We navigate snow not ours
but grown used to, one cold foot
over another, adopt accoutrements:
a red scarf, wind-wrapped and tight,
boots, their soles teethed like sharks,
shackling our ebon ankles, the weight
of wool coats borrowed
from our ancestors, the Gauls.*
Masters at this now,
we circumvent ice
as we do time, reach home.
The salt you bend to cast
parts the snow around us.
I bend and think
of a primary sea,
harbors of danger and history,
passing through the middle
in boats a-sail in furious storms,
cargo heavy,
of mysteres, renamed,
submerged and sure,
riding dark waves,
floating long waves
to the other side of the water,
and the other side
and the next.
*Our ancestors, the Gauls (nos ancitres, les Gaulois)-a phrase from a French children's history text used widely, until recently, in Francophone primary schools.
I was trying to write a book and survive in America at the same time. (I'll never figure out how that ambition wormed its way into me.) One of those two pursuits had to go. Time to choose, man. But a problem arose: I wanted everything. That's the way drowning men are. I wanted a novel, girls (fascinating girls, the products of modernity, weight-loss diets, the mad longings of older men), alcohol, and laughter. My due-that's all. That's what America had promised me. I know America has made a lot of promises to a large number of people, but I was intent on making her keep her word. I was furious at her, and I don't like to be double-crossed. At the time, I'm sure you'll remember, at the beginning of the 1980s (so long ago!), the bars in any North American city were chock-full of confused, aging hippies-empty-eyed Africans who always had a drum within easy striking distance-the type never changes, no matter the location or the decade-Caribbeans in search of their identity, starving white poetesses who lived off alfalfa sprouts and Hindu mythology, aggressive young black girls who knew they didn't stand a chance in this insane game of roulette because the black men were only into white women, and the white guys into money and power. Late in the evening, I wandered through these lunar landscapes where sensations had long since replaced sentiment. I took notes. I scribbled away in the washrooms of crummy bars. I carried on endless conversations until dawn with starving intellectuals, out-of-work actresses, philosophers without influence, tubercular poetesses, the bottomest of the bottom dogs. I jumped into that pool once in a while and found myself in a strange bed with a girl I didn't remember having courted (I left the bar last night with the black-haired girl, I'm sure I did, so what's this bottle-blonde with the green fingernails doing here?) But I never took drugs. God had given me the gift of loud, powerful, happy contagious laughter, a child's laugh that drove girls wild. They wanted to laugh so badly, and there wasn't much to laugh about back then. When I immigrated to North America, I made sure I brought that laughter in my battered metal suitcase, an ancestral legacy. We always laughed a lot around my house. My grandfather's deep laughter would shake the walls. I laughed, I drank wine, I made love with the energy of a child who's been locked inside a candy shop, and I wrote it all down. As soon as the girl scampered off to the bathroom, I would start scribbling down notes. The edge of the bed or the corner of a table was my desk. I'd note down a good line, a sensual walk, a pained smile, all the details of life. Everything fascinated me. I wrote down everything that moved, and things never stopped moving, believe me. All around me, the world (the girl, the dress on the floor, my underwear lost in the sheets, that long naked back moving toward the stereo, then Bob Marley's music), the elements of my universe turned at top speed. How could words halt the flight of time, girls wheeling away, desire burning anew? Often I would fall asleep with my head against my old Remington, asking myself those unanswerable questions. Am I the troubadour of low-rent America, always on the edge of an overdose, up against the walls, handcuffs slapped on, with two cops breathing down my neck? America discounting her life, counting her pennies, the America of immigrants, blacks, and poor white girls who've lost their way? America of empty eyes and pallid dawn. In the end, I wrote that damned novel, and America was forced, as least as far as I was concerned, to come through on a few of her promises. I know she gives more to some than they need; with others, she swipes the hunk of stale bread from their clenched fists. But I made her pay at least a third of her debt. I'm naive, I know, I can see the audience smiling, but my mental system needs to believe in this victory, as tiny as it may be. A third of a victory. For others, not a penny of the debt has been paid. America owes an enormous amount to third world youth. I'm not just talking about historical debt (slavery, the rape of natural resources, the balance of payments, etc.), there's a sexual debt, too. Everything we've been promised by magazines, posters, the movies, television. America is a happy hunting ground, that's what gets beaten into our heads every day, come and stalk the most delicious morsels (young American beauties with long legs, pink mouths, superior smiles), come and pick the wild fruit of this new Promised Land. For you, young men of the third world, America will be a doe quivering under the buckshot of your caresses. The call went around the world, and we heard it, even the blue men of the desert heard it. Remember the global village? They've got American TV in the middle of the Sahara. Westward, ho! It was a new gold rush. And when each new arrival showed up, he was told, "Sorry, the party's over." I can still picture the sad smile of a Bedouin, old in years but still vigorous (remember, brother, those horny old goats from the Old Testament), who had sold his camel to attend the party. I met up with all of them in a tiny bar on Park Avenue. While you're waiting for the next fiesta, the Manpower counselor told us, you have to work. There's work for everyone in America (the old carrot and stick, brother). We've got you coming and going. What? Work? Our Bedouin didn't come here to work. He crossed the desert and sailed the seas because he'd been told that in America the girls were free and easy. Oh, no, you didn't quite understand! What didn't we understand from that showy sexuality, that profusion of naked bodies, that total disclosure, that Hollywood heat? You should know we have some very sophisticated devices in the desert; we can tune in America. The resolution is exceptional, and there's no interference in the Sahara. In the evening, we gather in our tents lit by the cathode screen and watch you. Watching how you do what you do is a great pleasure for us. Some pretty girl is always laughing on a beach somewhere. The next minute, a big blond guy shows up and jumps her. She slips between his fingers, and he chases her into the surf. She fights, but he holds her tight and both of them sink to the bottom. Every evening it's the same menu, with slight variations. The sea is bluer, the girls blonder, the guys more muscled. All our dreams revolve around this life of ease. That's what we want: the easy life. Those breasts and asses and teeth and laughter-after a while, it started affecting our libido. What could be more natural? And now, here we are in America, and you dare tell us that we didn't understand? Understand what? I ask the question again. What were we supposed to have understood? You made us mad with desire. Today, we stand before you, a long chain of men (in our country, adventure is the realm of men), penises erect, appetites insatiable, ready for the battle of the sexes and the races. We'll fight to the finish, America.
I call it "the Phrase" and it comes up almost anytime Haiti is mentioned in the news: the Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere. These seven words represent a classic example of something absolutely true and absolutely meaningless at the same time.
On a recent trip to Haiti, I asked a young journalist working for an international news organization why the Phrase always appeared in her stories. "Even when I don't put it in," she confided, "the editors add it to the story."
The Phrase is a box, a metaphorical prison. If Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, that fact is supposed to place everything in context. Why we have such suicidal politics. Why we have such selfish politicians. Why we suffer so much misery. Why our people brave death on the high seas to wash up on the shores of Florida. After all, in this age where an advocacy of free markets is a substitute for foreign policy and Internet billionaires are created by the minute, being poor automatically makes you suspect. You must have some moral failing, some fatal flaw, some cultural blindness to not be prosperous. And what applies to the individual also applies to entire countries.
In my parents' generation, more than a few middle-class Haitians tried to deny that poverty back home was so prevalent. When I heard older Haitians stammer and object to the characterization, I wondered if they were trying to put Haiti's best foot forward, or just trying to convince themselves. Of course, the poverty was not always as obvious as it is now, having moved from the countryside into Port-au-Prince so that it spills into the main thoroughfares and the fashionable neighborhoods. Too many of us Dyasporas, having the advantage of distance to confront the truths of Haiti, would not even consider denying the desperate state of our poor brethren.
But the Phrase still grates with us because it also denies so much else about Haiti: our art, our music, our rich Afro-Euro-American culture. It denies the humanity of Haitians, the capacity to survive, to overcome, even to triumph over this poverty, a historical experience we share with so many other in this same Western Hemisphere. The Second American Invasion cast a harsh media spotlight on Haiti. The first black republic got more attention from the powerful news organizations of the West than it ever had in its history. But that scrutiny was ultimately disappointing. We learned once again that coverage is not the same as understanding. The Phrase became an easy out for reporters confronting the complexities they could barely begin to plumb. What a difference it would have been if American, or French, or British journalists had looked through the camera at their audience and declared, "Yes, this is a poor country, but like Ireland or Portugal, it has also produced great art. Yes, this poor country has suffered brutal government and yet, like Russia or Brazil, it has produced great writers and scholars. Yes, many of Haiti's most downtrodden, like the Jews in America or the Palestinians in the Middle East, have fled and achieved more success in exile than they ever would at home." Such statements would have linked Haiti to the rest of the world. They would have made it seem less mysterious, less unsolvable, less exotic. But then, that really wasn't the purpose of most reporting about Haiti over the last few years. Keeping the veil over the island was easier than trying to understand factions and divisions and mistrust and history. And it gave America an out if the intervention failed. So foreign journalists fell back on the Phrase. It was shorthand. It was neat. And it told the world nothing about Haiti that it didn't already know.
1982. TV. The nightly news. Bodies on the beach, faces behind barbed wire. Any one of them could be related to me. Rudolph Giuliani, then assistant attorney general of the United States, now New York City mayor, finger wagging: we have no problem with refugees as long as they come by the proper channels: (Rude refugees. Bad refugees. Ca ne se fait pas, it's just not done to come by boat and die on U.S. beaches). These refugees are economic, not political. There are no human-rights abuses in Haiti.
I want to break the television.
What about the women, men, and children who died fighting for freedom? What about my father, imprisoned then released and lucky enough to escape before the macoutes came for him again and lucky enough to get asylum and bring us out by the proper channels twenty years ago? I get tired of yelling and decide to do something.
The United States government transforms an abandoned building into a detention center in Brooklyn's former Navy Yard. After much political wrangling, a group of activist priests, themselves exiled by the Duvalier dictatorship, are finally allowed to organize English classes in the center.
I start teaching in one of those January winters so hard on island people. It is an out-of-the-way place, a group of abandoned industrial buildings not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, several highway overpasses, and a housing project. The streets are almost empty.
A hundred women and men live in this red building with windows covered with dirt and wire mesh. Black and Latino guards have been hired especially for the occasion. After the guard at the door inspects the contents of my bag, he flashes a smile and reprises with perfect comic timing the refrain of a television commercial: "Welcome to Roach Motel. Roaches check in but they don't check out." Humor as a weapon against a dirty job?
The men and women have been separated into different parts of the building and are not allowed to see each other. There is no yard, no place for physical activity or even a short walk in the sun.
When I start, they have been there for two months. They will end up spending more than a year without ever going out, except for the rare authorized medical or legal appointment.
After I pass inspection I wait as several guards bring the women out of the "living" area, one by one, through a metal door. There are about twenty of them, many in their twenties like me, none older than fifty, all waiting impatiently to get on with their lives. This must be a special occasion, a break in the monotony, for the women make the most of the secondhand clothing donated through the Haitian priests. They dress impeccably. No pants; only dresses, skirts and blouses, pretty and demure as if for church. The youngest, barely out of their teens, highlight their youth and beauty with perfect makeup and brightly painted nails.
I am not allowed into the living area, but later the women tell me that there are dormitories with bunk beds, guards everywhere, and a common room with the television always on. The windows are so dirty they can barely see outside. Where are we? What is this place? Nothing to do except watch TV. No family to take care of. No meals to cook. They miss their husbands and boyfriends, and relatives and friends who are on the other side of these walls and on the other side of the sea. Six months later, one of their lawyers argues unsuccessfully to at least let them have rice and beans instead of hot dogs and canned food.
Class is in a room with fluorescent lighting, no windows, and a guard at the door. I teach but I also ask for help with my Kreyol. My pronunciation is bad. I make mistakes. They laugh. We laugh together. This helps narrow the gulf between us: my twenty years of exile.
A face, an expression, a gesture reminds me of an aunt, a friend, my grandmother. Do you need anything? I ask.
They give me letters to send back home to worrying relatives and dictate a list of hair products. I stuff the letters into my shoulder bag and take them to the post office. I feel useful.
The night before class, I transfer hair relaxers and pomades from their forbidden glass containers (glass shards as a way out?) into plastic ones.
As the Latina guard carefully examines the containers and their messy contents, she finally blurts out: They have so many donations! People have given them so much, so many boxes, we have to put them in special storage! Looks at me like I'm stupid, like I've been had, taken by people already getting so much for free. They have so much, she says. Doesn't she know about divide and conquer? Setting the have-little against the have-not? Doesn't she know they-we- are the descendants of Toussaint and Dessalines, who led the only successful slave uprising in the history of the world and defeated Napoleon's troops and founded the first black republic? She probably doesn't even think I'm Haitian.
I want to narrow the gap. I am lucky. They are unlucky. Accidents of birth. I give out my home phone number in case of emergencies. I hesitate slightly before I do, fearing a deluge of phone calls, but days pass and no one calls, until Philocia. She is one of the youngest, distracted and hesitant whenever I ask her a question, not one of my best students.
Please, she says, can you do something for me?
Of course, I say, worried by her sudden assertiveness.
Well, Valentine's Day is coming and next Friday there is going to be a party and they are going to let us see the men. I am going to see my boyfriend-so I need a dress.
A dress? I ask. Maybe I haven't heard right.
Yes, she says. A red dress. Size eight.
I look through my closet as if a red dress might miraculously appear. This is not what I had in mind when I gave out my number. Didn't I say in case of an emergency?
I call a friend. A red dress? she asks.
Yes.
Red for hearts and roses?
I guess.
Have any of the other women asked for dresses?
No.
Her reaction convinces me not to ask anyone else. This one frivolous request I am sure will make the other refugees look bad, make people think that Giuliani is right after all, that they have just come here for economic advantages, that they have come here to shop.
I go to the clothing stores in my East Village neighborhood. No red dress in sight, and certainly no dress that I could imagine her ever wanting to wear. Too funky and outrageous, nothing her style. Besides, what if I do find one? I don't even have a real job. She must think I'm rich. Maybe the guard was right, maybe I'm being had.
Two days before the party, I take Philocia aside. I'm sorry, I say, but I couldn't find a red dress. I tried, but it's not easy. She smiles sweetly. I look down at her carefully manicured nails and think someone must have donated red nail polish to go with the dress she won't be wearing. Thank you, she says, mesi, like someone used to not getting what she wants. Why couldn't she have asked for something serious, something vital and important? Then I would have done anything!
Valentine's Day has come and gone. We are in the middle of class when Jeanne, an attentive, serious student, a woman in her forties, a madansara who used to sell pots and pans in the market of Jacmel, starts to cry.
What's wrong? someone asks.
What's wrong, Jeanne? I ask.
More tears. Silence. She rocks herself gently, back and forth.
I can't stand it anymore, she says, I want to go back home.
But they will kill you if you go back, someone says.
I don't care. I want to die in my country like a moun, like a person, not here like a dog.
More silence. I hand her a tissue. Are they all thinking the same thing?
Now, I say, surprised at the authority of my voice, this is what they want. They want to wear you down, so that you will go back and tell the others and they will be afraid to come.
More silence. What is Jeanne thinking? What are they all thinking?
Then, from the back of the room, a small still voice.
Not me.
It is Philocia of the red dress. Mwen mem. I will never go back. I don't care what they do to me. I spent two days in the water holding on to a piece of wood from the boat. There were dead people all around me. I'm not going back.
I look at her and she has not moved. I realize that she has never left the water and that I have understood nothing.
Now I want to find her a dress in every possible shade of red… for roses… for hearts… red for the blood of Toussaint and Des-salines flowing in her veins.
The windowed door of my hospital room framed scurrying white uniforms. Inside, the silence of isolation left plenty of time for interior monologues. The medication and its lingering scent made my head fuzzy and paralyzed my tongue. My spirit seemed to be having difficulty catching up with my body, like the distorted windshield view of a rainstormed road. I anxiously waited to see whether or not this physician would corroborate my overseas diagnosis of bronchial asthma, which was beginning to seem mild now that I was up against possible heavy hitters like tuberculosis, PCP pneumonia, and HIV.
Lying there, I could almost see my dad's concerned face, his eyes widening as his deep, stern voice prepared me with Haitian proverbs, tales about our clan, warnings and cautions for my work at Guantanamo Bay. Most important, however, was his promise of ancestral protection. So off I went, surrounded by my invisible army.
The IV stand was beginning to feel like an awkward extension of my anatomy, contributing to my claustrophobia. As I lay there, I struggled to pinpoint exactly when and why my body broke down. Was it the night-and-day contrast in temperature? Days with temperatures that sometimes sent boa constrictors, iguanas, and banana rats looking for shelter under my cot, then onto the clothes that dangled from my partially open dufflebag. At times the leftover wind from the Windward Passage would stir up the baked sand, lashing my face or filling my nose and mouth with grit. Or perhaps it was the cobalt-blue, diamond-lit evening sky that would seduce me into rolling up the sides of the tent, allowing the night's chilling vapors to invade my lungs.
Time was strangely distorted on that mound of land-days long, nights short, and mornings difficult to embrace. I could always set my watch, though, by the chants of exercising soldiers that began with the 5 a.m. dosage of pesticide the military used to wage the war against bugs. When it was kind, the fumes tickled inside your nostrils. Otherwise, you went into a choking cough that could rage for twenty minutes.
Before three days could come and go, my life had undergone a complete metamorphosis. Kreyol, the language whose purpose in my life up until now had been to pain and confuse me, would prove an asset. It became my passport to the American-occupied naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Justice Department would use me as a medium-or, as my contract stipulated, an interpreter-to execute its mission. Haitians fleeing political persecution-unleashed by a coup d'etat that had overthrown Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide-were being detained while they awaited interviews for political asylum.
I was one of sixteen language specialists. We worked in a defunct airplane hangar, freshly painted white, which held about fourteen thousand people when full. The scent of sweaty bodies thickened the already damp air. Their united sound of confused chatter echoed from the hollow interior, creating a dense hum of marketplace conversation. Bodies lay in rows on olive-green cots, all their worldly possessions on the concrete floor beside them-clothes, shoes, personal documents, in black plastic garbage bags or homemade straw sacks.
I rode the yellow school bus that transported service people through the camp. It was my means of getting to work as well. On the days when I arrived at the bus stop early, I would sit on a wooden park bench while an awakening sun pierced my sunglasses. All too often, the bath I had taken in insect repellent proved fruitless as last night's rainfall summoned what seemed like the island's entire mosquito population to feast on my exposed arms and legs. Waiting impatiently, I waved off a buzzing bee that had grown tired of a sugar-coated bottle neck from a nearby steel-grid garbage can. In the distance, a topless green army truck appeared, hauling soldiers to work. The overcrowded vehicle screeched at the red light, burying us in a fog of dust.
While I hadn't any preconceived notions about the architectural layout of a military base, never had I imagined it to be so elaborate- an actual replication of a city, a setup I suspect to be crucial in setting the underlining tone for the severity and intensity of the military training process. Like any other American town, it had a post office, a bank, a church, a gas station, credit union, firehouse, schools, hospital, restaurants, a 7-Eleven, a mall, and even a McDonald's. The neighborhoods seemed lifted directly from a suburban blueprint onto the desert landscape, the houses bearing prefabricated faces reminiscent of small towns in upstate New York. But even with the skeletal details of everyday life surrounding them, Guantanamo remained a wall-less prison.
I had committed to memory the entire bus route, which was easy to do. We would ride past Treasures & Trivia, a thrift store operated by civilian wives to occupy their day while their husbands worked. Up the hill brought us to the Jamaican Club, an after-hours spot where contracted Jamaican workers earning below minimum wage convened to bond and essentially keep sane amidst the sterility. We careened around the corner to a port and picked up a few more sailors who seemed anxious to get to their destination.
As usual, the day seemed innocent until we pulled into the ferry landing-the stop before mine. Like clockwork my stomach knotted and my heart pounded against my chest, asking to be let out. Winding around the final hill, we passed the grandest edifice on the island- the Pink Palace, the military's administrative headquarters, strategically planted on top of the hill overlooking the entire camp. This was where most of the important meetings were held by high-ranking military officials to plan and strategize with their Washington counterparts. The bus gave a final jerk indicating the end of its route.
Each day found me unprepared to digest the misery and despair that awaited me at the gate. Going back in there day after day seemed pointless, attempting to nurse physical and emotional wounds that I could not yet fully comprehend, let alone heal.
"A boat of forty-five was intercepted last night near the Windward Passage," was my substitute morning greeting from my supervisor. This tidbit was sure to structure much of the day's work. The voyage almost always promised an illness of some sort, followed by the culture shock of camp conditions. Sometimes the newcomers' eyes were weary, hazed by dehydration and seasickness. Some were badly sunburned, some wore big grins, usually a sign of relief at having been spared the swallow of the ocean. Others were generally happy about the possibilities that awaited them. After exchanging greetings and tips from familiar faces from the same or neighboring towns, the newcomers awaited the formal unveiling of their new reality. Sometimes the camp provided a ground for family reunification. When they arrived-some barefoot and meagerly attired, others clad in church-wear of sequined, taffeta dresses-they were taken to Camp Alpha, where the processing began. Hours would pass before they could all be photographed, fingerprinted, and given identification cards.
Fighting the fierce sunrays, children hopped about, alternating feet to keep their soles from burning on the cooked tar. Colonies of flies comfortably rested on their choice of heads and faces of those awaiting the final step: acquisition of an ID bracelet, marked with a bar code similar to those found on the side of household products. Some days, this long ritual-the stamping of the refugees with the marks of ownership-accounted for an entire workday. The refugees were happy to find Kreyol speakers among the processing staff. I often walked around continuously answering any questions, explaining the ensuing immigration procedures, tending to those who were ill, and troubleshooting for anything from diapers to emergency-room arrangements and anything in between.
Feeding time introduced the newcomers to the dietary convenience of the Western world-packaged food, a first for many. They curiously deciphered the contents of their brown plastic "Meals Ready to Eat," or MREs. Some ate ravenously, while others whose palates could not make an instant adjustment to the foreign taste eagerly passed on their unused rations to unsated neighbors. Sometimes they were used for bartering. The box of chicken a la king, stroganoff, and beef stew, a favorite among the brave, contained all the components of a well-thought-out meal: an entree, instant beverages, condiments, and for dessert, various junk foods, M &M's the most popular. The military often complained of the haughtiness of Haitians. How dare they criticize perfectly delicious war-ready meals?
Creative survival instincts blossomed before my eyes under less than favorable conditions, unfolding a culture. The women converted sheets into Sunday dresses, while the men went as far as creating a radio station from transistor radios given to them by the military. The two most memorable parts of the day, as in the hospital, were mealtimes and visiting hours. The neighboring camps were also established communities. As the families were scattered throughout, visitation rights were sometimes granted. While the women cooked, cleaned, washed, nurtured the children, and carried on the traditions, the men created furniture and paintings, took in a game of soccer, cards, or dominoes, or circularly discussed politics. Conversations were stimulated by their current isolated condition as well as the Miami-based Haitian Kreyol radio broadcast, Voix de L'Amerique- the only outside news to penetrate the wall-less penitentiary. Even the children created dolls, toys, puppets, boats, trains, planes. I marveled at an ability they took for granted.
Unfortunately the tragedies were equally colorful. The camp was nearly hit by a cyclone; three hundred and fifty people drowned trying to escape to "Castro's" Cuba to see if communism could offer a kinder hand.
When the glare of the sun, the chaos of the camp, and the rhetoric became overwhelming, I walked long and hard, away from everything as far away as possible, though never far enough. On one such occasion I escaped to the bathroom, located in a neighboring hangar. Halfway to my destination, the glare of the sun reflected off a steel cage, immediately attracting me. I walked toward the object, sinking into the cooked tar of the gummy pavement with each step. En-caged, a seven-year-old boy sat listlessly playing with a pair of broken flip-flops. "A soldier put me here because when I went to eat I kept getting pushed from the food line," explained the boy. "He said I was making trouble, so I have to sit here until I learn my lesson. Can you get me some water, Miss?" High up, a guard sat post in a twenty-foot tower equipped with a rifle, a gun, binoculars, and a video camera. He recorded my interaction while adjusting his walkie-talkie.
The sun hid behind a darkening stratus cloud, transmitting an orange-yellow tint that hovered over the entire island. The bus took the dusty route to my living quarters. The glow of a setting sun outlined the smoke of floating dust left by the tires. I usually liked to linger in the camp after hours, when things began to settle and the true culture of the environment surfaced, transcending the cohesion of the makeshift community, but that day I was anxious to leave on time. At a distance, a caterpillar of soldiers clad in white T-shirts and gray shorts getting in their mandatory evening exercise swerved by, their chanting fading as the distance between us widened. As the bus pulled up near my barrack, I made a quick run for it. Walking through a patch of swamp land, a swarm of fruit fly-like insects took cover in my ears, eyes and mouth. It was nearly seven and I hoped to complete my cooking and laundry.
McCalla was a small city. Each day I took a twenty-minute ferry ride from Leeward, where I lived, to the Windward side of the island, where I worked. The ride was awkward and always reminded me of my outsider status. Some days the 7 a.m. ferry was filled to capacity: I would be sandwiched between servicemen, which I hated, or have to stand by the rail for the entire ride. As much as I loved the view of the water and the wind gently stroking my face, these visions of serenity were eclipsed by my own paranoia. The ferry seats reminded me of church pews and some mornings they were equally precious, as I tried to get the last twenty minutes of sleep. Sometimes, I resorted to sitting in the compartment under the deck. The ferry also transported large trucks and machinery to the work side of the island. When we docked, the machinery backed off the lower deck first. The sailor in charge then hand-signaled for passengers from the top deck to single-file off the craft. Once on the ferry landing, we'd wait for the bus that took us to work. Some mornings, time permitting, we procrastinated, putting off going into the camp by stopping at McDonald's and picking up a high-sodium, nutritionally unsound breakfast. I often found myself gobbling down a sausage McSomething or Another not for any reason other than to reconnect me to home, where such rubbish would never touch my lips.
One night on the last ferry with two other translators returning from a party from the Windward side to our living quarters on the Leeward side, I discovered the strategic design of the island. A man's eyes rolled back in his head after he vomited uncontrollably. Panic-stricken, the other translator screamed at him questions of concern, while I quickly alerted the driver to our crisis. He pushed some odd buttons that made strange noises and in two minutes, like a scene from Batman, a secret tunnel produced a motor raft that transported us to the principal naval hospital. This, complemented by the acres of land mines strategically plotted throughout the burned grass partitioned by steel fences with barbed-wire topping, a deterrent for Cubans who were curious about democracy, not the ones who crossed the border every morning to work for the U.S. government, left me in awe of the island's intricate readiness for war. The chopping of helicopters was a familiar noise, as was the arbitrary explosion of cannons. The twenty-four-hour guard towers reassured both sides protection of their respective countries. Sun up to sundown, soldiers stood guard at the borders with their guns permanently aimed in the direction of the enemy.
That morning found me fussing with the contents of my knapsack, trying to get to some important notes from a recent meeting. Dashing in late to the eight-thirty meeting already under way, I arrived in time for the tail end of a heated debate about the nutritional value of the meals fed to refugees. These meetings were, for the most part, a waste of time because no one intended to rectify any wrongdoing; not really. So far as I could gather, the interpreters' meetings were held for sheer appeasement, an answer to our complaints of exclusion from the seven o'clock meetings with high-ranking government officials and asylum officers.
Today's hot debate was centered on a memo warning us against fraternizing with the "migrants," an offense that would not go unpunished. The list was long in its definition and examples of fraternizing were thoroughly spelled out, so there would be no misunderstandings. The content of the memo was the end result of yet another recent problem. It was rumored that military personnel and interpreters were beginning to establish intimate relationships with some of the migrants and the purchase of luxury items such as shampoo, conditioners, permanents, hair grease, and in some instances clothes on their behalf, was proof of this foul act. I was particularly embarrassed when one interpreter was caught on video accepting money from the migrants in exchange for a definite place on the next plane to Miami-a promise he was unauthorized to make.
Near my assignment's end, repatriation offered a free ride to refugees who had failed to prove a "credible fear" of persecution and were consequently to be returned to Haiti. I reluctantly volunteered to accompany them back. Though the two-day journey promised to be a grueling experience, I was prepared to make any sacrifice to return to my homeland after fifteen years of unintended absence.
It cost the U.S. approximately one million dollars per day to run the camp, and each repatriation neared $100,000, so filling the cutter to capacity was a must before we could be on our way. I arrived at the pier to find three other ships, housing a total of fifteen hundred refugees, ready to leave. We were scheduled for a 9 a.m. departure but were running late. On a good day, the deck fit five hundred bodies comfortably, if they were aligned sardine-style. Our ship housed only two hundred people on board, thus the holdup. Six-and-a-half hours later, with only fifty bodies added to the count, we were given clearance to leave so as to avoid an evening departure, when the ferocity of the Windward Passage would peak. I was escorted to my two-by-four cabin, which I believed to belong to some high-ranking officer. It offered me the privilege of a private bathroom half the size of the room. A pinup of Kathy Ireland graced the tiny closet door. A navy-blue jumpsuit, the only visible item of clothing, dangled solo in the darkness.
As the only civilian and the only woman working on the U.S. Escanaba, a Coast Guard cutter-the steel shark that guarded our national "security" in the form of international "drug busts"-I was at everyone's disposal twenty-four hours a day and partly responsible for maintaining order on board, whatever happened. En route, clandestine discussions held by the refugees and me in the camp were openly voiced here on the ship. Both the refugees and I found comfort in our mutual distrust of the asylum process. I had often overheard conversations corroborating these allegations from higher-ups. Programmed to spit out whatever numbers Washington entrusted them to produce that day in the name of efficiency and a job well done, these functionaries lost neither sleep nor appetite over the desperate accounts of a people whose destiny lay in their hands. "How are those numbers coming along?" was the question of the day, every day.
I remember being told the story of one twelve-year-old boy from Cite-Soleil: He was so thin that a thumb and index finger alone could have encircled his thigh. With tears rimming his eyes, he fought to keep from crying as he explained his dilemma. After the coup, his father had gone out to search for oil. When his father failed to return, his mother sent him out to search for his father and instead he found his father's corpse. He finally made it home, only to find his mother riddled with bullets, murdered by soldiers seeking revenge on democracy supporters. His family supported Lavalas, the people's movement, and for that he was wanted by the authorities.
Then there were two teenage girls, stocky, angry, and confused by the unexpected turn of events that left their lives upside down. It was as if someone had scrambled up a puzzle and asked them to fix it. They complained nonstop, frustrated by their inability to see what stared them right in the face. "I'm going to kill myself," one said. "What do I have ahead of me? I'm not going to Miami despite the fact that the Section Chief killed my parents in front of me. The only reason I was spared rape was because I had my period. I managed to get on a boat, and now I'm returning to the hell I thought was behind me." Though she put on a tough exterior, I told her to reverse it and to let her toughness flow from inside. This would enable her to better deal with life's unexpected blows. The human spirit is so resilient, its elasticity often surprised me, I told her enthusiastically. So far as I was concerned, she had already dealt with the most difficult part. But then again, I was merely speculating. I suppose I'll never know for certain from what she fled nor exactly what awaited her. "But that's all God's business isn't it?" I said. She smiled.
Dinner calmed everyone down somewhat. All concerns, needs, and worries finally began to drift with the fading day. Hours later when the sun made way for the moon and the stars, the chaos of the day began to subside, as did the buzzing of those returning home. No longer were there conversations about hypocrisy, distrust, and injustice. All had come to accept that which was most dreaded- returning home. There was a hush now, the ferocity of the clouds and the strength of the wind had calmed everyone's frustration and demanded silence.
Some time during the dark morning I was awakened by frantic pounding on my cabin door. It was one of the soldiers, breathlessly ordering me to tend to an emergency. He disappeared long before I could become coherent enough to ask for an explanation. I made my way up the tiny steel staircase, to find a robust fifteen-year-old unaccompanied minor under restraint, the girl I had been consoling that afternoon. It required the strength of three men to hold down this poor child convulsing in a screaming fit. Finally, she was pinned flat on her stomach while another serviceman tied her feet together. Two sailors simultaneously struggled to handcuff her hands behind her back as a fellow Haitian was instructed to hold her head fixed to one side.
We were entering the mouth of the Windward Passage. The wind fiercely rocked our vessel while lightning illuminated the dark, angry sky. Roaring thunder drowned my conversations, pulling rain from the clouds and pouring it over our bodies. This outburst caused some to grumble explanations of a jilted lover, others claimed her insanity came by way of a hex from the other woman. As she went in and out of piranha-like biting fits, a thinly built, gray-haired, mild-mannered man from the girl's native town of Jeremie accounted for her epileptic history. She had been fine for both his and my conversation of earlier that day. It seemed that the young lady I had tried to dissuade from suicide had manifested these feelings after all. Eventually she was subdued with her hand and foot securely tied to a pole on the flight deck. Lightning ripped across the sky and spotlighted her crucified shadow followed by the sky's disapproving grumble. I wrapped her in a wool blanket to shield her from the wind.
What was to have been a two-day voyage turned into a week of drifting in the Atlantic between Haiti and Cuba, in preparation to intercept incoming refugees even before the ink on President Bush's newly imposed executive order could fully dry. My trek through the Middle Passage dragged me through the murky road of history, determined to make me feel a pain that was centuries deep and supposedly resolved. Yet this nightmare gnawed so deep within me, not even my assimilationist lifestyle could mitigate it.
Witnessing two hundred fifty bodies enroped in slave-ship fashion on deck to be baked by the summer blaze or soaked by impulsive skies if nature willed left me feeling helpless and uneasy. We seemed to be going backward-in time-in history. But time spoke softly, gently unveiling its truth before me. The pieces of my parents' past, which they had difficulty talking about, were gladly exhibited through the troubled spirits of those who sat before me to translate their perplexities. An Abyssinian-looking beauty sat before me complaining about the factory where she worked sewing bras. A mandatory eighteen-hour day with no lunch and no break except those to fight off advances by her boss who promised her, in return, a raise of fifteen cents per hour. But this was mild compared to the threats of death received by her husband, whose goat had wandered off into a section chief's yard and fed on his garden. Or the woman whose community group was plastered with photos of a rooster and Aristide, thereby making her a candidate for death. Young men complained that Haiti was so plagued politically that their congregation for any reason, even for church, left them suspect of political activities. Or the tailor who was commissioned to make clothes for the sister of a certain section chief who, disagreeing with the asking price of her new dress, sicced her brother on him. Others reached the camp by happenstance, as one gentleman explained that he'd been fishing and fell asleep.
I'll never forget my first reintroduction to Haiti. We were nearing the pier when a refugee pointed to Gonaives, and Port-de-Paix, up north. "There's Mole Saint Nicolas," exclaimed a young man, proudly explaining the century-old U.S. desire to construct a military base there. This would be strategically ideal since Cuba and Jamaica, the other two largest countries occupying the Caribbean basin, are a stone's throw away. The fog revealed a sketch of our intended destination, the ship chaplain pointed to Sacre Coeur, a century-old landmark church. I gazed in disbelief, reflecting vaguely on the times when this cathedral served as the ultimate sanctuary for me and my family for Sunday mass some two decades ago.
The refugees were instructed to return their yellow I.D. cards, at last relieved from the tight wrist-squeezing of plastic bar-coded bracelets. Their curiosity about what lay ahead provided an occasion for me to give a briefing outlining the final phase of the procedure. At the wharf they were met by Red Cross personnel, sometimes accompanied by U.S. Embassy officials, who dealt with politically complex cases. The returnees were given an exit interview and fifteen Haitian dollars, which many claimed was insufficient for their long journey home. That day, the string of armed Haitian military officials awaiting their disembarkation left many fearful for their lives. Panic was lent validity by concerns about being followed home by the same would-be attackers who had been responsible for their initial departure. The U.S. military promised safety, but even if they hadn't, the Haitians had no means to negotiate. So they halfheartedly, yet peacefully, disembarked. When the ship was nearly vacant, I caught a U.S. State Department staff member handing the bag of I.D. cards to Haitian soldiers. Confused and frustrated, I looked for an ally until it dawned on me that no one on board remotely shared my concern.
On the return trip, the calm night sky twinkled on the ocean while angry phosphorescent waters pounded at the ship from bow to stern. The ordeal cast me into a four-day bout with insomnia. Even the ocean, hard as she tried, was unable to cradle me to sleep. For each night while they weathered the cold winds on deck, I wrestled with the displaced faces that haunted me in my cabin while I lay nestled in wool blankets. With their concerns and uncertainties etched deeply into their faces, strong and tired eyes imposed inquisitive gazes, looking for answers I also sought.
Meanwhile, back in the captain's dining room I began wondering to what I owed the honor of past-life luxuries-cloth napkins, sterling silver flatware, and china actually used and not only displayed. And waiters, four waiters who stood post on each corner of the table, eager to tend to the captain's every need. The quality and size of one's portions matched one's rank. Contrary to the migrants' restricted diets food flowed nonstop in the forms of soup, salad, entree, dessert, coffee, followed by the point of the dinner invitation. The closing conversation was to get an assessment of my personal limitations regarding the perils of my assignment. In other words, to size up the distance I would go for my people and my two countries, one that had my allegiance as a birthright, the other hoping to win it.
Despite the hazardous duty conditions, which had already claimed the life of one interpreter, I volunteered to be lowered by rope from the cutter into a tiny motor raft in an attempt to negotiate with prospective refugees on behalf of the United States government. Looking at the flimsy craft in the middle of the hungry, shark-infested waters, I felt the pressure of pleading to win their confidence as their boat repeatedly threatened to capsize. The sun began its descent and my sneakers were soaked from the puddle that collected in our motor boat. One of the teenage boys leaned on the bow. Their ragged sail was tied to the flimsy pole that struggled to hold it. "Why should I go on the ship, why should I trust you?" asked a dark-skinned man in his early twenties, turning up his nose as if he literally smelled something foul. I was lost for an adequate response except, I'm all you've got here and you have to believe in my good intentions. And besides, I was unprepared to watch them drown.
The mother wore only the bottom half of what used to be a dress, her shriveled sagging breasts dangled lifelessly against her badly scarred body. With dark spots and welts all over her back, her hair was ravaged and she spoke in delirium, a blur. "My sister, my baby," she muttered. Each time she tried to express herself, she was unable to add any more information to where she had left off. "My aunt and her baby were with us on the boat, the baby became ill. She plunged in the ocean with the baby saying she could no longer stand the suffering," explained the young man. "She's not good in her head," he finished.
They appeared to be badly dehydrated and said that they had not had water in three days. A colony of flies and insects buzzed around the stale vomit that floated atop the semi-flooded boat. Apparently they had been "maroons," on the run, for several months, living in caves, traveling underground by night, surviving on coconuts and wild berries. By the grace of people in the various towns, eventually they were able to escape. A veve of Agwe, the water god, decorated the mint-green craft. They had christened it "Kris Kapab," or "Christ Can," inscribed in blood-red paint.
The father was a fisherman, his gentleness reflected in his overall demeanor. "Do you have medicine on the ship?" inquired the fiery youth, who seemed to be reconsidering the idea of coming on board. He showed me the colony of parasites, white wormlike ones that had been eating away at his brother's scalp for the past few months. I looked at the visible rise in the puddle and as the boat dipped backwards, I quickly blurted, "Yes." I was getting tired, my mouth was dry, there were eighteen of them and only one of me and I didn't know how much longer I could sustain a coherent argument. The youth, who seemed to be the head negotiator, the city-slicker type, needing one final push, began to look as if he believed me, so said his eyes and his face. I looked at his Nelson Mandela T-shirt and asked how he thought the character on his shirt would handle this particular dilemma. This was the clincher. Mandela had become a universal living icon for courage, strength, persistence, and faith.
After three hours of intense creative negotiations catalyzed by the spell of an intensely beautiful set of almond-shaped eyes belonging to an eight-year-old refugee girl, I finally convinced this mistrustful family to come on board. A conspiratorial chill raced through me as I watched their craft along with all their worldly possessions set afire, a ritual that branded a mental scar on these victims and on me. It seemed a sacrilegious act for which we all would be punished.
The ocean danced and curtsied. Once again the empty ship was filled with laughter and jokes. For many, the last forty-eight hours had been a mere incident that would forever vanish into nothingness. Its effect on me, at that point, was apparent in emotions only, like the sharp pain that registers that a finger has been burned. It is not until days later, when the wounded area darkens, that the effect actually becomes visible. Astonished by the turn of events, I could only think, "Did this really just happen? Was I partly responsible for someone's impending death?" The thought horrified me. Sitting in a corner, I reflected quietly on the faces, the stories, and the concerns, however remote, that had taken precedence over my own needs, even if only for a short time.
On August 31, 1987, the last day of summer vacation, I got up early to go to Filene's Basement to shop for school clothes with my mother. I was twelve years old. We got off the T at Park Street near the Boston State House so my mother could make a stop at the bank. As we walked out of the train station, we were stopped by fire trucks and police barricades holding onlookers at bay. Above the streets loomed the highest steps of the Boston State House, still soaked and blackened by what seemed like a badly sprayed swastika. With a closer look, I saw that it was a man, burned to a grotesque crisp so that the most visible part of him now were his scorched legs, the unbending knees raised toward the sky. We asked what had happened and were told that he was a Haitian man who had soaked himself in gasoline, lit a match, and set himself on fire. His name was Antoine Thurel and he was fifty-six years old. The only clue to why he had killed himself was a large placard on which he had written a final letter in French. Loosely translated the sign read in part, "Because of many difficulties and my family and religious responsibilities, I want to offer myself in holocaust for the complete liberation of my country… May Haiti live for the new liberation."
Like the heroes of centuries past, like Boukman, Toussaint, Christophe, and Dessalines, and all the others who had given their lives fighting for the "liberation" of our country, Mr. Thurel had made the ultimate sacrifice. He had proven that not all men go to war because they are forced to, but some because they feel they must set an example, sacrifice themselves in order to incite all of us to change. Koupe tet, boule kay, was the war cry of our ancestors. "Cut off heads and burn houses," starting with all that is most precious to us, our houses, our temples, our bodies. In a foreign country, on foreign soil, Antoine Thurel had given his life for a never-ending quest for freedom, not only his own but all of ours.
The day Mr. Thurel died, as I watched the spot where his body burned again on the six o'clock news, I thought of one of the last sayings of an old man whom I called "Pere" who lived with my family. Pere was a quiet, reserved man who analyzed everything; he was one of the brains who fled Haiti during the Sixties' brain-drain. Before he died of old age, in exile, Pere had uttered a phrase which I would not completely understand for years.
"Haiti is a cigarette burning at both ends," he had said.
In their own way, both Pere and Antoine Thurel could have been alluding to Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "First Fig" about living fast, dying young, and leaving a beautiful corpse.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light.
Still, I found Pere's metaphor troubling. Is this why Mr. Thurel had died, for a cigarette burning at both ends? The imagery of a hopeless country being destroyed was one more to add to my list of negative things that I, as a Haitian child-and now a Haitian woman and mother-had been told about Haiti, about myself, not by outsiders but by my own. Mr. Thurel's action and Pere's words made me wonder about my love for Haiti and my love for myself as a Haitian.
Haitians don't trust each other.
Haitian families, whether they know it or not, teach self-hatred. I grew up with plenty of self-denigrating idioms, proverbs that offered such advice as: Don't let any Haitian boy touch the center of your palm; he'll steal your decency and turn you into a trollop. Don't let anyone read your books; they'll find whatever blessing was there for you. Don't eat from anyone; they'll steal your bonanj, your good angel. Don't study with others; they'll steal your intelligence. Safeguard your underwear because people could hurt your chances of having children. "Depi nan Ginen, neg te rayi neg," even in Africa, blacks hated each other. At first I thought this distrusting advice was part of my own family's proverbs, but I noticed that many of my Haitian friends also cautiously lived by these same rules.
It wasn't until I went to live in Cameroon, Africa, that I realized that blacks in Africa and elsewhere did love each other as a rule and that those who hated one another were exceptions to that rule. Only when we were paired against one another in divide-and-conquer style did that hatred begin. This love was reaffirmed for me by my host family in Cameroon. Sleeping in the same bed with my host sisters, I felt a kind of peace I had never felt before in my life. I felt like a tiger cub resting beside her mother's belly. I still feel that warmth and love when I receive a nod or an acknowledging smile from a black person or a Haitian person in the streets of Boston, New York, or Miami. But according to the proverbs and idioms that we are taught, we are all supposed to hate each other.
Haiti is a woman with two sets of children.
I have always been told and have come to realize for myself that Haiti is like a woman with two sets of children, the elite and the masses. The elite are the children born to luxury, in wedlock, and the masses are the children born to poverty, the bastards. The elites abuse or completely neglect the masses. This reminds me of one of Pere's favorite sayings, "Se rat kay ki manje kay pay." It is the house rats who eat hay houses. I saw for myself, firsthand, the devouring of these hay houses in the summer of 1997, when I returned to Haiti with a group of students on a trip sponsored by the Ministry of Haitians Living Abroad. Our group was composed of students from France, the United States, and Haiti. This trip was intended to reacquaint people like me with the country that we had left at a young age and connect us with other students our age who were just finishing school in Haiti. While traveling in Haiti with the group, I got to see most of the country. The most startling sight I saw was the number of high-priced Landcruisers and Range Rovers traveling Haiti's roads. I couldn't believe that a country so poor could have people driving such expensive cars. The reason for those cars was revealed to me one rainy day when we were trekking in an old school bus from Port-au-Prince to the southern town of Cayes. I saw young children bathing in the muddy rainwater that had collected in the craters on the road. There were heaps of trash and debris all along the road. Whatever was in this collection of trash must have been decomposing because the smell was unbearable; yet the children washed their little angelic faces, arms, and legs in this sewage. On that day, I finally understood why the rich people need Land-cruisers in Haiti: to create craters for the poor to bathe in.
Before that month was over, I got to see Haiti's prosperous sons and daughters at work. We were invited to dinner at Kinam 2, Haiti's Ritz Carlton. The purpose of this assemblage was to network and connect with the rich and powerful so that we could one day return to "rebuild" the country. Over dinner conversations, the students in the group who were living in France and the United States got job offers from the Haitian company heads, but the students living in Haiti were completely neglected and certainly not offered jobs. At that moment, I understood Pere's saying about the cigarette burning at both ends and his saying about the house rat eating the hay house.
Pray to the I was on Saturday, pray to God on Sunday.
In his final letter, Antoine Thurel stated three reasons for which he died: family, country, and religion. Religion is one of the most confusing aspects of being Haitian. Haiti's primary religion is Vodou, yet we are even more confused about Vodou than the white man who while enslaving us told us it was evil. I once heard a prominent Haitian pastor in Boston say that slavery was God's way of reaching out and saving the African continent. The Haitian parishioners echoed their assent with undiscerning shouts and praises. How long will we continue to pay for this kind salvation? How many Antoine Thurels will die to purge us from it?
I have often imagined Pere and Antoine Thurel having a conversation. Pere would list his maxims expressing his disillusionment with our people and Antoine Thurel would list his dreams for our outward and inward liberation, the dreams that had motivated him to set himself on fire that morning on August 31, 1987. Perhaps they are having this conversation now in our ancestral African home in Ginen with Boukman, Toussaint, Christophe, and Dessalines; I wish I could hear that conversation. Perhaps I would get some answers to my questions, a few replies that would calm the tormented voices in my head, heal some of my continuing grief over Antoine Thurel's death. Still these questions, like Pere's final words, continue to haunt me. Why don't we see that the things we tell ourselves and our children become part of them, and part of us? When will we realize that all of Haiti's children belong to one family, the family of humanity? Why do we teach resignation in our churches? Why do we not respect our ancestors' words and legacy? Why don't we truly honor their sacrifices by treating ourselves and our poorer neighbors more humanely? Will we one day find the answers to those questions, or will we always remain a cigarette burning at both ends?
When I was nineteen years old, I left Haiti for Guatemala City to enroll in a bachelor of sciences program. To prepare me for my trip, my parents fixed me two large suitcases filled with farewell gifts: from a bookmark made out of dry banana leaves to family photographs. What I didn't know then is that my suitcases were not only physical but also cultural. These suitcases, both cultural and physical, have been essential to my survival as an immigrant in three different countries.
Upon my arrival in Guatemala City, I whispered my aunt Didine's prayers to the saints, hummed Leon Dimanche's "Nostalgie" while longingly laying out and sifting through the items that had been lovingly packed in my suitcases: the talcum powder on my nightstand, which the vendor at the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince had wanted no payment for because I was leaving for university abroad. The multicolored kite that decorated my wall was made twenty years before by the neighborhood shoeshine man, who had presented it to my mother thinking she was carrying a boy. An unknown artist had sculpted the metal sheet lantern by my window. The small wicker basket in the corner of my room had carried dried Ilan Ilan flowers from my middle school in Port-au-Prince. The embroidered pillowcase where I rested my head each night was made by hand in the mountains of Jacmel. It was embossed with my great-grandmother's initials and passed down from my grandmother, to my mother, and now myself. My rubber sandals, a gift from my friend Marie, reminded me of traveling Haitian feet, steady, firm, and purposeful in their gait. I felt as though the ground beneath me was familiar whenever I wore my sandals. So many things in my suitcases comforted me, while reminding me of home.
Soon my classmates became curious about "la haitiana," the one who couldn't speak Spanish at first but was learning so fast. Little by little, I opened my suitcases, both cultural and physical, to them, sharing music, Haitian konpa, foods-griyo, plantains, rice and beans, pikliz-and stories of the feuding Haitian folktale characters Bouki and Malis. One day, I received a surprise visit from the national Guatemalan soccer team. The team was scheduled to compete against the Haitian national soccer team and wanted to look at me to get a sense of what Haitians would look like. Because I was taller than all the Guatemalan players, they assumed that all the Haitians would be very tall as well.
We were the only six Haitians reported to be in Guatemala City: a businessman, a female professor from the French Institute, and three other university students like myself. A few times a year, Claudette, the French professor, would invite me and the other three students to her home. During those afternoons at Claudette's, we would sit on her patio, eat Haitian food, listen to konpa music, and share stories from home. The oldest among us, Marijo, came from Jeremie, a southern Haitian town that had produced many famous poets. Marijo would recite verses that described the plush green landscape of the Haitian south. After her poetry recitals, Marijo would walk over to Claudette's piano and play the legendary Haitian ballads, "Haiti Cherie," and "Choucoune." One other student, Fadia, would dance while I told riddles.
Krik?
Krak!
You go here. I go there. We meet in the middle. What am I?
A belt!
Those afternoons at Claudette's always eased my longing for home, if only for a while.
After four years in Guatemala City, I moved to Quebec City, Canada, to look for work, and took my suitcases with me. I carried along my favorite comb, which I had learned in Haiti could be both a grooming tool and a musical instrument. To play the comb, all one had to do was put a strip of paper across the teeth, press one's lips against the paper, and hum to produce a harmonica-like sound. My new Canadian friends and I would have evenings of comb recitals and story telling, turning off the lights for an atmosphere that would make the stories sound scarier and the comb sound more mysterious. During cold winter nights, I would entertain my friends with descriptions of the deep earth smell and the thumping sound of Haitian rain on tin roofs. I would make them ginger root tea and peanut confections. However there were a few things I resisted sharing. I didn't tell them that at times what I missed most were the imperfections of my country: the large potholes that always forced our feet or our cars to slow down, the crowds of vendors at the markets who sometimes made it hard to move freely, but sang melodiously of the fruits and vegetables they were selling.
One day I accepted the invitation of some friends to accompany them to the carnival of Quebec. Having been part of the colorful and lively street party that was a Haitian carnival, I never imagined that the carnival of Quebec would be an outdoor procession of ice sculptures in minus-thirty-degree weather. More and more, I began to miss the gorgeous range of colors of Haitian people, from honey, to chocolate, to dark coffee. I missed the aroma of coffee, freshly ground every morning by my neighbors. I missed being greeted with a smile by people who had known me and my family for years. Back home, I had a name and a past, had a family, and a legacy. In Quebec City, I was rootless, just another immigrant.
A few years later, I made yet another move, to the United States, to Florida. At last, I felt, I could rest my suitcases for a while. Florida, home to hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million Haitians, is close to Haiti both in miles and in climate. South Florida, where I live, is full of Caribbean markets whose shelves are stacked with home-grown treasures such as mangoes, plantains, and breadfruits. There are many restaurants, large and small, that serve Haitian dishes like stewed conch and fried goat. Our voices are heard across radio air waves, singing, laughing, and arguing about politics. We have television programs that bring us news and images of home. It is somewhat easier to simulate Haitian life in Florida, but of course being in Florida is not completely like being home.
After more than two decades away from Haiti, I still reach out for my suitcases, both physical and cultural, for all of the items in them, linked as they are to memories and traditions, that have helped me, and still continue to help me survive the immigrant life. However, my suitcase has now expanded with a few more items gathered from other cultures, with the letters and photographs of the friends I have made in Guatemala, Canada, and Florida, with their stories, and languages, and traditions that have slowly merged into my own: the particular lilt of Guatemalan Spanish that I eventually mastered, the hand-made fabrics from San Andres, the cabane a sucre parties in Quebec City, where I indulged in maple syrup candies out on the street, along with the other residents, natives, and immigrants alike. What my own cultural isolation as an immigrant in these places has taught me is that I am part of a living culture that in no way stops being a part of me, even when I am not completely immersed in it. With everything I do and say, I am perpetuating that culture, enriching it, modifying it when necessary, but contributing to its regeneration. My suitcases, both physical and cultural, have always, and will always, make me proud of my culture. They are perhaps a microcosm of what I am missing living abroad, but will never completely lose.
My wife is white. When I told my friend Rosemonde over lunch that I intended to marry Donna, a petite woman of English, German, and Irish ancestry from Indiana, Rosemonde's jaw dropped as if she'd been hit with a Mike Tyson hook. Rosemonde's reaction foreshadowed what was to come for Donna and me. (We did indeed marry two months later on a cold, rainy December morning in Crawfordsville, Indiana.) If a black friend could have such a visceral reaction, then you know strangers could be far worse. And they have been.
Responses to our being together depend on the level of agitation and gall people have. Most often, we get the Why is he with her? stare, the rolled eyes, the sucked teeth. Every once in a while, a brave soul gets cocky, like the sister in the parking lot one day who muttered, "Jungle fever," as we passed by. We paid her no mind.
I know exactly what the stares are all about. Back in my days at Florida A &M University, a crucible of black activism and black power in Tallahassee, I used to be part of that crowd doing the gaping, perplexed and angered by the sight of a black-and-white couple. I took them as an affront to my race. That they happened to have fallen in love was the furthest thing from my mind. Then I fell in love myself, and my old foolishness became what Donna and I have had to learn to deal with. It doesn't faze us now; we've grown immune. But there was a time when we were on constant alert; ignorance is more often subtle-it tends not to shout. Imagine spending every day, walking into every gathering or restaurant, prepared for the slightest insult. It could wear you down if you let it.
Black women and white men seem to be the most offended by the sight of a black man and a white woman. Some black women even seem to feel that my marrying a white woman is downright pathological. I must hate my mother or maybe myself, right? Wrong. I'm not ashamed or sorry or the least bit uncomfortable with my mother, myself, or my marriage. I do, however, get pissed off when my wife is slighted or intimidated, or when she has to contend with ignorant people. When we lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, some years ago, a white mechanic helping Donna with a flat tire became furious at the sight of a black-and-white couple driving into the station. "Look at that," he growled as Donna watched him in disbelief. "You would never do that, would you?" Donna opened her locket and showed him a picture. His face flushed red; he blurted out, "But he's educated, right?"
We've come a long way since the days when a black man was lynched simply for making eye contact with a white woman. In fact there are more than three hundred thousand black-white married couples in the United States today, a number that has risen steadily since the 1970s. But still, this black man marrying a white woman was a big deal. I was one of those people who once led the arguments against intermarriage. Because racism remains a source of pain for so many of us in this country, many blacks and whites still view interracial couples as unnatural as horses mating with cows. We're treated as if we're traitors in somebody's grand scheme of things. I'm nobody's traitor; I simply followed my heart.
Donna and I met in Togo, West Africa, brought to that obscure place by our mutual idealistic pursuit of trying to make a difference in the world. I was drawn to her midwestern naivete and easy smile, and she to my northeastern edge and tempo. The attraction-physical and intellectual-was immediate. Even with our differences, we were so much alike. We were both considered radicals in Ronald Reagan's America, where liberalism was a dirty word: We had volunteered for the Peace Corps to work in remote rural villages at a time when most of our contemporaries were starting the management training program on the fast track to the Big Time, dreaming of becoming vice president of something. We wanted to teach a trade, share a skill, save a life.
I was born in Haiti and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a smokestack-filled industrial city about sixteen miles southwest of Manhattan. In the spring of 1987, after graduating from college, I went to Africa to complete the last leg of my own reverse triangular trade. Blacks had left Africa, were taken to South and Central America and the Caribbean, then to the colonies, to keep afloat the peculiar institution that was slavery. I was seeking to connect all the intellectual and spiritual dots. I left FAMU a disciple of Malcolm X (long before X T-shirts were fashionable), and though I never believed in the innate superiority of any race, I was still known to take issue with interracial couples.
So Africa was the last place I expected to be seeing a white woman-the first one I'd ever dated-let alone one I would marry. One of my closest friends, once asked me jokingly, "Garry, did you have to go to Africa to find a white woman? There were plenty in Tallahassee!" I laughed at the irony and thought that ours was in the classic tale of boy meets girl, except boy is caramel-colored and girl is lily-white, and they fall in love in Africa.
When we started dating, I would often ride my motorcycle to Donna's village in the central part of Togo, a sliver of a country nestled between Ghana and Benin. Over the course of a year, we became closer. I was moved by Donna's spirit and the care and concern she showed when working and playing with the local children. Some nights we would walk into the center of town with a flashlight and the stars as our guide to a watering hole. Between sips of hot beer and bites of fried yams, we wondered aloud about how our lives together would be once we returned to America. Were we getting into something we couldn't handle? I was unsure if I could return to Tallahassee for FAMU's homecoming. I was anxious about the hostility that might come from the all-black environment I remembered. I didn't want people faking it either. But mostly, I didn't want to have all those stunned black faces staring at us, thinking I had let the race down.
After a year, Donna and I started to consider marriage. The thought frightened me. It wasn't because I didn't love her or because she didn't share my journalist's urge to travel and explore. It was because she was white. Being together in African villages was one thing-to them we were simply foreigners-but I would be with a white woman in America. At one point, I thought about calling it off. But then I tried to put myself in Donna's place and wondered how I would feel if she came and told me that she loves me dearly and I would make her a perfect husband, but here was a small problem: I'm black.
We had to deal with our families: We'd told them of our intention to marry, and they knew of our racial difference. Under our intense scrutiny, their welcome was genuine.
Donna grew up in Crawfordsville, Indiana, a tableau of Norman Rockwell's America. She studied psychology at Denison University and had been drawn to Africa since reading a book called Cherry Ames: Jungle Nurse, of all things, while in elementary school. Donna's father, Donald Wilkinson, is of Anglo-Saxon stock from rural Illinois. Her mother, Clarissa, is half Irish and half German and grew up in Indianapolis. Neither had ever had much contact with blacks. Still, Donna's mother actually took offense when she learned that her daughter, fearing the worst, had sent her brother a letter before announcing the engagement, trying to gauge their parents' response. The Wilkinsons' welcome was in sharp contrast to the way I was once treated by the mother of a woman I dated in college. Her mother saw me as a cat-eating, Vodou-worshipping Haitian American, although I've never tasted the feline and I know as much about Vodou as I know about Buddhism. She went so far as to take her daughter, an only child, out of her will in case she lost her mind and married me.
My mother, Yvette, never had any time to harbor ill will toward white people; she was too busy trying to make ends meet and raise me. She, too, embraced the newest member of my family. Getting our parents' blessing turned out to be the easy part.
Some of my friends, like Rosemonde, tried to discourage me from marrying Donna, asking the old question "What about the children?" The race dilemma our kids would face was the least of my concerns: Our world is growing more multicultural by the day, and biracial children are often identified as black. Besides, being Haitian, I've never subscribed to the tragic-mulatto theory. What made the American mulatto's life sad, if it ever was, was not racial identity but rejection by a part of the family. Other relations embraced us as if our union were the most natural thing in the world-as if we were a perfect fit. Donna and I began to see who our friends really were.
As we settled back in the States and headed toward marriage, we confronted more serious problems than racial difference. Several months before our wedding, doctors found a blood clot the size of a golf ball in Donna's head. She underwent surgery to remove it, unsure whether she would ever again be able to speak, walk, or lead a normal life. Then began her recovery: Donna would spend five years on a daily medication and a year in physical therapy, struggling with the simplest sentences. (Today she is healthy but still working to gain full control of her fine motor skills.) Later, as we tried to start a family, she had two miscarriages, one almost took her life.
Other couples may have far less to overcome than we did, but if they're like us, once they decide they're serious, they quickly close ranks against those who would rather see them keep with "their own kind." Nobody's discomfort or anger or annoyance matters more to a couple in love than their being together. We determined that we wouldn't be worn down. Donna and I did this instinctively, without having ever had a conversation about it.
In fact, the first time we talked about how much racism has affected us as a couple was when I started to write this piece. Donna shared her sense of intimidation around some black women, the subtle messages she gets that she's not dressed right or not up to par. "You know when a woman is looking and not approving," she said to me recently, adding that it's something I wouldn't pick up on. "You don't have to have a word said." It angers me that anyone would dare to judge her; she doesn't need to conform to some standard of what a black man's wife ought to be. We also laughed at how some white women take my being with Donna as license to come on to me. A good sense of humor has always kept the ignorant at bay.
It has been more than twelve years since I first met Donna, and after ten years of marriage and two children, we don't have time to worry about what others think of us. With six-year-old Cameron, and two-year-old Mina filling our lives, the stares and whispers of strangers don't matter at all. We have learned to stay away from places where either one of us would be uncomfortable, to choose our friends carefully (we have more black friends than white) and to live in places where we feel safe and secure. That's what any man, of any color, wants for his family.
Since Cameron was born, I've made a herculean effort to make sure that my children are keenly aware of their African heritage. Our walls are festooned with African and Haitian paintings. My music library includes an eclectic collection of jazz, blues, and Haitian and African CDs. This doesn't necessarily mean that my kids won't confront that age-old existential question: Who am I? It is a question that bedevils all of us, regardless of race, religion, culture. I simply want Cameron and Mina to be surrounded by tokens of their African heritage while living in predominantly white America. And we have not shied away from discussing race with Cameron. To him, Daddy is black, Mom is pink, and he is brown. At a recent gathering, when someone pretended not to know this Garry person that Cameron kept talking about, my son simply sighed and answered:
"You know, black Garry, my dad."
Everyone laughed.
So if the sight of a black-and-white couple strolling down the street still offends you, it's your problem. We're busy leading our lives and rearing our children and keeping our love alive.
I am sitting in the home of a gorgeous, famous black actor. A hottie. His skin is ebony and his muscles are toned. There are empty beer bottles everywhere, sultry British music playing. And we're at the point in the interview when we get too much like old friends who used to kiss. We reminisce about Brooklyn and the Haitians we knew growing up. He flirts a little. We spill beans about sex and dating. Then he says something and my knees go weak-for I am self-conscious. He says, "You're the kind of sister that would probably turn her nose up at a brother and not give him the time of day." I don't know how he got my number. But I have a story I wish I'd told him in my defense.
I used to be a strong woman. I even considered myself a modern black woman. But six years ago I had to get stronger over eggplant parmesan. I was sitting at a dinner table with the then love of my life and his Texan parents. We were dining at Santerello on the Upper West Side ogling antipasto and getting drunk on red wine. It was a genteel scene. My mother and father were conspicuously absent- visiting with friends somewhere in Queens, where I should have been. My man and I had just announced that we wanted to move to Texas together. I don't know what I was thinking. It was my Normandy Beach approach to love in full-blown play. So far from East Flatbush where I was born and South Miami where I grew up. Haiti I had buried somewhere just beneath the surface for the night.
These were really reserved Texans, which made the air thick with unanswered questions. We were all laughing in a guarded way. The dining room was claustrophobic in thick red velvets and heavy woods. Still, as I said, I was in love and these were the colors of earth, familiar skin, tall tree trunks, and a dozen red roses. I was wearing a yellow dress to counteract the stress in my face and bring out those undertones people say I glow with. I wanted to be their friendly yellow rose rather than their black rose, in Texan parlance. There's an offensive Waylon Jennings song that goes "The devil made me do it the first time/The second time I done it on my own/ Better leave that black rose alone." Waylon understated, but my boyfriend's mother, under the influence of too much Chianti, would not be stopped. She and her husband began a conversation that went like this. As if I wasn't there:
I ran to the bathroom to cry. Ralph and Linda were their next-door neighbors of Mexican descent who comprised the majority of their ethnic friends. Texas was not New York. Maybe their son and I could live together in New York, or the Bay Area, but not in Texas.
At the time I was not sure just what my parents thought. I never asked because it would have been like talking about sex. In fact, it would have been talking about sex. I presumed that in the Caribbean there was unspoken encouragement of interracial dating. Half Indian, part French, two-thirds Arab… you know the drill. My father stayed silent on the issue. My mother was agreeable. It was generally the same response they'd had to every decision I ever made. Summer college. Columbia. Brazil. Freelance writing.
I was a student at Columbia University, and I loved the anonymity of New York at nineteen. With a lover you could blend into the throngs, virtually unnoticed. Part of the landscape of the city are the lovers that fit like the fixtures of dilapidated city apartments: original moldings, faucets, and such. Lovers fit in so well against buildings and urban decay because they are so oblivious to the sweat, crowds, and screechy-bumpy arrested traffic. In a Woody Allen movie, you fall in love with falling in love in the city at the Museum of Modern Art or in Central Park. You always notice the lovers, often mismatched, happy to sit too close on packed subways. There is certain freedom in the back of a yellow taxi to stare into goo-goo eyes, touch and kiss, not mindful of the meter, drunk drivers, or a cabby rolling his eyes at the window display of complete lack of self-control. I would sometimes look at the Haitian name on the I.D. card and think, This man could be my uncle or my father.
Before I messed with Texas I'd had my first significant romance with a graduate student in Russian studies. I noticed then the ostracism that would come to define my lovelife. I would hold hands with my boyfriend and members of the Black Students Association would trip on me as I tripped over campus cobblestone and he would stop me from falling. It's hard to say that their stares were hateful or judgmental. Maybe it was just me projecting my guilt for not being the black girl every one wanted me to be. I was, for the moment, maybe the one that the boyfriend wanted. Trying to belong to him, to me, to my family as well as the Black Students Association, the Haitian Students Association, and the Caribbean Students Association (only a few of the groups of which I never officially became a member). It was like Woody Allen quoting Groucho Marx in Annie Hall about not joining any club that would have him as a member.
Bedrooms are such sacred spaces because they allow you the freedom to explore the things that are truest about you in dreams and with another body. I couldn't say I saw my reflection in my lover's eyes. But I wondered about his fascination with me. Our skin contrasted as much as our styles did. I had extensions in my hair that he loved to look at-but not to touch. It was hard explaining the hair thing to him when he'd secretly looked as if he wanted to touch something about me that was real. As with my Senegalese twists, the line between real and fantasy somehow was blurred. If I stared at my hand on his stomach long enough it would look like a little brown island on a pale pink sea. I wondered if we could ever disappear into each other. I still think of this rather neutrally. As we do with all private thoughts when we're naked. But outside-if we went too far up the Upper West Side, I would be castigated in a glance or by a declaration. "I can't believe she brought a white boy up in Harlem." As if I wasn't there.
From the time we were eight years old, my best friend from childhood and I would sit around spinning tales and telling each other our dreams. I hate to confess it, but we were expert liars. Still, each day after school we'd report to each other elaborate tales of how we'd look, what we'd wear when we were twenty and courting or married to various rock stars and actors. Barring Prince and Michael Jackson, the list was pretty conventional: Leif Garrett, Andy Gibb, Sting, Rick Springfield, Carey Elwes, and Christopher Atkins. George Michael and Andrew Ridgely from Wham! took entirely too big a chunk of our time and creativity. But it went on for years. Shining white knights who would take us away from our little Caribbean community in Miami. My friend's Jamaican parents and my Haitian parents were always conspicuously absent from our ritual imaginings as were families and neighborhoods, patois, Kreyol, griyo, and jerk meats.
By high school we'd grown apart, but we still got together to talk about relationships-mostly hers. She had a series of sports-playing significant others. And I'll make it plain: Black boys were not into me. I tried to be down and alluring. I sometimes even let the basketball and football heroes copy my homework. Romantically, however, it was no go. I read Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy my first year in college. The main character lives in New York and works as an au pair who sexually crosses racial lines. I got it. It was going to be hard to be any kind of black intellectual as long as you were sleeping with the enemy. James Baldwin wrote about this all the time, making the boudoir the battleground of race war, too.
My grandmother had always shown me photos of my great grandfather who was practically white. She told me while combing my hair that she had a near ancestor who'd fought in Napoleon's army. My aunts and uncles and I have always had white friends. Some have intermarried. I look at my folks' meticulous photo-documentaries of my birthday parties, which were always exceptionally multicultural. I know that they didn't orchestrate this universe for me. It's hard figuring out what my people think of the Man because no one ever said a word to me until recently.
My hippest aunt and I were munching on sushi once. She reported that there were pretty harsh rumors circulating in the family about the fact that I only date white men. Only? was my response. It was the same tone I'd used toward my grandmother when I had my hair braided (and when I went natural). She'd asked me on both occasions: "Do you think you are an African?"
"I am just me," I said, sensing that I was never going to make her happy.
I have to say there is something so surreal about having your lover reach over to you in fascination and ask can he touch your kinky hair or tell you that he has never dated a black woman before. There is something cruel and unforgiving when your lover leaves you because he secretly doesn't know how to take love to the marriage point because of the possibility of beige babies. Or because his family is truly irked by you. And there are a lot of utterly disturbing things men have told me like, "There's nothing hotter than a bald black woman giving me head." (I was not bald!) Or, "I find how dark you are really sexy."
Still, I have trodden very foreign territories. I have had blue lights dimmed and Donna Summer played by boys who listened to Rundgren when disco was the shit because they thought it was appropriate. I was told in bed by a French man that I called to his mind Lauryn Hill-but more sauvage. But I have also known sweetness. You know, when it all comes down to warmth and eyes staring into each other. So for all these convoluted reasons, I apologize to the tall lanky writer who loved me so very hard he broke both our hearts. He was so country club that I could not hold his hand on 14th Street because I was freaked out by our juxtaposition. Like many black women with their white boyfriends-I didn't want to draw attention. I averted my glance, especially in Brooklyn.
A couple of years ago my therapist, who happened to be white, asked me why I didn't choose someone else to spill my guts to. Presumptuously, I believed at the time that she was titillated by my dating practices. I probably gave her some song and dance then. It hardly seemed an issue to be tortured by. A boyfriend I accused of fetishizing black women told me point blank: "Some men like blondes!" But there were so many whom I wouldn't really touch or kiss in public because I found it exhausting. I felt similarly about seeing a therapist who looked like me. That I would be outed before one of my own seemed like something terrible. It is hard to understand why I lived in so much conflict. I guess I looked back with my psychologist at a stereotypical history of strong Haitian women who emasculated their men and what-not. But I think it's all bullshit now. I open my bedroom door just a crack to the public. Let the people stare because the people have to see me for who I am. Used to feel like a crumbling fortress with Haitian-Black-American rubble falling fast and fragmenting into a billion little pieces. But no more.
One of the great men of my heart was an entertainment industry bigwig. And I loved his world because I felt free and safe in it. It was my girl-child fantasy. In a larger-than-life kind of life, you can swing whatever way you want because people are gonna give you respect no matter what. Illusory? Yes. But this idea made me stronger.
I used to hate that black male celebs could flaunt their white girlfriends and wives, while you rarely even heard about a black actress's love life. I do thank this man for our romantic dalliance. When he broke my heart, I didn't suddenly become paranoid about the great divide. He had been my closest intellectual and emotional mate. When he left my life, I noticed, like a fool, finally, that pain is just pain. He had once made the most tender observation: He was standing somewhere watching an attractive white man with dreadlocks play with his two cafe au hit babies. He was so enamored with this vision of what he saw as a real option for himself. When we were together, it didn't occur to me that I was an object of conquest or desire. I now open myself to the universe for a true soul companion.
Sure I want a lover who can dance konpa, who's read Baldwin and Achebe and Toni Morrison. I want to say something scandalous about what sends my pulse racing, like tan lines and good diction. I cannot say who fits this bill or what he will look like. But at my shrink's suggestion and for my own peace of mind-here is a note to the man I will always love most.
Dear Daddy,
I am told many black women are attracted to men who are the opposite of their fathers. But I don't believe this because I think you and I are so much alike. You are my most treasured model of humanity-loving and complex. No kind of man represents stability or real love better or worse than you do. Just like you, I've always wanted family and community to see me how I want to be seen. So I have unpacked a bit of my emotional baggage. Above are some things about me I want you to learn. I don't doubt that you accept me, I have never worried much about the world doing so. Thank you for letting me be myself.
It's been seven years since I have been home. I would run a thousand miles now to reach that man who sits on his little wooden stool, day after day, under the scorching Haitian sun, to sell his art in order to buy more supplies with which to quench the undeniable thirst in his heart. Under the cacophony of shrill voices and riotous laughter at Mashe Petyon, the marketplace at the center of Petionville, the artist would spend hours watching the vendors and their customers haggling over the price of sugar and bread. Then, with unchallenged genius, he would wave his brushes across the canvas to capture their movements: the fine lines around the women's eyes, the tiny beads of sweat on their brows.
It would thrill me to join those three sun-baked women, barefoot in one of his paintings, as they wash their clothes in a placid brook surrounded by gigantic mapou trees and emerald shrubs. I should have been there, at that perfect moment, when the artist painted blue-and-gold water that made concentric circles around and around the women's ankles, the skirts twisted to one side and tucked into waists to stay dry. Only the heartbreaking melodies of Pierre Cine's acoustic guitar could describe the emotions invoked by the way the scarves are wrapped around the women's heads in hibiscus greens, yellows, and reds.
I would give anything to place my bare hands on the majestic coconut tree that dominates the canvas; its deep green leaves reaching toward the cloudless blue sky, streaked at the horizon with purple, saffron, and amber. At the heart of the shrubs looms the painted shadow of nightfall. Atop it all is a single hut that has one window, one door, and an unseen breeze that gives the thatched roof a permanent sway above which seven black birds hover. Forever.
My friend, who just returned from Haiti, tells me there are few trees left in the mountains; no more lush shrubbery. She says the brooks are parched, leaving rocks buried beneath burning heaps of refuse and mud. The roads are narrow and jagged; many lead to nowhere, and the stench in the streets surrounding Petionville's cemetery is unbearable.
It's been seven years since I have seen my home. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I envision myself lying on the naked earth inside of my great-grandmother's peristil, a modest structure of concrete and clay. The walls of the main room are murals dedicated to ancestors and various lwas, the memories of whom must never fade. To the right is Our Lady of Czestochowa; the black virgin has three vertical scars on her cheek. She is holding a child. "That is Ezili," my great-grandmother told me in a hushed voice. "She is the vengeful mother. She will leave you alone as long as you don't bother her child. But touch her child the wrong way, and you will pay." Then my great-grandmother began to sing the same little song I catch myself humming sometimes: "Ezili, they say you eat people. How many have you eaten? Those who speak well, my eyes will protect. Those who speak ill, I will devour."
To the left is a mural of Saint Gerard in his clerical dress. He is standing next to a skull and white lilies on a table. My great- grandmother pointed to that wall and said, "That is Gede." Then she sang a different song: "When they need me, they say I am Gede; when they don't want me, they say I am garbage…"
Those melodies will never escape from my memory.
"There are many, many lwas," my great-grandmother told me. "Each one has a special song." She taught me the names of all the spirits and sang their songs so that I would pass that knowledge to my own great-grandchildren one day.
Today I live in Washington, D.C., thousands of miles and an ocean away from that peristil, from the lwas, the spirits, and images that inspired my great-grandmother's songs. But sometimes I find myself on that dirt floor and feel the grains of three hundred years against my skin. I see the rainbow of sequined flags decorating the walls and the center altar, covered with calabash bowls, oil lamps, and layers of candle wax that congealed in labyrinthine patterns. Sun rays filter through the holes in the tin roof, dust spirals heavenward; an avalanche of dreams buries me on that dirt floor, and I am born again.
I see the room that my great-grandmother had forbidden me to enter. I was five years old, holding her big hand, feeling safe among the marred faces of old women out of whose throats ancient chants soared above the flames of bonfires that burned for days to the relentless Kongo beat of goatskin drums. The elders agreed my eyes were much too young to view the secret room of souls and uncertain crossroads.
The last time I was home I went into that room. My great-grandmother had been dead for years; I felt that I had her permission somehow. The mystery quickly unfolded before my eyes. I had imagined that there would be more substantial things than the altars of cracked cement upon which stood small clay jars covered in layers of orange-colored dust, pieces of deteriorating fabric and broken black and red bead necklaces. The room itself was decaying. Several aluminum plates and containers made from dried calabash shells still bore the traces of disintegrated offerings: corn, sweets, yams and malanga just like they sold at Mashe Petyon, a picture of which hangs on my living-room wall.
It has been seven years since I have been home, but I visit Mashe Petyon every morning when I get out of bed with the scarf still tied around my head that keeps my dreams from falling. I look at the wall in my apartment and there they are: an ocean of black women squatting before their wide wicker baskets, their colorful skirts tucked between their legs. These women chatter among themselves, arguing and laughing with sheer abandon.
Sometimes, if the night before was easy, I'm right in there with them laughing as the morning sun travels across the sky, across the straw roof, along my black skin. I rest my head against the wall the way the sugarcane leans against the poles that hold the tent up above the marketplace and keep the invisible lines that divide secure. I know these women who sell bright yellow plastic plates, aluminum skillets, dried codfish, fried plantain, and charcoal. I recognize every one of their faces. Even when the painter exaggerates their features and makes their limbs like giraffes', I get inside the wooden frames and haggle with them the way my great-grandmother did when she took me along to buy the sugar she would sprinkle over sliced tomatoes for breakfast. With a hand cocked on her hip, a serious tone of voice, and steady vigilance in her smoky age-grayed eyes, she would ask for fifty cents' worth of oil, spices, a cup of rice, a pound of beef, and two eggplants to prepare the white-rice-and-legume supper.
It's been a lifetime since I was the little girl-child who sat on the porch at twilight with my great-grandmother, Madan Deo, to listen to her stories about women who shed their skin and took to the skies during the darkest hours of night. Madan Deo told me about the tall man who roamed the streets at midnight and spoke to no one. Met Minwi was his name, Master of Midnight. I always sat at her knees and faced her so that I would not have to look at the shadows which our little cotton tree threw onto the unpaved road. Shadows and the lamplight often resulted in such a macabre duet.
"Tim tint?" she would say before telling me a riddle.
"Bwa sech," I would answer, giving up quickly because my efforts to solve her riddles would rob me of the chance to hear more of the stories that her own grandmother must have told her. I wish I had asked her why she kept the old dress in which her mother, Madan Zepherin, had died. That dress hung on the wall for many years like a favorite picture.
One night, Madan Deo looked right past me toward the street beyond the porch and said, "Tim tim?"
Before I could answer, my great-grandmother stood and walked into the house. She said something about getting a cup of water and that she would return soon. She closed the door behind her to keep the insects from flying inside. Time went by and she did not return. I went to the door and tried to open it. It was locked.
"Bwa sech." I cried.
I turned to look at the dark road beyond the porch. The long shadow lingering at the foot of the porch told me that someone was there. I pounded on the door and called out to Madan Deo. "Bwa sech. Let me in. I give up. I am afraid."
It has been a lifetime since I was the little girl-child who huddled in the corner of the porch hiding and hoping that Met Minwi would not see me. I dared not breathe. The shadow waited at the porch. It had a pulse. Someone was there. 1 dared not look. I wanted to run inside the house, where Madan Deo would keep me safe throughout the night even if a hundred flying, skinless lougawous fell through the tin roof.
I opened my eyes for a brief moment. The long shadow stood still from behind the cotton tree-a few feet from where I was. I covered my eyes again and held my breath.
"Tim tim?" Madan Deo asked.
At last, she had come to save me. I took her hand and tried to pull her into the house. She shook me loose and told me, as she had done many times before, "Dyab pe dyab; dyab pa manje dyab." She told me there was nothing in this world to fear. Devils fear one another but one cannot destroy the other without destroying himself. I looked into the street and saw the long shadow inching away. It passed before the porch but I did not see him.
"I wanted you to see him," my great-grandmother whispered. "I wanted you to see him the way Madan Zepherin made me see him. Because until you look him in the eye and learn that you can still survive, you will always be afraid of something in this life."
It's been seven years since I walked by the melting black candles and plates of food offerings at the shrine of Baron Lakwa on the way to visit my great-grandmother's grave at Petionville's cemetery. I thought of the stories Madan Deo recounted about Baron, a lwas who stands guard at the crossroads between this life and the other. I thought about the Gede, the spirit that danced in my grandmother's head. They say Gede Nimbo, the protector of children, was her favorite. One of the rooms in the peristil was dedicated to him. When I held her hand as a child, during the ceremonies, people often called her Papa Gede. And they would point at me and say, "That child is Gede's granddaughter."
"Devils may fear one another," I can hear Madan Deo say from beyond, "but one cannot destroy the other." And I wonder…
Had I not covered my eyes on that warm night so long ago, I would not wake up every morning in search of shadows between the brushstrokes of a painter's version of Mashe Petyon. And perhaps I would not be so afraid to go home today.
We all know that to live is to fight. There are two kinds of battles: the ones life demands of us, and the ones we demand of life. Painting and Poetry are my battlefields. And to be honest, I don't know whether they are what I demand of life or what life demands of me: There are days when it is clear that it doesn't make a bit of difference in the world whether I do the work or not-and those days are like rain upon fire-and there are days when it seems clear I have a life mission-and those are wind in the sail.
To me, painting and poetry are living entities, at times unconscious ones, who relate to each other and to me like people in a "relationship"-living parallel lives that occasionally, and hopefully often, intersect intensely and meaningfully, all the while preserving the potential to remain fully independent of each other.
Becoming a painter and a poet had not been a planned, carefully thought-out affair. This persona crystallized after much "meandering." In the years before going to Philadelphia for an MFA at Penn, I had been an undergraduate student in anthropology at Berkeley. It was then that I returned to Haiti and began research in the Vodou religion. I wanted to understand the mysterious hushed stories of my childhood. I became initiated.
During this return to Haiti I began to paint. The paintings of that period were probably my first ones to express a kind of exile, a longing for an internal, mythical Haiti-my paradise lost.
It is clear that all art forms share the same technical concerns, such as form, composition, texture, rhythm, balance. All art forms share the same need to express mood, vision, ideas, and life experience. All art forms require a constant editing so that harmony and tension can work interestingly together. What fuels the creative process are an individual artist's themes, all of which affect the trademark characteristics by which we recognize a work.
Instant recognizable trademark for me: Haiti! I was born in Haiti and growing up Haitian is most of the worth I have. I feel fortunate because Haiti is a place of rich cultural and visual uniqueness. I am a painter from Haiti and I am proud of it. Yet I am sometimes leery of being called a Haitian painter, because this can become a label used to ghettoize.
I grew up near water, collected tadpoles at a river where women came to wash themselves, their children, their clothes. Men, too, came to wash, and brought their animals to bathe and drink. Water brings life and is used in rituals to evoke spiritual cleansing, renewal, transition to another world:
… Pour water on my head
so the sun might glimmer
on me. It is for hope that God
will pull them up by the hair to heaven…
Water is part of my vocabulary of exile and of longing. Houses speak of home lost and rebuilt; they shelter the body's memory of life, of dreams, and of God. Doors suggest and allow passages. Windows offer vision, the lure of light, outward or inward.
With my work I try to take people to Haiti-the place where I was born, where I grew up, where my sensibility was formed, my first impressions made. And I take people inside of Haiti, beyond the exotic facade of blue sky, palm trees, beaches, bright colon, and smiling natives; beyond politically disheveled Haiti, economically depressed Haiti, international-aid Haiti, brandishing-sticks-and-machetes Haiti, boat-people Haiti; beyond the America-has-had-enough-of-these-unruly-blacks kind of Haiti. I take people into Haiti's depth, its originality, its richness, its source of strength and creativity, its heart, psyche and soul, its religion, its Vodou.
I have often been asked how I can paint such a luminous, exuberant and bright Haiti when all news about Haiti abounds with accounts of the distress of Haitians, and particularly that of the boat people. My response is that I am not an illustrator for Newsweek. I am an artist. I don't have to focus on the same events journalists are meant to report. Yes, Haiti is poor and suffers from terrible economic and sociopolitical problems. But that is not all that Haiti is. If either painting or poetry can be seen as a form of prayer, one could say that the brightness in my images is a prayer for Haiti itself. Praying for the color of light is what I am able to do for Haiti with my work as well as challenge the multitude of negative stereotypes the world has been taught about its people.
Unique in so many ways, Haiti is the place of another kind of prayer house. Everything in Haiti is permeated by the complex world of Vodou. It is the essential filter and fabric of Haitian culture. When I enter the myths and religion of Haiti, I enter a world of exquisite lyrical imagination and freedom, yet of exacting, elaborate, and minutely structured rituals created only to allow timeless wisdom and intelligence to reveal itself to us in spirit possession. Vodou's spirits are gathered and ordered within specific families, numbers of which are recognized by and worshipped for their very distinct personality traits and functions.
Living in another country, I use my pen or my brush to voice incantations to a particular world that has created me and, to a certain extent, now uses me to re-create itself.
Technically speaking, I can paint any place, but if I choose one place, it has to do with its meaning-art is an act and effort of communication. Art cannot survive as only a self-indulgent endeavor. Haiti offers me items of meditation into which, because of my particular connection to the country, I can tap and develop further. Cambridge, where I now live, offers me a nurturing environment. Populations of the world are no longer being confined to their original shores. Different cultures are colliding with each other in close quarters and entering each other's consciousness. Through people like me, a Haitian-born painter and poet, foreign imagination is entering the American consciousness and system of reference. Many of us, the uprooted, may have come empty-handed but certainly not empty-hearted. I came with all that I had been and felt before. With all that my parents had been and felt before. With all that my ancestors had been and felt before. With the company of Spirits. So I continue to live and fight even in those days when there is no wind in my sails. I continue to
… Pour water on my head
so the sun might glimmer
on me…
On all of us.