A Wedding in Haiti (11 page)

Later I will e-mail Homero, asking him, as a Dominican, what most surprised him about Haiti. “The fact that, despite so much poverty, the lack of money, the bad economy, everywhere we went, people were selling something: whether it was mangoes on the road to Bassin-Bleu or car parts and pineapples in Cap-Haïtien or even the refreshments and cigarettes at the wedding. But who was buying?” In the case of the mangoes, I guess we were. But Homero is right: all along the streets of Okap, I don’t see a single shopper, but almost everyone seems to want to sell us something.

What most surprised me? The white UN tanks that would come creeping eerily down the streets. True, I’d not been keeping up with Haitian news, but the only enemy I was seeing everywhere was poverty.

Maybe because a goal always helps to focus sightseeing, we decide to look for a drugstore to buy Eseline some Dramamine. Although the roads from here on out will be a lot better, it’s still an hour to the border, and then a three-hour drive from Dajabón to my parents’ house in Santiago, where we will spend the night. We want to spare her and ourselves a repeat of yesterday’s saga. Bill also wants to find a café where he can drink a good cup of Haitian coffee before leaving the country.

But we might as well be the knights of the Round Table searching for the Holy Grail. We get hopelessly lost and end up stuck in traffic until we’re ready to give up. Piti asks a pedestrian, who confirms that there is a pharmacy near the cathedral on the main square. We are very close; it is very simple. By now, we should know what such phrases mean here:
very close, very simple
. But almost as if Haiti were out to show us that we will never guess her riddles or plumb her mysteries, a few turns, and we run into the beautiful white cathedral on a large, elegant square.

We park and set out to find a drugstore while Bill stays behind, guarding our luggage in the open flatbed. Eseline and the baby wait in the backseat. For some reason, she has not wanted to get out at any of our stops, like a caged bird that prefers the safety of its enclosure to the dangerous freedom beyond.

While Homero and Piti continue on their Dramamine mission, Eli and I peel off to peek inside the cathedral. Fifteen minutes later, when we reunite at the pickup, Homero and Eli report they could not find the pharmacy. But Bill has had better luck. A few doors down from the pickup at a small restaurant, he bought what he claims is the best cup of coffee in Haiti. (Yes, even better than in Moustique.)

But then, an unsettling incident occurs. As Bill is waiting for us, a woman comes charging across the street, berating him, an angry rant that went on and on. People stopped to watch; shopkeepers came out of their stores.

“Could you tell what was wrong?”

“She kept repeating
blan
this,
blan
that.” A white man; a big, silver pickup; a young Haitian girl and a baby in the backseat—Bill could guess what she was thinking.

But he had no idea what the woman would do. Would she incite onlookers? Would she attack him? Finally, another woman with a sidewalk stand of sodas said something to the angry woman and gave her a bottle of water, which seemed to douse her anger. She went back across the street, still calling out something to Bill.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“It’s no big deal,” he says, shrugging the incident away. But from then on, whenever he regales our friends at supper parties with the story of our trip, Bill will mention this moment. It’s as if he can’t help mulling it over, the way the tongue keeps investigating an absent tooth. The way I keep thinking about the girl in Bassin-Bleu wanting a piece of my jewelry, and I wouldn’t give it to her.

Actually, it’s a surprise that this was the only racial incident, not counting the kids at the wedding who were terrified of our pale skin. Haiti’s has been a race-driven history, and not just during colonial times, and not just whites against blacks, but internally down the generations, the light-skin mulatto elite against the darker
noirs
; the
noirs
not trusting the
griffes
or the
jaunes
.

Of course, the biggest target of hatred were the whites, who had once been the enslavers. At the moment of Haiti’s founding as a freed nation in 1804, Boisrond-Tonnerre, one of the signers of its declaration of independence, remarked that the document “should have the skin of a
blan
for parchment, his skull for inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for pen.” I’m glad that I learn about this remark only
after
our trip to Haiti.

Before we leave Okap, we try one last time to find a pharmacy. Several people have confirmed that a few blocks away, up a little alleyway, we will find what we are looking for. And sure enough, as if Haiti is determined to surprise us once again, an eleventh-hour rescue, the dark horse that wins the race, we find the tiny shop. It is no larger than a hallway, a narrow slot between buildings, easy to miss. The walls are lined with shelves to the ceiling, the shelves covered with plastic sheeting and scantily stocked with bottles and odd items like a game of Trivial Pursuit.

The pharmacist, a middle-aged woman wearing a top bursting with enormous bright-pink flowers and matching pink hoop earrings—her, you can’t miss—nods. Of course, she has Dramamine pills. How many do we want? (All pills are sold piecemeal.) Three will do, Piti decides. The first one will be wasted, as Eseline swallows it right off, and ten minutes later when we’re on our way, she vomits it up. But a second pill does the trick.

With our two missions accomplished, we decide to head for the border. Somehow, the incident of the angry woman seems a signal that we have overstayed our welcome. But even after we’ve left, we’ll keep thinking about Haiti a lot, in total disproportion to the short time we spent there. Back in the States, a friend will share how she had a similar haunting reaction after visiting Brazil for the first time many years ago. “It stops you in your tracks. Mind and body. When we see a thing, what then is the obligation? That’s a really big question and I worry about the answer.”

Tranquila, tranquila

On the way to Ouanaminthe, I try to meditate. Instead of
Bassin-Bleu, Bassin-Bleu,
my new mantra is
tranquila, tranquila
. Stay calm. Otherwise, I’ll betray our precious cargo by looking nervous. Besides, we already have proof that no matter how much head shaking goes on, little problems can be resolved at the border.

And there is a small part of me that, despite my huge doubts, wants to believe Piti. He keeps claiming that the immigration office on the Haitian side will be able to grant a temporary pass for his wife and child. “
Pero,
Piti,” I keep interjecting. “You don’t have any proof she is your wife. The baby has no birth certificate, proving that you are the father.” Of course, all you have to do is look at that little face to see the spitting image of Piti.

We stop at the immigration building on the Haitian side. Piti gets out to inquire, while the rest of us wait in the pickup, including Eseline and Ludy. As the minutes tick by, I start wondering if Piti himself has been arrested.
Tranquila, tranquila
, I keep telling myself.

Eseline, too, is jumpy. She has been feeling fine since taking the second Dramamine. But now she is looking around, amazed by the swarming market crowd that surrounds the pickup. Everywhere you turn there are makeshift stands, wheelbarrows full of yams, plantains, oranges, big bundles of disposable diapers, cane chairs, clothing, a tangle of motorcycles, trucks, cars, carts. There are plenty of shoppers here, including many Dominicans who buy cheap merchandise on the Haitian side and then cross the bridge to sell it for double or triple the price.

Piti comes out from the small wooden building, his round, boyish face suddenly an old man’s worried one. The Haitian officials have told him that there is nothing they can do. He’ll have to ask their counterparts on the other side.

“Ask them for what?” I ask him pointedly.

“Can I bring in my wife and baby,” he answers, as if Eseline and Ludy are pieces of luggage, not two human beings.

How could Piti think he’d get away with this? (How could
I
?) We both know Dominicans are notorious for their treatment of Haitians. In our own rural community, Haitians and Dominicans live peaceably, working side by side. But this is a rare harmony, one riddled with pointed jokes, racist comments, a blind prejudice all the more remarkable coming from those who have been victims themselves of oppression and poverty. One time a contingent of Dominican workers on the farm came to us protesting the fact that Haitian workers got the same daily wage as they. And yet, were it not for Haitian labor, Dominican agriculture, in addition to many other sectors of the economy, would come to a standstill. But no matter our interdependence, and I say this with shame, a poor Haitian can’t count on having rights on Dominican soil.

But, right this moment, what I’m feeling is frustration with Piti for putting his wife and child in this predicament. It looks like we will have to turn right around and drive ten hours back to Moustique. It’s either that or Piti finds a way to cross the Massacre River at night with the help of a smuggler.

“My wife, my little baby,” Piti keeps pleading, as if we could work miracles.

We inch our way through the market crowd, the pickup parting the way as we go. Homero and Eli ride in the flatbed since we’ve been warned that anyone could grab one of our bags and run off. Not that anyone could get very far in this swarm of people, animals, and vehicles.

On the other side, the lieutenant with the gold teeth comes up to the pickup. “How was your time in Haiti?” he asks, craning his neck to look inside the cab. I rattle on about the wedding, what a long trip it was, how we’re so glad to be back. But he is not listening. His eye has been caught by the Haitian couple in the backseat.
Tranquila, tranquila,
I quiet my noisy, thumping heart, as if it were the contraband I needed to hide.

“What about them?” He nods toward Piti and Eseline.

“Oh, he’s got his passport and visa.” I hand over Piti’s documents. “He works up on our farm,” I tell the lieutenant, though technically, Piti is now the
capataz
on a neighbor’s farm. But the lieutenant doesn’t care about anecdotal details. He takes the passport, reviews it, then nods: everything is in order. He hands it back and looks beyond Piti to Eseline. For the first time since I embraced feminism as a young woman, I am willing invisibility on two females. May Eseline and Ludy disappear; may they be mere appendages to a husband with a passport and visa.