Martine did not respond.
Charlie continued. “We think maybe she came to Jacmel to look for you.”
“Why would anyone look for me? I am a poor artist.”
“We were told you help women.”
“Nobody here is getting my help,” Martine insisted. “I cannot even help myself.” She pointed back toward her house. “You see how I live. You have been listening to the jealous gossip on the streets.”
“You’re sure you haven’t seen her, dear?” Bea asked.
Charlie turned to Mackenson. He made his own attempt with Martine in Creole, but the results were apparently the same.
As prepared as she’d been for yet another dead end, something was telling Charlie she should not give up. The woman knew more than she was letting on. They’d been told she knew everyone. That she was big on helping others. And Senzey, they’d been told, had wanted to come to Jacmel to learn art. Martine was an artist. Teaching art. What was this game she seemed to be playing? “Well then,” Charlie said, entering into a little game of her own. “I guess we’d better get going.”
Lizbeth looked devastated, but Charlie kept at it, helping Bea from her chair. The old woman turned her face to the artist, lowering her glasses as if that might help her see. “It’s been a pleasure,” she said, her blind stare cutting right through the woman’s facade. Clearly Bea had her doubts as well. Charlie smiled, and thanked Martine for her time.
“You are not going to buy?” the woman persisted.
Charlie shook her head. “No thanks. I think my grandma might be feeling ill.” She gave Bea a tiny pinch on the arm.
“Maybe we’ll come back another day,” Bea added. “If we have the time.”
“But—” Lizbeth objected.
“But we need to go,” Charlie finished for her as she began to head down the path that led to the street.
“I’m not ready to leave. Just one more sec,” Lizbeth pleaded, desperately grabbing a stack of canvases from Martine’s hands. Charlie turned back to urge the woman along. She pulled lightly at Lizbeth’s elbow. And as she did, she saw, peeking out from among the portraits, one piece that did not look anything like the rest.
Charlie grasped the painting between her fingers and pulled it away from the pile. The bustling urban landscape was unmistakable. The intricate scenarios played out on the canvas, the delicate brushstrokes, could have only come from one person.
Lizbeth saw it too. “It’s hers, y’all!”
“What’s going on?” Bea asked.
“It’s Senzey’s painting!”
Martine tried to grab the painting back, but Charlie held tight. “You know her, don’t you?” she asked.
“I know lots of girls.”
“Why won’t you tell us where she is?” Charlie demanded.
“Where is the child?” Lizbeth cried.
Martine stood firm, hands on her hips, sizing the three women up. “Okay, so I know a lot of girls,” she finally said. “But that does not mean I need to tell people about them.” Her voice turned sharp with bitterness. “There are girls, they come to me, they are running away from terrible things. From husbands who beat them, from men who put them into prostitution, from people, sometimes their own families, who treat them like slaves. You know of restaveks? I do not even ask the girls I see why they come to me. If they want to talk about it, they do. So, no. I do not know your Senzey, and if I did, why would I tell you where she was? I do not even know you.” She gathered up the canvases and turned toward the house.
“But Lukson!” Lizbeth cried out. “What about Lukson?”
“What about my baby?” a voice rang out from inside the house.
The group fell silent. Charlie turned, and there, silhouetted in the dark doorway, stood Senzey. A little older looking than in her photo, a bit more worn, a sadness clouding her dark eyes, but definitely Senzey.
“Where is he?” Lizbeth asked.
“Why do you ask me that, when you are the ones who would know?”
Lizbeth took a step forward. “How on earth would we know?”
‘What are you talking about, Senzey?” Charlie asked.
“What did the orphanage tell you?” the girl cried.
“You do not have to speak to them, Senzey.” Martine reached out a protective arm.
“What orphanage? I don’t understand,” Charlie said.
“So the baby is not here?” Bea asked.
“Tell them my baby is not for sale.”
“You should go now,” Martine told them.
“Wait,” Charlie said. “You gave the baby up?”
“Oh, dear God.” Lizbeth slumped down into the vacant chair, her hat tumbling to the ground as her head sank into her hands. “What have I done? Forgive me, Luke, for failing you.” She took off her sunglasses to wipe her eyes.
Charlie saw Senzey freeze, her eyes landing on Lizbeth’s face. “You are not from the orphanage,” she said, more a statement than a question.
Lizbeth shook her head.
“And you know of Luke.”
Lizbeth nodded sadly. “My son.”
“Of course,” Senzey gasped, then stepped closer to the woman. “You have the same blue eyes, like him. And like his son.” She took another step closer. “He has talked all about you.”
Suddenly she stiffened. “So tell me, where is he?” She gave a defiant jerk of her chin. “Where did Luke disappear to? What was so important to him that he could not come back, could not even write to me? Was he too afraid to be a father? Was it a woman? You must tell me. I need to know.” Her eyes darted from Lizbeth to Bea to Charlie.
Finally Lizbeth spoke. She stood and stepped forward, folding Senzey into her arms.
“Oh, you poor, dear girl,” she said, with a sob. “Luke is dead.”
24
Nobody was talking as they sat around the heavy wooden table at the coffeehouse in Jacmel. The man, Mackenson, had guided them here after Senzey agreed to come with Luke’s mother and her friends, to sit and talk somewhere cooler than the steps of Martine’s house. She felt numb. She could not even cry. And, to her tongue, the coffee tasted like bitter medicine.
Senzey had never been inside this restaurant. With its brick walls and high ceiling, it still looked like the warehouse it once was, a place where they stored the coffee from the ships instead of a place where the coffee was turned into fancy drinks that probably cost more than most Haitians earned in a day. At the other tables, people did not seem to be talking much either, their noses deep in their laptops and their ears tuned to music playing through the speakers, the jazz that Luke had liked so much. She imagined, for a second, being here with him. It was then that she felt the first tear rolling down her cheek.
“Now, now, it’s all right. You just cry all the tears you’ve got inside you.”
Senzey felt Lizbeth’s hand, warm and plump, patting her bare knee. “I did not believe him,” she sobbed. “My sister, everyone told me that he did not really love me, that they knew he would leave. And I believed them instead of him.”
“You can’t beat yourself up, child. Don’t you think Luke knew how you felt about him? Why, if I had a penny for every time I blamed myself for saying or not saying the things I did before it was too late, I’d be living in a big old mansion by now.”
“I am a terrible person.”
“Hush. That’s no way to talk. Maybe if you get it out, tell us what all went on, you might feel just a wee bit better.”
“I do not even know how to start.”
“Well, there’s no better place than the beginning. How’d y’all meet?”
“Luke—” Senzey paused to wipe her eyes. “He ate at the hotel where I was working. He was there many times for dinner.”
“That boy never was one to cook much for himself. Woulda eaten a pepperoni pizza every single night, given the chance.”
“I saw him sometimes, eating alone or with a friend, and we talked together a little. Then one night, when I was helping to clear the dishes, I saw that L
uke forgot his wallet on the table. His passport was inside.”
Lizbeth shook her head. “His mind was always on something else. Luke woulda lost his own head if it weren’t screwed on tight.”
“He was not gone long, so I ran after him. After that, Luke started coming into the restaurant almost every night.” Senzey noticed Mackenson looking at her, judging her with his eyes. She knew what he was thinking. Just another Haitian girl out to find her blan.
“It was Luke who came to me,” she said, setting her own eyes squarely on Mackenson’s. “He wanted me to do something for him. He was going on a work trip to the countryside, for two weeks, and he needed somebody to take care of his cat.”
Senzey smiled at the thought of it. A cat who needed a babysitter. A cat’s job was to hunt for rats, not to live inside a house like a princess in a castle. But she had agreed to do it. Luke was a nice, polite guy who had asked for her help, and she would give it.
“So I stayed at his house while he was gone. The first time I stayed there he gave me a list of things to do,” Senzey told Lizbeth. “Like feed pumpkin to the cat. Pumpkin! Do not forget to lock the door. Clean out the refrigerator if the electricity stays off. Make sure the windows are closed when it rains. The list was very long.”
Lizbeth smiled. “He got that from me. Only way to keep things from flying in one ear and straight out the other, I always said.”
“But he also told me to please eat his food, to use his air-conditioning, and his television and his internet. I know now that he was asking me to stay there more for me than for him. He had other people to watch his cat for him. He was so kind, that when he came back I cooked him a big Haitian dinner—lambi, akra, pikliz. He was very happy.” Senzey readily drifted into her memories.
“Bless your heart,” Lizbeth said.
Senzey told them how she had stayed in Luke’s apartment many times after that, while he was traveling, how the two of them started spending more and more time together when he was home. How, after returning to Port-au-Prince from one long trip to Cap-Haïtien and back, he asked her to stay.
“And then he went back to Texas, and disappeared,” she said, tears once again filling her eyes. “I wrote many emails, with no answer. And then I sent a letter.”
“That letter did not reach my doorstep until eight months after Luke passed,” Lizbeth said.
“I had to give it to another NGO worker to take back to the US to have it mailed, because there is no mail system here,” Senzey said. “I didn’t know how long it would take. But after I did not hear from Luke, I was like a zombie. Here I was, with his baby growing inside of me, and I thought he did not even care.”
“You poor thing, you must have been devastated,” Lizbeth said.
“Then one day, when I had only two months more to go, I met a man and woman while I was coming out of the clinic. They were very nice, sometimes taking me for something to eat, asking to do shopping for me and coming with me to appointments. They were like friends. Not even my own sister did what they did. There was nobody who had been that kind to me since Luke left.”
Senzey remembered how she had told these people her story, how she was mad at Luke for leaving her like this, scared and alone and without a way to properly care for the baby.
“They talked a lot about how hard it was going to be for me to earn any money. The only job I knew was my work at the hotel, and they would never allow me to live there with a baby. So when they told me about a place nearby, where my baby would get a better start in life, where I could leave him until I could find a way to take care of him, I listened. They told me it was the best thing to do for my child.”
“Then they offered me a little money. Usually, they said, some money is paid to a mother bringing her child to this place, to help her care for her other children who are still at home. Of course, I had no other children, but they told me that was okay, that I could use the money to get my own start.”
When the baby was born, Senzey took one look into the eyes that were Luke’s eyes, brushed her fingers across the same light, soft hair she’d caressed on Luke’s head, and burst into tears. Then she kissed the baby goodbye. She used the money they gave her to get to Jacmel, and Martine.
“Well, all right then.” Lizbeth looked around to the others for support. “Seems like there’s only one thing for us to do.” She placed her two palms firmly down on the table. “We’ve got to march right on over to that orphanage and get that baby back.”
25
“It is not that easy.” Mackenson’s eyes were following Senzey as she headed to the restrooms just outside the coffeehouse’s open back wall.
“What do you mean, not easy? Why not?” Lizbeth asked.
“I don’t get it. Was that place an actual orphanage? Who were those people?” Charlie asked.
Mackenson hesitated before answering. “There are many mothers here who are in a hard situation.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Charlie said.
“There are sometimes not many choices for a girl.”
“Go on.” Charlie took a sip of her coffee.
Mackenson shot a wary glance in Lizbeth’s direction, and took a deep breath. “They call them ‘baby-finders’. There are many of them here. They are people paid by the orphanages to convince women to give up their children.”
“Why would they do that?” Bea snapped. “Why would they want to fill up orphanages with children who aren’t orphans?”
“It is a business,” Mackenson told them. “They keep children there, sometimes, to raise money from sponsors, but most of the money goes right into the pockets of the people running the orphanages.”
“So they’re just warehousing the children there?” Charlie asked.
“They do not always keep them there,” Mackenson said.
“So they find them homes, adopt them out?” Lizbeth cocked her head.
Again he hesitated.
“Spit it out, Mackenson,” she urged. “I need to hear this.”
“Maybe sometimes they find them homes.”
“So what else could happen?” Charlie pulled her chair closer to his.
“I have heard things,” he said.
“What things?” Bea spoke up.
“Some of the children,” he answered slowly, “the older ones, are sometimes sold to be restaveks. And some are sold to … others.”
“You mean like traffickers?” Charlie asked loudly.
It was then that they noticed Senzey had returned. Mackenson wondered how long the girl had been standing nearby.
Senzey shook her head. Mackenson could see fear building in her eyes. “No, no, it is not like that. They told me I could have him back when I am ready. That Lukson will be there when I return for him.”
Lizbeth reached an arm out to Senzey to gently guide her onto the seat next to her.
“They promised he would be taken care of,” she insisted. “They showed me pictures. The children in this place are happy.”
She looked to the others’ faces, as if seeking assurance that this was true.
“It was the best choice, it was the only choice, until I can care for him myself,” she said, tears returning to her eyes. “I am trying, but it has not yet worked as I hoped.”
Senzey wiped her cheeks with the back of her arm. “I could not come back to see him for six months, they told me. It is too upsetting for the children when the mothers come, they said.”
“Hogwash,” Lizbeth said.
“Disgusting,” Bea said.
“So,” Senzey continued, “my plan was to go get him after six months. And now it is six months, and I still have not found a way to care for my baby.” She lowered her gaze to the floor.
“But I can help.” Lizbeth wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulder.
Senzey, still crying, did not look up.
Then Mackenson leaned in toward her, switching to Creole to try to calm the girl. “It is all right, mama. You did what you thought was right. So you gave
your baby to the orphanage. Okay. Now you have some help. You do not have to be a victim. Go try to get him back. Before it is too late, and something happens that you will regret forever.”
26
Senzey could not see her own toes dangling beneath the surface of the cloudy water. The pool of the Hotel Abernathy was empty of people, the lounge chairs piled high by the gate, spotted with mud from the last rain. She leaned back on her hands, stretching her palms flat against the rough concrete. She had never felt more confused in her life.
It had not been easy saying goodbye to Martine. “She is a good person,” Senzey had told the others as they headed down the bumpy hill toward the road that would lead them back to Port-au-Prince. “She is always helping others. It is all that really matters for her. The money you pay Martine for her art”—she pointed toward the paintings piled high in the rear of Charlie’s car—“she uses it to help many young women, to keep them out of trouble. You see how she lives, like a poor person. But she does not really have to live that way. It is her choice. And most of her time she spends showing the women how to make money by doing their own art, by making crafts or helping others who are making things to sell. For me, she is teaching me with my painting.”
But any money Senzey could make from her art turned out not to be enough. She took other work in Jacmel whenever she could find it, in hotels and restaurants, but it was not often, and did not provide enough to make a difference. The six months she had given herself to find a solution had gone by, and she still could barely provide for herself, let alone a child. She was beginning to think she never would.
She kicked at the water, the splashing making a noise as if a child were playing around. It was good to be alone, to have some time to think. All that talk in the car had been enough to make her crazy.
“Lukson. What kind of a name is Lukson?” Lizbeth had asked, right in the middle of a very long story she had been telling about Luke. The woman never seemed to stop talking. “Do we call him “Lucky” for short?”
“It is from the name of Luke,” Senzey told her.
“Here in Haiti, many people give their sons the name of their father,” Mackenson explained.
“Oh, I get it,” Lizbeth said. “Like you, right? Your father was Mack?”
Island on the Edge of the World Page 15