Dear Haiti, Love Alaine

by Maika Moulite

  “I’ll...just head home.” Jules nodded. I walked him to the hospital entrance, and we hugged goodbye as he climbed onto the back of the motorcycle I had hailed. He tried to wave away the money I gave him to pay for the ride until I pressed it into his palm and wouldn’t let go. As I watched them leave the driveway, I saw Andres. He was wearing the same dirty clothes from hours before and he held a large vase of flowers. He sauntered up to where I stood frowning at him, swaying like a tree in hurricane winds. His eyes were bloodshot, and when he opened his mouth to say hello, the stench of alcohol revealed what he’d been doing since he left the hospital.

  “You better not have driven here,” I said.

  “No. I have a chauffeur for that,” Andres retorted. “Where’s Estelle?”

  “In her room. With my parents,” I said pointedly. “You can’t go in there like this.”

  “Watch me,” he said.

  Andres made a beeline for Estelle’s room, shaking his head in a weak attempt to sober up. My parents were walking out with the doctor when Maman realized who it was careening toward them. Her eyes bulged and she jerked my father and the doctor in the opposite direction. Her hands shook the way that mine did when I was upset, but she said nothing to him, as I’d known she wouldn’t. Anything to avoid a scene. Andres entered the room and stopped short at the door when he realized that Estelle was sleeping. He turned to place the flowers on the edge of the table that stood at the entrance. As he wobbled to stand beside her bed, I raced over and grabbed his arm.

  “Leave her alone!” I hissed. “She needs to rest.”

  “Well, I need to speak with her,” Andres said, crossing his arms.

  “We don’t always get what we want.”

  “That’s not what your Roseline promised,” Andres said.

  Again my mind fluttered to Roseline, who had looked very much at peace this morning. Was this her doing? I didn’t know if coincidences would be this strong. I held my ground as Andres tried to maneuver closer to Estelle, refusing to move from where I stood between them.

  “You need to go,” I insisted.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Andres said. He took another step closer to Estelle, tightening the gap. “What I need to do is put you in your place.”

  Suddenly, Andres was on me like a lion locked on its prey. He grabbed me by the arms and pulled me toward him, holding my body against his. I smelled vomit mixed with the alcohol. He was tugging me closer and closer to his lips. I beat against him in panic as I realized what he was trying to do.

  “Andres!” I hissed. “Let me go right now! Stop this!”

  Andres looked down once more and then he was on me, kissing me roughly as he pressed me even closer into his chest. The liquor on his tongue made me gag as he forced my mouth open with his. I still tried to fight him off, stomping on his feet to no avail. Finally, I bit him on his bottom lip. I tasted blood and retched. He pushed me away from him and I bumped against the side of Estelle’s bed. I turned around quickly, hoping that my sister had not awoken to see her worthless boyfriend shoving his tongue down my throat. It was too late.

  “Andres?” she asked, her voice small. “What are you doing?”

  He stood near the foot of Estelle’s bed and his face was marred with shame. He didn’t look her in the eyes as he shook his head.

  “Get out,” Estelle said. She sounded more tired than angry. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Andres said, wiping at the blood on his mouth.

  “Trust me, I do,” Estelle said with more ferocity. “Losing this baby was probably the best thing to happen to me. Now I have nothing tying me to you.”

  He opened his mouth to speak but closed it and gave a curt nod. Without another word, he left the room and walked right into my father. I looked at them there, one man who had never been denied a thing, and another who was growing up to be just like him. Papi opened his mouth to presumably shout at Andres when his eyes bulged forward. His hands clawed at his throat, pulling at the skin to widen its passage for air.

  “Gregoire!” My mother ran toward Papi, where he had collapsed on the floor. “Doktè, Doktè!”

  Without getting up, I watched his breathing fade, then stop altogether. He was dead before the doctor rushed back into the room.

  My mind flickered to Roseline.

  Estelle’s face crumpled and she wept. I will never forget how broken she looked. I sat with her on the bed, cradling my twin in my arms and letting her cry until she had no more tears left. I had none to shed myself, but I felt a shadow descend on me, the fear of whatever caused my father to die. Money. Power. Love. Success. It was obvious that Jules, the poor scholarship boy who was embarrassed about his need, would want to be wealthy. Andres planned his entire life to one day exert control over others. Estelle wanted the world to adore her. And I craved to have accomplishments separate from the family I resented. Even as I consoled Estelle and told her that everything would be fine, I felt like a liar. We had set a horrible ball in motion and we were plummeting toward the ground with nothing to cushion our fall.

  Friday, February 5

  The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant

  A list of possible reactions my mother could have if she discovered I’d read her innermost thoughts (by degree of likelihood)

  Joyful surprise (Very unlikely)CELESTE: Oh, did Estelle give that to you?

  ALAINE: Y-yes?

  CELESTE: How swell! I’d love your opinion on our decades-old familial strife and secrets. What did you think of the part when my father died dramatically on the floor of a hospital? Or that said father was a sexual predator? The heavy allusions to blood magic?

  ALAINE: Uh...

  CELESTE: You know what, you need more context. Here, take the rest of my hidden diary entries.

  Vehement outrage (Unlikely)CELESTE: ROOOAR I AM SO VERY UPSET WITH YOU THAT I’M RAISING MY VOICE TO PROVE MY POINT [moves to throw chair across room]

  Flat-out, absurdist denial (Neither more unlikely/likely)CELESTE: Is nothing sacred? How dare you read my fan fiction without my permission?

  Feigned ignorance/business as usual (Likely)CELESTE: How is your paper going?

  ALAINE: Mom, can we talk about what I read in the diary Tati Estelle gave to me?

  CELESTE: What diary? What’s a Tati Estelle? Do your homework.

  ALAINE: Please...?

  CELESTE: I have to go.

  ALAINE: Go where?

  CELESTE: Oh...to the...um—[runs from room]

  Stony silence (Very likely)CELESTE:

  ALAINE:

  The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant

  Tati Estelle said that I needed to know where I came from, but reading my mother’s diary only succeeded in making me more lost. “I don’t really have a relationship with my momTM” could be the Alaine Beauparlant catchphrase at this point, but I do know her (and the average diarist, i.e., me) well enough to understand how huge of an invasion of privacy reading this was. Tati Estelle found the diary when she was moving back in and thought to pass it along as a sort of treat but ended up using it as something to distract me from my whirling thoughts after Mom wandered off. Reading about Tati Estelle’s miscarriage hurt. I had no idea that she had carried that with her all these years. I wondered if she could even have children after what happened to her. In an alternate universe, I had a cool older cousin who was just as full of life as her (yes, her) mom. Then again, Tati Estelle had said she was happy about the miscarriage because it meant she could move on from Andres...so who knows if she would’ve let that pregnancy result in a baby at all.

  I knew my mother had been reacting to more than a skeevy senator’s throwaway lines that day on her show. He’d forced himself on her, and his promise, I’m not going anywhere, brought her right back to that moment. I sensed that Andres’s story with my mother and aunt did not end in that hospit
al room. But someone who had been left there was my grandfather Gregoire. There were no signs of him anywhere in the house, and they never mentioned him. Ever. Now I understood why. I hoped Roseline was okay, wherever she was now. I wondered if my grandmother Jacinthe still harbored those foolish, hostile feelings toward her, even in her home clear across the country in the suburbs of Pétion-Ville. She was a bigger mystery than my own mother was. This was a lot to process.

  Is it bad that a part of me thinks that after years of not having a Real ConnectionTM with my mother, I’m entitled to a level of transparency? Even when her memory is a memory itself...maybe these pages will come to hold something she won’t be able to give me. It comforted me that I could see pieces of myself in her writing—how she dug into writing a full story even if it was just for her eyes.

  I still hadn’t decided what was up with that ceremony and needed answers:

  Where was Roseline?

  Could she have been behind my grandfather’s freak death?

  Would I blame her if she were?

  What had she endured living in this house?

  Could Andres Venegas be a more terrible human being?

  And why hadn’t I ever heard of any of this until now?

  I know My People had spirits and lwas and vodou and Jesus, and they were all over the place if you knew where to look, but I had been removed from all of it growing up. I’d read that their spirits were linked with Catholic saints and mysterious entities derived from Africa. That the enslaved and their descendants had worshipped in secret for safety. There were others like the ones at Tatiana’s church who considered all those practices to be depraved and demonic. I suspected the truth wasn’t so clear-cut. There were folks who called on the spirits to urge their crops to grow, cure sicknesses, find love. The darkness was only a fraction of what these forces could do.

  Dad always said science was his savior, and we had just two Sunday rituals: yelling at the screen during football or soccer, then trying out a new restaurant for dinner. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if his attachment to biology and chemistry and physiology—to the mechanisms he could explain—derived from the inexplicable course of events that night decades ago. Our church was Monday morning at breakfast when he would tell me, like some kind of Haitian Ellen DeGeneres, to not be too hard on myself and to be kind to everyone.

  Sunday, February 7

  The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant

  What was meant to be a painfully uncomfortable dinner to celebrate my grandmother Jacinthe’s birthday with family/close friends tonight upgraded to a painfully uncomfortable and depressing dinner for family/close friends. It was a dark and stormy night (like, for real, for real) and I had just started working on the meal with my mom. She insisted that she be the one to prepare everything, even though Tati Estelle begged that Jacques, the longtime family chef, handle the feast. After reading her diary, I didn’t understand Mom’s desire to cook for her mother.

  “We pay him for this!” my aunt exclaimed as my mom gathered ingredients for the various dishes. “It’s Maman’s birthday, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Well, you can pay him for the time if it makes you feel better. But I’ll be the one to make it,” she said in that final tone of hers that had cut off many an interview.

  My aunt left the kitchen in a huff, muttering, “Celeste always gets her way.”

  I had volunteered to help my mom so that I could try to get info on the people coming to dinner. We stood in the large kitchen, sunlight streaming through the open windows above the sink that overlooked the pool area. We worked together to prep the ingredients, my mom interjecting with tips along the way. We chopped onions into tiny pieces (But not too small so that my cousin Jean can pick them out), seasoned grilled chicken with our homemade spices (This epis will make any meal delicious. The secret is to wash the meat with water, lime, and a tiny bit of vinegar first), and sprinkled just enough shredded cheddar cheese on top of the macaroni before popping it into the oven (It’s much better than that box stuff).

  “How do you know how to cook all this food?” I had yet to bring up the diaries to her, and I had a feeling the answer was Roseline.

  “Classes... A friend.”

  “How do you feel?” I asked as I finished peeling the beets and potatoes we would be using for the salade russe. I didn’t press her, painfully aware that I had no trouble squeezing info from anyone except her. “The internet is going crazy over that leaked GNN memo firing you from the network.”

  My mom shook her head as she scooped mayo into the bowl that I’d placed the vegetables in. “They didn’t fire me—I quit. They were going to let me go anyway. I just beat them to the punch. With William swimming around like some maniacal piranha, I’m surprised Mike’s note wasn’t released the same day I sent in my resignation.”

  “William must’ve used that time to celebrate with his hubby, Keith,” I said. I had gone to only one of my mom’s company holiday parties, but even at the age of eleven, I noticed how contentious her relationship with her EP was.

  MY HAZY RECOLLECTION OF THE ONE TIME I MET WILLIAM DONAHUE, MOM’S EX-EP

  Setting: We find William Donahue and Celeste Beauparlant at an impasse, standing beside the sole remaining mini ceviche taco at the hors d’oeuvres table of GNN’s non-denominational company holiday party.

  WILLIAM: Take it. Please.

  CELESTE: No, it’s fine.

  WILLIAM: I know how little you cook. This must be lunch and dinner for you. I insist.

  CELESTE: Actually, there are these new places called restaurants, so I never have to starve anymore. The things people come up with.

  Enter the star of the show, Alaine Beauparlant, dragging along Celeste’s driver, Jimmy Richmond, to settle a disagreement. Cue audience applause.

  ALAINE: Mo-om! Jimmy says that he doesn’t believe I can get straight As with “my mouth.”

  CELESTE: Where are your manners? Say hello to Mr. Donahue.

  WILLIAM: Hello there, Alaine. Tell me. Are you as bossy as your mom?

  ALAINE: [pauses to think] No, probably more.

  Scene.

  AN IMAGINED EMAIL EXCHANGE BETWEEN MOM AND HER BOSS DISCUSSING HER FOREGONE FUTURE AT GNN

  From: Celeste Beauparlant

  To: Michael Sanders

  Subject: I quit.

  Michael,

  In light of recent events, I must submit my resignation, effective immediately. Of course, our representatives are in touch, but I wanted to state personally that I have enjoyed my time at GNN and grown so much throughout my years with the network, even with a bloodthirsty vampire like William Donahue as my EP. Entrusting me with Sunday Politicos was considered a “risk,” but you took the chance—because you had no choice if you wanted to avoid the wrath of what you so lovingly called the “PC Police.” And in the six years since I’ve held the role, the program has flourished. I will always remember the amazing team that has been beside me through the ups, downs, and sideways. I would not have been able to reach such heights without their expertise and support. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to create a platform that has engaged an audience so ripe for stimulating discussion. I will cherish this experience always. I hope they stop watching.

  Celeste

  From: Michael Sanders

  To: Celeste Beauparlant

  Subject: Re: I quit.

  Thank GOD. Now I don’t have to fire you.

  Mike

  Press Release From GNN Announcing Mom’s Departure A Few Days Ago

  Friday, February 5

  GNN CORRESPONDENCE

  For immediate release:

  From the Office of Michael Sanders

  It is with great regret that GNN ends our professional relationship with Celeste Beauparlant. In her time anchoring Sunday Politicos, she made great strides for the program and the network
as a whole. Effective immediately, Keith Donahue will serve as Celeste’s permanent replacement and lead anchor for the show. Keith has done a superb job standing in for Celeste since her departure at the end of December. We are excited to see where he will lead the program.

  Celeste will be missed and we wish her the absolute best.

  Michael Sanders

  GNN President

  ***PETITIONING GNN***

  SIGN THIS PETITION

  REINSTATE CELESTE BEAUPARLANT AS HOST OF ‘SUNDAY POLITICOS’

  TRICIA JENKINS, ATLANTA, GA

  Greetings. I run a successful blog about the intersection of race, gender, and culture in America. Something I have in common with many of my readers is an admiration for Celeste Beauparlant. She’s a wonderful role model who had a minor lapse of judgment.

  Politicians themselves have been forgiven for much worse and, as Solange has reminded us, Celeste deserves her seat at the table. We still haven’t heard her side of the story! Please join me in demanding GNN reinstate her as host of Sunday Politicos.

  If the allegations are true regarding her health, the least they can do is allow her the dignity of a proper resignation, signing off the air in her own way.

  Sincerely,

  Tricia Jenkins, Beautiful Brown

  Sunday, February 7

  The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant

  Soon, everything was in the oven, on the stove, or cooling in the fridge as we wrapped up our prep. I stood at the sink with my mother and we washed up in silence. We were all gossiped out about GNN drama. I poked her arm after drying my hands.

  “Will you be okay tonight?”

  The water was still running over her fingers as she absentmindedly rubbed her hands together. She shook her head to clear it, then looked at me. “We’re late. Let’s go change our clothes for dinner.”