“Papitas?” He pointed to the plastic bags filled with thin, flat yellow strips, arranged in a way that made him look as though he were sprouting a giant marigold from his hair.
“It is chips bannann. Fried plantains,” Mackenson explained.
Charlie dug deep into the pocket of her jeans. “Will he take dollars?”
“Dollars or gourdes. Whatever you wish. Money is money here. But do not expect him to have any change.”
Charlie lowered the window further. She could see Lizbeth in the mirror, shifting in her seat. “Two please.” She held out some bills in exchange for the bags. “Mèsi. Thank you.” She handed a bag to Mackenson, and passed the other over her shoulder to Lizbeth.
Lizbeth wrinkled her nose and shook her head at Charlie’s offer. “It’s just fried bananas,” Charlie explained. “With salt. Nothing too exotic.” The woman still declined.
With the traffic still not moving, Charlie glanced over at Mackenson, sitting tall in his gray, long-sleeved Nike jersey and matching baseball cap. The guy could be a model. “So have you always been an interpreter?” she asked.
“No. I was a teacher of electrical engineering at the college. Before the earthquake. Now there is no college.”
“What a crying shame,” Lizbeth said. “You were a teacher and now you do this?”
Charlie thought she noticed Mackenson roll his eyes.
“Mostly I do jobs for people,” he explained. “I fix electricity, things like that. I work as a guide sometimes when the hotel needs me.”
“Seems like their electricity could use some of your fixing,” Lizbeth said. “Went out yesterday afternoon just as I was trying to take a little catnap. Got hotter than a two-dollar pistol in that room.”
Mackenson nodded. “The electricity from the city is only available for a few hours each day. Then they must use their own generators.”
“Well then, somebody should tell them to turn those things on. A person is likely to explode in that kind of heat.”
“It is very expensive to use power from a generator. Most people do not use them in their homes.”
“How do they make their supper, then?” Lizbeth asked.
“They use charcoal for their cooking.”
“What do you know? Just like our barbecues back home, right, Charlie?”
“Yep.” Charlie nodded. She was by now well aware that Lizbeth was the kind of woman who talked when she was nervous. Here she was, about to come face to face with a part of her son’s life she knew nothing about, and maybe—if they were lucky—find the woman and baby they were looking for. Yet all she could do was talk about barbecues. “You like to barbecue, Lizbeth?” she asked.
“I sure do.” Lizbeth was quiet for a brief moment as Charlie continued to follow Mackenson’s finger-pointed directions through the crowded streets. As they inched their way up a gentle hill behind a bus that had passengers piled on top of the roof and spilling out the back—“Courage, Maman” was the motto blazoned across its side—she began to notice the neighborhood changing slightly. Here the streets seemed to be a little cleaner, the stores a little more plentiful, the sidewalks a little less crowded. It was not pristine, by any sense of the word. It was just different. Still busy, but in a less chaotic way.
Shops vied for attention with competing neon colors splashed across their facades, the low, cinderblock buildings home to businesses offering car parts, groceries, dry cleaning, and a couple of restaurants. And everywhere, the ubiquitous lottery shacks, where all one could buy was a bit of hope for tomorrow.
But what Charlie took most notice of were the hair places. Barbershops, unisex salons, “studios de beauté”, all easily identified by their handmade signs: men drawn with dark, razor-thin beards, women with long, straight hair or updos, all with very serious—she supposed it was meant to come off as alluring—looks on their painted faces, chipped and flaking from the year-round sun.
“I think we are close to the street where we are going,” Mackenson said.
“This is where he lived?” Lizbeth asked.
“It’s lively, right?” Charlie answered.
“That’s one word for it.”
Charlie braked hard as a stray dog darted in front of the car, chased by two small boys with sticks.
Lizbeth let out a muffled scream from the back seat. “Likely get ourselves killed in this damn place.”
“We’re fine, Lizbeth. Nothing happened.”
“Yes,” Mackenson added. “We are fine. But maybe just a little lost.”
8
Mackenson lowered the window and shouted to a woman selling aranso, dried fish, from a crate on the side of the road. “Hey!”
Charlie pulled the car to a stop.
“Hey!” he repeated before the woman turned her attention his way, approaching the car at a lazy pace, one hand resting on her hip. “Koman ou ye?” How are you doing? he asked with a smile, holding out the address on the slip of paper in his hand. The woman peered through the open window at Charlie and Lizbeth, a gust from the air conditioner rustling the brim of her canvas hat. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and pointed ahead, and handed the paper back to Mackenson with narrowed eyes.
He closed the window and sat back, trying to shake off the sting of her look as they continued toward their destination. Mackenson was used to receiving looks like hers, from others who were jealous of this kind of job. One guy from his neighborhood, Cité Soleil, had even gone to a Vodou priest to ask for help from the loa to take Mackenson’s job from him, he had heard. But why should he feel guilty? Sure, he was comfortable in this cool air, on these soft leather seats, but he had worked hard to teach himself English, had done plenty of work for the hotel before the owner started recommending him to the guests as a guide. No, he refused to feel bad about it.
It was true that jobs like this one weren’t difficult to do, but they could test his patience. The two women with him now seemed nice enough, but it became tiresome trying to explain his country to people when he sometimes could not even explain it to himself. Especially hard for him was listening to those who came to Haiti thinking they were here to fix all the problems. Like the son of the older woman, the one called Lizbeth. Charlie had explained to Mackenson that Luke, she said his name was, had been working with an NGO. Mackenson had met many people like this Luke, living like kings from the money they made pretending to help. People who made promises to do certain jobs for the government, yet when you saw the NGOs’ reports, you would find that three different organizations said they were spending money on the same project. There was never anybody watching, nobody telling them what should be done. They did not ask what the Haitian people needed. And some of the NGOs, the houses they had built, and continued to build? The rooms were too small, the materials too cheap. They only did what was easy. They didn’t ask the Haitians how or where to build, what was best for this place. It was just a way for them to make more money.
Of course, not everyone who came to help was bad. But he had seen far too many people who came charging in to fix things, only to leave a mess behind. And what about those who thought that a week or two of work was enough to fix a country? Maybe being able to tell stories to their friends back home about what they did made them feel good, but it was like using a glass of water to put out a fire in the forest. Where did it leave the people they came to help? He had seen it a lot right after the earthquake. Back then Haiti was filled with blans rushing to help. Now they seemed to be almost invisible.
It was complicated. Even if things come from a good heart, they aren’t always good for everyone.
This Charlie, she seemed to be different from the rest. The way she jumped into the driver’s seat of the rental car while he was still standing there waiting for her to hand him the keys. He had not met many blans—and not one blan woman—who wanted to drive in Haiti. He had sat on the edge of the passenger seat, ready for her to turn to him for help, but when he saw how she fought through the traffic, how she made the big car move aro
und the rubble and puddles, how she ignored the lane markers and stop signs just like any good Haitian driver would do, he relaxed. Now he was finding it funny to see people turning to look at her, people who didn’t see many women at all behind the wheel in Port-au-Prince.
But the other woman, Lizbeth, looked as though she was just waiting for a pair of black hands to fling open the door and snatch her right from the car. And asking questions about his mother. Mackenson had no interest in sharing the story of his father leaving them for his other family. A blan would never understand this struggle, which was a way of life in so many Haitian homes. Of course, he thought, with a sudden feeling of shame, he should not be thinking this way about the poor woman. She had lost a son, and no woman should have to suffer the pain of a thing like that. Charlie had told him why Lizbeth was in Port-au-Prince. He felt sorry for her, chasing after some souyon, one of those girls who ran after blans just for their money, who treated guys like Mackenson as if they were no better than a piece of trash floating down the gutter in a storm, who would not recognize a good Haitian man if he were staring them in the face.
Stop, he told himself, as Charlie slowed the car to check the numbers on the houses. What was the matter with him today?
Charlie was slowing almost to a halt.
“It makes no sense,” Lizbeth said. “The numbers are all mixed up. They were going higher, now they’re lower.”
They rounded a bend in the street before Charlie pulled the car up onto the sidewalk to park.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Mackenson asked.
“It’s the street number Luke’s work gave me,” Lizbeth answered, her wrinkled nose practically pressing against the glass of the car window. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”
Mackenson had to agree with her. He would never have guessed an NGO worker would live in a place like this. Usually they lived in big houses behind walls with locked gates, as if to keep the real world from invading their lives. This was a two-story cinderblock building, practically in the street, with a tailor shop and a snack bar below and a row of apartments above. It was fine, by Haitian standards. But he did not think that a blan would choose to live here.
“What did your son do for work in Haiti?” he asked, wanting to make sure he understood what Charlie had told him.
“He came down here to help with the water situation.” Lizbeth’s eyes remained fixed on the apartment windows above. “After the earthquake.”
“And he stayed after that?”
“Yes.”
“That is not the usual thing. Most people who came to help are gone now.”
“Luke just loved his job, teaching people to help themselves. What’s that thing they always say? Give a man a fish?”
The woman did not seem to want to leave the car. “I don’t know what that is, about the fish,” he answered.
“‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,’” Charlie said. “‘Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’”
Mackenson nodded. “Your son was a smart man,” he said into the rearview mirror.
“A do-gooder actually doing good, right?” Charlie said, as if she had been listening to his thoughts.
“Well, he certainly wasn’t in it for the money, by the looks of things,” Lizbeth said.
Mackenson reached for the door handle and felt Charlie’s hand gently pulling him back. She shook her head a tiny bit, indicating with her eyes toward the back seat.
“Lizbeth?” she said. “You just tell us when you’re ready. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
9
Lizbeth could have sworn she was hearing the sound of her own heart pounding, until she noticed the rock in Mackenson’s hand. The door was a rust-colored metal, battered and scratched from lord-knows-what. Above her, the green and white striped awning gave the building the appearance of a beach cabana, if beach cabanas came with security bars slapped across every window. Still, the place looked clean enough, at least from the street.
She waited on the cracked sidewalk as Mackenson continued to rap on the door while shouting for someone’s attention. Perspiration rolled down her cheeks like the tears she’d only just managed to stop. She wasn’t sure they’d find out much of anything here. But the address she’d got from Luke’s work was all she had to go by. Even that had not been easy to get. Luke had neither sent nor received letters in Haiti, as the darn country had no mail system. Imagine. How could people live like that? The nice lady back in the States from the NGO had to dig through her paperwork to figure out where he was last living. Apparently the boy had moved homes quite a lot down here.
Finally she saw the door crack open. A muscular middle-aged man spoke with Mackenson. Lizbeth heard her son’s name mentioned, and suddenly it seemed as though all eyes were on her. The older man opened the door wider and gestured for them to come inside. She went first, at his insistence, up an exterior staircase that led to another door.
Inside the building it wasn’t much cooler than it was outside. At the end of a dark hallway the man reached around Lizbeth to open a door with a key from his pocket.
“He says this was where your son was living,” Mackenson explained.
The one-room apartment was mostly empty, with just a few pieces of dark wooden furniture filling the space. The kitchen looked like one of those miniature play sets, a tiny two-burner hotplate and a fridge just big enough to hold a carton of milk and a jar of pickles. How a boy Luke’s size could have fitted into a place this small was beyond her.
“This is Kervens,” Mackenson added, by way of introduction. “He is the caretaker for this place.”
“So you knew my boy? You knew Luke?” Lizbeth asked eagerly.
She watched Kervens’ face as he spoke, his words sounding like popping corn to her, a mishmash of a language she couldn’t even begin to understand. Kervens turned to brush the dust off a bed lodged against the wall, gesturing for Lizbeth and Charlie to sit, as Mackenson translated.
“He wants to know if you would like some water,” Mackenson said, handing Kervens a wad of bills. Before they could answer, Kervens was out the door.
“You okay?” Charlie asked, her hand coming to rest on Lizbeth’s knee.
“I think so.” Lizbeth took out a tissue to wipe the back of her neck. It still seemed so unreal, being here in this foreign place with these folks she hardly knew. Even this room felt far from her comfort zone, though she knew in her head that part of her son’s soul must be watching over her from somewhere in these walls.
Kervens bounded back through the door and delivered two sweating bottles of cold water to the women.
“I hope y’all didn’t go to too much trouble.” Lizbeth gratefully untwisted the plastic cap.
“They sell water on the street.” Mackenson pointed through the room’s one window.
Kervens leaned back against a table and said something to Mackenson.
“He says he knows your son. He is sorry to learn that Luke has died.”
Lizbeth could see Kervens nodding in the background.
“He says your son was a good man. A good friend to have. Most of the blans, they live up in Pétion-Ville. Not here.”
“Blans?” Charlie asked.
“White people. Foreigners,” Mackenson explained.
Kervens continued to talk to Mackenson. Lizbeth could feel the tears about to start again. She dug inside her bag for more tissues.
“After his rent money was done, the landlord told Kervens to get rid of all the things belonging to your son, so that he can find another person to rent the apartment. But Kervens put all the things away for when your son came back.”
Again Kervens left the apartment, this time returning with a large cardboard carton.
“Did he know the girl?” Lizbeth asked. “Ask him if he ever met a girl with Luke.”
Mackenson seemed to frown a little as he interpreted her words for Kervens.
But Kervens broke into a smile. “Senzey?”
/> Lizbeth nodded. Kervens continued to speak to Mackenson.
“He says yes, he would see her sometimes.”
“And the baby?”
Mackenson repeated her question in Creole. Lizbeth saw Kervens’ forehead wrinkle with confusion before he spoke.
Mackenson folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “He says he did not see any baby.”
“I knew it!” Lizbeth blurted out. “I should’ve listened to myself. Damn fool is what I am. Letting myself listen to some gold digger looking for a ride out of this godforsaken place.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Charlie said. “Let’s just slow down for a minute and think about this.” She turned to Mackenson. “Ask Kervens when was the last time he saw Senzey.”
Kervens thought about the question before answering.
“He says maybe last spring, or summer, he cannot remember exactly. Senzey sometimes stayed here when Luke was traveling, and sometimes when he was not. After he was gone the last time, for so long, Kervens did not see her again.”
“Aha! So she skipped out when the money dried up,” Lizbeth said.
Mackenson again spoke with Kervens.
“The rent money was not gone. Luke gave the money for one year before he went to the States.”
Lizbeth held the damp water bottle against her forehead. If only she weren’t so damn hot, maybe things would all make more sense.
“He says maybe she went back to live at the hotel where she works,” Mackenson continued. “And that maybe she could have been carrying a baby in her. He did not notice. She did not say anything to him.”
Lizbeth felt something tugging inside, as if all her organs were contracting at once.
“Does he know which hotel?” Charlie asked.
“Hotel le Président,” Kervens answered.
Lizbeth removed her glasses and peered into the cardboard box. She almost didn’t want to touch it, remembering how painful it had been when she’d finally forced herself to go through Luke’s things at home. He didn’t have much of anything there, and he didn’t seem to have much here, either. She wondered if the girl had taken anything for herself. She picked up a T-shirt, worn and faded, and held it to her chest.
Island on the Edge of the World Page 5