Island on the Edge of the World

by Deborah Rodriguez

  Again she noticed Mackenson’s impeccable manners, and his attention to cleanliness. She’d tried not to laugh the day before when he discreetly sliced up their shared dessert, leaving the portion Charlie had already attacked with her fork facing in her direction. He even used a napkin to pick up a piece of bread from the basket. She supposed his habits must’ve had something to do with living in a country with so many diseases. Lord knows she’d had to endure a boatload of vaccinations before heading on down here, though her doctor had claimed she was more likely to die from a car crash while she was here than from a mosquito bite or some tainted water.

  And his fingernails! She’d never seen such a perfect set of nails on any man; smooth and buffed and not a speck of dirt. How he did that in this dustbowl of a city was a mystery. Folks back home could also learn a thing or two about courtesy from him, the way he excused himself from the table every time his mobile phone rang, bless his heart.

  And now, here he was, smiling and nodding at Bea’s request to drive them downtown to some place where they make art out of rubbish. Wasn’t there enough trash for her right out there on the streets? Lizbeth had half a mind to fake a headache, just to get out of the heat and grime of the city. But the handsome Frenchman at the hotel had told Bea she would enjoy the place with the garbage art, so it was off to the garbage art they went.

  “Found objects,” Bea corrected her, when they were in the car. “They are called the Atis Rezistans, Artists of the Resistance—the sculptors of the Grand Rue.”

  Lizbeth didn’t answer. She was too busy hanging on for dear life as the car bounced across a pitted intersection, toward a traffic jam worthy of the parking lot at Costco just before a Fourth of July weekend. Only this was far worse. It wasn’t just cars, it was also a jumble of trucks and motorcycles and those painted tap tap things, people selling plastic bags of water and soda bottles carried in gigantic bundles on their heads, and pedestrians going every which way. There were men hanging over the open hood of a car, deep in discussion, and others unloading piles of lumber so raw the boards still held the outline of a tree. Any open space that might’ve been left was taken up by the umbrella-shaded “shops” that seemed to grow like weeds from the sidewalks. And no traffic cops, not a one, anywhere. It was a miracle anyone got from place to place in one piece.

  But somehow Mackenson managed, finally squeezing the car into a tiny parking space just off the main street. “Be careful,” he said as he opened the door and took Lizbeth’s hand. “There is mud.”

  She stepped down gingerly in her open-toed sandals to avoid the puddle, her foot landing smack-dab on a pile of trash instead. Mackenson led the two women across the busy thoroughfare, dodging the traffic amid a sea of honking horns. Lizbeth felt like she was inside one of the old video games her son used to play, where the frog had to make it across the street without getting himself squished to death. Once safely on the other side, she thanked the Lord and turned her attention to her surroundings. They call this “downtown”? The buildings were low, some of them crumbling, almost as if the earthquake had happened nine days instead of nine years ago. The street was wide, covered by a canopy of powerlines strung willy-nilly across the sky. Mackenson had said they were on boulevard something-or-other, but it looked more like a junkyard to her. Old tires and auto parts in piles everywhere, and not a tree in sight.

  They turned right, Mackenson’s hand resting on Bea’s arm as he gently led her through a maze of abandoned cars and rusted motorbikes, lazing cats and pecking roosters, Lizbeth following closely behind.

  “We are here,” he said. Lizbeth’s gaze was drawn upward, where, from atop a wrought iron arch, a human skull was staring down at them, with Christmas-light eyes hanging from its sockets. She thought she’d arrived at the gates of hell.

  She quickened her pace to catch up with the other two as they continued down a narrow alley bordered by a row of dilapidated wooden shanties, which looked like they might topple right over with one sneeze. Could anyone even live in those things? Lizbeth had to wonder. “Are you sure there’s an art gallery back here?” she asked.

  At the end of the path was a courtyard, an open-air space jam-packed with the kind of sculptures she’d seen outside the hotel. Only this was different. There were tons of them; huge statues towering overhead, knee-high figurines crowding shelves along the cinderblock walls, life-size likenesses that met her face to face, and each one of them spookier than the next.

  At first glance, they reminded her of those popsicle stick figures Luke used to bring home from kindergarten, with yarn hair and little googly eyes from the craft store, only bigger, and made from trash, and way scarier. But some of them were actually quite complicated, when you really looked at them. It was pretty clever, the way they used marbles for eyes, hubcaps as hats, springs for necks, vacuum cleaner hoses as arms, tire rubber for clothes. Some of them were almost beautiful, decorated in lacy golden fabric and shiny mirrors. But mostly they were creepy, the bones and skulls and dismembered baby-doll parts sending chills down her spine.

  They followed Mackenson into the cool shade of a three-walled room as big as a garage, Lizbeth hanging on for dear life to Bea, fearing the woman might trip up on something, what with everything so cluttered and all. She felt herself being pulled forward as Bea stepped in close to a tall wooden figure, pausing to remove her thick, round glasses to wipe them with a scarf. “What’s this one?” she asked Lizbeth.

  “Well,” Lizbeth replied, moving in for a better look, “it’s kind of hard to describe. I think it’s supposed to be an angel, or maybe a queen. I can’t tell if that’s a crown or a halo on her head.” She watched as Bea carefully ran her hands down the front of the statue.

  “That is the pussy,” came a deep voice from behind.

  Lizbeth turned to see a dark man in baggy shorts and cropped, bleached white hair emerging from the shadows. “Pardon me?” She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.

  “Ha! So these are the pubic hairs?” Bea’s fingers rested on a cluster of rusted nails that had been hammered halfway into the rough wood. “That’s fabulous!”

  Lizbeth lowered her eyes and backed away from the piece, only to find herself poked from behind by a large, red penis hanging from a totem-like creature with a bucket on its head. She barely managed to stifle a scream.

  “Are you the artist?” Bea asked the man.

  “We are a group of artists here. But this is my space,” he answered, his English near perfect. “Would you like me to show you around?”

  Lizbeth was already inching her way back out, toward the courtyard. “That’s so kind of you, but we really must—”

  “We’d be delighted,” Bea insisted.

  Lizbeth was wilting in the afternoon heat, her capri pants practically glued to her thighs, the money belt she wore hidden under her blouse damp with sweat. She reluctantly followed Bea, Mackenson and the artist through the ground-floor rooms, her eyes wide with wonder at the pieces the artist claimed had been on display in art shows all over the world. Paris, Venice, New York. Why anyone with half a mind would voluntarily go see these naked, nasty things was a mystery to her. She stuck close to the group as they climbed a crumbling stone staircase, not wanting to be left alone.

  “You don’t mind if I touch them, do you?” Bea asked.

  “Please,” the man said. “Go ahead.”

  Bea, now latched onto Mackenson, made her way very slowly through the mess, exploring every sculpture up close as her hands ran over each and every crack and crevice.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting back to the hotel?” Lizbeth asked. “Maybe Charlie’s come back.”

  Bea ignored the question. “You know, you should really try this, Lizbeth. With your eyes closed. Sometimes people find they can see better with their hands than with their eyes.”

  Lizbeth did not have the slightest desire to see things any clearer than she already had.

  “Where do you find your materials?” Bea asked, rubbing her fingers across a pa
ir of nipples made from metal bottle caps.

  “There is an endless supply of trash here in Port-au-Prince, as I am sure you have seen. There is no system for proper disposal. So it is not hard to find things for us.”

  “Recycling! I love it,” said Bea. “And the bones? The skulls?”

  “Those were taken from the cemetery by people, after the ground was broken up by the earthquake.”

  Lizbeth gasped a little. Bea simply continued to ply the man with questions about his so-called art. Apparently she was looking to buy a souvenir for her salon back home. Lizbeth began to grow impatient. That woman could talk the legs off a chair.

  Her thoughts wandered as the group drifted through a seemingly endless maze of rooms. Outside a window she could see the crumbling rooftops of the shacks surrounding downtown, roosters and stray cats perched atop homes that looked more suited to accommodate them than humans. She couldn’t get her mind off of Senzey. Surely she would have tried harder to find Luke, or his family, if the baby was actually his. That baby wasn’t her son’s. No sirree. That girl had no doubt gone and got herself in trouble, and then looked to sweet Luke as her ticket out of it. What had she been thinking, chasing down a girl like that in a place like this? It was downright crazy, just like everyone had said. Everyone, that is, except for Charlie, who seemed certain that something would turn up. To Lizbeth, it seemed that the only thing likely to turn up around here was trouble.

  She ground to a halt when, behind her, she heard Bea ask, “Why so many penises?”

  “These are the Guédé,” Mackenson explained, without missing a beat. “The family of spirits that embody the powers of death and fertility. Baron Samedi is their leader, the head of the cemetery, which he rules with his wife, Maman Brigitte.” He smiled at Lizbeth.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to cover her embarrassment. “I do believe we already met him, back at the hotel.”

  “The Guédé are very mischievous, very sexual loa,” the artist said, beaming with pride.

  “I see.”

  “They make fun of people, swear a lot. Every year, in November, there is a big celebration. That day there are thousands of people in the streets who become possessed by the Guédé. It is very fun. Very wild.”

  Lizbeth clucked her tongue. “It sounds like an excuse for bad behavior, to me.”

  “How do they know they’re possessed?” Bea asked.

  “Their voice, the way they act. When it happens, it is the loa doing the talking for them. And then, to prove that it is true that they have been possessed, they use the piman.”

  “Piman,” Mackenson interjected, “is kleren, raw rum, with peppers soaked in it.”

  “Here. I will show you,” the artist said, then left the room for a second. He returned with a bottle filled with a nasty-looking, cloudy liquid.

  “And they drink that?” Bea asked, incredulous.

  The artist nodded. “Some do. But mostly they rub it on themselves, on their face, or like this.” And then the man actually began to rub his own private parts, right there, right in front of them, with a grin the size of the Grand Canyon on his face.

  Lizbeth felt herself once again blushing, and turned away. “They’re probably so drunk they don’t even feel it,” she muttered.

  “Exactly,” Mackenson said.

  Bea was laughing. “One can only hope!”

  They weaved their way back through the warren of shacks, a rusted aluminum goddess type of thing almost as tall as Mackenson slung over his shoulder like a victim rescued from disaster. How on earth did Bea plan on getting that monstrosity onto an airplane, for Pete’s sake? Why, she’d practically have to buy it its own seat to get them to allow that. Lizbeth shook her head and continued leading the old woman toward the street until, suddenly, she came upon a sight that stopped her in her tracks.

  “Ouch!” Bea said as she plowed into Lizbeth’s back. “Whadya stop for?”

  Lizbeth remained silent and still. She was looking at a darkened doorway to her right, where a woman stood, stooped and gray-haired. In her arms was a child, naked save for the thin diaper covering its tiny behind. The woman’s broad hand cupped the back of the baby’s head as she gently swayed to and fro, dancing to a tune only the two of them could hear. But it was the woman’s eyes that Lizbeth would never forget. Two round buttons, like the ones on some of those statues they just saw. Two dark round buttons that bore right through her soul and into her heart. Lizbeth felt as though she’d been peeled open like a grapefruit.

  They did not return to the hotel until close to dinnertime, hungry, tired, and soaked from the short walk from the car to the hotel. The rain was coming down in buckets, turning the staircase from the veranda down to the parking lot into a waterfall. Lizbeth unlocked the door to their room to find it empty and dark, with no sign of Charlie anywhere in sight.

  16

  At first Charlie wasn’t sure if she was in the right place. The sign was almost invisible, half hidden behind a thicket of orange bougainvillea. But there it was: Farming for Freedom. And next to it, a larger sign, reading Prive. Private.

  She stopped at the gate and turned off the ignition, road-weary and dying of thirst. The drive had taken far longer than she’d expected. For the first forty-five minutes or so, she’d inched her way through city traffic, already so dense so early in the morning that she had to wonder whether people had simply stayed out all night. Then, driving through the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, she got stuck behind a fat truck belching black smoke straight back into her windshield, the roads too narrow and windy to offer the slightest chance to pass. After that, when she finally began to climb higher into a less populated area, it was the crumbling asphalt, overloaded tap taps, and careening motorbikes that had forced her to keep her speed well under the limit.

  As she left behind the hillsides stacked with little houses climbing halfway to the sky, she found herself surrounded by green. But even this far from the city center, life was led on the streets—vendors chatting as they crouched near their wares, children skipping and running and just plain goofing around, and always plenty of people walking to and fro. She was tempted to ditch the car and join them for a while, just to feel a part of things. Ever since she’d stepped off the plane in Haiti she’d felt as though she were living in a bubble, tucked away like a precious china doll, behind a dusty windshield or the walls of the hotel. For days she’d traveled by foot only as far as the distance between the car door and the front door, and it was beginning to make her stir-crazy.

  Charlie turned off the air-conditioning and lowered the window all the way down. She could feel the temperature outside dropping as the car continued its ascent. She passed a schoolyard full of kids playing, a sea of navy blue uniforms in perpetual motion, the sounds of recess the same as anywhere in the world. By now she’d climbed so high that the mountains across the way looked like patchwork quilts, their fields in varying stages of harvest. Plumes of white vapor seemed to levitate from the ridges, whether smoke or fog Charlie could not tell. In the distance, she spied a farmer crouching in an impossibly steep plot; a tiny dot of red among the green of the crops and the brown of the earth.

  And now here she was. The pastor’s directions had been good, though there were so many spots along the way with lottery shacks and solar-charging stations and those ubiquitous piles of tires for sale—which made sense, considering how damn hostile the roads were—that she wasn’t sure which was the landmark she was supposed to be looking for. And it seemed to be market day everywhere, a jumble of umbrellas and baskets and produce spilling out into the streets at just about every turn. She did get a bit lost a couple of times. Finally, she took a wild guess at the intersection of a pebbly, red-dirt road bordered with pines, and luckily had been right.

  She exited the car, gulping down the last of the water in her bottle, staring out at the distant mountains across a deep valley frothy with fog. It felt unreal, being here, so close to her mother, to Jim. It was hard to imagine his ugly presence in a place
as beautiful as this. But of course, he’d blighted the Amazonian jungle with his sanctimonious bile as well, sticking out like a sore thumb among people so genuine and true.

  Charlie took in a deep breath of the mountain air, feeling the anxiety she’d managed to keep in check during the drive here starting to surface. As she bent to stretch her legs she heard a voice coming from behind the closed gate.

  “Yes? Can I help you?”

  She stood and found herself face to face through the bars with a broad-shouldered young Haitian man cradling a rifle in his arms. Charlie’s forced smile bounced back at her off the dark lenses of his Ray-Bans. “Bonjou!” she chirped. “How are you doing today?”

  The guard returned neither the greeting nor the smile. “What are you looking for?”

  “I am in the right place, aren’t I?” She gestured toward to the sign. “Farming for Freedom?”

  The guard nodded.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she said, shaking out her curls. “Would have been a shame to come all this way and be in the wrong place. Is Pastor Jim here?” Her heart was pounding as she peered through the bars of the gate and up the long driveway, toward some structures in the distance.

  The man shook his head. “The pastor is out doing business.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Who are you?” He pointed with his chin as if challenging her to come up with a good answer.

  “Me?” Charlie stuffed her damp hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I’m from one of his backer organizations.”

  His brow furrowed in confusion.

  “We’re a group who gives him money. From Virginia. He didn’t mention to you that I was coming?”

  “No, he did not.” The guard dropped the rifle to let it rest against his side.

  “Darn. I was hoping for a tour of the place. You know, to let our folks hear firsthand about all the good things their money is doing.” She tugged at the T-shirt that was beginning to cling to her torso. “And your name?”