I’d wanted to give her something. I’d wanted to write her a poem or a story. I’d tried to write, but I couldn’t think of what to say. Everything felt too heavy. I used to write all the time. I’d write about things I saw that day and about things I’d imagined, like romantic love, or stories in which the hardworking triumph and those who seek only pleasure are punished, tales with happy endings. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were a little like the soap operas Manman loved so much. I can’t write those stories now. I can’t write anything now.
Tonton Élie takes Nadine in his arms, which is awkward, because he’s not normally affectionate. It just makes this day feel stranger and more uncomfortable. Élie can’t go to the airport with us. He has to go break up rubble for that cash-for-work program the aid organizations run. If he doesn’t go, they’ll give his spot to someone else. “You are going to a better place,” he tells Nadou. “Don’t forget us. Don’t forget your country. You are going to a more beautiful place so that you can come back someday and work to make things more beautiful here.”
Nadine doesn’t say anything, only sniffles. “Dakò,” she finally whispers. “Okay.”
I slip away to bathe quickly and get dressed before Jimmy gives us a ride to the airport. Jimmy’s papa is lòt bò and sends him money every month. I put on one of our shirts, a yellow sleeveless blouse—we share all our clothes. Nadine has left almost all of them for me, and so now this is my shirt, not ours.
I keep thinking I can hold time still if I just concentrate on it.
We ride in silence to the airport, both of us in the backseat, holding hands. I think I should say something.
“Are you afraid of the airplane?”
“A little.”
I can’t think of anything else to say. Or maybe there are so many things to say, but none of them come to the surface. I watch all the streets we know and try to imagine what it would be like to be seeing them for the last time. It is Saturday morning. Children gather around a broken water pipe on the side of a muddy street and fill their buckets. A woman with fat, grandmotherly arms sells ripe bananas, peanut butter, bread, and hard-boiled eggs out of a basket in front of one of the camps. A motorcycle taxi shoots by carrying a woman passenger sitting sideways, elegantly, not creasing her skirt. A banner across the road advertises a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic. An elaborate taptap bus painted with the face of Brazilian soccer star Kaka stops in front of us. For a moment I want to say: Nadine, hold on to all this. Remember this. Not because it is all beautiful or good—so much of it is ugly and broken—but because it is ours.
Nadine looks out the window, absorbed in thought, her eyes fixed on a future I cannot see. The road leading to the airport, past the Trois Mains statue, is also a camp. Over the clustered sunbaked tents, the blue and gray sea of tarps, rise billboards. One, for Delta Airlines, shows New York City and the Statue of Liberty looming over it. The billboard hangs over the camp like a question mark and a promise and a joke. I wonder if Nadine will get to go to New York City.
We arrive. Standing on the curb in front of the departure terminal with her small black suitcase, Nadine looks lost. She gazes at me with the same lost expression she had on January 12, when she cried out, “Where is Manman?” Now she pushes her phone into my hand—with the little pink sticker of a rose on it, with her special love-song ringtones, with the sudoku she used to play when she couldn’t fall asleep. “I won’t be able to use this,” she says, and she clears her throat.
“Orevwa,” I say. “Till we meet again, sista. Do well for yourself.”
“Orevwa,” says Nadine. “I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll see each other very soon,” I say firmly.
“Mwen pap janm lage w. I’ll never let you go.” She nods. “I’ll get you to the US as soon as I can, as soon as I can.”
We hug for a quick moment. I slip her fifty gourdes I’ve saved, in case she gets hungry. I thought there would be more to say.
I walk her as far as I can and then watch her join the line of passengers waiting to board their planes. My fingernails dig crescent moons into my palms. I watch the back of her head as she blends into the crowd, as she becomes just another person departing, as she disappears from my life.
DECEMBER 2010
MY LIFE IS STRANGE TO ME NOW. IT IS NOT my life. Manman is gone. Nadou is gone. Everyone and everything I was used to is gone. All the ordinary things I do are different now. I go through the routines of the day feeling like an actress in a TV drama. Now she walks down the street alone to buy Maggi and parsley, fifteen gourdes in her hand . . . The water bucket never felt so heavy when I walked with Nadine to fill it. We’d wait in line together for water and help each other hoist the buckets onto our heads so we wouldn’t spill, and we’d gossip or sing all the way home. I had expected that life without Nadine would hurt, but I wasn’t prepared for how boring it would be.
I can’t wait until she sends for me.
Now I am the only one left to carry the water, to cook our food, to wash the clothes, to mop and sweep. Sometimes it’s just me and Tonton Élie, but most of the time there are other people staying with us or eating with us—cousins or neighbors from the country who come to town with a sack of yams or breadfruit to sell, or other people we know from Port-au-Prince who just come by to talk or listen to politics on the radio with my tonton.
People come and go easily, lightly. I can’t get used to any of them. Some of them are good for jokes or rumors. Here’s one that Ti Blan, who used to do cash-for-work with Élie before the aid organizations ended cash-for-work, told us last weekend. He’d stopped by and scrubbed his sneakers, and I had given him boiled yam sliced up with herring sauce and a chunk of avocado while he waited for his shoes to dry.
“There’s this woman who sends her daughter to school one morning. Then the goudougoudou happens, and the school collapses! The mother runs into the street, crying, ‘Anmwèy!’ and trying to find her daughter. Then her daughter appears and says, ‘Manman, Manman, stop crying! I’m alive! I wasn’t at school. I was at my boyfriend’s house instead!’ And her mother goes, ‘Oh, thank God in heaven you’re a whore!’”
It’s not a very good joke, but we laugh, anyway.
Nadou hardly ever calls, but I know phone cards must be expensive. I can’t be angry or impatient. She’ll send for me soon. Sometimes I think about all the things Nadine and I will do once she brings me to Miami. I’m making a list, based on the one Nadou and I started as a joke, before.
1. Go to a movie in a theater
2. Go bowling
3. Learn English together
4. Shop at a mall
5. Go to New York City (Brooklyn and Statue of Liberty, too)
6. Ride a roller coaster
7. See snow
8. Meet Rihanna
9. Buy matching purple Converse and high heels
10. Sit in parks (clean parks, no tents) eating ice cream cotton candy
11. Learn to drive a car
12. Go to school!
13. ???
I also keep track of the ways that Port-au-Prince is changing—everything I will tell Nadou when we can talk forever, on and on, face-to-face. The worst is the cholera.
Everyone’s terrified of it and telling jokes about it because they’re terrified. There is cholera in the provinces, cholera in Cité Soleil, cholera in the camps. Soon we will all have cholera, shitting and shitting and dying, dried-up, in the streets. Where did this cholera come from? Haiti never had cholera before. Why do these things keep happening? Tonton Élie says it’s obvious that the foreigners are putting something in our water to make us sick and kill us.
When I’m not cleaning or sleeping, I read whatever I can find—old schoolbooks or pamphlets left by Jehovah’s Witnesses. On the cover they’ve got smiling people of all different races and colors in a garden with tigers and elephants. Sometimes I nap all afternoon, to make the time pass. There’s no point in trying to find the money to go back to school, because Nadine
will send for me soon, and I’ll have to drop out and move to Miami. I’m waiting until I get to America before I go back to school. Sometimes I wonder if Manman would approve, but she never could have imagined a world in which Nadou and I would be parted.
I simply have to be patient. Whenever my phone vibrates, I hold my breath, hoping that it’s Nadou, but it is always Digicel with some offer, or the Ministry of Public Health with an announcement, or a robot message from some presidential candidate. It’s always stupid. It’s never a person, because there is no one left who remembers me.
Today when I went to hang the laundry out to dry, I passed by Ti Zwit, the old, old man who sits under the eucalyptus tree all day. His eyes are so old they’re a cloudy almost-blue. He is so old he’s even outlived his own children; he has no family left, so everyone else takes care of him however they can. His knees are as dusty and knotted as the old wooden walking stick that leans against them. “Bonswa, Ti Zwit!” I have to shout, because he can hardly hear. “How are you doing!”
“Oh, not too bad, my child!” he smiles, toothlessly.
“It’s Magdalie!”
“Yes, yes!”
I’m pretty sure he has no idea who I am.
“Are you eating, Ti Zwit?”
“Oh, yes, oh yes, my child. I eat.”
I reach for his hand and press two fifty-centime pieces into his dry, hard palm. It’s barely anything, but it’s all I’ve got.
“God bless you, pitit!” says Ti Zwit. “May God protect you always!”
When I get home, I call Nadine. I have been saving up money, a few gourdes here and there. If I go out to buy Kotex, Tonton Élie doesn’t have any idea how much it costs, so I can keep ten gourdes that way. Finally, today, I have enough to put minutes on my phone to call Nadine.
“Sista!” I cry when she finally picks up.
“Chouchou,” she says. Her voice sounds like it does when she has a secret.
“Sister, how are you? I’ve been longing to hear from you.”
“I’m good, wi.” She doesn’t sound excited to hear from me. “How is everybody there?”
“We’re the same. Everyone’s the same,” I tell her, because how can I explain how it really feels? “Have you become totally American yet, boubou?”
Nadine giggles. “I don’t even speak English yet.”
“Are you taking classes?”
“Of course,” Nadine replies. “At what they call community college. They always have the air conditioner on inside, so I have to wear a sweater, and I still feel like I’m getting a cold. But there’re so many people in the class who speak Spanish. Hondurans, Dominicans, Cubans . . . I think I should learn Spanish before I learn English. All I’ve learned so far is coño.”
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s a bad word.”
“That’s funny, Nadou.”
“And they look at me funny because I’m Haitian. Like they think I’m dirty.”
“Oh, that can’t be true, Nadou. You’re imagining it.”
“Oh? We had to have a conversation in English to introduce ourselves, and when I said, ‘I call myself Nadine, and I come from the country of Haiti,’ this guy from Colombia said, ‘That’s a very bad place.’”
“You just didn’t know enough English to understand him.”
“Mmm . . .” I can hear Nadine shaking her head, all the way in Miami. “They think we’re savages with AIDS who don’t eat anything but dirt.”
I laugh. “Listen, are you getting my visa soon? So I can come join you in your freezing classroom and learn Spanish, too?”
“Soon, soon!” Nadine promises. “I just need to figure things out first. I don’t know how to take the bus downtown yet. There’s a lot I have to learn before I can do it right—you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“Okay, cheri? Just be patient. Be a little patient.”
“Wi, Nadou.” Yes, I will be patient.
THE OTHER DAY TONTON ÉLIE SAID, “I think maybe I’ll send for Michlove so she can help you here.”
I said, “Ah. Hmm.”
Michlove is his girlfriend from the country, from near Jérémie, where he and Manman grew up. She is about eighteen, but she looks like a big attractive woman, huge tits and a real bounda, a bottom you could balance a basket on. She’s not very smart. I know I’m a lot smarter. It’s not only that she can’t read and write; there are a lot of people who are intelligent who never had a chance to learn to read. Manman was one of them. No, Michlove is just kind of . . . boring. You look into her eyes, and there’s no spirit there. So I know I’m supposed to be nice and patient with her. But I know if she comes to Port-au-Prince, I’m going to fight with her all the live-long day about stupid little things, and she’s a lot bigger than me and fights with her nails.
So I told Élie, “Ah. Hmm,” in a way that showed him that I was resigned to whatever he decided to do. And then, to be fair, I added, “Michlove is very good at braiding hair.”
I don’t want new friends. I don’t want anyone. Not now, anyway. I used to be friendly, but now I am not. Everyone is annoying. Everyone else in the camp is always in and out of one anothers’ tents, borrowing things, gossiping, telling jokes, watching soccer games or Kirikou reruns on TV, bringing one another food. There are people who, if you don’t stop by and say hi for two days, admonish you with, “Oh, I never see you!” or, “You’ve let me go, have you?” I just want to be by myself, hiding, until Nadou sends me word that I can come join her in America. So that’s what I do: I stay inside, sleeping, and waiting for the days to go by.
JANUARY 2011
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
I sit up straight, my heart pounding, wrenched from sleep. It’s two P.M., but it gets so stiflingly hot and dusty under plastic tarps and sheet metal that I’m lying on a sheet on the floor, wearing just a bra and a skirt, sweating, dreaming quick, shallow, afternoon dreams. I am the only one home.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
It takes me a dazed moment to realize that the noise is someone pounding on the door. I get chills, despite the heat.
“Who is it?” I call out, and I hear the panic in my own voice.
“PNH! Open up now!”
The police? I haven’t done anything. Why are the police here? I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. I reach for the nearest shirt and pull it on, inside out. What if they rape me? What if they shoot me?
“Open up!”
“Wi, wi, map vini! Yes, yes, I’m coming!”
Barefoot, my hair a mess, I stagger to the door and unlock it, and it flies open. There are three officers holding rifles and wearing camouflage and silver reflective sunglasses. Beyond their uniforms and guns, I can’t see anything else. If you were to ask me later whether they were short or tall or young or old or black or brown, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
“Bonswa,” I say, “Good afternoon,” because I’m not sure what else to do.
They don’t say anything. They move past me. I am sure they can hear my heart beating. They start searching everywhere. They open the suitcases where we store our clothes and dig into everything. They look under the table and peer into our water buckets and even run their hands over our sacks of rice and charcoal. They pull the mattress off the bed and search beneath it. They poke the butts of their guns against the tarp and metal roof, making sure there’s nothing up there. “Mèsi, madmwazèl,” one of them says. “Thank you, miss.” Then they leave. A few moments later, I hear the same pounding at Mme Joseph’s next door. They probably weren’t here for more than two minutes, but I feel exhausted, with my eyes wide open. The room is humid, a soupy mix of sweat and men’s cologne.
Later I go out to buy hot pepper, green onion, and a piece of coconut to cook dinner before Tonton Élie gets home. Mme Christophe, the machann with graying hair and green eyes she says she inherited from a French great-grandfather, is gossiping with Michael, the young guy in a red Digicel vest who sells scratchable phone cards. They so
und more interested than traumatized.
“Mezanmiiii, I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” says Mme Christophe with satisfaction.
“They’re looking for thieves and kidnappers,” reports Michael. “You heard about the girl who got kidnapped on her way home from school last week near Kalfou Gerald? They’re looking for whoever took her.”
“Oh, why would anyone kidnap a little innocent?” Mme Christophe mutters, more to herself than anyone else. “What money can her family have?”
“The police were looking for guns, for anyone with guns,” Michael says.
“Look at this country,” Mme Christophe tsks, shaking her head.
I don’t feel like gossiping or talking politics right now, so I buy what I need and thank Mme Christophe and tell them both good afternoon.
When I get home, I notice it, lying on the floor, halfway under the bed. Open, dusty, ruffled, and still, like a dead bird half-eaten by a cat. It’s my old journal, the one I’ve been hiding since it was pulled from the rubble. The police must have shaken it loose when they pulled the mattress from the bed frame.
I stare at it for a while, not sure what to do. The cover, with yellow puppies on it, is gouged and dusty, but the notebook is intact. I step closer. It’s open to a page with one of Nadine’s drawings.
I can’t help laughing. Since the earthquake, the journal had become a holy, untouchable thing to me, like a relic, but when I see Nadine’s stupid drawing of Mme Faustin, it comes back to life. Little grains of whitish plaster fall onto my skirt as I lay the notebook on my lap and begin, cautiously, to leaf through it. And there we are—Manman, Nadine, and me, frozen in time. I run my fingers over the words, the barely-there indentations of the ballpoint pen, and wonder at the things that survive.
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