A Wedding in Haiti (6 page)

“There is plenty of room,” Charlie assures us. I don’t inquire further, assuming the family will redistribute itself in surrounding houses. But when we wake up the next morning and go outside, we find everyone has slept on mats spread out under the trees. It’s not lost on any of us: the generosity of those who are willing to share the little they have. It goes through my mind again, the scene with the girl and the young man in Bassin-Bleu.

Before we settle in, Leonardo needs a ride home. Bill, cranky after a twelve-hour drive, shakes his head, no. It’s not far, Leonardo argues, which argument is used against him. If it’s not far, he can walk.

“Come on, honey,” I intervene.

Come on, honey, nothing. Leonardo has been totally useless as a guide. What’s more, he’s now doubling his charge—an extra hundred dollars,
and
he wants door-to-door service.

One of our vaudeville acts ensues. The boy hasn’t seen his family in two years, I point out. (“He’s not a boy!”) He’s too tired to walk. (“So am I, and I’m the one who’s been driving all day!”) So, I’ll drive him. (“It’s not that far.”) Even if it’s not far, Leonardo has to carry a suitcase and a box full of spaghetti
for his mother
. This poignant detail doesn’t seem to affect Bill the way it does me. But then, the plight of small farmers doesn’t make me want to join their struggle by buying a coffee farm. The Leonardo impasse finally ends with a settlement: I’ll stay with Bill, unpacking our things, and Homero and Eli will drive Leonardo home in the pickup.

It’s a moment in the trip I will hate missing. Leonardo running out of the pickup, surprising his auntie sitting outside their front door. Homero recounts the cries of joy, the tearful embraces, the exclamations over the box of spaghetti. Bill listens, penitent, if defensive. “He might be poor, but he’s still a spoiled brat.” It may be, but even if it is spoiling, certain things—not counting my jewelry—seem a shame to withhold.

While Homero and Eli are off delivering Leonardo, our host Charlie shows us around. The outhouse is down a path, bordered by small bushes to which half a dozen scrawny goats are tied. Every time you head for the facilities, you set off a round of bleating, so everyone is apprised of all your movements, including the ones your bowels make. The bathroom is literally a place to bathe, a structure with a thatched roof and four sides covered in tarp. You lift a flap and enter. Inside there is a big basin and a small container for throwing water over yourself. As for the water itself, Charlie holds up a hand. “It is coming.”

A little while later a sister and the two young nieces appear, carrying buckets from the river, which we know from having forded it earlier is a distance away.

The other hut behind the house is the kitchen, a small dark room, blackened from the charcoal fires inside. Above the door on a wooden plank someone has written a series of numbers. It turns out to be the cell phone of a fifth sister who is working in Florida, the mother of the two girls. I ask for their names.

Soliana shyly whispers hers. “Rica,” the older, bolder one pipes up. She has a megawatt smile that makes you smile just to look at her.

“
Rica
means ‘rich’ in Spanish,” I tell her. When Piti translates, Rica keeps smiling the same blinding smile as if this is no news to her. It occurs to me that with a number of uncles working in Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, her lucky name was picked for a reason.

Tomorrow’s plans, to bed at last

Night has fallen, and Piti and his brother Willy are due home. They will take shortcut paths where the pickup cannot go. It is a dark, moonless night, but Piti claims he could find his way blindfolded, as he has been walking these hills since he was a boy.

Before he leaves, we discuss plans for tomorrow. The wedding is supposed to take place at the unlikely hour of eight thirty in the morning. But this is actually a good thing, as our party will have to leave right after the ceremony. Tomorrow is Thursday. Unless we get to Cap-Haïtien tomorrow night, nine hours from where the wedding will take place, we will have a hard time making it to the border in one day before the gates close on Friday at five o’clock.

“We are coming with you,” Piti decides on the spot. By we, he means his bride, Eseline, and their four-month-old baby girl.

“Piti, it’s your wedding!” I try to reason with him. “Don’t you want to stay and be with your family and other guests?”

Piti shakes his head. “There is the problem with money. I have used all the money.”

Bill and I have already sent Piti some money for his wedding present, but now we offer him some additional funds so he can stay for a few more weeks. Afterward, he can return with his family by bus or however it is one gets to the border from here.

But that is the problem, Piti explains. Why, he wants to go with us. The journey is long and rough. The ride in the air-conditioned cab of our pickup, even though crowded, will be so much easier on the young baby and on Eseline, who has never traveled far in a vehicle.

Later, of course, we will understand why Piti was so insistent on going with us. Years ago, we helped him acquire his passport, so he can travel easily back and forth. All he has to do is purchase a visa. But Eseline is another story. She has no passport, and since the marriage license won’t be issued until two weeks after the wedding, no proof that she is married to Piti. But Bill and I are Americans, people of means. We will figure out a way to cross his family. Piti does not say any of this to us now. In fact, when I question him about documents for his wife and child, he assures me that all these arrangements can be made at the border.

I decide to follow the then current policy of the US military toward gays:
Don’t ask. Don’t tell
. Piti has made these crossings multiple times. He must know this plan can work; surely he wouldn’t be exposing his young wife and child to danger and trauma. The less I know about these transactions, the better off we all will be, since, as people have often told me—starting with my mother, when I was a naughty child and would try to lie my way out of a punishment—my face betrays me.

But what about Eseline? “Shouldn’t you talk this over with her first?” I say, sticking up for the female’s right to decide.

“Tomorrow she is my wife and must do what I say,” Piti explains, matter-of-factly.

“Piti!” How could the sweet boy I fell in love with years ago utter such a sexist comment? “You must talk it over with Eseline,” I insist. Piti gives me a perfunctory yes-mom nod. I have a feeling the talk will not be the kind of conversation I am thinking of.

After we say our farewells, our group sits down at the table in the front room. No dinner seems forthcoming, so we unpack what’s left of our snacks by the light of two candles. As we uncork the wine, our host appears bearing a pot of steaming rice, followed by Jimmy with a bowl of bean sauce, or so we think, though there’s not a bean in sight. Charlie returns with a third pot of spicy goat’s meat swimming in gravy, which Bill claims is the most delicious goat he has ever tasted.

I don’t bother to ask how many times he has tasted goat, but it’s definitely not a staple of our Vermont diet, which tends to be primarily vegetarian in deference to me. I try a mouthful of the rice, avoiding the brown sauce, as I’m not sure what’s in it. Dessert is some Hershey’s Kisses that were lying around in our kitchen in Vermont since last Halloween. I was about to throw them out, but Bill intervened. “Save them for the trip. They might come in handy.” Indeed, in this part of Haiti, where nothing is thrown away, they taste delicious. “The best stale Hershey’s Kisses I’ve ever tasted,” Bill jokes.

Soon after our meal, we brush our teeth under a spangle of stars and dive under our mosquito nets: Homero in one bed, Eli and Pablo in another, and Bill and I in the third one. The night is comfortably cool since we’re up high above the dry basin where Bassin-Bleu lies. Remembering that hot, dirty hotel, I feel doubly grateful.

I fall asleep, wondering if Piti has made it home. What has Eseline said about their sudden departure tomorrow? According to Piti, Eseline has only traveled as far as Gros Morne, a little south of Bassin-Bleu. Again, from my high school French, I know
gros
means big, but I don’t recognize
morne
. Maybe something to do with mourning? It is precisely what I imagine Eseline is feeling as she receives the news that tomorrow she and her baby will be borne away by a new husband, who doesn’t even bother to discuss his plans with her beforehand.

August 20, a long wedding day & night

Preparations

I wake up to one of the pleasures I remember from childhood: sleeping under a mosquito net like a princess or some other precious being who needs to be veiled from the world.

For a while in my half sleep I’ve been hearing a rhythmic sound, not the patter of rain or anything mechanical. A human rhythm. I peek out the door and see one of Charlie’s sisters sweeping the dirt yard with a broom made of straw. It hasn’t rained in months; the ground is hard and dry, a grayish color. She sweeps away the fallen leaves, smoothes out any clumps. By the time she is finished, the yard is a tidy, uniform pale gray, except for one embarrassing darker spot where I, unwilling to walk all the way to the outhouse in the middle of the night, peed just outside the door. I recall a lecture given by Woody Tasch, author of
Slow Money
, in which he claimed that there are two kinds of people in this world: “those who shit in drinking water and those who don’t.” I’ve now added a third kind: people who pee in other people’s front yard.

The rest of the family is still lying on mats under a tree in the backyard. Our own stirring wakes them, and preparations begin. The wedding will start at eight thirty, but since Bill and I are the official godparents, Piti wants us there at seven thirty. To get there, we will have to drive about twenty minutes, park the pickup on the side of the road, and hike in to the bride’s family’s house. Given those directions, I briefly consider wearing the same practical black jeans and
I LOVE MY BARRIO
T-shirt from yesterday, instead of the fancy outfit I packed when I thought this was going to be a church wedding—a long, flouncy, pale yellow skirt and jacket, a black camisole with lace edging, and impractical black sandals.

But Piti is getting married, and I’m going to his wedding in style! There is no mirror, but when I come out of the house all gussied up, I can see myself reflected in my hosts’ eyes. I must look as strange as the proverbial British colonial in his starched white suit and safari hat sitting down to tea in the middle of the jungle.