The Gospel of Trees

by Apricot Irving

  The heavens themselves seemed to vouchsafe a happy ending: as soon as the ceremony was over, a few light clouds blew over the sun and danced a minuet above the just-planted trees, sprinkling raindrops on the heads of the jubilant schoolchildren, who skipped home aglow with the conspicuous pleasure of benevolence.

  Or at least that is how I remember it.

  As it turned out, one or two details had been overlooked. The local officials had been consulted, but the barefoot soccer players, loath to lose their playground, had not. Nor had my father thought to check with the women who peddled their wares twice a week in the blazing sun.

  The day after the tree-planting ceremony, when he came back to check on the seedlings, the machann told him exactly what they thought of his lousy idea, complaining that full-grown shade trees were the perfect habitat for snakes, and they didn’t fancy the idea of one dropping on their heads while they worked.

  Moreover, the entire project was seen as a hateful compromise to which they had not given their assent. One of the candidates running for député had promised them a proper covered market like the Iron Market in Cap-Haïtien, but with the new trees, they were afraid he’d never deliver on his campaign promise.

  * * *

  In his next newsletter, my father conceded defeat.

  SPECIAL EDITION newsletter “Haiti” by Jon & Flip Anderson: February 2, 1984

  This country certainly needs more than trees and rabbits. Haiti has been called the “graveyard of development projects.” We can add my idea of planting trees in the market place to the list of failures. It appeared to start with success. The holes for planting the trees were all dug one morning by a crew supplied by the Magistrate. In 5 minutes the work was done. It is incredible what a little organization can do. That night a big rain fell which seemed a confirmation of success. The trees started to grow a little and I could envision the shade they would be giving within a year’s time. Now, 3 months later they are all gone. For some reason people started breaking the heads off the trees and then taking the bamboo pickets for firewood. I guess my vision of a beautiful shady place was not shared by the people who bake in the strong tropical sun. I don’t like to give up though and there were many people very supportive of the project so I think we’ll try again, organizing from a different angle. What other lessons wait to be learned? Is there a possibility for success here?

  * * *

  Like a long line of others before him, my father’s missionary efforts had faltered, but it may be that the wasted time was not completely in vain. The shade-dappled marketplace never materialized, but a few of the local residents appeared to be inspired by the idea and planted trees in front of their own houses. The seedlings in the marketplace didn’t survive the year, but those planted by ordinary citizens—si Dye vle—still stand in Limbé like sentinels, their leafy branches perfectly suited for equally stubborn birds to build their nests.

  A Hundred Ways to Get It Wrong

  Limbé, 1984

  MY FATHER’S CURE for the stress of Haiti was to collapse onto the living room floor for a quick thirty-minute nap after lunch, his back slumped against the cool concrete, oblivious to our feet scampering past his head. All that was necessary was to stop and let the body revive itself, then back to work again.

  He was learning the hard way that reforesting Haiti was not going to be as straightforward as he’d hoped. Torrential tropical storms could drop up to twelve inches of rain in a single night, washing away months of work. And then there were the goats, who could happily chomp their way through hundreds of seedlings in a matter of days.

  When my father took a group of visiting Canadians to visit a rural school where they’d planted two hundred and thirty trees the previous year, only one had survived. In an attempt to salvage the visit, he helped the church group plant more trees along the Limbé River, but when he returned the following day to check on them, a few seedlings were already gone.

  —Such a place, he muttered as he kicked at the disturbed soil. The wear and tear of altruism, seen up close in all its bewildering inconsistency, was enough to grind a man down.

  My father was even more exasperated when Obed asked permission to attend a weeklong agricultural seminar in Port-au-Prince and instead emigrated to the U.S. Obed later wrote, semi-apologetically, to say that he had found a good-paying job in Connecticut—though he was surprised that he didn’t see many other people on the road when he walked to work. My father was frustrated. Haiti badly needed men with Obed’s drive and vision, and yet success so often seemed to be equated with escape. (The painful truth: that no matter how hard Obed worked, he could not have risen to a position of authority equal to my father’s or earned an equivalent salary—even at our meager income of several hundred dollars a month—was a tension unacknowledged by most missionaries.)

  And yet when it came time to hire new workers for the hospital tree nursery, even for part-time jobs, my father waded through piles of politely worded requests—some of them from applicants who had gone to the extra trouble of translating their letters into English in the anxious hope of winning his favor.

  2 Avril 84

  Mr John

  Agronomy

  Limbé, Haiti

  My dear

  I’ve great honeur to salue you and to make you to think to me perfectly.

  I want you send your new to me and the walking of your work.

  With your love the kindness to recover my letter with a great pleasure.

  I remain your affectionate

  M- Charely

  Student of Department’s Agriculture

  Had my father been able to read French, the candidates could have shown off their fluency, but even among those whose families had scrimped and saved for the best education they could afford, the worry was palpable. The missionary hospital, subsidized by churches in the U.S., was the largest employer in Limbé. But there weren’t enough jobs to go around.

  * * *

  My mother, stuck at home with Rosie, felt the frustrations of Haiti to be nearly endless. Most of the other missionary wives, who worked in the office or as nurses in the hospital, hired cooks to help in the kitchen, but my mother’s Kreyòl was faltering, and giving instructions grated against her independent streak. Also, she wanted her daughters to learn how to wash dishes and keep their rooms clean, like other American girls. But everything in Haiti took extra time. Fresh cow’s milk, delivered by a local farmer in a rinsed-out rum bottle, had to be pasteurized. Yogurt meant setting the canning jars in a warm bath and checking on them every few hours. Whole wheat flour, which wasn’t for sale even in Cap-Haïtien, had to be sifted from the son de blé (more commonly used for animal feed, but my mother wasn’t picky).

  As she slapped, folded, and leaned hard against the flat of her palm, kneading the bread for dinner, she daydreamed about being able to push her grocery cart down an air-conditioned aisle and buy whatever she needed straight off the shelf, in English. The prospect of returning to the U.S. after three intense years in Haiti felt like a cold glass of water after a twenty-mile hike. It was hard to even imagine a life where there would be time to play recorder and take walks by the creek in Idyllwild; a world without so many needs clamoring for her attention.

  Joanna, having decided that my mother enjoyed too much free time, put her in charge of the hospital doll project, which meant that at any moment there might be a knock on the door with a request for help. Joanna sold hundreds of the cheery cloth Haitian dolls when she went on speaking tours, and diabetic women at the hospital hand-stitched the eyes and mouths to pay for their daily insulin shots. My mother was in charge of fixing crooked embroidery and restocking the little gold baubles that doubled as earrings. She purchased fabric for the doll dresses from machann with carefully balanced baskets on their heads, who confidently measured the cloth by the length of their arms.

  My mother also volunteered with Meadow’s kindergarten class at Jericho School, and helped my five-year-old sister learn to ride a bike. When Meadow cou
ld wobble, with a wrinkled forehead and fierce concentration, the entire length of the compound with my mother running alongside, she suggested that my father take her out for a spin, just to see how well she was doing.

  My father held the bike seat while Meadow balanced her feet on the pedals, then sent her flying with a good strong push, only to stand back and watch as she veered with a scream and a crash into the rabbit cages behind our house.

  —Jon! Why didn’t you help her? my mother yelled as she ran to pick up the bike and the crying daughter.

  He threw up his hands and stalked into the house. —That’s how my dad taught me!

  * * *

  With our parents’ attention fixed elsewhere, we missionary kids competed for any scrap of attention we could find. I hated and loved it when Ana pinched my cheek and told me that I was cute before escorting me through the back-door entrance to the Hodges house to play Barbies. The next day, with Kirsti at her side, she’d inform me that I was too hotshotty and American. I was a pest, and my nasty jelly sandals made my feet look ugly.

  —I didn’t want to be friends with you anyway! I’d shout, sticking out my tongue and kicking at the dust as the screen door banged shut behind them.

  When it was Kirsti’s turn to be picked on, she didn’t yell or fight back. She just retreated inside her quiet house, into the arms (so I imagined) of a serenely attentive mother, which did little to soothe my jealousy. For at least a week—or was it longer? it feels, in memory, like a year—we made a pact not to speak to her or even acknowledge her presence. Within days, Kirsti had morphed into a pale, frightened shadow. Only Picole would play with her at recess. Peter, sensing danger, made himself scarce, as did Meadow.

  I, on the other hand, rather liked the way that Kirsti’s lower lip trembled and her brown eyes blurred with unspilled tears. Now that I was no longer the one being humiliated, it felt delicious to pile on the scorn. This newfound hatred tasted sweet. I belonged. She didn’t.

  Most of the parents, distracted by a hundred other crises, never even noticed, but when Suzette caught wind of our game, she dressed us down in a white-hot fury. I could not meet her livid gaze. Kirsti hid under Suzette’s arm as we lined up miserably to beg forgiveness. Kirsti patted our backs tentatively, murmuring absolution, which only made it worse. I slunk home with my chest heaving.

  * * *

  We had created, on the missionary compound, a world unto ourselves: communal living—but only for the expatriates. Only in rare moments did we recognize our poverty. We had only each other to turn to. Our enclave smacked of scarcity, not wealth.

  All of the missionary kids had learned to belt out the lyrics to “Ayiti Cheri,” thanks to Laurie Casséus, who drove over from the nearby Baptist seminary to direct the Jericho School choir. Laurie’s long blond hair swayed across her back when she raised her arms and summoned our voices into the air, and we threw ourselves into that rousing love song for Haiti—Ayiti cheri, pi bèl peyi pase ou nan pwen: Beloved Haiti, there is no more beautiful country than you—but aside from trips to the beach or church on Sundays we rarely left the compound.

  We seldom saw our Haitian and Dominican friends in Cap-Haïtien, and though my mother played the autoharp with a Baptist choir in Limbé and joined a Kreyòl Bible study with Pastor Tomas, my participation was limited to Sundays, when I pulled on my white socks with lace fluttering around the ankles and, in my scuffed church shoes, doing my best to avoid the mud puddles, walked the half mile to the Limbé Baptist church.

  The sanctuary held more than a thousand worshippers, even without the balcony that hung half-constructed from the far wall, whose rose window Dr. Hodges had helped design. Women with starched white doilies balanced on their heads arrived throughout the service to squeeze onto the long wooden benches, but the thin flutter of air from two small oscillating fans behind the pulpit barely reached the front rows.

  During the brow-wiping sermons, Meadow, Rosie, and I were expected to pay attention like the Haitian girls who sat so quietly in their Sunday dresses. My father allowed no fidgeting. He refused to let us bring colored pencils or books, like the other missionary kids, so I flipped through the Old Testament, which, luckily enough, was chock-full of drama—Absalom dangling by his long hair from a tree as his horse raced off without him; Ruth slipping under Boaz’s cloak at night; Onan, who was supposed to provide his widowed sister-in-law with a son but instead spilled his seed upon the ground, for which offense the Lord slew him (a sufficiently vague descriptor but one that I nevertheless hid furtively if my father happened to glance over at the page).

  Had I been asked, I would have piped up proudly that of course I was a Christian—I had gotten down on my knees and prayed to ask Jesus into my heart when we lived at the Ag Center, during a Children’s Bible Hour radio broadcast. It was nice to know I had heaven to look forward to, maybe even some stars in my crown if I behaved just right. It was just that the flowery sermons and long-winded prayers in Kreyòl went on so long. At least in English church we got to sing silly songs with hand motions.

  I didn’t mind Sunday school on the compound with Suzette. She had us memorize her favorite Psalms, which I rather liked. When I climbed trees and recited Psalm 139 under my breath—Oh Lord, You have searched me and You know me, You know when I sit and when I rise—I could almost feel God shimmering in the leaves. I felt more or less the same frisson of glory if I fell and got the wind knocked out of me and my mother put her hand on my forehead and prayed a shimmering waterfall of words in a language spoken by nobody, as far as I could tell, but her and God. Baptists got nervous when people spoke in tongues, but my mother’s glossolalia was an incantatory song, a burbling babble of comfort. If church could have included a little more of that close and holy darkness, it wouldn’t have been half bad.

  Instead, church seemed to mostly be about sitting still and trying to impress God (or other people). When it was time for the French hymns, I stood up alongside everyone else, a thousand feet shuffling on the bare concrete. Most people in Limbé spoke no more French than I did, but the women dutifully adjusted their head coverings and cradled their thumbed and wrinkled songbooks as we blundered along together. Sometimes my mother stood up front and strummed her autoharp while severe-looking men with tightly cinched belts passed the collection baskets. Only when we got to burst into the harmonies of the Kreyòl version of “We Shall Overcome”—nou va triyonfe yon jou!—did the enormous room swell to its full echoing capacity.

  Finally, after what felt like three torturous hours, the pastor raised a hand and squinted his eyes shut, using his other hand to mop his forehead with a starched handkerchief as he pronounced the benediction. And then, mercifully, it was over. The congregation crowded into the aisles to catch up on the latest gossip; I retreated through the side door with the rest of the missionaries. Even in church, we kept to our own.

  On the long walk home, Dr. Hodges trundled past on his bicycle, having pedaled in early to teach Sunday school. His bike bell clanged a polite warning, his hand lifted slightly in hello. Sometimes a car full of missionary kids drove past waving, with Barbara at the wheel, but my father insisted that we needed to walk because it would help us meet our neighbors—as if that alone could bridge the chasm we’d created.

  My mother held Meadow’s hand, and my father hoisted Rosie onto his shoulders. I walked as quickly as my too-tight church shoes would carry me.

  The road from the church was treeless and hot. Women shelled peanuts in their front yards. Men tipped back woven chairs to listen to the radio. A girl, pinned between an older woman’s knees with her scalp pulled back at a sharp angle, met my eyes as the comb yanked backward.

  Neighbor kids yelled Blan! Blan! but I hated it most when they called Meadow and I Cheve wouj! Cheve wouj! (our red hair being the ongoing joke because, despite our obvious wealth, it looked like we had a protein deficiency). Watching each other from a distance, we jumped to conclusions and got it wrong at least half the time. It was a relief to finally reach the front
gate of the compound and retreat under the cool shadows of the overhanging trees as Haiti dissolved behind me into a clamorous song.

  Ti Marcel

  Limbé, 1984

  TWO YEARS INTO his unplanned career as a missionary agronomist, my father wrote to Grandma Lois: You said not to wear ourselves out taking care of Ti Marcel. I think in a way it’s therapy for me.

  At nine months old, Ti Marcel had neither hair nor teeth and could not sit up. She weighed under eleven pounds. My father brought her home from the pediatric ward so that my sisters and I could shout some life into her, but she didn’t smile or giggle like other babies. Her skeletal arms jutted out from her distended abdomen, and she had wide, unblinking eyes and a rib cage like a shuddering kite frame, ready to catch in the slightest breeze and lift her out of our hands, drifting beyond the horizon, lost to the world.

  A visiting American nurse had pointed out the tiny foundling to my father because of the simple astonishing fact that she kept not dying. More than once, the doctors had performed emergency venous cut-downs on her ankles to connect an IV to collapsed veins. My father suspected that her chances of survival were slim if she remained in the overcrowded ward, untouched for hours. He wanted to give her a fighting chance, as he would have wished for any of his daughters.

  Rosie, who was four years old and eager for a younger sibling, leaned in close and tickled Ti Marcel’s feet. I was eight and aware of all the attention I had already lost. I turned away. Her papery skin reeked of scabies medicine and urine.

  She had no name. The Haitian nurses at the hospital called her Ti Marcel, little Marcel, and this name—the name of the father who had apparently abandoned her—was one of the few things we knew about her. The fragments of backstory, which we acquired piecemeal from uncertain sources, were as follows: Her mother was said to have died soon after giving birth; unnamed relatives fed her watered-down tea instead of milk, then left her at the missionary hospital. They had not been in contact since that time. Her father, Marcel, was rumored to have fled the country only to be thrown into detention once he arrived in Florida. It was an old, tired story—yet another survivor with a strong body and shrinking options who had risked everything for a chance at Peyi Bondye, God’s Country: where coins could be found on the street, free for the taking; where all the children had enough food to eat and all the fathers had three-car garages; a distant realm from whence the missionaries hailed; mythical land of the minimum wage.