Dear Haiti, Love Alaine

by Maika Moulite

  When all I’ve got to look back on are some letters from a time when my mom was unbridled enough to put aside her doubts and reservations for the sake of a friend, I want to be able to say I tried it all. Even the ideas that seemed crazy. I don’t feel qualified to declare unequivocally that certain events that are unexplainable in the natural sense but easily explainable in the supernatural realm are straight-up wrong. (No shade, but you’re a nun, so wouldn’t you agree?)

  So I did a little digging. I’m not saying I have all the answers now, but I did what any good journalist would do when embarking on a highly sensitive story. I thought of all the people in my family—and heck, this country—who believed that madichon was a real power that moved and shaped lives. I checked the archives from the time that this supposed curse would have taken seed.2 I found a few things that swayed me enough to investigate this curse business for real.

  Consider this my Hail Mary Marie.

  * * *

  1 Self-imposed disclaimer courtesy of my dad, the shrink: terms such as blanket insanity, “nuts,” “loony,” “cuckoo,” and “bonkerzzz” are not found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) and are not legitimate attributions to one’s mental health status.

  2 Thanks, Tati Estelle. I guess I should’ve checked in with you before turning in my Who’s Who assignment after all.

  Twenty-Five-Year-Old Letter From Mom To

  Tati Estelle In The Dossier Tati Estelle Gave Me

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

  Chère Estelle,

  I have yet to perfect the gait of a New Yorker. I keep my head up high, face straight ahead, and walk like I’m in an unwinnable race as I resist the urge to yell at each person who bumps into me on the sidewalk. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that casual confidence down because I refuse to step out into the street with the pedestrian signal on the red stop sign. How can you trust that the drivers will stop every time for you? The risk is too great. And the drivers. You think Port-au-Prince is bad?

  Well, Port-au-Prince traffic is absolutely terrible. But that’s the point! At least you know to expect the unexpected there. There are no rules. New York City is worse for creating all these lights and sidewalks and bike lanes to just ignore them. An utter waste of time making the signs and printing out the DMV books. I could go on for pages about the shared faults of Manhattan pedestrians and drivers but I’ll spare you.

  How are things back home? How are you and Maman holding up? I’ve thrown myself into my studies to avoid thinking of...everything. But even that can’t stop the dreams. Just last night I dreamed that I was wandering around in Citadelle Laferrière. But it wasn’t the Citadelle as we now know it. The halls were lit with candles but they did nothing to chase away the darkness that seemed to seep into my bones as I walked through the fortress. I could hear someone wailing in agony. And as I walked toward the screams, I found a woman cradling a man on the floor in her arms, his blood growing in a pool around her as her cries echoed through the halls. Maybe it was Marie-Louise. I didn’t see them, but I sensed there were servants tucked away in the shadows watching as she grieved. I could always tell when Roseline was around.

  I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep after that. It’s such a strange thing to be able to speak my mind without a second thought but to be simultaneously reluctant to express what’s in my heart. But I will try to put into words here what I could not say with my lips the last time we were together in person. I had to go. Even before Papi’s death. But I can’t deny that him dying was the sign that I needed to leave. A terrible chapter in our lives—in Roseline’s life—is over. I didn’t need to protect her from anyone anymore and I hated myself because I hadn’t been doing that good of a job, to be frank. I wanted to get as far away from what he had done as possible. Coming to school here allowed me to do that... I took it as my opportunity to be free and move on. I hope you can understand.

  Love always,

  Celeste

  Scanned Letters I Found In Online Academic Caribbean Journal Archives From Henri Christophe’s Widow, Marie-Louise Coidavid, To Christophe’s Successor, Jean-Pierre Boyer

  Friday, August 17, 1821

  Dear Mr. President,

  The princesses and I have arrived safely in London with the kind assistance of Sir Popham. It has been a trying time for the family since the deaths of Henri and Jacques-Victor. Though I am cautiously optimistic of the quality of our stay, I am anxious to return to my countryland soon. I pray that my husband’s enemies have appeased themselves with the blood that they have shed.

  Yours truly,

  Marie-Louise I,

  former Queen Consort of Haiti

  Thursday, October 11, 1821

  Dear Mr. President,

  Your Excellency, the first anniversary of my widowhood has come and gone. I have recalled our conversation countless times over these many months and have not forgotten your promise to bring me and my daughters home before long. I, above others, understand the fickleness of the sea and suspect my first letter never reached you. Alas, I persevere by sending this in its stead.

  Yours truly,

  Marie-Louise I,

  fmr. Queen Consort of Haiti

  Tuesday, June 11, 1822

  Dear Mr. President,

  I follow the affairs of our beloved country closely and rejoice in our periods of triumph and mourn in our times of grief. I hope I do not overstep my bounds as a humble widow to congratulate the successful unification of Hispaniola. The third time is truly the charm. Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo will finally be two stunning hemispheres to the singular pearl that is our island. I do pray this letter finds you well and in good health and that you deem it appropriate to return my family to our grand nation.

  Yours truly,

  Marie-Louise I,

  fmr. Queen Consort of Haiti

  Wednesday, March 26, 1823

  Your Excellency,

  As I acknowledge this March 26, the day I was first crowned Queen, I take a moment to ponder your silence. I understand the delay. Running a nascent country requires much effort and time—more than one person can provide. It isn’t surprising if there are other pressing issues that come before answering a weary dowager.

  Please know that I do not demand special treatment from you because I deserve it, but I beg you for it because I have nowhere else to turn. I am a Haitian first and foremost and my heart yearns to be in the land my husband helped build. I do not require a royal entourage, money, or fame. I don’t even need this title of queen in a land of presidents. I simply ask that my children and I can spend our remaining days in the country we love.

  Yours truly,

  Marie-Louise Coidavid

  Sunday, July 4, 1824

  Your Excellency,

  I saw it fitting to send this note on the day of American independence. It is widely known you enjoy satirical plays and I’m sure the irony of the six thousand black Americans leaving the alleged “land of the free” to seek their true liberty in Haiti is not lost upon you, as it is not lost on me, even all the way in Pisa, Italy. If you recall from our conversation at the final state banquet Henri and I hosted, I was born of free blacks. I suspect my ancestors would have never conceived a descendant of theirs would reach such distances as Europe. Despite it all, I desire nothing more than to get back to Nord with my last remaining child. It is urgent.

  Yours,

  Marie-Louise Coidavid

  SCANNED LETTERS BETWEEN COIDAVID AND BOYER’S WIFE (AND ALEXANDRE PÉTION’S WIDOW) MARIE-MADELEINE LACHENAIS GIVEN TO ME BY TATI ESTELLE

  Wednesday, March 23, 1825

  Marie-Madeleine,

  Forgive me for the delay in reaching out to you. Even after all these years, I knew I didn’t dare come empty-handed. I finally have something important to share, much too delicate to send to Boyer and p
ray for a reply that will never come...

  I spend every Wednesday at confession and this very morning I overheard a white man of evident stature and means confessing to the priest of having an illicit family in Saint-Domingue. He feared God was going to punish him by killing his mistress there and his wife back in France. I think he believed the cathedral empty but the two of them and sobbed loudly, revealing his biggest, selfish fear of losing his own life when he would soon lead an extensive fleet to Saint-Domingue to demand reparations for the loss of income from their slaves. Typically, I would not divulge something so personal as a religious confession but my allegiance to Haiti forced my hand.

  I’m sure you’ve seen the letters to Jean-Pierre. I have always been polite and sanguine in tone with him but I am desperate. My last remaining child is dead. No mother should be so cursed to witness all four of her children reach the grave before her. I have not fully absorbed the shock of Améthyste’s sudden illness but Athénaïre had taken our family’s change in circumstances worse than any of us. The hatred that festered in her soul must have overtaken her body when she became with child and she slipped away in labor. She had come to blame me for our life and rarely deigned to speak to me. She became taken by an Italian boy who promised her the moon at the paltry price of her family fortune. What that pisano didn’t know when he began to court her was that our world-famous fortune was dwindling and he disappeared the moment he discovered his

  Athénaïre and her money were gone. I would give up and live the rest of my life near my daughters’ mausoleum but I have a granddaughter now that I can’t look after here in Pisa.

  You and I know what Henri and Alexandre would say if they knew of this letter. You and I also know that it doesn’t matter because we are the ones who’ve survived. I implore you, think of our stolen moments of commiseration in the early days of the country, before our men ripped it in half. Is there anyone you can sit and drink with who does not have an ulterior motive? At least I am transparent with my request and you above all know I have no desire to reach the pinnacle of our government again. I’ve seen the mountaintop and much prefer the view from the valley. You, yes, you, the mind behind two presidents, know my heart. I am simply the sane, aging woman behind an unhinged king.

  From one first lady to another, please bring me home.

  Your faithful servant if you so choose,

  Marie-Louise

  Tuesday, July 12, 1825

  Marie-Louise,

  Do not insult my or your intelligence by suggesting this “important” information you have is exclusive to you. There have been whispers of such a crisis for years now. It was never a question of what was possible with the French but when they would assemble themselves to publicly gripe about the absurd slight of claiming one’s freedom. How dare we.

  Nevertheless, I will help you. Nothing is free in this life (as the French so menacingly reminded me with a fleet of ships at our shores not a fortnight ago) and I will need you to do something for me in return. I can offer you safe passage and resources to your precious Nord but you will not return as Henri Christophe’s heartbroken widow. You will be a red-blooded Le Cap woman who is ready to move on to a powerful new man. Charles Rivière-Hérard has never been able to hide his affection for you, and speaks of you even now. He’s had a notoriously small circle since the beginning but there are even fewer people he allows to get close to him since his rapid, decorated ascent in the military. You will be one of them.

  There is something afoot in my husband’s ranks and I know Rivière-Hérard is behind it. I urged Jean-Pierre to reject the French’s demand for 150 million gold francs. Rivière-Hérard was a snake at his temple, hissing for him to accept the “deal.” At first glance there appeared no choice but to agree to their terms, what with their warships and guns waiting at the Port-au-Prince harbor. But the people will revolt over this further bondage. We don’t need whips and chains to be slaves if we’re expected to sign over ten times our gross domestic product to the very slave-owners we claim to have escaped. Rivière-Hérard knows this fact and will twist it to his advantage. I can hear the cries now; tear down that mulatto from his ivory tower. Jean-Pierre turns a blind eye.

  You will keep your eyes, ears, and legs open for anything “important” you hear of and from Rivière-Hérard. Pass along to me what you learn and do your part to silence his faction’s dissent so then you can live your days in peace in the land you claim to love. Ultimately, I want Rivière-Hérard to be dust in my hands. In every sense of the word.

  Jean-Pierre is president for life and it is my intention to keep it this way. I believe he will do what Alexandre and your Henri could not and stay alive long enough to do some good under my counsel. Only embark on this journey if you are willing to follow through to the end. I swear with every breath within me that if you do not fulfill your obligation, you and your children’s children will come to curse the day you entered this arrangement.

  Mml

  Letter From Mom To Tati Estelle In The Dossier Tati Estelle Gave Me

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20

  Estelle,

  I miss you. Please answer me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how quickly you pass the phone to Maman if you happen to be home when I call on Sundays, or the fact you don’t call at all. I know you’re upset but we’ve never gone this long without speaking, even after I accidentally burned your favorite wrap dress when I was ironing. I’m not trivializing this, but you did love that dress.

  You know I couldn’t stay there. I was suffocating and that was when I realized that there was never going to be a good time to leave. I was never passionate about what life would offer me if I stayed in Haiti. I’m not cut out to marry some politician, have children, and stay home and watch my servants clean things all day. I didn’t want to deal with the hypocrisy of summering on a hill that looked down on the abject poverty just a few miles below.

  So when Roseline said she wanted to try lifting—exchanging—this curse for something better for us all...I took a chance and allowed myself the luxury of believing that this madichon that has plagued us our whole lives was real and agreed to perform the ritual. And if it wasn’t, I prayed that this ritual would somehow clean our hands of what Papi did. But I was wrong. It didn’t make living with his actions any easier. I felt guilty looking at Roseline, watching her stay home to cook and clean when we would go to school or a party. I know you sometimes felt that I picked Roseline over you, that I spent all my free time with her because I wished she was my sister instead, but the truth is, I knew she was safe with me. When Roseline left after he died and I got Maman to promise she wouldn’t try to get her back...and when you reunited with Andres...I decided that if I was going to be selfish and attempt to build a new life from of all this history, it would have to be then.

  Do you know, that very night I’d made up my mind, Andres’s father mentioned the American student visa program at dinner and Maman didn’t immediately change the subject? That’s when I realized I could actually make this happen. I filled out the application and wrote my essays, and when I got that acceptance letter three weeks later, I cried.

  This country isn’t paradise. It’s draining to sift through everything someone tells me, wondering if it’s an unintentional verbal jab or if there are other underlying meanings. I was running to catch a bus, and as the white driver shut the door on me, he said, “Don’t be hatin’. There’s another bus coming.” I was floored. And I was so proud of my English in high school. I flinch a little each time a classmate frowns and says, “What?” when I speak.

  But I’m challenged here. There are shops and Broadway shows and parks to explore. I write essays in class and hear feedback from my new column in the newspaper. I’m auditioning to be an anchor on the student-run television station next semester. I’m hurtling toward my purpose. I can feel it.

  I miss you. Are you happy? Did you get what you wanted?

  Celeste

>   Clearly Unsent Letter From Tati Estelle To Mom

  Tuesday, November 19

  Celeste,

  Allow me to state the obvious, but I miss you. I’m also very, very angry with you. I hated keeping up that wall between us but I was betrayed. By you, my best friend, my mirror. That’s never happened before. You’ve always sworn to “leave this stupid town” and talked incessantly about its flaws (it was a downer at parties) but I thought it was just chatter. I never thought you’d actually go, let alone with our family in pieces. I had no desire to leave Haiti before this and I assumed you wouldn’t want to either. I felt stupid for wanting to stay.

  I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish with the freeze-out but I’m thawing now. Every Sunday, I read all your letters, cry a little, and then stash them in that clunky chest you kept in your room for your books. I took it with me to school.

  Port-au-Prince is not Cap-Haïtien. It’s not New York either. It probably wouldn’t have been enough for you but I feel independent and urbane enough here in college. Jules still asks about you when he sees me on campus. L’Université d’État d’Haïti may not be Columbia but it’s just as instructive... But I’m a science politique student with connections. I’m doing most of my learning in the palace anyway. And things down in Palais National are all over the place since Baby Doc left. We’ve had three presidents since you’ve been gone. Three.

  Maman has found herself a “gentleman friend” already and he spends sixty percent of his time complaining about missing his domino buddies. I wonder how many of them landed in New York with you to escape this mess. Yves (that’s his name) can’t believe a retired priest was president before he was (“Who would trust a priest who quits the priesthood?!”).

  For the record...I knew Roseline needed you more than I did. But I still needed you. After she left, I thought I’d get you back. As for those magical wishes, I lost you and Andres but have gained reoccurring nightmares of a pregnant girl dying in labor on the floor of a room I don’t recognize. I guess you can rest well knowing you made it to New York on your own.