The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  “Celia?” Franci called from the hallway even before she saw her. She emerged pulling a purple tank top down over white shorts. “Hey, girl! What brings you here again so soon? Why didn’t you call so I could meet the train?” Not waiting for answers because the answers didn’t matter, Franci wrapped Celia in a hug. “Come in. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you! How did you get here? Don’t you have a bag?”

  As Celia opened her mouth to speak, the telephone rang. Franci snatched it up. “Oh, Philip, guess—”

  Franci’s eyes widened in alarm. “I’ll be right there!” She hung up the receiver, grabbed her car keys, and turned to Celia. “That was Philip. Come. Something has happened at work.”

  “Is he—?”

  “It’s not him. At least, that’s what he said. But some kind of emergency. He needs me there as quickly as possible.”

  As Franci backed out of the driveway into the street, she saw the convertible. The top was up and road grime dulled the glossy yellow paint but it was still an eye-catching car. She frowned and turned her gaze on Celia. “That can’t be how you got here.”

  “It is,” Celia admitted.

  “And it belongs to?” Franci stomped on the gas, causing the Fiat to leap forward. “Don’t lie! That is a José Lago car if I ever saw one.”

  “It is José’s car, but it’s not what you think, Franci.”

  “What I think is that it better not be what I think!”

  “Franci,” Celia said, reaching for the seat belt. “You have other things on your mind. So drop it. For now, okay?”

  “Okay,” Franci agreed. Every part of her body, even her blown-out Afro hair, seemed electric with tension. “He should have told me something. He must have known I’d worry every second till I get there.”

  “Maybe there was somebody there he didn’t want to talk in front of.”

  “Oh! That could be. In fact, that’s how he sounded.”

  Celia grabbed the armrest as Franci swerved around a horse-drawn cart, cutting it so close with oncoming traffic that she flinched. Fortunately it was not far to Philip’s office. Celia drew a breath of relief as they approached the nondescript government building at the mouth of the harbour—then went rigid with fear when Franci drove right past the sentry without so much as a nod. He looked startled, and Celia could have sworn he lifted his rifle in both hands before he realized who it was and waved.

  By then Franci had braked to a stop in front of the harbour master’s office. She was halfway up the steps before Celia caught up. They entered Philip’s office together, expecting anything, perhaps, other than what the room was about to reveal.

  Philip, looking much as he always looked when he was in uniform, sat at his desk. He rose and held out his hands to Franci. Before she could ask anything, he said, “Just stay calm and act natural.”

  As far as Celia could tell, the only un natural thing was Philip’s terse warning to act natural. Her eyes swept the room. In a dim corner, half-concealed behind a coat rack, she saw—at first she didn’t know what she was seeing, only that it was dark and moving.

  Philip took Franci by the elbow and led her toward the dark thing. Speaking in a soft voice, he said, “C’est ma femme, Franci. Franci, voici mon amie, Josephine.”

  Franci held out her hand. The child, for it was a child Celia now saw, drew back. Philip pulled Franci away and jerked his chin toward the door. Outside, still speaking in a low voice, he explained, “She’s a stowaway. From Haití. Her father got caught, I guess it was six months or so ago. They turned him over to me and when I discovered he had the little girl—they hadn’t found her yet and that was actually how they caught him, trying to get her off the ship—well, I should have reported them but I didn’t.”

  Franci wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Philip!”

  He gently disentangled himself from her embrace. “Let me finish, Franci. After that, the guy dropped around occasionally, looking for work. I tried to give him spare change, but he didn’t like handouts and would hang around until I found something for him to do.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Philip ran fingers through his wavy blond hair, already mussed by what Celia recognized as a repetitive worry gesture. “Good question. She showed up here about an hour ago asking for a shovel. Maybe he’s sick, maybe she wants to make a garden, I don’t know. All I know is I don’t have a damned shovel and I’ve got a ship coming in. If she hangs around they’ll pick her up for sure because she doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. I was hoping you—” He seemed to notice Celia for the first time. “And Celia, yes. Maybe the two of you could find a shovel for her and take her home?”

  “Claro!” Franci exclaimed. “Where’s home?”

  “When I last saw the man, maybe three weeks ago, I asked where they were living. He just waved.” Philip waved his own hand to the mountains rising along the southeastern side of the bay. “Somewhere up there. Probably in some thrown-together shelter. Having entered the country illegally, it’s not as if they could apply for housing.”

  “What would happen if they were turned over to the authorities?” Celia asked.

  “They’d be put on the next boat back to Haití.” Philip gave Celia a look that begged her to understand why he had not done the legally appropriate thing. “But they had a reason for leaving. Wrong political party or something. The guy’s been whipped to within an inch of his life; his back is a mass of scars. He said his wife and another kid were killed.”

  Celia and Franci looked at each other, overcome by a mixture of horror and gratitude at the unearned good fortune of having grown up in a country where, in their lifetime, there had been no such violence.

  “Let me talk to her,” Franci said softly.

  Philip smiled. “With your French? Good luck!” But there was relief in his voice.

  They found the girl where she had been, in the dimmest corner of the room. In French, Philip told the child that he must go now to bring in a ship, and she must go with these ladies, that they would find her a shovel and take her home.

  Franci put out her hand. The girl, as ragged a child as Celia had ever seen, stared at it a long moment, then placed her own dark hand in it. “Je suis Josephine,” she said.

  Franci, although she had already been introduced, touched herself on the chest and repeated her own name. Then motioned to Celia. “Ma amie, Celia.”

  The girl barely glanced at Celia and—Celia felt certain it was because of her colour—edged closer to Franci.

  When they reached the car, Franci tossed her keys to Celia. “You drive.”

  Celia obediently slid behind the wheel. Franci got into the passenger seat and held out her arms to the child, inviting her into her lap. The girl obliged but did not lean back the way a normal child would. She held herself bolt upright so that her starvation-thin body made minimal contact with Franci’s.

  “Where to?” Celia asked.

  “Home,” Franci said. “Mamá is doing a garden. That’s probably what Josephine wants the spade for. It’s that time of year. They must be trying to live off the land.”

  Observing Josephine from the corner of her eye, Celia guessed that although she looked to be about eight, she might be older and small for her age due to malnutrition. The girl had fine features and almond-shaped eyes looking out of an oval face as dark as Franci’s. The depth of her colour was less apparent on the rest of her body due to scaly dryness and a coating of dust. Josephine’s tension increased as they left the harbour and entered what Celia supposed were to the child unfamiliar parts of the city. When they stopped at the house, Josephine pawed at the door latch. Franci opened the door but clung to the girl’s hand as if fearing she might bolt. Celia trailed them to the back of the house.

  “Mamá!” Franci shouted.

  Franci’s massive mother appeared in the doorway of the cottage. “Franci!” she exclaimed. “Where you get that scrawny child? You bring her inside this minute, I give her something to eat.”

  “Mange?” Fran
ci pantomimed eating.

  Josephine shook her head. She was scanning the yard, and when she saw the spaded area, headed straight to it. She returned clutching the shovel.

  “She seems pretty focused,” Celia commented. “Maybe we can take some food out to them later, when we see what their situation is.”

  “Good idea,” Franci said, and to her mother, apologetically, “She just wants to borrow your shovel. Is that okay?”

  “She gonna bring it back?” the old lady demanded. “How come she take it just like that, don’t say nothing?”

  “She doesn’t speak Spanish. Only French,” Celia explained.

  “Mon Dieu!” came the piercing voice of Madame Morceau from the window of her garage apartment. “You have a child who speaks français?”

  “We’ll bring the shovel back,” Franci promised, hurrying after Josephine, who was already at the car. Waving up to Philip’s mother, she called, “I’ll explain later.”

  Again Franci pulled the little girl into her lap. Celia pried her fingers off the shovel and placed it in the back seat where it would not interfere with the gear shift and headed for the harbour. She hoped Josephine would be able to direct her from there.

  The girl remained upright and attentive to landmarks. She relaxed visibly when the harbour sparkled in the distance. Suddenly she pointed to the left and said, “Ici.”

  As soon as Celia turned on to the highway that ran along the southeast side of the harbour, the girl’s demeanour changed. She allowed her body to relax against Franci’s and, unsmiling, began to chatter.

  Celia and Franci glanced at each other. “Did you get any of that?” Franci asked

  “Les chiens? The dogs?” Celia suggested hesitantly. “And something about rocks.”

  “I thought she was talking about her father.” Franci frowned. “I think she’s saying he’s sick. But where?” To Josephine, she said, “Où est ta maison?”

  Josephine’s small grimy hand gestured in the direction they were driving, a highway rather grandly called the Carretera Turística, although it ran for at least two kilometres through an industrial wasteland before emerging into open countryside.

  “Mais où?” Celia persisted, as the highway twisted and climbed toward the great fort that guarded the mouth of the harbour. To Franci she said, “We have come a good five kilometres. I find it hard to believe she walked this far alone.”

  Again Josephine rattled off a long explanation in her quaint Haitian French, which left Celia and Franci more perplexed than before.

  “Le grand homme? The big man? Oh, why did I let my college French lapse?” Franci muttered in frustration.

  “I think she said under the big man. Could she mean the Frank País monument?”

  “Under the statue?” Franci looked bewildered. “Oh, like somewhere on that hill, lower down?”

  As if in answer to both of them, Josephine suddenly bounced on Franci’s lap, pointed to the parking lot for the País memorial, and squealed, “Ici, ici!”

  Celia braked sharply and turned into the parking lot. Josephine had obviously observed how the car door worked because this time she had it open before Franci got to it. Celia took the shovel from the back seat, intending to carry it, but Josephine took it from her and clutched it to her chest as if it were a beloved toy. They locked the car and followed the child up the steps, at least two hundred of them, to the top of the hill. There in a grassy park as big as two soccer fields stood an enormous bronze likeness of Frank País, the young schoolteacher who in 1956 had led an attack on the Santiago police headquarters to divert attention from the landing of the boat bringing Fidel and his fellow revolutionaries from México. Two months after the Granma landing, the police spotted Frank País walking down the street and shot him in the back. The young teacher’s funeral turned into a massive rally led by the mothers of Santiago, followed by nationwide protests against the dictator’s brutality.

  Josephine crossed herself as she passed under the shadow of the huge statue. Celia wondered whether she considered the statue a deity, a demon, or simply a giant whose goodwill she wished to keep. Josephine waited on the far side of the park until they caught up to her, then moved rapidly down the slope through a tangle of undergrowth. Celia had noticed a network of scratches on the child’s bare arms, and as she collected a few on her own, realized that this was how she had got them.

  “Like following a goat,” Franci muttered. Celia glanced back and saw that Franci, in shorts and tank top, was having a rough go of it. Her grumbles turned to ouches as they trailed Josephine through a thicket of thorn bushes that, had they been hiking on their own, they certainly would have avoided. Suddenly the head-high bushes opened onto a small clearing. One side was walled by a rock face down which trickled a pencil-thin stream of water. Near it was a hut, barely bigger than a dog kennel, built of cardboard and torn plastic. Josephine did not enter the hut but went immediately to an area where the soil had been turned up.

  “Look,” Franci brightened. “She is making a garden.” Franci bent to pick up something. Holding it up for Celia, she exclaimed, “Can you believe this? A broken spoon! She was trying to dig a garden using a tablespoon!”

  Celia looked at the soil, already turned up to a depth of about fifteen centimetres. It was longer than it was wide. She was struck by an awful suspicion. “Ou est ton papa?”

  Without looking up from her digging, Josephine pointed to the hut. Celia moved to the burlap-covered doorway and called, “Monsieur?”

  There was no response. She pulled aside the burlap. It was dark inside; she could see nothing. Celia went down on her knees, which was the only way for a grown person to enter the hovel, and crept forward.

  Franci called from behind her. “Tell him he needn’t be afraid of us.”

  Slowly Celia’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Near the entrance was a rusty pail and beyond it a pile of rags. Then she saw that it was not a rag pile; it was a rag-covered man. She thought his face moved, as if he were trying to speak or smile. She leaned closer. The movement was not his. It was that of flies and ants, claiming what they could from the corpse. She automatically reached for his wrist to check for a pulse, although the smell had already told her that there would be none. Celia backed out.

  “What?” Franci demanded.

  “He is dead,” Celia said, although Franci must have understood the simple words the child flung over her shoulder as she shovelled dirt: “Il est mort.”

  Franci’s lips parted but she said nothing. She simply walked over and took the shovel from Josephine.

  “What are we going to do?” Celia asked.

  “Help her dig the grave.”

  “Franci, this is illegal! You can’t bury a body just anyplace. The authorities—”

  Franci picked up the pace of her digging. “If you want to leave, go.” She glanced up at Celia with a grim smile. “But if you notify the authorities, I’ll kill you.”

  Celia had no trouble following Franci’s thought processes, both the ones that led to her sudden decision and the ones that flowed from it. She sighed and started scooping soil with her hands. “Another shovel would make this go a lot quicker,” she muttered.

  Josephine looked from one woman to the other, then dove into the hut. She came out with the pail of water. She dumped it and handed the bucket to Celia.

  “Merci,” Celia said and began using the pail to remove dirt from the hole. Josephine busied herself sorting stones from dirt, heaping the rocks to one side.

  The sun blazed down and the smell of putrefaction coming from the hut intensified. An hour later, when Franci reached down to wiggle loose a rock, Celia saw that her hands were blistered. The blisters had broken and were bleeding. She rose and took the shovel from her. “You work the bucket for a while,” she said.

  Franci looked at her hands ruefully. “I noticed Josephine’s hands had big broken blisters on the palms. Now I know how they got that way.”

  Celia’s hands fared no better, but by the time she
felt she could stand the pain no longer, at least they had a hole. It was not deep but it would have to do. The clearing had been in shadow for an hour; the sun would be setting soon.

  “C’est bien?” she asked Josephine.

  The child stared at the hole. Celia could tell that she was not satisfied but she too must have realized that they were running out of time. She shrugged and, in a tiny voice, said, “Oui.”

  “How are we going to get him out here?” Franci asked.

  “Very carefully,” Celia responded. “He is lying on a piece of canvas. If we each grab a corner, I think we can drag him to the grave.”

  As Franci started for the hut, Celia warned, “Don’t touch the body. And once you have touched anything, keep your hands away from your face. He could well have died of something contagious. I have already touched him, so I will drag him to the door. Then you grab a corner of the canvas and pull.”

  The old man—or perhaps he wasn’t that old, merely ravaged by life and death—was surprisingly light. Just before dragging him out into the light, Celia brushed the insects off his face. No need for his daughter to see that.

  Josephine had not come to help them bring out the body. When they reached the grave she was in it on her knees, smoothing it with her bare palms. Franci held a hand down to her. The girl hesitated, then took it and climbed out. Holding opposite sides of the canvas, the three of them lowered the body into the ground.

  Celia went back into the hovel and came out with an armful of rags that she spread over the body, not for the man’s sake but for the child’s, to give her the illusion that her father had gone to rest in the nearest thing to comfort they could provide.

  When Josephine saw what Celia was doing, she took one of the rags, a small scrap of brown velvet, and laid it over his face, soft side down. Franci pulled the child to her and held her while Celia shovelled in the dirt. When the body was covered, although by barely half a metre of soil, they started to leave. But Josephine, who had neither wept nor spoken during the process, squatted and began piling the rocks she had set aside on top of the grave.