Hold Tight, Don't Let Go

by Laura Rose Wagner

  I sit on the edge of a white plastic chair, my back straight, not removing my purse. I don’t even have enough money for a soda, and I’m afraid I’ll get kicked out. I take out my phone: no missed calls, no message from Jimmy. After a while a chubby young woman in plaid shorts comes out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “No, thanks . . . I’m just waiting for someone.”

  “Okay,” she says. “We don’t have any food right now. But we’ve got drinks.”

  “Okay. Mèsi.”

  She disappears into the kitchen again, and I turn to the TV, where a giant squid is destroying a ship. Jimmy is now twenty minutes late. A slow dread begins to creep over me that he might not come at all.

  But then he appears in the doorway, full of apologetic smiles. Jimmy doesn’t show his teeth when he smiles, making him seem shy. “Magdalie!” he cheers, and he gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How are you, ti cheri? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you! You don’t have to worry anymore. I’m going to fix all your problems.” He gazes around the room. “But let’s go somewhere more private.”

  That makes sense. You don’t bring out a lot of money in public, certainly not in the middle of the street and not even in a mostly empty restaurant, because someone could always see you. I follow Jimmy through a dark hallway and down another set of cement stairs. “Do you come here a lot?” I ask.

  “Sometimes,” he replies. “I come here sometimes to drink a little rum and enjoy myself.” As we hurry down the stairs, he puts a hand on my waist to steady me.

  “I’m all right.” I laugh. “My feet have roots. I won’t fall.”

  We arrive in a lightless little room with a tiny window set higher than my head, facing into an alleyway. “Thank you again so much for doing this, Jimmy,” I repeat. “I don’t know what I would have done. Sometimes I feel like I have no one left.”

  Jimmy smiles and gathers me in his arms and calls me sister. It doesn’t feel like the kind of hug a brother would give his sister, but I don’t try to pull away. He is very warm, and he smells like cologne. “Ti Magda,” he murmurs, “I’ll take care of you.” His hands slip under my blouse and up my back.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. I hear my voice as if from far away, as though it isn’t coming from me. I sound too calm.

  “Come on, Magdalie.” His hands unhook my bra, then slide down to the gap at the back of my jeans. “You look a lot like your sister.”

  These jeans were always too loose, I think. I knew I should have worn a belt.

  His zozo is hard and swollen and hot against me; I can feel it through his jeans. All my mind can come up with is a bunch of words with little thought attached to them: Heat. Closeness. Zozo. Cologne. Sweat. Dim gray sunlight. No emotion or thought, only panic. Run. Run. Run. Music from the TV blares through the building, reaching us where we are—rollicking adventure-movie music.

  “No, Jimmy. Please,” I whisper. “I don’t want to do this.” I try to push him away lightly, hoping that what’s happening isn’t happening, that it’s all a joke, that I might be misunderstanding it all.

  “Come on, Magdalie, my Magda,” Jimmy says again, his voice higher than usual. “Don’t be stuck-up and cold like your sister. Come on. I thought we had an agreement.”

  He leans against me, and his tongue penetrates my mouth, quick, muscular, and slippery. His beard stubble stings my cheeks. Jimmy makes a noise, like a growl or a grunt, deep in his throat. He clasps me tightly against him. I hold my breath. My mind starts to float away to a safe place, far away from my body.

  It wouldn’t be so hard, I think. A few minutes, and then you’ll have everything you need. You’ll go to Miami. You’ll have Nadine back. You’ll have everything you need. You’re the only person you can rely on, Magdalie. I keep my mind focused on that distant place, far away from the gray bar-resto and its dim back room, beyond those wrought-iron windows garlanded with dusty cobwebs. Somewhere safe, where there is no pain and no shame.

  This is easy, so easy. Jimmy begins to fumble with my zipper. He pulls my jeans down to my knees. He slips his finger inside my yellow cotton kilòt. Easy. He licks his finger and slips it inside of me.

  We bought these kilòt when Manman took me and Nadou shopping for school clothes downtown in August before our first year of high school. A new school year meant new panties, a new backpack, new pencils.

  Jimmy is sweating. I feel the clamminess of his palms as he runs his hands over my hair. The pinkie fingernail of one of his hands is long and pointed, so he can pull the SIM card out of his phone. Drops of sweat gather like blisters along his hairline, on his upper lip. “Magda,” he murmurs hoarsely.

  Once I start thinking about Manman and Nadou, I can’t get my mind back to the safe, faraway place. I try to force it back, but I can’t. I can’t get Manman’s voice out of my head. Listen, pitit mwen yo, my little ones. Whatever you do in life, don’t beg. No matter how hungry you are. And don’t ever sleep with a man for money. She used to tell us that, me and Nadine. And we’d laugh at her, because it was such a silly thing to say, because we weren’t beggars or whores.

  Come back, Magdalie. Don’t lose yourself, Magdalie.

  Jimmy’s mouth is sour and frothy; it tastes like stale kleren and pineapple candies. “Come on, Magda,” he sighs. “You owe me this.”

  I want to be the person you dreamed I would be, Manman. Manman, Manman, I want you to be proud of me.

  “No!” I cry, and I pull away, pushing Jimmy as hard as I can, with all my rage, with the rage of a hundred girls. My nails scratch trails into his forearms. “Don’t touch me anymore!”

  He looks shocked, confused, and hurt. “You’re the one who wanted this.”

  “That’s not true!” I scream, pulling my jeans back up.

  “What a freeloading little slut you are, Magdalie!” Jimmy roars. “You think people will just give and give and give and never ask anything in return?”

  “Go fuck yourself, Jimmy!”

  He lunges at me then, clenches my wrists in his hot hands and pins me against the gritty, cold cement wall. “Don’t scream, Magdalie, or I’ll hurt you worse.”

  “Don’t do this,” I whisper, and I try to twist out of his grip.

  His lip curls. “Your plan is idiotic,” he breathes softly over my face. “Your plan is the plan of a stupid, naive child. You are never going to get to Miami. You think Nadine can get you a visa? She couldn’t if she wanted to. And she doesn’t want to. Nadine has moved on. Nadine doesn’t care about any of us. Nadine doesn’t care about you.”

  Jimmy lets me go, then spits at me. That sound contains all the hatred in the world. I run, pounding up the gray, dark cement steps, dashing through the empty restaurant and slipping on the wet, cracked mosaic stairway. I run as if a demon is after me, until I’m delivered back into the bustle of the street market of Delmas 33. I’m shaking all over, but I keep walking as fast as I can. I’m too furious to cry. I can’t remember the last time I cried. He’s right. Nadine has forgotten me. There’s nothing left for me. There is nothing left to hope for.

  Maybe Jimmy is right about me, too. Freeloading little slut, you think people will just give and give and give . . . It’s true, it’s true, I’m always looking for an opportunity or a handout. It’s true.

  It starts to rain, and the rain feels good. As the machanns look for cover and pull all their pèpè off their hangers, and as all the other women pull out plastic bags to cover their hair, I keep walking. I’m sorry, Manman. I’m sorry, Manman. I feel like a crazy person, and I know I look like one. I walk straight through the rain, through the puddles and the mud, all the way home.

  I NEVER TOLD TONTON ÉLIE ABOUT WHAT happened with Jimmy, because it was too shameful. I am so stupid for not having known that would happen, for having ended up in that situation. And I was ashamed that I almost had sex for money, even if I didn’t do it. I feel dirty and frightened every time I think of the
smell of cologne and the feeling of Jimmy pressed up against me. How could I ever tell my uncle that? It’s not the sort of thing you can tell a man. I’ve got it sealed up in my heart.

  I don’t even tell Safira.

  “What happened with your cousin’s boyfriend?” she asks when she comes by to borrow a bit of detergent.

  “It didn’t work.”

  Her eyes grow hard. “What did he say?”

  He said the ugly thing that I fear the most. “He said, um . . . he said he didn’t have the money.”

  Safira gazes at me as if she knows I’m lying, but she doesn’t say it. Instead, she says, “Do you believe that?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Hmmph!” she says, leaning against the door frame. “Men. Liars, vagabonds.”

  “All of them?”

  “Mmm. Not all. But plenty. They’ll tell you sweet words, they’ll call you cheri doudou, but as soon as you give them what they’re after, it’s a hit-and-run. They turn around and get out of there.”

  “Is that what happened . . . ?” My gaze falls to her pregnant belly.

  “He said he loved me. Used to sing me love songs. Said he would always be there for me. Ala traka, what can you do when you fall in love with a liar?” Safira laughs, but her eyes look sad.

  “Do you want to come in?” I ask. “We have a kowosòl. It’s ripe. I could make juice.”

  “No, no, I have to wash all this laundry before my auntie comes home. Just— Magdalie?”

  “Wi?”

  “Just like how I put too much trust in that guy . . . Maybe you shouldn’t put too much trust in your cousin.”

  “My sister.”

  “Your sister. Maybe she . . . maybe she isn’t able, or she doesn’t know . . . I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Safira!” I snap. “You don’t know Nadine. She wouldn’t do that. You don’t know anything.”

  She nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not my business. I’d better go do my washing.”

  I’ve stopped having patience for anyone. Other kids in the camp playing soccer and being loud make me angry. The rap and bachata that fill the air and pierce the tarp whenever the electricity comes on fill me with hate and make me bury my head under the pillow and curse them in my mind. It is so very hot under a tarp roof. My dreams awaken me, exhausted, aware, and furious.

  I used to cry, but I can’t now, ever since I realized that Nadine had let me go. I want to scream and scream and scream enough to split the sky in two, but I choke whenever I try to weep. I feel as though my head is expanding sideways, ready to explode.

  Every day I have waited for her. Because she promised, because a sister wouldn’t make a promise and then forget about me. Every day I have waited for her call: Magda, cheri, it’s time. I arranged your visa. Go to the embassy. I’ve fixed everything.

  It’s an effort to drag myself out of bed each day.

  I am washing clothes when the blan comes and takes my photo. It doesn’t surprise me. Foreigners take a lot of photos, and sometimes Haitians do, too: of the rows of temporary toilets and of people collecting water. They take photos of children, sometimes the clean ones with neat hair but more of dirty kids with no pants. They take photos of amputees, like Noémie, who lives on the other side of the camp, not realizing that she didn’t lose her leg in the earthquake but in a traffic accident six years ago. They take a lot of photos of rubble and of tents and houses made of tarps.

  When the white man in the baseball cap takes my picture, I’ve got my skirt tucked up between my legs so it doesn’t get wet. I’m sitting on a low wooden bench, leaning over the plastic basin of soapy water, washing underwear. I’m humming the song from the Whirlpool commercial. The camera is black and huge, like a wide, fat gun. The man sweats greasily and smiles as he bends down to take my photo.

  No one likes having her picture taken while she’s doing chores and a mess. I’d rather put on a Sunday dress and get my hair permed and put on some lip gloss and be standing in front of something nicer than a tent.

  A memory flickers across my mind—something I haven’t thought about in months. A few days after the quake I saw a foreign photojournalist setting up a shot. He had an assistant with a big pointy black umbrella and lights, and he was taking a photo of a man sitting on a big pile of rubble. Now, why is that idiot sitting on a huge pile of rubble? I’d wondered. It didn’t make any sense to sit on top of a pile of rubble in the bright sunlight like that. There were other places to sit. And then I realized that they had put him there for the picture.

  Now, with this new photojournalist crouching down, his knees cracking, his camera trained upon my face, I remember that scene in the rubble with the posed man. I can’t stop laughing. I laugh in a crazy, desperate, too loud way that seizes my whole body. Tears roll down my face and my throat fills with phlegm. And I think, Nothing is funny, nothing at all. Nothing will ever be funny again. But I cannot stop laughing.

  The photojournalist takes my picture—skirt tucked up, hands soapy and wrinkled. Sweat turning to salt rings on my blouse. Click, click, click. I look down and see that my knees are grayish, and I think that I should put on some lotion. Click, click, click. The camera’s shutter opens and closes like a knife slicing against stone. I’m laughing so hard, I can’t breathe; my chest is in spasms.

  The photojournalist has thin, almost invisible lips pursed in graveness, a narrow nose, and a plump double chin. His hair is hidden under his baseball cap. His face flushes pink in the tropical heat. His eyebrows are knit into a practiced gaze of compassion and pity. He says something nasal in English to his Haitian translator. The translator leans toward me.

  “He says, how wonderful it is to see you so happy and laughing. He says he loves the light in the eyes of the Haitian people, your resilience, in spite of all your suffering.”

  A scream rises from me like a searing vapor, but I do not hear it. I dimly glimpse the sudden fear and shock on the face of the photojournalist as I hurl my basin of dirty washing water at him, the thud of hard plastic against his shins, but the expression and the sound mean nothing to me. Someone utters a vulgar curse against the photojournalist’s mother, and I don’t comprehend that it is me. If Manman were here to hear them, those words would have earned me a beating. I am bursting out of my own skin. I do not think in words; I only feel a shapeless desire to tear and to destroy.

  Safira appears—I don’t know from where—and seizes me by the arms, apologizing to the photojournalist and his translator in self-conscious, flawed French. “Désolée, désolée. She’s having a crisis. She doesn’t know what she’s doing . . .”

  She guides me through the camp, and pushes me into her own tent. She has me lie down on the bed. I still can’t breathe—my breath comes in jagged, high-pitched wheezes, and my head rolls from side to side. My heart thrums hard in my chest. I wonder, Am I dying? Safira unbuttons my blouse and pours a little bag of treated water over my face. “Okay, doudou. Don’t excite yourself, ti kokòt . . .” She hums a hymn as she sits on her heels in the corner, boiling leaves and soaking dishes in an old yellow Ti Malice bucket. Tears run out the corners of my eyes, dripping into my ears, and after a while my heart grows quieter. I begin to feel embarrassed.

  Safira pours the hot tea through a strainer and hands me a steaming cup. “We boil this where my family is from in the Artibonite,” she says.

  “Us too.” It is verbena tea, and it makes me think of Manman and how she’d boil verbena tea whenever someone was angry or shocked. I don’t know what else to say to Safira. I want to apologize for having acted the way I did, but I can’t find the words. I stare at the swell of her belly. However ashamed I am of what Jimmy almost did to me, I am relieved not to have let him get anywhere near my bobòt. Safira sings softly as she washes the dishes, and her voice grows louder with each line. It is unexpectedly beautiful and clear—such a strong sound from a seemingly weak body.

  Dieu tout puiss
ant quand mon cœur considère

  Tout l’univers crée par ton pouvoir,

  Le ciel d’azur, les éclaires, le tonnerre,

  L’éclair matin ou les ombres du soir

  De tout mon être alors s’élève un chant . . .

  And when she gets to the final line of the hymn, I mouth along,

  Dieu tout puissant, que tu es grand!

  God Almighty, how great thou art!

  Safira pauses as the final note vanishes from the air soundlessly against the dull tarp walls. She keeps her eyes on a fixed spot, looking neither at me nor at the dishwashing in front of her. Her thin hands with their long bones work as though they have memorized the chore.

  “I told you before that my manman sent me here when I got pregnant?” she says suddenly and softly.

  “Wi, I remember.”

  The water splashes as she scrubs a blackened pot with a scratching sound, and she hums the final line of the hymn again. “But that’s not the whole story. My manman was sick. They said she had tuberculosis. Some people were talking; they said it was a curse, and she must have AIDS. The hospital gave her medicine, but we didn’t have any food. And I had to take care of her.”

  I stare at my hands. I feel light-headed and drained, as though maybe this is a dream, and Safira’s words just keep coming, running over me like water.

  “The guy, I told you, who said he loved me? He told me he’d give us food vouchers and money if I slept with him,” says Safira tonelessly, still not facing me. I count the bumps of the vertebrae on the back of her neck.