
to the other side of the water,
and the other side
and the next.
*Our ancestors, the Gauls (nos ancitres, les Gaulois)—a phrase from a French children's history text used widely, until recently, in Francophone primary schools.
AMERICA, WE ARE HERE
Dany Laferriere
I was trying to write a book and survive in America at the same time. (I'll never figure out how that ambition wormed its way into me.) One of those two pursuits had to go. Time to choose, man. But a problem arose: I wanted everything. That's the way drowning men are. I wanted a novel, girls (fascinating girls, the products of modernity, weight-loss diets, the mad longings of older men), alcohol, and laughter. My due—that's all. That's what America had promised me. I know America has made a lot of promises to a large number of people, but I was intent on making her keep her word. I was furious at her, and I don't like to be double-crossed. At the time, I'm sure you'll remember, at the beginning of the 1980s (so long ago!), the bars in any North American city were chock-full of confused, aging hippies—empty-eyed Africans who always had a drum within easy striking distance—the type never changes, no matter the location or the decade—Caribbeans in search of their identity, starving white poetesses who lived off alfalfa sprouts and Hindu mythology, aggressive young black girls who knew they didn't stand a chance in this insane game of roulette because the black men were only into white women, and the white guys into money and power. Late in the evening, I wandered through these lunar landscapes where sensations had long since replaced sentiment. I took notes. I scribbled away in the washrooms of crummy bars. I carried on endless conversations until dawn with starving intellectuals, out-of-work actresses, philosophers without influence, tubercular poetesses, the bottomest of the bottom dogs. I jumped into that pool once in a while and found myself in a strange bed with a girl I didn't remember having courted (I left the bar last night with the black-haired girl, I'm sure I did, so what's this bottle-blonde with the green fingernails doing here?) But I never took drugs. God had given me the gift of loud, powerful, happy contagious laughter, a child's laugh that drove girls wild. They wanted to laugh so badly, and there wasn't much to laugh about back then. When I immigrated to North America, I made sure I brought that laughter in my battered metal suitcase, an ancestral legacy. We always laughed a lot around my house. My grandfather's deep laughter would shake the walls. I laughed, I drank wine, I made love with the energy of a child who's been locked inside a candy shop, and I wrote it all down. As soon as the girl scampered off to the bathroom, I would start scribbling down notes. The edge of the bed or the corner of a table was my desk. I'd note down a good line, a sensual walk, a pained smile, all the details of life. Everything fascinated me. I wrote down everything that moved, and things never stopped moving, believe me. All around me, the world (the girl, the dress on the floor, my underwear lost in the sheets, that long naked back moving toward the stereo, then Bob Marley's music), the elements of my universe turned at top speed. How could words halt the flight of time, girls wheeling away, desire burning anew? Often I would fall asleep with my head against my old Remington, asking myself those unanswerable questions. Am I the troubadour of low-rent America, always on the edge of an overdose, up against the walls, handcuffs slapped on, with two cops breathing down my neck? America discounting her life, counting her pennies, the America of immigrants, blacks, and poor white girls who've lost their way? America of empty eyes and pallid dawn. In the end, I wrote that damned novel, and America was forced, as least as far as I was concerned, to come through on a few of her promises. I know she gives more to some than they need; with others, she swipes the hunk of stale bread from their clenched fists. But I made her pay at least a third of her debt. I'm naive, I know, I can see the audience smiling, but my mental system needs to believe in this victory, as tiny as it may be. A third of a victory. For others, not a penny of the debt has been paid. America owes an enormous amount to third world youth. I'm not just talking about historical debt (slavery, the rape of natural resources, the balance of payments, etc.), there's a sexual debt, too. Everything we've been promised by magazines, posters, the movies, television. America is a happy hunting ground, that's what gets beaten into our heads every day, come and stalk the most delicious morsels (young American beauties with long legs, pink mouths, superior smiles), come and pick the wild fruit of this new Promised Land. For you, young men of the third world, America will be a doe quivering under the buckshot of your caresses. The call went around the world, and we heard it, even the blue men of the desert heard it. Remember the global village? They've got American TV in the middle of the Sahara. Westward, ho! It was a new gold rush. And when each new arrival showed up, he was told, "Sorry, the party's over." I can still picture the sad smile of a Bedouin, old in years but still vigorous (remember, brother, those horny old goats from the Old Testament), who had sold his camel to attend the party. I met up with all of them in a tiny bar on Park Avenue. While you're waiting for the next fiesta, the Manpower counselor told us, you have to work. There's work for everyone in America (the old carrot and stick, brother). We've got you coming and going. What? Work? Our Bedouin didn't come here to work. He crossed the desert and sailed the seas because he'd been told that in America the girls were free and easy. Oh, no, you didn't quite understand! What didn't we understand from that showy sexuality, that profusion of naked bodies, that total disclosure, that Hollywood heat? You should know we have some very sophisticated devices in the desert; we can tune in America. The resolution is exceptional, and there's no interference in the Sahara. In the evening, we gather in our tents lit by the cathode screen and watch you. Watching how you do what you do is a great pleasure for us. Some pretty girl is always laughing on a beach somewhere. The next minute, a big blond gu
y shows up and jumps her. She slips between his fingers, and he chases her into the surf. She fights, but he holds her tight and both of them sink to the bottom. Every evening it's the same menu, with slight variations. The sea is bluer, the girls blonder, the guys more muscled. All our dreams revolve around this life of ease. That's what we want: the easy life. Those breasts and asses and teeth and laughter—after a while, it started affecting our libido. What could be more natural? And now, here we are in America, and you dare tell us that we didn't understand? Understand what? I ask the question again. What were we supposed to have understood? You made us mad with desire. Today, we stand before you, a long chain of men (in our country, adventure is the realm of men), penises erect, appetites insatiable, ready for the battle of the sexes and the races. We'll fight to the finish, America.
A CAGE OF WORDS
Joel Dreyfuss
I call it "the Phrase" and it comes up almost anytime Haiti is mentioned in the news: the Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere. These seven words represent a classic example of something absolutely true and absolutely meaningless at the same time.
On a recent trip to Haiti, I asked a young journalist working for an international news organization why the Phrase always appeared in her stories. "Even when I don't put it in," she confided, "the editors add it to the story."
The Phrase is a box, a metaphorical prison. If Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, that fact is supposed to place everything in context. Why we have such suicidal politics. Why we have such selfish politicians. Why we suffer so much misery. Why our people brave death on the high seas to wash up on the shores of Florida. After all, in this age where an advocacy of free markets is a substitute for foreign policy and Internet billionaires are created by the minute, being poor automatically makes you suspect. You must have some moral failing, some fatal flaw, some cultural blindness to not be prosperous. And what applies to the individual also applies to entire countries.
In my parents' generation, more than a few middle-class Haitians tried to deny that poverty back home was so prevalent. When I heard older Haitians stammer and object to the characterization, I wondered if they were trying to put Haiti's best foot forward, or just trying to convince themselves. Of course, the poverty was not always as obvious as it is now, having moved from the countryside into Port-au-Prince so that it spills into the main thoroughfares and the fashionable neighborhoods. Too many of us Dyasporas, having the advantage of distance to confront the truths of Haiti, would not even consider denying the desperate state of our poor brethren.
But the Phrase still grates with us because it also denies so much else about Haiti: our art, our music, our rich Afro-Euro-American culture. It denies the humanity of Haitians, the capacity to survive, to overcome, even to triumph over this poverty, a historical experience we share with so many other in this same Western Hemisphere. The Second American Invasion cast a harsh media spotlight on Haiti. The first black republic got more attention from the powerful news organizations of the West than it ever had in its history. But that scrutiny was ultimately disappointing. We learned once again that coverage is not the same as understanding. The Phrase became an easy out for reporters confronting the complexities they could barely begin to plumb. What a difference it would have been if American, or French, or British journalists had looked through the camera at their audience and declared, "Yes, this is a poor country, but like Ireland or Portugal, it has also produced great art. Yes, this poor country has suffered brutal government and yet, like Russia or Brazil, it has produced great writers and scholars. Yes, many of Haiti's most downtrodden, like the Jews in America or the Palestinians in the Middle East, have fled and achieved more success in exile than they ever would at home." Such statements would have linked Haiti to the rest of the world. They would have made it seem less mysterious, less unsolvable, less exotic. But then, that really wasn't the purpose of most reporting about Haiti over the last few years. Keeping the veil over the island was easier than trying to understand factions and divisions and mistrust and history. And it gave America an out if the intervention failed. So foreign journalists fell back on the Phrase. It was shorthand. It was neat. And it told the world nothing about Haiti that it didn't already know.
THE RED DRESS
Patricia Benoit
1982. TV. The nightly news. Bodies on the beach, faces behind barbed wire. Any one of them could be related to me. Rudolph Giuliani, then assistant attorney general of the United States, now New York City mayor, finger wagging: we have no problem with refugees as long as they come by the proper channels: (Rude refugees. Bad refugees. Ca ne se fait pas, it's just not done to come by boat and die on U.S. beaches). These refugees are economic, not political. There are no human-rights abuses in Haiti.
I want to break the television.
What about the women, men, and children who died fighting for freedom? What about my father, imprisoned then released and lucky enough to escape before the macoutes came for him again and lucky enough to get asylum and bring us out by the proper channels twenty years ago? I get tired of yelling and decide to do something.
The United States government transforms an abandoned building into a detention center in Brooklyn's former Navy Yard. After much political wrangling, a group of activist priests, themselves exiled by the Duvalier dictatorship, are finally allowed to organize English classes in the center.
I start teaching in one of those January winters so hard on island people. It is an out-of-the-way place, a group of abandoned industrial buildings not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, several highway overpasses, and a housing project. The streets are almost empty.
A hundred women and men live in this red building with windows covered with dirt and wire mesh. Black and Latino guards have been hired especially for the occasion. After the guard at the door inspects the contents of my bag, he flashes a smile and reprises with perfect comic timing the refrain of a television commercial: "Welcome to Roach Motel. Roaches check in but they don't check out." Humor as a weapon against a dirty job?
The men and women have been separated into different parts of the building and are not allowed to see each other. There is no yard, no place for physical activity or even a short walk in the sun.
When I start, they have been there for two months. They will end up spending more than a year without ever going out, except for the rare authorized medical or legal appointment.
After I pass inspection I wait as several guards bring the women out of the "living" area, one by one, through a metal door. There are about twenty of them, many in their twenties like me, none older than fifty, all waiting impatiently to get on with their lives. This must be a special occasion, a break in the monotony, for the women make the most of the secondhand clothing donated through the Haitian priests. They dress impeccably. No pants; only dresses, skirts and blouses, pretty and demure as if for church. The youngest, barely out of their teens, highlight their youth and beauty with perfect makeup and brightly painted nails.
I am not allowed into the living area, but later the women tell me that there are dormitories with bunk beds, guards everywhere, and a common room with the television always on. The windows are so dirty they can barely see outside. Where are we? What is this place? Nothing to do except watch TV. No family to take care of. No meals to cook. They miss their husbands and boyfriends, and relatives and friends who are on the other side of these walls and on the other side of the sea. Six months later, one of their lawyers argues unsuccessfully to at least let them have rice and beans instead of hot dogs and canned food.
Class is in a room with fluorescent lighting, no windows, and a guard at the door. I teach but I also ask for help with my Kreyol. My pronunciation is bad. I make mistakes. They laugh. We laugh together. This helps narrow the gulf between us: my twenty years of exile.
A face, an expression, a gesture reminds me of an aunt, a friend, my grandmother. Do you need anything? I ask.
They give me letters to send back home to worrying rela
tives and dictate a list of hair products. I stuff the letters into my shoulder bag and take them to the post office. I feel useful.
The night before class, I transfer hair relaxers and pomades from their forbidden glass containers (glass shards as a way out?) into plastic ones.
As the Latina guard carefully examines the containers and their messy contents, she finally blurts out: They have so many donations! People have given them so much, so many boxes, we have to put them in special storage! Looks at me like I'm stupid, like I've been had, taken by people already getting so much for free. They have so much, she says. Doesn't she know about divide and conquer? Setting the have-little against the have-not? Doesn't she know they—we— are the descendants of Toussaint and Dessalines, who led the only successful slave uprising in the history of the world and defeated Napoleon's troops and founded the first black republic? She probably doesn't even think I'm Haitian.
I want to narrow the gap. I am lucky. They are unlucky. Accidents of birth. I give out my home phone number in case of emergencies. I hesitate slightly before I do, fearing a deluge of phone calls, but days pass and no one calls, until Philocia. She is one of the youngest, distracted and hesitant whenever I ask her a question, not one of my best students.
Please, she says, can you do something for me?
Of course, I say, worried by her sudden assertiveness.
Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States Page 6