Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti (2 page)

Dieu, Ta fidélité va jusqu’aux nues,

Plus vaste est Ton amour que l’horizon,

Ta tendre main est toujours étendue,

Inépuisable est Ta compassion
.

The words are in a tongue not her own while still similar to her Kreyol. Nonetheless, the important words stand out for they are the same in both languages: fidelity, love, and compassion.

It will be a long, lonesome road ahead. She is glad to have faithful company.

**

Within two hours, the girl nears her home. Swells of cool air sail in from the sea to battle the oppressive humidity that takes hold this time of year. She aches with hunger, and the canapé fruits she had plucked from low-hanging branches on the path make her long all the more for real and heavy food.

Approaching her mother, house, and sleeping mat feels good. Her eyelids hover like heavy curtains waiting to close a show.

She passes her neighbors’ houses along their lonely road, counting them off:
en, de, twa, kat
, until she reaches her own home, number five. A lone lamp lights its single window, piercing the darkness and reassuring her that her mother waits inside.

She first directs her followers, likewise succumbing to their heavy limbs and weary minds, into a pen of crooked wire fencing adjacent to the home. Before closing the gate, she releases the
ti kabrit
cradled in her arms to let it find its feet and join the others.

—
Manman
, I’ve returned, she says, pushing the entry curtain aside and peering into the blackness. The lamp’s flickering glow is nearly dead. There is no reply.

— Manman?

At first she sees only specks of white, spilled rice dotting the floor. She hears slow and labored breaths.
Not again
.

Little Libète’s eyes shoot along the trail of grains before landing on her mother’s outline, heaving on the floor.

Facedown with limbs splayed and the infant’s head obscured, it appears the woman fell, possibly smothering the baby in her arms. Or, she might have died trying to shield him.

Libète crouched to get closer.

It was clear she was young. Her hair was carefully straightened, like a professional, and she wore a pressed, deep-blue dress, well-appointed for someone in Cité Soleil on a weekday. They had died recently, maybe only an hour or two before the children arrived. Flies, with their adroit ability to seek out death, were already settling in to feast.

Jak hovered a few feet off. His attempts to speak came out as stammering. Libète, still crouching, was silent. She moved closer to turn the woman over, certain that face up and out of the mud was the more dignified position.

—
Mon dieu!
she exclaimed as she reeled back, letting the body drop and clasping her mouth with her other hand, the one untainted by death. She looked to Jak, eyes wide. It’s…it’s Claire! You see—and the baby—it must be Ti Gaspar!

Claire was not well known to Libète and Jak, but was her cousin’s friend, and always kind in passing. Gaspar couldn’t be more than two or three months old.
What evil could do such a thing?

Indignation played across her face as she continued her inspection. She knelt at Claire’s side, soiling her knees and dress in the mud, this time turning the body over completely until her void and dirtied face looked upon the wide, blue sky.

No blood had been visible from her back, making the cause of death unclear. It was no longer a mystery. Her throat had a wide gash running from one side of the chin to the other. Her torso was soaked with mud thickened by blood, both from her throat and also three other cuts in seemingly random locations across her legs and chest.

— The–the, Jak stuttered before finally getting out the words.
Look
…at her heart.

Protruding from her sternum was the dark handle of a knife, pushed roughly parallel with her flat body when she fell upon the ground.

Gaspar’s swaddling was covered in the same foul mixture of dirt and blood, but with no obvious wounds of his own. By contrast, he appeared at peaceful rest. Libète moved to close Claire’s open eyes so that she might rest too. Doing so only led to more horrible observations.

Claire had been marked by two large cuts down her right cheek, deliberately placed. Red rivulets had run down the chin from her open mouth, and Libète peered inside. She recoiled violently.

— The tongue—Jak, it’s missing. Oh God, it’s been cut out.

She suppressed a sob. Poor, poor Claire, poor Claire, she repeated to herself, pushing the chin up with a quick thrust of her index finger, bringing to a close what had been left open.

She stood up. Tears welled and fell down both her cheeks, but she wiped them away with a grim determination to stay composed.

— We can’t leave them like this, Jak said.

Libète nodded and reached to the hem of her own skirt and, with some effort, tore a large piece of blue fabric. She placed it over Claire’s face.

— I need to go, she told the boy. To find someone—anyone—to let others know. You have to wait with them.

He looked at her pitifully. Go, he murmured. But quickly.

She was off, running at full speed through the sea of reeds toward the edge of her home, Bwa Nèf. She looked down to avoid tripping and when she neared an open field at the end of the reeds, she burst forth, colliding with an unseen person.

She crashed and fell, swearing as she spun upon the ground. Blinded by the Sun and unsure of who or what lay before her, it took a few moments to register whose path she had crossed.

— 
Dyab la
—the devil! she gasped, the words slipped out before she knew she said them.

The man, or at least the form the Devil inhabited, was aged and of formidable size but slumped stature. He righted himself using a metal cane, an old golf putter given new and terrible life.

Libète slid her backside against the ground and away from the figure, clenching her jaw and swallowing hard. His face was unreadable, eyes hidden by a wide-brimmed hat while the rest of his face and head were obscured by long greying dreadlocks and a plaited beard. A small snorting pulled her eyes to the left and her heart sank. She saw
it
—the Dyab’s minion—creep out from behind him. It was common knowledge the Dyab had turned a young man into this very pig.

— Pardon me,
mesye
, she wheezed with heavy breaths. It was an accident.

Unable to look at either in the eye, she sprang up and ran for her life back to Impasse Chavannes, knowing she would find the safety of others there. She prayed madly for protection against this devil, daring only the shortest glance over her shoulder to see if either gave pursuit.

They did nothing but watch her go on her way.

Libète presses a wet rag against her mother’s forehead. It feels as if on fire.

The child looks toward the ceiling and up to God, wondering what this all means.

Unable to lift her mother from the floor by herself, she had fetched help. Running to house number four, she banged upon its heavy door even though no light could be seen inside. Marie Elise, her mother’s closest friend, soon opened it.

Lit only by the moon, she wore a sagging nightgown that showed her gaunt, aged frame. Libète did not know how old this woman was, but she was well past her manman Sophia’s 23 years. The woman’s face was long, her skin drawn tight like a drum, even more so now than usual.

— Libète? But you’re so loud! You’ll wake Daniel. What’s the—

— She fell again! My manman fell. Libète could not stop her tears.

—
Bondye!
she gasped. When? Marie Elise moved to fetch her clothes.

— She’s on the floor now and can’t talk much. She looks so, so sick. I tried to help her onto the bed but couldn’t. She was too heavy and—

— Libète, Marie Elise interrupted. I understand. Now go back and comfort her. I will come.

The girl nodded sharply and sprinted back home.

— Marie Elise will be here soon, and manman, you’re going to be alright, like the last time.

—
Mèsi
, Libète, her mother coughed, unable to otherwise speak.

Marie Elise was not far behind, bringing with her two other women from houses one and three. Together, they lifted manman into her bed, ordering Libète to hold the wet compress to her mother’s forehead and sing her a song.

Marie Elise and the two other neighbors now stood outside the curtained door, whispering while Libète did as told. She strained to listen to their low voices but couldn’t make out their words over her own raspy singing. She sang several songs while her mind played through past memories like a film reel.

Unlike many women, her mother Sophia had given birth to only a single child, to Libète. She was a special child, her mother said, because she came on the first day of the year, New Year’s Day, but more importantly for all Haitians, Independence Day. The rallying cry of the Haitian slaves who revolted against their French masters was purloined from the French revolutionaries who rose up only a few years before: “
liberte, egalite, fraternite
.” Manman had later told her that of the three, she thought “Libète” was the most fitting for the name of her little girl.

She heard the other two women split off, leaving Marie Elise to re-enter the house and sit with Libète and her mother. The woman put one arm around Libète and took the rag from her hand, wetting Sophia’s brow herself. She joined Libète’s quiet melody, rocking the girl softly. Her voice had a remarkable purity, smooth like a silken dress, a strange gift entrusted to an old woman in a distant corner of Haiti. She continued her singing as she placed the compress back into Libète’s small hand, patted the girl’s head, and began busying herself about the room. She put on water for tea over a small charcoal stove and prepared new rice brought from her own house. Manman had not eaten since that morning.

Libète leaned into her mother’s ear.

— You are so weak, she whispered. Are you leaving me?

No response came. Libète sat with the silence.

Manman was already alone at the time Libète was born. The girl had known no father and had no other family. Her grandfather died from a failed heart before her birth. He left this home that they now occupied, as well as the goats that provided their livelihood. Libète had asked where her father was last year, at the age of six. The question saddened her mother, so she did not ask it again.

— Manman, please, she said. Are you leaving me?

— I — she gasped — believe I am. And I am so scared.

—
Then don’t go
.

Marie Elise’s song still floated around the room, caressing them.

— My body fails me—this sickness…

Libète clung to her mother.

— But, she rasped. You will not be alone, Libète. You will have Marie Elise, and God.

— Manman, they aren’t you.

—
Cherie
, all will be well.

Marie Elise realized they were speaking and stopped her song. She came close, firm hands for Sophia and Libète’s shoulders.

— Libète, do not strain your mother by making her speak. Give her your words instead.

Libète looked up, biting her cheek to quell her tears.

— Sing for her again, Marie Elise insisted. Your voice is prettier than mine.

Libète did. She sang songs from church, others to which she didn’t know all the words, and simple songs every Haitian child knows. Before long, she was improvising lyrics and melodies dedicated to her mother, songs of gratitude for her life and goodness, her kindness and love, because all of the lyrics of all the other songs could not say the things that young Libète now bore inside her.

The songs soon stopped.

Libète’s mother was dead within the hour.