Things quickly fell into place. Mackenson’s brother, the one who was a priest, had an empty building that was a part of his church. Some Germans had been planning to start a project there the year before, but for one reason or another it never happened. So Mackenson convinced his brother to turn over the space to Senzey. It was plenty big enough for all the classrooms and the day care, and also for the little shops or workrooms they’d need someday to help the women start their businesses. And it had a huge kitchen. But still, money would be needed to run the place, to buy materials, and to help support the women while they learned, so they could afford to feed their families.
That’s when Lizbeth stepped in. She bet on the fact that those church folks back home wouldn’t know what hit them once she got her hands on their wallets. They wanted to help? She’d show them what help was. She knew those people’s intentions were right. She just needed to show them how to start thinking with their heads instead of their hearts.
One quick trip back to Texas, and she’d been proven right. The dollars had started flying down to Haiti faster than a sneeze through a screen door.
“I’ve seen a few people down here trying to do similar things,” April had cautioned Senzey. “Like the woman who started up the project where they make jewelry. Nice idea, and beautiful stuff. I think they’re doing well, but I’ve heard they have more women than they can handle lining up to get hired.”
“But this is different,” Senzey had insisted. “I want to give women skills that they can use on their own. That way we can keep taking in others to help.”
So now the plan was to start by growing fruits and vegetables, the way they did it down here, on rooftops, in old tires. They would sell their organic produce to restaurants. They’d also try canning their own sauces and jams to be put up for sale. They hoped to get into teaching some cooking, so some women might be able to, one day, start their own little restaurants. Mackenson’s wife, Fabiola, would be of help there, with her experience as a cook. And Lizbeth had hauled her big old sewing machine down from Texas, with the thought of sharing some of her own skills.
April, bless her heart, had also volunteered to chip in. Lizbeth would never forget the look on Charlie’s face when her mother said she was planning on staying behind once she and Bea went back home to California.
They’d all been gathered around a table on the hotel’s veranda, a bottle of rum between them, Bea sporting a shiner as purple as the milkweed that grew wild back home. You shoulda seen the other guy, is what she’d said to Robert when he expressed his concern.
After Senzey had finished telling them about the plan that had been cooking in her brain, Lizbeth surprised them with her own decision to remain in Haiti.
“You’re staying?” Charlie asked, her eyes wide.
“I think you’ve had one too many kleren, Texas Grandma,” Bea added, with a laugh.
“Well, maybe I have imbibed just a bit too much, but even so, I’m as serious as a dog with a rib-eye. You think I’m gonna leave behind the only family I have? That I’m not gonna stick around to see this baby take his first steps, say his first words? What am I going to do up there in Texas, rattling around that empty house all by myself? Besides, who’s gonna help Senzey out with all this if I’m not around? My big old Texas mouth is gonna come in right handy around here.”
“Seems like that makes four of us staying behind,” April said.
Her words seemed to fall on Charlie hard. “But—”
“I told you, Charlie. Haiti is home to me. You think you had trouble adjusting to life in California? Imagine me trying to make that work, after all these years away. Senzey’s project is perfect for me, exactly the kind of thing I think should be happening down here. I can be a huge help to her and Lizbeth. Besides, I have some unfinished business to attend to.”
Lizbeth didn’t know how she and Senzey would have ever got along without April, the way she knew how things worked in Haiti. The woman was a downright genius when it came to negotiating. She’d even managed, lickety-split, to find a place for all of them to live. Lukson was, by default, the man of the household, living like a little prince among Lizbeth, Senzey and April in a rented three-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Pétion-Ville. The fancy part of town, as Charlie’s mother put it, where the diplomats and foreigners and businessmen of Port-au-Prince lived high atop the frenzy of the city, cocooned in their gated estates. Theirs was not a mansion, by any means, but it was a nice place with plenty of room for a child to grow.
Senzey had big plans for Fanm Ansanm. While they waited for their first harvest, Mambo Michèle would be conducting a class in manufacturing herbal soaps and ceremonial candles. She had asked April to consider teaching a little hairdressing. And eventually, she said, they’d be hiring an instructor for a class in basic business management.
Lizbeth stood and stretched her back. Her afternoon naps were ancient history by now, with her being so busy and all. But that was fine by her, especially after hearing the Haitian proverb Mambo Michèle had scared her with once, after she’d caught Lizbeth letting out a big yawn: Sleep is death’s younger brother, the woman had warned. That had woken Lizbeth up right then and there.
Through the doorway she saw Senzey ushering in yet another candidate, one more in the tide of young mamas just looking to help their families survive. This girl had two little ones hanging onto her skirt, both of them barely old enough to walk. Twins, Lizbeth thought. She could only imagine how hard it might be for Senzey to turn away any of these women. Word of mouth was traveling fast. They sure had their work cut out for them.
Up on the roof, she could hear April and Mackenson banging around, getting everything all cleaned up to make space for the garden. Must be hot as blue blazes up there, she imagined. Lord knows it was an oven inside, despite the open windows. How Senzey stood it, shuffling all those women in and out and fussing over Lukson without losing a drop of sweat, was beyond her. She supposed it was something she’d have to get used to, just like everything else around here.
Who would have dreamed she’d ever be living in a place like this? She certainly wouldn’t have, that’s for damn sure. But she had to admit, it truly had grown on her—those smiles that were more real than any you’d find on a Texan face, those streets bursting with color and chock-full of life no matter what the time of day, that sweet, juicy fruit that tasted like it had just been plucked straight from the tree. Even those crazy rainstorms that seemed to explode from above made her tingle all over.
Lizbeth stood at the window watching cotton-ball clouds drifting across the baby blue sky. Beautiful. “If only Luke were here to see all this,” she sighed.
She looked up to see Senzey in the doorway, a motionless Lukson draped over one shoulder. The girl silently passed the sleeping child to her, where he snuggled in against her arms as if they were the edges of a warm cradle.
Lizbeth felt the warmth of tears rolling down her cheeks. The baby’s eyes fluttered open, and his little pink lips bowed into a sleepy smile at the familiar sight of his grandmother’s face.
42
Charlie squeezed past the life-size statue of Èrzulie Fréda to get to the foils, the jagged edges of the sculpture’s tin crown catching on her sweater as she did. “Damn it, Bea. Did you have to choose something so big?”
“That thing is kind of creepy, if you ask me,” Doreen said from her chair in front of the mirror.
“She’s not creepy,” Bea said. “She’s the Vodou spirit of love.”
“If you say so.” Doreen had walked into the Bea’s Hive salon looking like a zebra, thanks to the boxed at-home dye-job she’d succumbed to during Charlie’s stay in Haiti. When it came to their hair, it seemed like the women of Carmel had zero patience. She was still doing damage control on those who had sought help elsewhere during her absence. Charlie had been booked solid since her return, and she was exhausted.
Bea, however, was in her element, spending her days entertaining the salon’s endlessly revolving audience wi
th her tales. Each time Charlie heard them, the stories became more dramatic—the search for the baby sounding like an action movie, the mambo becoming a mythical sorceress, Robert a matinée idol.
“Why don’t you show Doreen your love letters—I mean, your postcards,” Charlie teased. Robert was traveling through the States—Louisiana, North Carolina, Brooklyn—continuing his research on various Vodou practices. There was talk of him possibly coming to San Francisco to look into the life of a Vodou princess who lived there more than one hundred years ago.
“Mind your own business, Charlie. You know I don’t think of Robert in that way.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlie said.
Doreen laughed.
“But I will show you the pictures of our baby,” Bea offered. “Have I shown you those yet?”
Charlie loved how Bea had claimed part ownership of Lukson, acting every bit the long-distance grandmother as Lizbeth was in person down in Haiti. She and Lizbeth spoke daily, marveling over each little thing that child did. You’d think he was the first baby they’d ever been around, the way they went on and on.
Charlie and her mother also spoke daily. She could hear the excitement bubbling through in each conversation. For the first time in April’s life, she claimed, she could actually see that she might make a difference, a real difference that was more than just a band-aid or a fool’s errand. And each time they spoke, Charlie and her mother both made a promise to visit, their conversations ending with I love you, a signoff that once again felt as natural as a simple goodbye.
And Jim? April had finally managed to pull the rug out from under him, exposing him to his backers for what he was. The travesty on the mountain was closing for good, a huge chunk of Jim’s money being distributed as back pay among those who had suffered from his tyranny. She was still working on the orphanage racket, a difficult feat in a country that was used to turning a blind eye to those sorts of situations. Yet she was confident that, with time, and a bit more rabble-rousing, she’d be able to make some headway. For now, Jim had been rendered fairly harmless. She had no doubt he would eventually pop up with another scheme, in another place. That was who he was. But in the meantime, among both the church community back home and the underbelly of Port-au-Prince, he was about as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party, as Lizbeth would say.
“Have I told you about the zombies?” Bea asked Doreen. “They’re real, you know.”
Charlie cleared her throat loudly.
“Well, sort of,” her grandmother added. “But they do know how to bring people back from the dead down there.”
“You’re scaring Doreen, Bea. Enough with the zombie talk.”
“You’re no fun, Charlie. Oh, and, by the way, don’t forget to put some lowlights in her highlights, and cut off the over-bleached stuff.”
“Yes, Queen Bea.” Charlie shook her head. Her grandmother would never learn to let go of the reins of this place. No matter how hard Charlie tried, nothing would ever change at Bea’s Hive. Even her attempts at decluttering had been thwarted. It wasn’t just Èrzulie Fréda looming over the salon. It was also the mass of Martine’s paintings, which had cost Charlie a fortune to frame in Carmel. Now they were crammed into every spare space along the salon’s four walls, the glittering women watching over Charlie with their soulful eyes as she worked. Whatever bare, flat surface was left in the salon had also been claimed by the candles and bowls and cups, the red silk flowers and blue beads, the two baby dolls with eyes that opened and shut—Bea was planning on putting together an altar for Èrzulie Dantòr soon, she’d told Charlie.
Until then, her grandmother’s prized possession from their trip—a gift from the mambo—remained folded, right there on the shelf next to the towels. The traditional Vodou flag would be draped right above the altar, somewhere convenient for Bea to run her hands over the thousands of tiny sequins and beads that depicted the loa in all her glory. There Bea would draw upon the magic of her friend Mambo Michèle and the power of Èrzulie Dantòr to do her stuff. In the meantime, she was using her own magic—the magic of her mouth—to bully their clients into chipping in for the Bea’s Hive Salon Scholarship Fund, money that went straight toward sending Mackenson’s daughter and her two cousins to school.
Despite her enthusiasm for hanging around the salon to entertain people with her stories, Bea had been busier than ever with her own clients, spending hours each day on the other side of the door. Charlie didn’t know what the hell was going on back in Bea’s little “office” behind the kitchen, what she and her devotees were talking about. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know.
For the most part, Charlie was happy to be home. She was honestly warming to what she did, helping people feel good about themselves, both inside and out, when she added her therapist hat to her hairdresser’s toolbox. But that old restlessness, that yearning to walk among cultures other than her own, had been stirred up by the trip to Haiti. It was the freedom one feels in the unfamiliar, that space to listen to your own words, that constant challenge to your perceptions of the world, and of yourself. To Charlie, that was her comfort zone.
That’s why this time, after the bell over the salon door rang for the last time that afternoon, and Bea turned to her, took off her glasses, leaned forward, and uttered those five familiar words, Charlie had to smile.
“Charlie,” her grandmother said. “I’ve had a dream.”
Acknowledgments
I am thrilled to share Island on the Edge of the World with you, my readers. This is my sixth book, and I have loved the process of writing and researching every one of them because each time I learned something more about cultures and people. I also love writing the acknowledgments, because, while writing a book may appear to be a solo act, it is not. This leads me to thank the most amazing, most gifted writer in the universe, Ellen Kaye. Let me tell you a bit about our relationship. She is the backbone to my books, my friend, my travel buddy and research partner. She is the hardest-working and most dedicated and most talented person I know, and I love working with her. Wonder what our work relationship is like? Think the odd couple. (I’ll let you guess who’s who.) She makes sense of my chaos. She helps me get the story out of my head. I admit it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to sort through some of the clutter in my brain.
Thank God she has a wonderful, patient husband in Andy Besch, who says, “Go for it, Ellen. I’ll walk the dog and cook dinner while you go off again to the ends of the earth with Deb.” Ellen, can you believe this is the fourth book we have worked on together? I also have to thank Tillie (the dog) for loaning her to me.
Beverley Cousins, you are an amazing editor. You dig in first and push hard. I am forever thankful for your notes, even when I grumble. I know now to trust your clarity of vision and the gift you bring to my stories. I am so grateful to you and your entire team at Penguin Random House. And I have such gratitude to Maddie West, my editor at Little, Brown UK and Sphere Fiction, for her constant faith in me. I love how you take time to conspire with us about all the whirling stories in my head. Thank you both so much for believing in me.
The ringmaster in all of this is Marly Rusoff, my agent and friend. I often think back to our first conversation, fifteen years ago, when I called you from Afghanistan. Imagine! We’ve already managed six books together. I adore you and your partner Mihai (Michael) Radulescu. Marly, thank you for helping see my stories reach a global platform, but most of all thank you for believing in that crazy hairdresser from Michigan who thought she had a book in her.
Lizzy Kremer, thank you for being my agent for the UK and Australia. You have always been a champion for my books. Being on your team is the best, and I am very grateful.
Noah and Zachary Lentz, thank you for being the loving sons you are. I draw inspiration from both of you. The fun—and periodically unpredictable—life that we lived was sometimes a blessing, and, a few times, not so much. For this book I drew from some of our complicated times as a family to help bring the story to life. I am so
proud of the men you have become, despite having a mother who often lacked a good husband radar. Just like in the book, boys, we made it through and came out on top. You will both recognize the truth in the stories. I love you so much.
My daughters-in-law are amazing. Martha Villasana Lentz and Aretha Lentz, thank you for giving me the best gifts in the world—loving my sons, and giving me such beautiful grandbabies. I could never have dreamed that I could love so much.
Denis Asahara, what can I say? I am pretty sure I said, in the acknowledgments for the last book, that you make me crazy, and that still holds true today. I love you and thank you for always being supportive of my adventuresome spirit and creative side. I love that you enjoy the grandbabies as much as I do. I never knew that finding a low-maintenance man was possible until I met you. You make me so happy. I want to grow old with you.
Serena Evans Beeks, I am not sure I have ever met anyone so genuinely kind as you are. You showed me the beauty in all things Haitian, from the people to the art to the countryside. You taught me the mistakes we often make when trying to help poor nations. You took me from seeing, “Oh, those poor people” to “Oh, those beautiful, amazing, resourceful people.” Thank you for showing me the real Haiti, and for teaching me how to listen to what Haitians are actually saying. You make such a difference in the lives of Haitian people. They are so fortunate to have you in their lives, as I know you feel you are to have them in yours.
I love missionaries. I grew up in the church, played church as a kid with my stuffed animals as my congregation, and really thought I would be a missionary when I grew up. Missionaries have always been a part of my life. My world became a better place when Tom and Teresa Elkins stepped into Tippy Toes for haircuts. I don’t think they had any idea that I was adopting them as my family when we met, but I did. I love your wisdom and kindness and how you shared your incredible and complicated stories about mission life. You opened up the world of third-culture kids to me, both the good and the difficult side. Tom, your jungle stories always made me laugh, and Teresa, my family appreciates you for teaching me how to bake pies. You indeed have become family to me.
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