A Wedding in Haiti (26 page)

We are in luck: a table has just opened. The waiter escorts us to an outside patio and hands us each a large menu like a choir’s music folder. I have a brief, absurd image of all of us standing up to sing the Hallelujah chorus.

I’m at one end of the table with Piti, who is gazing down at his menu as if it were written in a foreign language. It might be that he doesn’t read French, or perhaps he is shocked at the prices—most entrées are in the mid- to high-twenty-dollar range. With my translation help, he decides on the fried fish, perhaps thinking of Eseline’s choice of fish last year in Cap-Haïtien.

At the other end of the table, Bill and Mikaela and Adam are talking about Haiti, the frustrations of the reconstruction, the six-month anniversary on Monday. I’m relieved not to have to participate, as I’m feeling that I can’t trust any of my reactions or instincts right now. Only one impulse feels trustworthy: seeing to it that Piti isn’t again left out in the cold as he was in the lobby of the Oloffson.

“What a difference from last night!” I say, recalling our singing and dancing in the tiny back room in Moustique.

Piti shakes his head, as if he, too, doesn’t believe we got here from there.

“What do you think so far, I mean, about Port-au- Prince?”

Piti’s expression is suddenly grave, his forehead lined. It’s that old man who occasionally makes an appearance on his baby face, a preview of what he will look like when he is my age. “Poor Haiti needs so much help,” he says, sighing. “If I had money, I would help.” I wonder if he knows that the majority of people dining at Magdoos tonight came to Haiti with the same idea: to help.

We finish our meal with a half hour to spare before the midnight curfew. On the way back to the compound, Adam takes us on a dry run to the Dominican consulate, so we will be able to find it on our own tomorrow. As we say our goodnights to him, then to Piti and Mikaela, I brace myself. This will be my first time alone with Bill since our full day of squabbling. At dinner, he was chatting away, effusive and happy at last to be among friends, eating good food, anticipating a good night’s rest. See, I wanted to call down the table, see what comes of not staying at the Oloffson!

But neither of us has energy for recriminations or I-told-you-so’s. What’s more, Bill’s intrepid eating of the mystery meat dish in Moustique last night has resulted in upset bowels. He admits that he hasn’t felt himself all day. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom?” I shake my head, feeling myself melting already at the thought of this bloke, whom I was going to leave forever, dying on me from food poisoning. “I have Pepto-Bismol in my case by the sink if you need it.”

The door of the bathroom closes. I sit on the edge of the bed and take a deep breath. I would meditate if I thought it would help. But what’s the use? No matter what, I keep coming back to this faulty default self. When Bill finally returns and climbs in beside me I curl into the curve of his body and listen to his breathing a long while, before I, too, fall asleep.

July 9, Port-au-Prince—we came to see

Breakfast at pâtisserie Marie Beliard

The sun is shining brightly through the picture window—so soon after I fell asleep! As I’m coming awake, I hear a soft strumming through the closed door. It’s Piti, playing his guitar. He brought it along to Haiti with the idea of leaving it behind for that future day when he will come home to stay. But once in Moustique, he changed his mind. He will need his guitar to make it through the long, lonely months without Eseline and the baby. Right now, hearing him play, I wonder if he needs it just to get through the day, bracing himself for more of what we saw yesterday.

We’re eager to get going, figuring we’ll find a place open for breakfast. Adam drops in to say good-bye and tells us that there is actually a very good pâtisserie called Marie Beliard on the way to the consulate. “On the way” is one of those slippery phrases I’ve learned not to trust in Haiti. But Adam, who has not failed us so far—it wasn’t his fault the Quartier Latin was packed last night—is right again. We make one left turn on the way to the consulate, and go down about a block, and there it is, a shop with large picture windows and a pull-in parking area not piled high with rubble.

It is breakfast time and the place is hopping. We stand around, trying to figure out the system for ordering. A bemused woman in her forties offers to help in a slightly French-accented English. She reminds me of women I’ve seen in delicatessens in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, so neatly attired—their pumps match their purses—you’d be surprised to learn that all they’re dressed up for is this outing.

Madame explains that we must pick a number from a dispenser at the end of the counter; wait for it to pop up on a panel; then we must place our order with our attendant, who writes it up and hands the slip to us; whereupon, we must join that other pressing crowd at the register; pay for our order; get our slip stamped; then return to the first crowd, where we must try to catch the attention of our attendant; hand over our stamped slip; and wait for her to fill our order. I’m exhausted just hearing how to do it.

But the system seems to be working: people keep getting their bags and boxes and going out the door, our patrician lady among them. Meanwhile we wait and wait and wait. Even people whose numbers were after ours have come and gone. Nine o’clock ticks by; we’ve been waiting over a half hour! I go out to give Piti, not really a progress report, more like a regress report.

Back inside, another English-speaker, a man named Junior, hears us grumbling and asks what’s the problem. When we explain, he puts in a good word for us with one of the attendants, then begins telling us his story. It turns out he lives in Miami with his wife and kids, but he travels back and forth because he has business in Haiti. What kind of business? “I make ice and sell it to restaurants, hotels, grocery stores.”

My next question is one that I’m sure everyone in Port-au-Prince must be asked: “Were you here when the earthquake happened?”

Junior’s face clouds. He nods slowly. Yes, he was. “The land became the sea.” He sways as if reliving the moment. He managed to escape. But it was crazy, crazy: the streets full of frantic people, the dust, the cries. As he talks, the crowd around us grows quiet. Even though Junior is speaking in English, people know that he is talking about
goudou goudou,
the onomatopoeic name that Haitians have given the earthquake, imitating the sound of the ground shaking, the buildings crumbling.

Junior must assume we’re missionaries or aid workers, because as he is leaving, he thanks us for coming to Haiti.

I feel embarrassed to be getting credit for something we’re not doing. By the same token, it seems coldhearted and not totally accurate to say we didn’t come here to help. “We just came to see,” I explain.

He looks me in the eye, and I’m bracing myself for a moral scolding. But what he says surprises me, “Haiti needs for people to see it.”

“It’s like our 9/11,” Bill remarks as we are finally leaving the pâtisserie, with three sandwiches and a half-eaten baguette (it arrived before the rest of the order). “Everyone wants to tell where they were when it happened.” Haiti’s earthquake, however, was such an overwhelming catastrophe; far more people died than even in the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But there is no need to compare tragedies; suffering is suffering, not any less intense if it’s experienced by fewer casualties.

Still when the suffering is on such a colossal scale, it feels as if the world is destroyed, not just your corner of it. Did Haiti, not just Haitians, die in the earthquake? It’s a wrenching question, which later I will come upon in Amy Wilentz’s introduction to a new edition of
The Rainy Season
: “Is Haiti still here? . . . How many people can die in one event without destroying national identity? . . . Is a country a map, as we reflexively believe? What happens, then, when that map is erased?”

God’s pencil has no eraser

We park across the street from the consulate, a two-story building that looks unscathed: no cracks on the walls, no pile of rubble in the yard. A Dominican flag droops on its pole on the roof. No need to keep waving chauvinistically above a destroyed city.

As we are disembarking, a black car pulls up to the entrance, and from its backseat emerges an officious woman in her thirties with a lot of attitude. You can tell—something cross about her expression, something big about her pocketbook, an extra umph in the slamming of the car door. I find myself hoping she does not work in the visa department.

The consulate personnel are busy as we enter. At a long counter, clerks are stamping visas in passports, stacking packets of them at one end. Business has been brisk: a lot of people wanting to go next door and wait out the devastation.

At a desk near the doorway, a young Dominican guy asks if he can help us.

“We’re here to see Ruth Castro,” I tell him. That’s the name Señor Ortiz gave me over the phone. Ruth Castro at the consulate would receive us and help us resolve the problem with Piti’s visa. “She’s expecting us,” I add, hoping to speed things up.

“You mean Ruffy Castor,” the young man corrects me. So much for passing ourselves off as people she knows.

The guy is now looking us over: me, Bill, and Piti. But then, his eyes land on Mikaela, and he is instantly, visibly smitten. Daniel introduces himself and eagerly plies us with questions. What are we doing in Haiti? When will we be returning to the DR? He himself is headed home to Santo Domingo for the weekend, this very afternoon. Any chance we can meet up, anywhere we say? Mikaela glances over at me, and I know we are thinking the same thing: Is this the opportune time to tell Daniel that the day after tomorrow, she will be on an early morning flight home to DC?

Just then, there’s a flurry of activity in the hallway: a woman is approaching, her progress impeded by petitioners needing a signature, an answer to a question, a problem solved. This must be Ruffy Castor, whom Daniel just buzzed. My heart sinks. It’s the very woman I was hoping would not be taking care of us! Even without a big pocketbook and an automobile’s door to bang shut, she still looks cross. Who knows what José Ortiz has told her about us.

“How can I help you?” Ruffy Castor asks, once we’ve introduced ourselves. Does she really not know? I’m wondering if José Ortiz did call her, after all.

Sheepishly, I explain that we need a visa for Piti. His old one, well, it expired a while ago. Again, I’m expecting a scolding, but Ruffy gets right to the point. “Let me see your passport,” she asks Piti. Quickly, she reviews it; asks if we want a new visa for three months or for a year; collects the two-hundred-dollar fee for the year visa; tucks it inside the passport; then hands the packet over to one of the clerks to take care of. “It will be a few minutes,” she explains. Meanwhile, she invites us to wait inside her office.

That’s all there is to it? We’re impressed. Give this woman a job running Marie Beliard!

We follow Ruffy down the hall and crowd into a minuscule office (so maybe she’s not as important as I thought) with two chairs crammed on the other side of her large and cluttered desk. Bill and I sit, while Piti and Mikaela stand behind us. Once we’re all packed in, Ruffy closes the door and turns on a rattling air conditioner—a little luxury, along with the chairs, she can offer us.

When we ask how long she has been in Haiti, Ruffy launches into her story about the earthquake. She was right here in her office; it was a little before five in the afternoon. She was already thinking of going home to her husband and her little six-month-old baby when the quake struck. She ran out on the street to find the world destroyed. All she could think of was her husband and child. Were they alive? Injured? She tried using her cell phone, but, of course, there was no reception. The anguish, the anguish she felt as she made her way home! It took her two hours on foot to reach her apartment, all the while passing scenes that kept stoking her terror. Thankfully, her husband and child were safe, her building still standing amid the surrounding rubble.

There is a knock on Ruffy’s door: Piti’s visa is ready. Bill asks Ruffy if there is anyone at the consulate we can hire to give us a tour of the city. It turns out there is a Haitian policeman assigned to the consulate, Leonard, whom she’d be happy to loan us. In parting, we exchange hugs. I recall my initial impression of Ruffy and wonder if I misjudged her, or if by listening to her story we gained access to a warmer, more caring person.

Before we proceed with Leonard to view the city, we stop at the Dominican embassy just a few blocks away. Ambassador Silié is currently at a conference in the Dominican Republic, but José Ortiz comes out of his office to greet us. A short, slender man with dark, expressive eyes, he is as gracious as Ruffy, though understandably a little wary at first. Every time we’ve been in touch in the past, it’s with
problemas
.

But this time, we come with good news: Piti’s visa issue has been resolved. And yes, we will be at the southern border crossing before five this afternoon.

I ask after his health. He looks to be in excellent shape, but since the earthquake, he has been very anxious, he explains. As he starts telling the story of that afternoon last January, his face tenses up. He was still at work when the earthquake struck, and although the embassy itself did not collapse, the next-door children’s hospital fell on the portion of the building in which his office was located. He was trapped inside, unharmed but not knowing if any minute, in an aftershock, the roof would cave in and crush him. It was like being buried alive, he explains. The worst part was hearing the children screaming for help, and not being able to do anything for them. He was finally rescued, but the experience keeps playing over and over in his head.