Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

by Edwidge Danticat

  Once I'd told him, two months passed before my father spoke to me again, but when he did he gave his consent. We sat down in his room and he told me that he knew I was a good girl, that I was going to school to study and better myself. I agreed. I had won. Afterward I did something that few Haitian girls my age did: I attended my senior prom and at my father's suggestion arranged to sleep over at my best friend's house to avoid traveling alone late that night. Only when I got to sleep away from home—a serious no-no— did I understand my victory. My father and mother were letting me go.

  If I didn't know how to speak to my family before, I certainly couldn't speak to them now. I'd never learned how to talk to my family without being on guard, without always preparing to counteract my father's No in some way. No, Iln'y a pas de text could not explain my foreignness that first year away from home, nor could it explain the place my parents called Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn but I knew as Sunset Park. Back then I wanted to escape the fate of never knowing what I was capable of because I was black, because I was a Haitian girl, because I was poor. That overwhelming desire sustained me through the college years. But in graduate school, I suddenly needed to talk to my mother about what it meant to actually escape. I wanted to speak to her of what I had spent my whole life unconsciously running from: her powerlessness.

  During one of my tirades against my family, my mother once asked me, "If we are these terrible things, then what are you?" Only now can I say, I am my mother. I am my father. I am Fifth Avenue— also known as Sunset Park—Brooklyn. And to do what life and graduate school requires of me, I need to make peace with that. I need to learn to speak with a different part of myself. I no longer write unmailed letters to my mother. I call her and tell her things I didn't know I could say.

  During the 1995-96 school year, I went looking for Haitians outside of my family. My whole life I'd never had one Haitian friend. I decided to volunteer my Saturday mornings with other Haitian women mentoring Haitian girls who reminded me of myself. Looking back I wondered what, if anything, the great thinkers like Derrida, De Man, Foucault, or Johnson could say that didn't seem to mock me and the things I had done, the circular search I had been on, had always been on, in language. How could they account for what I knew about living in shadows, in crevices, dying each time I remade myself, surviving in gaps or waiting on that one elliptical mark for a space to enter.

  There are people whose spirits are destroyed by not being able to conquer a language, people like my parents for example. They speak in heavily accented English, and must sometimes use their children's voices instead of their own. They do not get to talk about their experiences but hope that their children will even things out in the future and make them right. Perhaps my mother had given birth to me so that I could do all the things that she never did. Only now, as I learn to speak forgotten words, am I beginning to understand her bravery. Even among new Haitian friends, some encountered in Boston and others while I spent hours on the prettiest Haitian beach, in the prettiest Haitian sea, I find myself mourning, for her and for myself. Perhaps to really make things right, I have to accept my own version of Haiti, to become my own Haitian daughter.

  MAP VIV: MY LIFE AS A NYABINGHI RAZETTE

  Marie Nadine Pierre

  I am a Nyabinghi Razette. Most people identify me as a Rastafarian. The Nyabinghi was an army of women and men brought together by Haile Selassie I, the Emperor of Ethiopia, to fight oppression. Among Rastafarians, Nyabinghi means "death to all oppressors." Razette was coined by Sistren Jahzinine and it refers to a female Rastafarian. As a Nyabinghi Rastafarian, I believe in the divinity of Haile Selassie I and the Empress Menen.

  My life as a Nyabinghi Razette has not earned me friends nor has it brought me wealth. However it has connected me even more to my Haitian self and has given me the aesthetic and spiritual freedom that I have always sought. Some people feel that a Haitian cannot be a Rastafarian. I don't see any contradiction between my lifestyle as a Rastafarian and my ethnic identity as a Haitian. Those who do not see the obvious parallels between us have a narrow view of both Haitians and Rastafarians.

  Perhaps the closest analogy that can be drawn between Haitians and Rastafarians is through spirituality. Haitians and Rastafarians share spiritual paths (Vodou and Rastafarl) that have roots in Africa and that continue to act as positive forces in the world. Members of the African diasporas from different countries practice their own forms of spirituality such as Obeah, Condomble, and Santeria, just as there are different groups of Rastafarians, from the Twelve Tribe Rastas to the Nazarite Rastas.

  Another issue that promotes the separatist view between Haitians and Rastafarians is language. In the Rastafarian trod, or lifestyle, the English language is prominent. Irits, the Rastafarian language, which is not to be confused with Jamaican patois, is overly influenced by English to the extent of drowning out other languages such as Haitian Kreyol. I am often appalled at the ethnocentric perspective of some English-speaking Rastafarians who go to great lengths to discredit and discourage other languages, especially Haitian Kreyol. A transnational Haitian, I was born in the United States and spent my formative years (age one through eleven) in Haiti; I speak English well enough so that it is relatively easier for me to adapt to Irits. At the same time, I have to recognize that Irits is one way that most non-Kreyol-speaking Rastas identify themselves as other-than-Haitian.

  In spite of these struggles in and outside of the trod, my faith as a Nyabinghi Rastafarian could never cancel out my identity as a Haitian. I love Haitian music: mizik rasin, konpa; Haitian food: diri hole and barman peze. Now, as a vegan who does not eat meat, I cook brown rice with peas and I eat tofu and seitan instead of griyo and boulet. In fact, my version of Ital, or Rastafarian cooking, is Haitian food with vegan substitutes. By adopting an Ital or vegan lifestyle, I am fighting the diseases that have plagued many people in my life, including family members, friends, and acquaintances, who have suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart failure. Without forcing my lifestyle on anyone, I do think that a Rastafarian vegan diet might help many Haitians in the United States who are living under stressful conditions in crowded urban centers in New York, Boston, and Miami or are adjusting from a familiar tropical climate to a cold foreign one.

  One of the most treasured manifestations of my life as a Razette and as a Haitian is expressing my love of colors, especially in fabrics, in dresses and skirts, as in the regal dress and headwear that African women wear. I love to wrap my dreadlocks in a beautiful festive Afrocentric fabric, praying for strength as I do from my African and Haitian ancestors.

  During Nyabinghis, when Rastafarians gather to chant praises or Isis to the Empress and Emperor of Ethiopia, men are asked to uncover their dreadlocks while women are asked to cover theirs. When I was a "bald head" or had not yet become a Nyabinghi Razette, I thought that black people, including Haitians, who read the Bible were being brainwashed into accepting white domination. However, as a Razette, I became aware of the fact that many of the people described in the Bible, including the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon, and Jesus, are black Africans. Since contemporary scientific evidence shows that civilization began on the African continent, it follows then that Eve's and Adam's descendants would be black.

  Rastafarl, provides me with a space to explore such ideas. Being a Razette gives me the spiritual freedom to create and re-create myself as a woman of physical and spiritual strength and power. My identity as a transnational Nyabinghi Razette, Haitian, working-class, dark-skinned black woman, doctoral candidate, mother, and wife is best captured by the creative and artistic framework of the collage that joins me not only to the immediate Haitian dyaspora in the United States, but to the larger African community all over the world.

  My life as a Nyabinghi Razette encourages me to seek the truth about the condition of all black Africans on earth. Both as a Razette and a Haitian, my goal has always been to be free and to be myself. Both as a Razette and a Haitian, I want to live with the truth that black
people have been the makers and builders of strong and beautiful civilizations. And they will continue to be.

  EXILED

  Sandy Alexandre

  I was twelve years old when I was tricked into exile. One weekday morning, as I was preparing to catch the school bus, my mother confronted me with her latest finding in what was then my burgeoning delinquency problem. Because I had neglected to cover the pot of rice from last night's dinner, the cockroaches had easily invaded and spoiled our leftovers. We quarreled: She blamed; I denied. And suddenly, forgetting to whom I was speaking, I made the horrible mistake of responding to one of her comments with the expletive "So?" In retrospect, I must have said the word with too strong a hint of exasperation, with too much of the sense that I had grown quickly inconvenienced by her diatribe. Not only had I said "So?" I had dramatized it by rolling my big insolent eyes. She had never liked that word so; she thought it was too curt, too arrogant, and too defiant. The word had no Haitian equivalent to which she could relate, against which she could measure its power. Especially now that it was being used in the context of an argument, she felt safe in assuming the worst of a word whose meaning she did not completely understand. "Pa di'm so," she said as she turned to stare at me in utter disbelief and disgust. "Don't tell me so," she repeated. "Do I look like one of your cronies that you can speak to me in such a disrespectful way?" My mother and I had been having many arguments like this one lately, but this dispute finally brought our conflict to a crisis.

  She had had enough of my attitude. She deemed me too Americanized— too saucy—to handle. Her Haitian upbringing (the ruler by which she measured good and evil) could no longer tolerate such unfilial behavior, so she threatened to punish me by sending me back to New York to live with my father. She warned that as soon as I returned home from school, I would find my bags packed and ready for me to be sent away. The sauciness lingered: "Good!" I retorted. "I don't like Florida anyway!" Not taking her threat seriously, I sauntered off to school with an air of cool defiance. But because of the argument, I knew I had missed my bus and so looked more the fool than the victor I wanted to be; to save some face, I walked out of the house singing, "I love New York, I love New York" to the tune of a commercial jingle that she and I both knew. Clearly, my eyes were not the only things on a roll!

  When I returned home, sure enough, my mother handed me my luggage and then, along with my uncle, drove me to the airport. Walking through the airport, I summoned the same cool saunter of nonchalance that allowed me to keep my dignity only a few hours before. But underneath that so cool exterior lay a completely incredulous and regretful prodigal daughter. How could I be so foolish? How can she be so serious? She's blown this thing out of proportion. Does she really mean to send me away? Am I really all that bad? Why must I always be so rebellious? Why does the sign over my flight gate read: DEPARTURE TO PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI?

  In the fifteen minutes before I was to board the plane, my mother, with a smug smile of victory, explained that I was actually going to be living with her sister in Haiti. Her announcement was the "Ta da!" of a magician whose craft was more entertaining to himself than to his audience. So, while she was being thrilled by her own perspicacity, I couldn't see the humor nor appreciate the genius behind the trick of changing flight destinations. Although her decision was obviously final, I was too shocked to accept the reality that she had proudly unveiled before me. I was in a state of denial. I found her reasons neither sufficient nor strong enough to justify my punishment: "It's for your own good; You're too much, too incorrigible." And the inevitable, "Children in Haiti don't disrespect their elders. You'll learn from them," she predicted, "to comport yourself as a child." Those oft-referred-to "children in Haiti" had some nerve, to keep reminding my mother of how horrible a child I was. How tired I was of hearing my mother sing the praises of these Haitian angels! But soon, whether I liked it or not, I was also going to be—if even just superficially—a child of Haiti.

  When it dawned on me that I had been so cleverly deceived, that I was indeed going to Haiti, a place I imagined had no bathrooms, no refrigerators, and no English, I started to cry and then to scream out of sheer terror. Through my tear-glazed eyes, I spied a flight attendant who had a look of grave concern and pity; so, choosing fight over flight (pun intended), I grabbed the opportunity to try to save myself from banishment.

  "Don't cry," she said. "What's wrong?"

  Pointing to my uncle as if he were the guilty one in a criminal line-up, I sobbed: "He's not my father! He's (gasp for air and then a phlegmful sniff-sniff) not my father!" I wanted to convey the impression that I was being abducted by a complete stranger. My pointing, trembling, finger and my crying eyes combined to form a plea for help, to make me a paragon of victimization. Save me! I exuded.

  You can imagine the commotion that my outburst caused. The flight attendant was as horrified as I had predicted. I knew that I could appeal to the sensibilities of an America that, at the time, wanted the children on its milk cartons found and their kidnappers prosecuted. Certainly, she was not going to stand idly by while, right before her very eyes, I became an "unsolved mystery."

  To this day, I am still surprised at the desperate measures to which I lowered myself to save myself from Haiti. But this tactic only helped to stall the expulsion process. The exile must go on! My mother quickly explained the situation and after everyone was mollified, the attendant escorted me to my seat. I had been defeated.

  Had I known then what I know now, I would have understood both the comedy and the import behind the situation in which I found myself, for on the plane I was surrounded by symbols that marked my situation as a potentially profound, enlightening, and extraordinary one. To my right, on the seat beside me, sat a middle-aged Haitian woman who was deeply embittered about the ruckus that I had caused. She was "familiar with my kind," and with a sort of "fire and brimstone" speech that she seemed to have saved for this moment, she accused me of being an ingrate, a child too ripe for my age, a Haitian American gone too American. Indeed, she knew me too well! As if she had been planted on the plane by my mother, she continued to torment me about the many ways in which my punishment was justified. That my plane instead of heading north was flying south seemed ironically appropriate—Haiti was to be my Hades. I knew her "kind" too, and her finding pleasure in my plight made me decide that I didn't like her too much.

  To my left sat a Haitian man in his early thirties, who confessed— with a hint of pride—that he himself had been in my present predicament when he was just a young boy going through his adolescent, vagabon stage. "When I got to Haiti, I sold all of my clothes and returned to the States. Don't worry, you can do the same thing," he advised. So while Mrs. Fire and Brimstone castigated, I wondered if my mother had packed my favorite green-and-black dress. I could get a lot of money for that one, I assured myself. How symbolic was my seating arrangement—between the good on the right and the not so good on the left. This exile was a parable in the making!

  When I arrived in Port-Au-Prince, I was immediately met by my uncle Yvero. "Sandee!" he called out as he rushed over to help me with my bags. "Your mother told me all about your coming." He smiled as he said this, and even though I felt miserable, I couldn't help but smile back at his genuine happiness to see me. Did he know why I had been sent? Would I be able to continue relying on his reassuring smile or would he turn against me—the ingrate, juvenile delinquent—when he discovered my reason for being here? His smile comforted me but it also renewed my sense of shame. I knew that I didn't deserve to be smiled at. I sought no comfort because I was too tired and defeated. 1 sought no comfort because I refused to believe that there was any to be found in Haiti. If I were never going to see America again, at least I could wallow in the familiar territory of self-pity. But, this was only temporary, because I had resigned myself to exile; that is, I had surrendered. I had no other choice. It was clear to me that if I wanted to survive in Haiti, I could choose to be neither arrogant nor disobedient. That I needed t
o acculturate myself for survival purposes necessitated that I substitute humility for impudence, respect for disrespect and acceptance for denial. I was now in a situation and a place where I could not allow my Americanness to override whatever Haitianness I possessed. I needed to tap into all the Haitian resources that I owned because I was going to be here for an undefined amount of time. My title of "American" meant nothing good in this country. My uncle knew why I was here: I was here because there was a correlation between there being something wrong with America and there being something wrong with me.

  Uncle Yvero rushed me out of the airport and quickly hailed a tap-tap. He had a commanding and respectable presence. He was younger than my mother and looked it, with his thick head of black hair and well-kempt mustache that complemented it. He carried himself, and my bags, with masculine ease. I felt safe in his company. If I wasn't careful, his strength would ruin me. After all, I wasn't here to depend on someone else's Haitianness; I was here to find my own.

  He offered me a Chiclet. "Ki jan ou ye?" he asked.

  "M pa pi mal"—I'm fine—I answered. After an hour or so, we transferred to another tap-tap headed to our destination—Arcahaie. When we finally arrived, it was already night. I knew we were in the country somewhere because it was pitch black everywhere I looked.

  "Sandee?"

  "Wi," I replied. "I'm right over here."

  It was my aunt, Mante Venide. I couldn't actually see her, but I immediately recognized her voice from the cassette recordings that she occasionally sent to my mother. Her greeting was always the same—your name in the form of a question. She had supper waiting for me, she explained. "I know you must be hungry. Here. Eat, child." I did. I ate and then soon after that went to sleep.