Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti (32 page)

— Would it be alright, he asked, and it’s fine if not, but would it be alright—if we started our lessons once more?

Libète offered a tight-lipped smile before moving toward the door. I’d like that. Very much.

She patted Titid on the head, lifted the sagging curtain, and gave a parting wave before vanishing into the pitch night.

Nèg pa fye nèg depi nan Ginen

Black people don’t trust each other since Guinea

News of its arrival broke a week before landfall.

A heavy tropical storm called Tomas is on a direct course for Haiti. The skies already pour everything they can, and camp life is a sodden mess.

“Move to a safe place,” the international organizations blare from loud speakers. “Stay out of the open,” the camp leaders say. “Beware of mudslides and flash floods,” the radio broadcasters admonish. They do not have to live in the muck, mud, and wind.

When the rain relented, other camp residents busied themselves with disassembling tents and struggling to protect their meager possessions. Libète had other concerns.

She set out after a breakfast of stale bread and morning chores to discover more about the stolen girls. Her investigation was not sophisticated. She started by simply asking around for the names she had heard: Patricia, Ti Joassaint, Jesula, and Nathalie. Posing as a worried relative looking for a missing cousin worked well; people were quick to speak to a desperate little girl.

What she discovered was not too helpful. Jesula was about 20 years old and was very pretty, the missing woman’s immediate neighbor Madeleine said. She last saw Jesula as she was heading out to a club, about three weeks ago. Madeleine believed it was actually a brothel but never raised the question. No one had missed Jesula at first because she was sometimes gone a day or two at a time. Madeleine reported her absence to the police who regularly drove through the camp, but she had heard nothing since. Libète asked to be directed to the missing woman’s tent, but the neighbor sighed. Both the tent and possessions had been raided. Libète thanked the weary woman and moved on.

Ti Joassaint was staying with a man named André, and a string of inquiries helped her locate their shared tent. She came upon André sitting on an upturned milk crate, sharpening a knife. He wore a yellowed tank top and had bulging muscles and several pieces of ostentatious gold jewelry
. Surely fake
, Libète thought. She set to asking him questions about his missing “friend.” All he offered in return were evasive answers followed by a few choice words. She soon shuffled off. The thought of cursing back crossed her mind, but his gleaming knife made it clear this was a bad idea.

Libète was disturbed to learn that Patricia’s shelter was a stone’s throw from her own. It sat removed from the others, on the outskirts of the encampment. Patricia had only moved there a week before being taken and was staying with two other women, distant cousins. She came upon them laying in their sweltering tent. Libète peeked inside and saw that their space was a mess, littered with cigarette butts and slop. Bottles of alcohol were strewn about too, and she saw several used condoms wallowing in the mud near the entrance. She stirred the two women, and one got up to shoo her away. The cousin’s eyes were distant, like her Uncle’s after a night of drinking, and her words came in labored clumps, nearly unintelligible. When asked about the missing girl, the other began to sob. Libète let them be.

Nathalie’s circumstances were different. Libète already knew that the girl had been living in her own tent down in a small camp that had sprung up in Bwa Nèf, this information thanks to Davidson. He was still distraught over his friend’s abduction.

Before heading to Nathalie’s camp, she decided to take a detour to first visit the girl’s family, her former neighbors from the row of homes. She mulled over what she had gleaned along the way. All of the victims were young and pretty by most accounts, and in their mid-to-late teens. They all lived in precarious situations in the camps. Some might have been selling themselves, or more charitably put, relying on sex to survive. But could it really be the same person or people behind each abduction?

— Wait! Libète! My daughter! Stop!

The call drew her out of her thoughts. She recognized the voice before she saw its owner, dismayed to see spindly-limbed René, her Uncle’s friend. He broke off a conversation with another man and made a short sprint to meet her. She stepped back two steps to keep him from coming too close.

— Libète, my dear, what are you doing here? So far from home in Twa Bebe?

— Bwa Nèf is my home. Twa Bebe is where I stay.

— Ah, of course, of course. Here, let me take your picture, child. You see, I am working for one of the
ONG
s — he tapped an ID badge clasped to his shirt — and they are having me get photographs of children.
Eligible
children! He lifted his wrist to highlight the compact camera dangling from it.

— Eligible for what?

— For school! For scholarships! This big foreign organization wants to send more girls to school. I tried to come by your Uncle’s tent earlier when I was in Twa Bebe, knowing you’d be interested, but you were out doing whatever it is you do. What good fortune you have! I can still take your picture and register you! Here, sign your name if you know how. He handed her a clipboard with several sheets of paper.

She suppressed a grimace.
Of course I can sign my name.
The top page was a list of names and ages. She saw many cursive signatures and many “Xs,” substitutes for those who still could not write. Thank you for thinking of me, she said with some sincerity as she scribbled her information. When will we have word if we are to go to school?

— Probably in a week or two. I’ll come around and let you know the results then.

René took a quick picture that captured her unsmiling face. He showed her the digital display, coming uncomfortably close to do so. Still, Libète marveled at the image. How grown she looked, and yet, waifish.

She thanked him as she stepped away, and he gave a small bow before heading the opposite direction.

To be in school again!
She appreciated Elize’s lessons, and was glad their reconciliation meant they would resume soon, but it was not the same as being in the classroom with friends.
I could always do both,
she thought. G
oing to class in the morning, and Elize’s in the afternoon
. This buoyed her spirits but also distracted her from her original weighty purpose. Refocusing, she continued on to the camp to find Nathalie’s family.

The first member she laid eyes on was its youngest, the small boy Ti Gaston. Now around three and a half, he was larger than when Libète had last seen him before the quake. His preoccupation with tormenting animals was unchanged. This time, instead of crushing ants, he ran about wildly, chasing a chicken with a stick, shouting,
I’ll kill you!

— Gaston! Libète hollered. The boy stopped and looked alarmed, as if caught committing a crime.

— Wi?

— Where is your home? Where is your mother? The boy pointed nervously to a white tent at the end of a short, uniform row. Libète thanked him and walked toward it, the boy’s mother soon popping into view. Gaston, pleased to learn he was not in trouble, raised his stick high and began chasing the terrified hen once more.

— Manman Nathalie, Libète called, raising a hand and waving as she approached. The woman was cleaning ears of corn, dropping the husks into a black plastic bucket. She acknowledged Libète with a slight nod before pausing her work.

— I’ve come to speak with you. About your daughter. About Nathalie.

Her eyes filled with hope. Have you seen her, Libète? Do you know anything about her?

Libète looked to the ground, shifting the mud with the lip of her sandal.

— I am sorry, but no.

The wounded mother gruffly resumed her shucking. I haven’t seen you since the earthquake. Why did you come if you have no news?

— I’m trying to find out more about what happened. We were all so sad to hear that she was…

Libète hesitated. She was not so good at discussing hard things.

— Taken?

— Yes, madam. Taken.

— Well I know
nothing
. Her words dripped like a bitter sap. She and I had not been speaking, you see. She was “her own woman,” she would say. “Going to live how she wanted,” she told me. I tell you, she changed. Lived only for boys—couldn’t care less about the rest of us. Flirting, riding around on motos, going to restaurants—sleeping in different tents. At sixteen, no less! Still a girl!

More husks were pulled and dropped in the bucket.

Libète didn’t know what to say. She wondered if the mother’s bitterness was because Nathalie was doing these things or if it was because her mother could no longer do them. Her weary body sagged from bearing a small army of children and the toll of decades’ worth of daily labor in the slum. Libète still saw glimmers of her past beauty. It wasn’t hard to imagine her looks rivaling those of her now-missing daughter.

— What was the last thing you two talked about? Libète blurted awkwardly.

She paused her work again, her nostrils flaring as she rifled through past memories. It was some weeks ago. She came home with these nice used clothes, these
Kennedys
, and we fought over it. I wanted to know where she got the money for them. She lied. Said something about a friend giving them to her. I said if she was holding out money from the family, then I would hold out a home for her. She wouldn’t tell the truth so I kicked her out.

— You did?

— I did. She left. I didn’t expect her to stay away—I thought she would be back the next day. But she didn’t come. I tell you, she
changed
. Was more aggressive. More manipulative. I was sick of her coming and going in the night. She stopped caring for us — her voice cracked — so I stopped caring for her…

The tirade trailed off, and she now stared into open space.

Libète realized these were the words of a guilt-ridden mother.

— It wasn’t your fault, Libète said quietly. She was taken from the street. It wasn’t her choice to leave you.

— I’m not stupid! she snapped. I know that. It was something she had gotten into, something she wouldn’t talk about, something with those men. Men like your cousin and his friends! She had been hanging about them, like a bee drunk on a flower’s pollen.

— My cousin?

— Yes. He’s been through here with his friends, you know, drumming up support for his “
kandida
.” Nathalie followed them around. Libète pondered this, the mother soon interrupting her thoughts. Why are you doing this, Libète? I remember you always getting into others’ business, but why this, why now?

She breathed deeply before locking eyes with the woman.

— An attack upon one girl, I think, is an attack upon the community. An attack against four women, well, that’s seems a war against us. So I’m choosing to get involved. Because I can. And because I should. Doing nothing, she sighed ruefully, that would mean giving up the fight.

— I’m going to teach you one of the most important things I can today, Elize says with more solemnity than usual.

Libète sits, her two fingers doing a nervous dance on her knee. He paces back and forth in the outside Sun, relying upon his cane to pivot.

— It starts with a simple phrase: “I am because we are.”

He lets the words leap into the air and hover there for Libète to consider.

She slumps, her disappointment manifest.

— While simple, Libète, it has great depth. What do you think it means?

Libète shifts on her stool in the shadow of the shack, slate in lap. She writes the words on it and looks at them. She repeats them, murmuring under her breath. Titid lays at her side, his body inflating and deflating with quiet breaths, like a balloon.

—
I am
…because
we are
. I’m not sure. Because we are, she repeats to herself. Because we are…
what
, Elize? What is the what?

— It is an ethic. Do you know what an ethic is?

She shakes her head.

— A moral principle. A way of ordering life.

She gives a dismissive shrug. I don’t understand. That means nothing to me.

— Let’s step back before we step ahead. Though we are Haitian, our heritage connects us to a much larger people. Which is that?

She touched her piece of chalk to her chin as the question rolled around her head.