In Darkness

by Nick Lake

  I’m trying to remember the words so I don’t lose my mind, all that shit about having a Glock, about making all the mother fuckers duck, but the third verse I can’t remember.

  Last time I slept I dreamed I was in a marsh, riding a horse. I’ve never ridden a horse in my life, but I was riding it easy. And I saw this old man, I think he was a houngan cos his place was like the truck that Biggie’s houngan lived in. He called me Toussaint and spoke about Ogou Badagry, who Biggie wanted on his side when we went to war.

  It was crazy, but it was like I knew everything that Toussaint was, everything he knew. How he’d learned medicine from his father. How his wife’s eyes had been the precise color of polished amber at dusk. How Toussaint knew what that looked like – amber, I mean – cos his master used a piece of it as a paperweight in his study.

  I forgot most of it when I woke up, but I remember those things. And it freaks me out, cos I don’t even know what a paperweight is. And I’d never seen shit that was made out of amber, but still I can picture that paperweight in my mind, see the bubbles in the yellowy stone.

  You feel me? So now I think, maybe I’m losing my shit, cos I can’t be Toussaint l’Ouverture – that would be crazy. I keep telling myself I’m just dreaming, that I’m remembering this stuff cos Biggie was always talking about Toussaint, how he was just an illiterate slave who learned to read and write, and how he destroyed the French navy, how he was the hero who made us free. Sometimes he said that Dread Wilmè was Toussaint l’Ouverture born again, but as I lay there in the darkness after waking up I thought, no, that’s not Dread – or maybe it was Dread once, but not anymore – that’s me, I’m Toussaint. But then I made myself stop thinking that, cos it’s completely mad, completely crazy.

  Me, I never saw the big deal with Toussaint, anyway. I never thought we were so free as all that in the Site. We couldn’t get out, except if we had a pass. We had soldiers guarding us, and the people were starving. I thought that made us kind of like slaves, but if anything Biggie had more of a hard-on for Toussaint than for Biggie Smalls, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Yeah, I say to myself. You’re remembering this stuff from Biggie.

  But then I think, no. Biggie never said nothing about a paperweight made of amber, and besides, I don’t even know what amber is.

  So then I’ve gone round in a circle, and I’m back to the start. I’m going mad with the darkness and the loneliness. The hand has stopped crawling toward me, making that rustling sound, and I think it was only doing that in my imagination to begin with. There’s nobody else here. Just me. No wonder my mind is spinning out, making up this story for when I’m sleeping, and I try not to let myself think the worst thing – there’s a part of me that’s looking forward to going to sleep again, so I can see what happens next.

  I get bored of saying the words to songs, so I sit and crack my knuckles instead. It makes a sound like guns going off a long way away. I wish I could see something. Anything. I wish I could see my hands. If I could see, I wouldn’t feel so crazy.

  I need to think about something, anything, so I think about Biggie. Yeah, Biggie. The mofo named himself after a dead gangster, like that was a good idea, like that was good luck.

  Biggie, the first time I saw him, he was standing by Dread Wilmè’s right-hand side, and that’s not just an expression, man – that shit means something. It meant he was the second-biggest gangster in Solèy 19, the general who carried out all of Dread’s black ops. And Dread got his orders from Aristide, so that made Biggie part of the government in the Site, almost.

  We were in some shack somewhere, cos Dread was always moving around to avoid the militia who wanted to bring down Aristide’s government. One of his guys found me and Manman in Papa’s boat, brought us to see him. This was, I don’t know, a few months after Papa got killed and Marguerite went missing. Dread, he was sitting on the bed, a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, his dreads hanging over his face – you didn’t see Dread’s face till he wanted you to see it. There was a smell of unwashed clothes in the air. Manman and me, we were trying not to look at the young men standing around us with guns.

  Dread was younger than you would think – thirty, maybe. He had this music on when we came in, not rap like Biggie liked, but some real old Haitian stuff, maybe vodou songs. Dread wasn’t looking at us, just reading some book. Biggie was standing next to him, only I didn’t know he was Biggie then, if that makes sense. I just knew he looked cool, with his baseball cap and his low jeans, his underwear showing. I guess he was only fourteen, maybe fifteen.

  Dread still didn’t look up, but he tossed the book at me and my hands flashed out and I caught it.

  — Read the third page, he said.

  I fumbled with the book, got it open.

  — Toussaint was a slave, yes, but he was a man of noble countenance and –

  — Good, said Dread.

  He looked up for the first time and I saw that his eyes were huge and black, like windows into something bad, like his soul was older than I could imagine, only not in a good way like Marguerite’s. In a scary way.

  — I heard you could read and I didn’t hear wrong, he continued. Your papa raised you right.

  Manman did this, like, half-choke, half-sob thing, and I looked down at the ground.

  — I’m sorry, said Dread. I’ve heard about what happened to your husband. To your papa. Dread took a cell phone from his pocket and waved it at us. I’ve spoken to Aristide. He agrees with me. We’re going to give you a house here in Solèy 19. We’ll look after you, keep you away from those anti-government fuckers. And we’ll send you to school.

  — Oh, thank you, thank you, said Manman. There were tears on her cheeks. Merci, Dread.

  — Don’t thank me, he said. Thank the prime minister.

  I turned to Manman.

  — What about Marguerite? I asked.

  Manman swallowed, then nodded at me. She took a step forward and put her hands together, like she was praying.

  — Dread, you know I’ve been Lavalas all my life. Aristide, he delivered my children.

  — We know, said Dread. That’s why we want to do right by you, keep you protected.

  — So, said Manman, the men who killed my husband, they . . . took my daughter. She’s the same age as my son – they’re twins. We . . . I . . . we need her back. Will you look for her?

  Dread, he looked at her slow for a moment before he stood up and took her hands. I saw how big he was then. He reached the ceiling and it was like the room was too small to contain him, like anything would be too small to contain him. There were scars on his face and his neck, like someone had tried to remove his head.

  — We’ll try, he said. He turned to the guy next to him. Biggie, he said. And that was how I heard Biggie’s name for the first time. Take them to their house, he told him. And make sure the boy receives an education.

  At that moment, I didn’t see the guns, I only saw the book I was holding, which I handed back to Dread.

  — No, said Dread. Keep it. Read it. That book will open your mind, tell you how the Haitians rose up to throw off the yoke of oppression, man. These people who want to remove Aristide, they want to make us slaves again. Truth. Read that book, maybe you can help fight them better.

  — Thank you, I said.

  You know what? I never did read that book. I think I lost it, maybe, when we moved. I was thinking so hard about my papa, and about Marguerite and whether we would see her again, that I forgot all about it.

  Right now, I wish to fuck I had read it.

  My mind drifts off, and I start to think about vodou. Toussaint, he went to see a houngan, talked about some thing that was inside him. I saw a houngan once, too – right before Biggie shot him – and he said I was half a person. I thought vodou was bullshit back then, a lie for people who wanted to feel safe. I thought it when Dread was burned, and I thought it afterward, too.

  Biggie was different. Biggie thought that cos of the bone dust the houngan had sprinkle
d on him bullets couldn’t kill him. Like I said, I thought that was about the stupidest thing ever.

  But now I’m not so sure. I’ve seen Biggie talk to me, bullet holes all through him, like a bowl for draining vegetables. And I’ve seen . . . I don’t know what I’ve seen. I’ve seen myself flying through the night air and rushing down and going into the mouth of a man, and then I was dreaming of Toussaint. I think, maybe there’s something to this vodou stuff after all.

  I reach into my pocket and I take out my pwen. I hadn’t really thought about it till that moment. Dread Wilmè gave it to me. It’s a stone with a god in it, from the old country. A gede lwa, one of our ancestors. It’s meant to protect me, so I think, well, now is the time. I hold it in my hand. It’s smooth, round. It’s like it came from the sea it’s so polished. I thought it didn’t work when I got shot in the arm and ended up in here. But now I think, what if it stopped me getting shot in the heart? Or in the head?

  I lift the pwen to my ear.

  — Tell me, lwa, I say. Tell me if there’s a way out.

  Nothing.

  I hold the stone tight. I ask it for strength. I ask it to stop me going mad. I ask it to find me food. My stomach is a tiny curled-up thing, like a cat, and it’s got claws that dig into me. My mouth is a desert that stretches miles in every direction. My stomach is a creature hurting me from the inside.

  The pwen is silent, but I’m feeling its smoothness with my fingers and I have another thought. I put the stone in my mouth and I suck it, and there’s, like, a firework burst in front of my eyes, even though there’s no light. Saliva runs down my throat, and I swear it’s like I’m drinking a glass of cold water, even though there is no water.

  I think, maybe the pwen will save my life after all. I take the stone out of my mouth and I say:

  — Thank you, lwa.

  Then I suck it again.

  I’m glad I didn’t give the pwen to Tintin. Right now, it feels like it’s saving my life. I know it’s just a stone and all I’m drinking is my own spit, but there’s a little part of me that believes something different – there’s a little part of me that thinks the stone is giving me water, keeping me alive.

  I told you I saw two men killed before my eyes by the time I was eleven years old.

  This is how it happened the second time.

  I was, like, one month from my eleventh birthday. Manman and me, we’d been living on our own for 877 days, and I’d been going to school on Dread Wilmè’s dime, while Manman had been doing I don’t know what for Lavalas. Only, that got harder, cos in between Papa dying and this time I’m talking about now, Aristide got kicked out of the country for, like, the third time, and you can imagine how happy Lavalas were about that.

  I was playing again, but alone this time. I was in the middle of our street, trying to build a bike. I’d seen one on a TV which someone had set up in one of the squares in the Site, so that people could sit on the ground and watch it. I’d found a couple of wheels from old prams, and some chains and other parts that were on the trash heap. I spent hours on that bike and never had much to show for it.

  Like the night I was born, it was very dark. It seems like it’s always dark when the big things go down in my life – when we were born, when my papa was killed, when Dread Wilmè died.

  This was after Aristide had gone, like I said. The Americans made him leave, except Biggie said it was them who put him in the palace in the first place. I never understood that. I asked Manman about it and she said it was complicated. She said that about everything. Then when I asked too many questions she would say, chita chouter yon jour wap fait goal. Careful, or you’ll get what you’re looking for.

  I think she meant that some answers are dangerous.

  So, Aristide was gone. Some moun said he was in Africa, some moun said he was in South America. Others, they said he would come back one day, when he was ready. Maybe he’s come back now. Maybe he was so pleased to see Haiti again he jumped off the plane and pouf, the hospital fell down. The way Manman talked about him, you’d think he was some giant, some magical big guy from a story, more powerful than any ordinary person, so that when he jumped up and down, you could imagine the buildings shaking.

  But Dread Wilmè still lived in the Site. Before, he would send his chimères to fight the rebels. After Aristide left, it got worse. The new government gave more guns to the Boston guys, the rebels, and told them to go after Dread Wilmè, cos he had been Aristide’s man. Also, the police would come into the slum and hunt for Lavalas supporters. With them were the attachés – they were like police, but they wore black masks and no moun could see who they were. Usually they made people they didn’t like disappear, but sometimes they had the chance to kill people, and the best time for them to do that was during the demonstrations. There were lots of demos and Manman took me on some. You have to understand: the Site was the biggest base for Aristide. He said he’d make the poor rich, so the poor loved him. It makes sense, right?

  When the military kicked him out, and the UN came, the Site fucking exploded. It stands to reason.

  I remember one demo. It was Haitian Flag Day, and thousands of us went out on the streets of the Site, singing songs in support of Aristide, calling for him to come back, singing songs against Latortue, who was the prime minster of the government that replaced him.

  — Trop de sang a coulé, Latortue doit s’en aller.

  Too much blood has flowed, Latortue has to go.

  We sang in French, so the reporters could understand, which was a joke, cos there were no reporters there anyway, even though we must have been, like, 10,000, minimum. We were all carrying Haitian flags and it was like a big party, all these people, all this color.

  The attachés came when we were close to the sea, on the main avenue. There were UN soldiers behind them in armored trucks, but they didn’t do anything. The attachés were in jeeps, and they got out with their black masks on and their rifles in their hands. Manman and me, we were near the front of the crowd, so we saw them, and we started to back away. People were shouting out in fear, and then the shooting began. One guy in front of me, he went down on his knees, and he was crawling toward me like a zombi, man. I was screaming and screaming. I wanted to get away from him more than I wanted to get away from the bullets.

  You, maybe you live in a world where people don’t get shot. I know what you’re picturing. I’ve seen anpil movies. You think bullet holes in a person look like little circular holes, like red coins. They don’t. What a bullet does, it goes into a person and it tears, it rips them open, makes them into a monster. They’re not human anymore.

  This guy in front of me, he’d been hit in the face, and his whole cheek, the whole side of his face had been, like, blown out about half a meter from his body, like a horn, like a trunk, like some kind of awful animal thing. You have never seen shit like this in your life, mwen jire. He was like a zombi, I’m telling you, like something out of a horror movie. And he was still crawling toward me, this massive bloody growth out of his head, making this animal sound, too.

  I don’t remember much of what happened after that. It was all running and screaming. Eventually we found ourselves in an alley with lots of other people and we couldn’t hear gunfire anymore.

  The UN soldiers came and locked everyone into the slum so they couldn’t escape. That’s what they did to people in the Site during the break-bones time.

  We called the UN soldiers casques-bleus, cos they wore blue helmets. They put cargo containers on the entrances and exits to the Site, and they built checkpoints and put soldiers on them. They’re still there – sometimes, me and Tintin, we drove as close as we dared and showed them our asses.

  It was a dog fight and the Site was the pit. Manman said 3,000 people died in twelve months.

  But in those twelve months, there was one person who didn’t die. One person who moved around constantly, sleeping in a different place every night, evading the men sent to kill him.

  Dread Wilmè.

  We
had moved to Solèy 19, thanks to Dread, and for a long time, our part of the Site had been safe, cos Aristide paid Dread Wilmè to protect the people. Manman knew Dread Wilmè from her time with the Lavalas party. She respected him. He sold drugs, but he didn’t tolerate crime. He didn’t let anyone steal, or commit murder for no reason.

  It was bad under Dread, but it was good at the same time.

  Now Aristide was gone, though, Solèy 19 was no longer safe. Some of the men who worked for Dread Wilmè had taken their guns and become chimères, working for no moun but their ownselves. Also, there were many men who wanted to kill Dread cos they didn’t like Aristide, and that included the government, who were handing out guns like they were lottery tickets. Plus, the UN wanted to kill all of them, so there would be no more guns in the Site. Manman was always frightened during the break-bones time, which was basically the whole time after Aristide was banished for good, cos the people from the Site, they just wouldn’t give up on him, on the dream he’d sold them.

  OK, so now you know the lowdown on everything that was going on at that time, when I saw my second man get killed.

  That night, Manman was outside, too, cos it was so hot. She had an old radio and she was listening to it, sitting on a chair outside the shack. She was keeping an eye on me, as I worked on my bike.

  With no warning, the radio went off and all the lights.

  I heard someone scream. That wasn’t unusual in the slum, but then I heard another loud noise. A sort of rumbling. It was a little bit like the noise I heard when everything fell down.

  Rrrrrum, rrrrrumm, rrrrruuuum, rrrrruuuuum.