“Magda!” she hisses.
I sit up, startled, my heart pounding. “What!”
“Twalèt kenbe m!” she whispers. “I have to go to the bathroom! Now!”
I flop back down and turn over, pulling the sheet over my head. “Can’t you hold it until morning? Tonton Élie isn’t back yet. You know we’re not supposed to leave the tent at night without him.”
“No!” Nadine squeaks more loudly. “I need to go now.”
“Nadou, it’s the middle of the night—”
“Do you want me to have diarrhea in this bed?”
I shine the display of my cell phone over Nadine. She definitely looks uncomfortable, with a light sheen of sweat at her hairline. “Fine, let’s go,” I mumble, and I slip on my plastic sandals.
“This is all your fault,” she hisses accusatorially as she unbolts the sheet of plywood that makes up our front door, her fingers slipping as she rushes. “I knew you would put too much clove in the sòs pwa. You’re always adding too many cloves. You know it does this to me.”
“I added no more clove than anyone else would have.” As much as Manman taught me to add, I think to myself.
Using my cell phone as a flashlight, we wend our way to the camp toilets. They are portable plastic toilets, and one of the aid organizations pays people who live in the camp a little bit of money to clean them. This is how shameful our lives have become: foreigners paying us to clean our own houses. The toilets are hot and horrible and make me gag. There is always something leaking and creeping across the sidewalk, a slow-moving puddle that trickles into the street. They don’t even have doors anymore—people took them to use the wood for other things—so you’d never use one alone. You need someone with you to stand in the open doorway, and, anyway, it doesn’t feel safe to be there alone, especially at night.
Nadine and I have trained ourselves never to have to use the camp toilets if we can help it. When we have to pee, we go in a plastic kivèt, then pour it into the sewage ditch and rinse it out: easy. When we’ve got to do more than that, we have to strategize. I mean, it really changes things when you have to plan. It means I don’t drink coffee anymore.
Most of the time, Nadine will go to her friend Jimmy Jean-Pierre’s place, which is just a couple of blocks away, where they have a real toilet. She keeps her own roll of toilet paper on top of our TV and takes it with her whenever she goes. She says Jimmy wouldn’t have a problem with my doing that, too, but I don’t know him that well, and I’m embarrassed, and I don’t want his family to think I’m a freeloader. Sometimes I go to the latrine behind the little restaurant across the street, which is owned by a lady named Loulouze who wears huge earrings. “Of course, my child, you’ve got no mother. Use it whenever you like.” But I don’t want to take advantage of her kindness.
And you can’t always plan ahead . . .
In the dark, on nights when we don’t have power, the camp looks like a different place than it does in the day, deserted and menacing. Even my fears are blurry—the bogeymen of my childhood imagination, and the rapists Tonton Élie is always warning us of. A lone streetlight, installed by a relief organization, illuminates the area right around the toilets, but until we reach it, we are in a landscape of invisible phantoms and lurking monsters.
“Go faster, go faster!” Nadine begs.
She takes a deep breath, then hurries inside and pulls down her pajama pants just in time. I stand where the door should be, blocking the view of all the nonexistent passersby, and I pick at a hangnail, trying not to listen to what Nadine is doing.
I hold my breath. This is one of the worst smells in the world. I can think of only one smell that’s worse, and that’s the stench of rot that rose up from the city in the days after the quake, that told you death was everywhere, everywhere. But the toilet smell is terrible in a different way, maybe because we’re supposed to get used to it. I keep holding my breath, and my chest gets tighter and tighter. The air from my lungs backs up into my throat, my nose, my mouth, and I try to release it bit by bit without breathing any new air in. It takes more than a minute for me to feel dizzy and see purple-black spots, and without thinking, I gulp in a huge quaff of warm, putrid air.
It is acrid and horrible, searing and thick with shit and poison. I imagine the germs buzzing in the air, traveling down into my lungs. The smell is so strong, it lingers on my tongue. My stomach lurches, and I feel a sour burn at the back of my throat.
“Nadou, are you finished?”
“I’m not sure . . . ,” she whimpers miserably. “I think there might still be more in there . . .”
I am brisk with Nadine because sometimes she can get very exaggerated about illness and discomfort—she has always been this way—and because I would rather be sleeping peacefully in bed than standing out in the middle of the camp in the middle of the night, my cheap plastic sandals sticking in the filthy toilet mud, holding my breath outside this sickening cesspool. Still, I’m glad I am here. It is unpleasant to be sick, but it would be so much worse to be sick alone in this place. I feel sad and lonely just imagining Nadou stumbling through the dark alone, by the dim light of the cell phone, to have diarrhea in the horrible camp toilet. Who would block the doorway for her if I wasn’t there? Who would block the doorway for me, if our roles were reversed? Who would be there to laugh about it with me afterward, to laugh at the stupidity and awfulness of it all?
“Okay, let’s go,” says Nadine. Her voice sounds small. “My butt’s all raw,” she whispers with a trace of an apologetic smile on her face.
“Anmwèy!” I burst out laughing and gasp, “Mezanmi, Nadou!”
We walk more slowly back to our now-home as the first pink fingers of light appear over the horizon and the camp’s roosters rouse themselves and begin to crow.
SEPTEMBER 2010
NADOU’S PAPA CALLED FROM MIAMI YESTERDAY evening and told her, “I got it, pitit mwen. I got the visa.” I was bathing in Loulouze’s yard—the lady with the big earrings, who says a young girl should have privacy to wash her chouchoun—and when I came back to the tent, Nadou’s face was blank. I thought something terrible had happened. I thought someone had died.
“Nadou, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She couldn’t look at me. She was looking somewhere over my shoulder, and she said, “He got it. He got it. I’m going. I’m supposed to go to the US consulate tomorrow and pick up all the documents.”
It took a minute for me to even move. Then I grabbed her hands in mine and held them tight. “That’s great! Finally! That’s fantastic news!” My voice was brittle with enthusiasm. I was pretending, for Nadou’s sake. I knew she could tell the difference. But there was no point in throwing myself to the ground and screaming, “Don’t go, don’t go!” Of course she must go. Anybody, given the chance, would go, would leave this broken city.
Nadine shivered. “We’ll figure out a way for you to come. I don’t know how, but we’ll do it, okay?”
“Yeah. I know. We can do it. Nadou, stop looking so sad. Stop it! Be happy instead.”
“You promise you’ll come?” she asked me.
“Of course. Stop being dumb.”
“Tomorrow we’ll start figuring it out,” Nadine decided. “After I get back from the consulate. We’ll start doing research. I’ll ask Jimmy. His dad’s in Miami. And he’s good at computers. He’ll know.”
“Okay. Agreed. I promise.”
“I know, sista.”
Nadou spent almost all day waiting in line at the US consulate, so we’re only just now going to meet up with Jimmy at the cybercafe, at five P.M. She came home looking exhausted, clutching a fat manila envelope to her chest. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL AT UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION, it says. It is sealed with thick, clear tape. On the front is a grainy black-and-white photograph of an unsmiling, serious Nadou. Underneath is all the information they need about her: her birthdate (July 28, 1994), her place of birth (Port-au-Prince, Haiti), her father’s name (Duverlus, Frantz) and status (US Re
sident), and her mother’s name (Étienne, Yolette) and status (deceased).
“How did it go?” I ask.
“There were so many people there,” says Nadine, her eyes glassy. “Standing in line, all day. All around the block. Under the hot sun, all day.” She shakes her head in wonder. “So many people. Most of them weren’t approved; they weren’t there to pick anything up. They were just . . . just waiting and hoping.”
“Just think, if all those people had real jobs . . . ,” I say. “Just think of where this country might be.”
Nadine tears open a bag of drinking water with her teeth and sucks it down. “That is their job. Trying to get out.” She tosses the plastic bag into the drainage ditch a few feet from our front door. “Let me call Jimmy and tell him we’re on our way.”
The cybercafe is packed at this time of day, mostly with high school and university students who have gotten out of school and have come to chat online, send e-mail, or do homework. A young man in a corner is on an international call, speaking English loudly. I can’t tell whether he’s good at it or not, but he sounds frustrated. In another corner, a staticky TV is playing a Whirlpool commercial with an adorable little light-skinned girl and her handsome light-skinned father and their beautiful kitchen full of shiny new appliances. The world in that commercial isn’t meant for people like me, but I can’t help humming along to the Whirlpool song.
Jimmy gives me a kiss on the cheek in greeting, then wraps his arm around Nadou’s waist and pulls her close to him. Jimmy has always liked Nadine. They SMS all the time, and I always know when she’s gotten a message from him, because she has a special ringtone for him—Celine Dion’s “Je lui dirai.” He wants to be her boyfriend, and she’s kissed him a few times, but she decided it would be better to just be friends.
“Let’s go see what we can find.” Jimmy pulls a chair up to one of the computers. Nadou sits in a chair next to him, and I lean over her shoulder to watch.
“Your chin is pointy,” she says.
“Your shoulder is bony.”
Jimmy starts typing without even looking at the keyboard. His fingers are slim and elegant. He smells like cologne.
“First you go to yahoo-dot-fr,” he explains. “Then type in ‘tickets port-au-prince miami.’” He pushes the keyboard toward Nadine, who slowly begins to peck out the words, using two fingers. “You’re going to have to get good at computers when you’re living in America,” he counsels her. “Now click on Search.”
The computer burbles electronically, and then a site comes up that lists a bunch of airfares. I’m afraid to look—what if the ticket price is huge, so huge and expensive that I’ll never be able to dream of buying one?
“Magda,” says Nadine softly. I realize I’ve actually shut my eyes. “It’s not too bad. Look.”
They’re all between $200 and $250 US for a one-way flight. I exhale. I start calculating it into gourdes . . . Around 10,000 gourdes. It’s more money than I’ve ever seen. But it’s not an unimaginable amount of money. It’s not impossible.
“It shouldn’t be hard, girls,” Jimmy says assuredly. “The hard part will be the paperwork. Tonton Sam doesn’t like Haitians coming in.”
“Who’s Tonton Sam?” I ask, confused. “Does he work at the airport?” I imagine a big fat man checking all the passports and turning Haitians away.
“It means America, Magdalie,” explains Jimmy. “Uncle Sam. America doesn’t like Haitians.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say to that. I feel guilty, and I don’t know why. “I knew that already.”
“So it’s not just buying your ticket. You have to get a visa and everything, like Nadine did.”
“I can do it! I’ll do it,” Nadine declares. “I can get it for her.”
Jimmy looks at Nadine as though she is stupid, but he doesn’t say anything, because he likes her. All he says is, “I gotta go, little ladies. I have an exam in two days.”
“Mèsi, Jimmy,” says Nadine. “Thanks. You’re so nice to me.”
“I’ll text you,” he tells her. “Tonight.”
“Ten thousand gourdes,” I say to Nadine as we walk home through the smoky dusk. I repeat, “Ten thousand gourdes.” I sing it softly, like a chant. The air smells like burning trash.
“We can do it,” she says excitedly. “I’ll be working on the visa from Miami, okay? I’ll be able to do it, because I’ll be a rezidan.”
“Wi,” I agree.
“And, Magda, you can be working on getting the money for the ticket.”
“How? How will I do that?”
Nadine chews her bottom lip. “Like when Tonton Élie gets a job, you can ask him for money.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well . . . when he gives you money and sends you to the market to buy food, just keep a little of it. Bargain with the machanns as low as they’ll go, and then keep a little, and tell Tonton Élie that they’re selling whatever it is for twenty-five gourdes instead of twenty apiece.”
I’m shocked. “You want me to steal from Tonton Élie, Nadou?”
Nadine slaps her hands together, fingers to palms, fingers to palms, and shrugs. “We have to do what it takes.”
“Yeah.”
“Or you could get a job.”
“Yeah.”
“I promise you, sista, I’m going to do whatever it takes.”
And Nadine holds the promise out before me, and possibility shines in her eyes, as if her eyes contain both of our futures, and all I have to do is follow. None of this will be that hard. Nothing is impossible, with patience and faith. Little by little, the bird builds its nest, I remember Manman used to say.
NOVEMBER 2010
THIS MORNING NADINE WAKES UP AT FOUR to get ready. Her fingernails and toenails are painted red, and her hair is in curlers, after a trip to the beauty salon yesterday, and she’s laid out the new outfit she got downtown—tight, skinny blue jeans, a white blouse, and a long vest that’s the same golden-brown color as her strappy sandals. All new, not secondhand. Her earrings and necklace are gold-colored. Élie gave her all the money he got from cash-for-work, even if it means we’ll be eating white-flour porridge for the next week. Looking at her, you wouldn’t know she is poor. We are happy for her.
If Nadou can leave, that is good for her, maybe good for all of us.
Nadine is bathing, using the blue plastic kivèt. She stands behind the tent with a rigged-up tarp for cover, soaping herself up in her underpants. Around her, a couple of chickens cluck and dash out of the way when the water she pours over herself splashes them. Chickens are dumb. I am a few feet away, cooking over the charcoal: boiled plantains, fried chicken, and sauce made of onions, tomato paste, green onion, garlic, thyme, and a Maggi cube. It is early, but I want to make a good last meal for her, something that will sustain her until she gets to Miami. As she washes, I think, This is the last time you’ll have to bathe in cold water.
She wraps herself in a towel and goes back inside the tent, to the clothes she’s laid out on the bed we share. Nadine has always laughed at how I sleep “ugly,” kicking my legs out and flinging my arms wide, reaching over and stealing her sheet in the middle of the night or waking her up by resting my head on her shoulder. I realize I will sleep alone from now on. For a second my life spins out of focus. I can’t think about these things. My eyes sting. The chicken sizzles in the pot before me.
“Magda!” Nadine calls from inside. Her voice sounds like a child’s. “Come help me do my hair!”
We learned to braid hair on each other as little girls, armed with cloth ribbons and plastic barrettes, and later we learned how to do perms on each other. This morning I take out Nadine’s curlers and brush her hair, adding touches of pomade here and there. Nadine watches in a handheld mirror. She is so silent this morning. I feel the minutes rushing toward us.
“How do you feel?” I ask her.
Nadine pauses. “Bizarre.”
Nadou hasn’t seen her papa since he left, when she
was, maybe, eight. He was never there for her; he just sent Manman a Western Union money transfer every once in a while. Nadine’s father never mattered before, but now he matters more than anything. She has papers that say her father is a US resident, and her mother died in the earthquake, and because of these things Nadine has a visa to go to America forever.
That is the funny thing—Nadine and I are so much like sisters that we forgot we aren’t really sisters. Until now. Before this, it never mattered. I was Manman’s daughter. I’m still Manman’s daughter, in every way but the one that matters now. It took months of appointments and DNA tests (taking her blood, scraping the inside of her cheek), but now Nadine has a passport and that thick, magical manila envelope sealed by the US consulate. It is her passage to lòt bò dlo, the other side of the water.
Nadine only picks at the chicken and banann bouyi I’ve set in front of her. She’s too nervous, too busy fussing with her makeup and her clothes. I sit on the bed, still wearing the same T-shirt and skirt I slept in, watching her, trying to memorize her. She’s already slipping away; she’s halfway gone. This separation is temporary, I keep telling myself.
Since January 12, every good-bye feels like it might be forever.
Jimmy has come to see her off. He has a camera in his hand. He smiles.
“Come, Magdalie, let’s take a photo,” says Nadine, and she tries to put her arm around me, but as soon as she does that, I start weeping.
“Don’t hug me, or I’ll cry,” I tell her.
Jimmy snaps the photo and shows it to us. We look stupid—Nadine’s arm wide open, failing to pull me in, her mouth in the middle of forming a word; me, still in my sleeping clothes, head down, a blur.
“Erase it,” I tell Jimmy.
“But this is the last photo,” he tells us.
I ask myself in my heart if I am jealous. God says we should not be envious of others, that it is a sin, but I still have to ask myself if, honestly, I am jealous of Nadine. She is leaving. She is going to a better place—to a place I have only seen in photos and in films, to a place where everyone has money, everyone has a car and a lawn and a flush toilet, where the streets are straight and flat and clean. To a place where she will go to university, and she can have a good life, where it will be easy to accomplish whatever she sets her mind to. To a place with no rubble and no makeshift tents. To a place without fear. I don’t know when I’ll join her. Maybe I am supposed to feel jealous. I ask myself and ask myself, I search the darkest places in my heart, but the truth is, I don’t feel jealous at all. I just feel sad.
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