Island on the Edge of the World

by Deborah Rodriguez

  He had spent two hours so far asking around, urging his friends to ask their friends if they had ever heard of Darline. He was tempted to quit and head back to his home on the edge of the neighborhood, where things felt a tiny bit calmer, a tiny bit safer. Looking at the rubble around him, the crumbling shacks that people called homes, he felt lucky. He was proud of the small house he had managed to rent for his family, a house that was now filled to the roof with the addition of the two children of his cousin, who had been left with Mackenson and Fabiola to raise as their own. He had worked hard to get the money to put down for the rent, and even harder to fix up the place. He had recently added a square concrete patio in the front, where Fabiola could sit in the sun and wash the clothes, and the children could lay it all on the trees and bushes to dry. Someday, he hoped, he would have enough money to buy the house, and make it theirs forever.

  He was headed toward what would be his last stop, no matter what. If he did not get any answers at the place his friend Wilner had suggested, he would go home. Fast. Behind him, he could hear the sound of footsteps growing louder. Mackenson lowered the brim of his cap and shoved his hands in his pockets, spreading his shoulders to make himself appear bigger. He held his breath as a group of young men passed and then turned toward the same spot he was headed to.

  The nightclub stood out like a fish in the desert. Even so, it was just a small concrete box of a place, no bigger than a single-car garage of one of the fancy homes up in Pétion-Ville, its painted front chipped and scarred with graffiti. He was grateful for the crowd outside, as there appeared to be only one small window looking in, and he was wary of what he might find should he need to actually enter.

  He had been told of a man named Evens, who was the boyfriend of Senzey’s sister Darline. It did not take long to find him in the group that was socializing under the sky. Evens stood from a crouch near the nightclub’s front door. He was a tall, skinny guy wearing a sleeveless basketball jersey with Lakers 23 across his chest, as if he were about to be called into the game. Seeing Mackenson following pointed fingers toward him, he stood eye to eye with Mackenson and asked, “Kisa ou vle nan men mwne?” What do you want from me?

  “Bonswa. Good evening. I am here only to ask about Darline.”

  Evens narrowed his eyes. “What about Darline?” His friends drew nearer, as if lining up to welcome the entertainment a fight might bring.

  “I would like to talk with her.”

  “And what do you want to talk to her about?”

  “Is she here?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do you know where I can find her?”

  Evens looked away.

  Mackenson reached into his pocket for a few gourdes, hoping that the offer of enough to buy a drink of kleren inside would help to loosen the man’s lips.

  Instead, Evens grabbed the bills, shot Mackenson a smirk, and went straight inside.

  His friends laughed. “I will tell you where Darline is,” one of them said, sidling up to Mackenson. “She is with her ‘papa’. Her sugar daddy. That brother,” he gestured toward where Evens had disappeared through the door, “he has no job, no money. But the old man, he gives her whatever she wants.” Then the man started to dance, all elbows and knees, humming the song that had become so popular the year before. “Madan Papa”, Daddy’s Girl. Mackenson had heard it blaring from every moto-taxi and tap tap, its words telling of the girls who become “sugar babies” to older, richer men. Though it was a song everyone liked to dance to, Fabiola had told Mackenson that she found it sad, thinking about all the girls who were called on to support their entire family, or who wanted an education, and had no better option than to turn to an arrangement like this, girls whose parents looked the other way when their daughters traded their bodies to rich men in exchange for security. He thought she was probably right.

  “So do you know Darline’s sister as well? Do you know Senzey?”

  Mackenson turned to see that Evens had returned from inside the nightclub, this time looking much happier.

  “Senzey?” Evens seemed surprised by the question. “Sure. I know Senzey. But I do not know what happened to her. I have not seen her since she got big as a house.” He bent his knees and thrust out his middle, patting his stomach.

  “Would Darline know where she is?”

  Evens shook his head, continuing his little dance.

  “Do you know who the father of the baby is?” Mackenson asked, ignoring the guy’s mocking gestures.

  “How the fuck would I know, man? You know how those souyon can be.”

  14

  “Aren’t you concerned about your granddaughter going up into the mountains alone?”

  Bea’s laugh echoed across the veranda of the Abernathy. “You don’t know Charlie,” she told her new friend Robert—or, rather, “Row-bear”, as he pronounced it. As soon as he’d joined her at the table after her breakfast, she began to fill him in on the note she and Lizbeth had found earlier that morning. Lizbeth had read it aloud as Bea brushed her teeth with water from a bottle. Charlie had gone to look for her mother.

  “My granddaughter,” she assured Robert, “is a very independent young woman. And tough. That girl could wrestle a tiger and have it purring like a kitten before you’d even see it coming.”

  “She must take after her grandmother.”

  Again Bea could feel herself blushing. What was it about this Frenchman that made her feel so giddy? She pressed a glass of cold water against her cheek and tilted her face toward the ceiling to catch the breeze off the whirring fan above. “Well,” she said, “Charlie is stubborn like me, that I’ll admit to. But she is a lot more, shall I say, worldly than I am. She can handle herself just about anywhere.”

  “That surprises me, Madame Bea. You have the air of a woman who has seen quite a lot in her day.”

  Bea laughed again. “Oh, I’ve seen a lot, all right. I just don’t need to leave my chair to do it.”

  “I understand. Sometimes I feel as though my life is spent always between the covers of a book.”

  Bea didn’t bother to explain that that was not exactly what she had meant. She didn’t want to scare the poor man off by talking about her “gift”, after all. Behind her, she heard the shuffle of Stanley’s feet approaching the table.

  “Good morning, Professor,” he said. “Is there something I can get for you?”

  “Good morning, Stanley. A cup of your magnificent coffee would be very good, if there is still some to be had.”

  “Of course.” Stanley limped away toward the kitchen.

  “And what are your plans for the day, Madame Bea?” Robert asked.

  “Me? I’m finally breaking out of this place.” She waved an arm across the empty veranda. “After Lizbeth finishes putting herself together, we’re being taken to a late lunch by the interpreter my granddaughter has hired. Mackenson. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, of course. Everyone knows Mackenson around here. A very nice young man. You will be in good hands.”

  Stanley returned with the coffee and Robert invited him to sit. As the two men began speaking in French, Bea’s mind started to wander. Despite what she’d told Robert, she was worried about Charlie. Not about her physical safety; no, it was her emotional well-being that Bea was concerned for. She imagined the girl could stand up to Jim, if need be. Anger could be a powerful weapon. But what shook Bea to the core was the thought of her granddaughter having to do battle with the feelings of rejection she’d tried so hard to bury for so many years. Bea had to believe that April must still hold love for her child, but she also understood the power of a man like Jim, and knew all too well what a blinding influence a husband like that can become. It had nearly happened to her, when she was young.

  April’s father had turned out to be one of those controlling types who, not long after their baby was born, had become consumed with jealousy at the drop of a hat. Bea couldn’t even say hello to the mailman without her husband flying into a rage. She tried
to reason with him, over and over. But things just seemed to get worse. There was no way in hell Bea was going to live her life that way. And there was no way a man like that was going to make an even halfway decent father for April. After the divorce, he disappeared from their lives. She never did tell April the full truth of the matter, choosing instead to explain his absence with a story about a helicopter crash during the evacuation of refugees from Vietnam. Maybe she’d taken it a little too far with that tale, but she’d wanted to protect her daughter, just like she now wanted to protect Charlie. Bea could only hope that her instincts about April were right.

  The two men continued to talk. About what, Bea had absolutely no idea, but that didn’t bother her. She was thoroughly content to simply close her eyes behind the huge lenses of her sunglasses and be calmed by the lullaby of a foreign language drifting lazily through the steamy morning air. Just as she was beginning to melt into her chair, she felt a sudden chill pass over her, as if a gust of ice-cold air had blown in her direction. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

  “What the heck was that?” she asked the two men.

  “What was what?” Robert said.

  “That cold breeze. Didn’t you feel it?”

  Both said they had not.

  “But I swear, it just blew right over me.”

  “There is no breeze at all,” Stanley said. “The air is very calm right now.”

  “Well, I felt something.” Bea paused for a moment. “Or someone. Did anyone pass by just now?”

  “Only Mambo Michèle,” Stanley said.

  “Mambo Michèle?”

  “She’s a Vodou priestess. She lives near the hotel.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. She is probably here to see a guest.”

  “Mambo Michèle is a healer,” Robert said. “One of the best, from what I have been told. I have heard she has quite a talent. There is probably someone who has come to the hotel to seek her help. Someone with a problem.”

  “I’d sure like to be a fly on that wall,” Bea said.

  “A fly?” Robert asked, apparently unfamiliar with the expression. Bea explained it to him. “Ah,” he said. “In French we have a similar phrase about a little mouse.”

  “Do you believe in Vodou?” Bea asked him.

  “It is not my religion, but I respect the power that it holds.”

  So much for scaring him away, Bea thought. Maybe she’d offer to do a reading for him later. “What about you?” She turned to Stanley.

  Stanley hesitated with his reply.

  “It is a complicated thing, here in Haiti,” Robert interjected, looking at both of them. “Vodou is misunderstood, and frowned upon by many outsiders, and also by some Haitians—though those Haitians doing the frowning are probably turning to Vodou themselves, at times. You know,” he added, “here there is a saying: Haiti is seventy percent Catholic, thirty percent Protestant, and one hundred percent Vodou.”

  Stanley let out a knowing chuckle.

  “I see. So what exactly is it about Vodou that gets people so worked up?” Bea asked.

  Again, Robert answered. “Well, in the old days, Vodou was seen as a threat. There is a story about how the slaves had help from the loa, the spirits, in overthrowing the French.”

  “There was a woman possessed one night by Èrzulie Dantòr, the Black Madonna,” Stanley added, his eyes wide. “She slit the throat of a black Creole pig and gave its blood to the revolutionaries, who drank it and promised to kill the blancs.”

  “The white settlers,” Robert clarified.

  “Oh my.” Bea removed her glasses and placed them on the table. “That’s quite an image.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “But, you know, perhaps the threat was less magical than it sounds. You see, the revolutionaries used Vodou ceremonies as a cover for their meetings. The slave owners did not have a clue.”

  “You make it all sound so interesting,” said Bea.

  “I think it is very interesting. So, of course,” Robert continued, “whether it was magic or not, other colonists and slaveholding nations, including yours and mine, feared the same thing could happen in their own territories, with their own slaves. So they did all they could to demonize the religion, and erase it altogether.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about Vodou,” Bea said.

  “He wrote a book about it,” Stanley said.

  “Of course he did.” She dabbed with a scarf at the perspiration forming on her brow. “Can I ask, Robert, have you ever seen it yourself?”

  “Seen it? That is a difficult question, as Vodou is something that is all around us here in Haiti. But I have met many people who have told me stories.”

  Bea sat up straighter in her chair, her attention piqued. “Like what?”

  Robert laughed at her eagerness. “Well,” he began, “for instance, there was a woman, an American, a guest at this hotel. She asked to talk to Mambo Michèle because her husband had left her, after thirty years of marriage. He swore to her that there was no other woman, but she did not know whether to believe him or not. Just in case, she wanted to make sure he could not …” Robert hesitated. “… would not be able to, you see, perform with anyone, if you understand what I mean.”

  Bea found his sudden shyness adorable. “I understand perfectly,” she laughed. “Go on.”

  “So, she asked Mambo Michèle what to do. Mambo Michèle told her to pick a saint. Any female saint will help with an unfaithful husband, she said. Pick one, and find out her favorite color and food and drink, and make an offering.”

  “And?”

  “She did just that. She decided on Èrzulie Fréda, the loa who rules over the heart. In her garden, she placed a strawberry cake under a tulip tree, and poured some pink champagne into the ground. Then she asked for what she wanted.”

  “That’s a lovely image, but how would she ever know if the spell worked or not? It’s not like he’d come running back to her, complaining about not being able to get it up.”

  Robert made a sound as though he were choking on his coffee, and Stanley excused himself from the table to go and get him some water. “Well, Madame Bea, all I can say is that just doing the ceremony made her feel better. So, in a way, it worked.”

  “Don’t you have anything juicier?” Bea asked Robert.

  He laughed, in that way that made Bea feel as though she were the wittiest person on Earth. “Oh, there are plenty of those stories. But most of Vodou is not what people think.”

  “I don’t get it. What is it, then?”

  “You ask some very difficult questions, Madame Bea. You are not wrong to expect stories of poison and zombies and sorcery. There are practices intended to do evil, and there are spells cast in order to seek revenge and satisfy jealousy. But it is much more than that. Vodou is a way of life, a system of beliefs that lives in the music, the art, the stories, the medicine, even in the justice system of this country. It is something to which every man or woman can turn to make order out of chaos, to give them something divine in a world that has presented them with such harshness. Some say it is the very soul of the Haitian people.”

  Bea nodded her head slowly. It was all so complex. And it was all so wonderful.

  “Perhaps you would like to meet Mambo Michèle?” Robert asked.

  “You bet I would,” she said, practically stepping on his words before they were out of his mouth. “I’d love to compare notes with her.”

  “Compare notes?” Robert asked, confused.

  “I mean,” she quickly added, “I’m thinking why wouldn’t I want to meet Mambo Michèle, after all you’ve had to say about her? She sounds like such an interesting woman.” Bea adjusted her scarf and smoothed out her long skirt. “Besides, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with letting a little magic into our lives. Am I right, Monsieur?”

  15

  Why a person who was blind would want to go look at a bunch of art made out of garbage was beyond Lizbeth. Personally, she would have preferred returning to th
e hotel after lunch, where at least she could lie down under a fan to wait out the afternoon heat. That is, if the electricity was on. But Bea, she was something else. That woman was so full of energy she was jumping around like hot water on a skillet.

  Lizbeth was exhausted. She was looking forward to heading back home to Texas the next day. Hearing what Mackenson had to say when they’d met up that morning had been enough to make her go straight to that nice woman at the hotel’s front desk to arrange for a seat on the first plane out. He’d hit a dead end. If her own sister didn’t know where she was, how were they ever gonna find that girl? And what kind of a girl doesn’t let her own family in on her whereabouts? Why, Mackenson had almost said so himself—Senzey was a fraud, looking to point the finger at her son for putting her in the unfortunate condition in which she found herself.

  So here she was, waiting out the time until she could leave by babysitting Bea while Charlie was off on her own fool’s mission. What was that girl thinking, driving around here all by herself? Why, anything could be happening, and they wouldn’t even know. She could get robbed or carjacked or kidnapped—Lizbeth had heard that those things happened around here. She could likely have an accident, with the horrible roads and crazy drivers, and animals walking right in front of a car as if they owned the place. She’d seen pigs and dogs and goats wandering around clueless right in the middle of the city. And what about getting lost? Charlie could find herself out in the middle of nowhere, where nobody spoke a word of English. Not to mention the weather. They’d seen rain coming down in buckets practically out of the blue. Those roads were bound to turn into rivers right in front of her eyes.

  Lizbeth mopped her forehead with a balled-up tissue. Even out of the sun, it was hotter than blazes. Mackenson had borrowed a car from the hotel for a couple of hours, and had escorted them to a small restaurant nearby, run by Haitian women. They were seated on the patio under the shade of a mango tree, Lizbeth on high alert the entire time, fearful of a falling piece of heavy fruit. That’s all she needed, to get a concussion while she was here. Bea had ordered goat in some kind of sauce, while Lizbeth asked for the pizza. There was no sauce on Earth that would convince her to eat a goat.