Jean-Alexi didn’t leave but neither did he touch her. She wanted to be touched by someone she chose. Nothing more than that. Too much. Instead they lived chastely side by side in the abandoned house for a couple of days. It was the happiest time of Marie’s life. One night after he took her out for a big dinner at a friend’s restaurant, they lay in bed and held hands.
“That day on the beach I told you about?” she said.
“Listening.”
“You were so beautiful that day. I wanted you for mwen boyfriend, but you don’t even look.”
Jean-Alexi smiled and closed his eyes. “You were just a girl-child, I think.”
He leaned over to kiss her, then kissed her more. “I’m leaving here,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said, and covered his mouth with hers. She made love to a man of her choosing. This is it, she thought, this is what it should be. The other times were such a sad fake. Women did it to eat, but why did the men buy? Compared to the real, it was worse than nothing.
After a time, the moon drifted up, and she was so peaceful in the quiet room, she fell asleep. In the morning, she woke up, and Jean-Alexi was gone.
* * *
After Jean-Alexi left, something hardened inside Marie. She went to a higher-class madam who paid off Madame Zo, and soon she was walking the fancy streets of Pétionville. Jean-Alexi’s prophecy haunted her — she wasn’t going to let the life eat her up. She saved to buy one expensive outfit, and once well-dressed, she worked her way into the restaurants. She would sit alone and order dinner and hardly ever was she alone by the time she finished, check taken care of.
A French aid worker took a fancy to her after several times together and made a deal to have her to himself when he was in town. He was an older, important man in local politics; she heard him give interviews on the radio, speaking of aid and saving the Haitian people. Although he did not care enough to keep Marie his when he was gone, he insisted on owning her body when he was there.
He would arrive and open his rented apartment that remained empty and locked against her while he was gone. Each day when he left, he turned the key from the outside, imprisoning her no matter how she argued that she would like to take a walk or visit with a friend. When he returned, he filled a washbasin with warm, soap-filled water and motioned Marie over. He bathed her as gently as a mother: her feet, her elbows, behind the ears, although she had already made herself clean for him. Then he would have her spread her legs apart, and he would rub only there, and at that moment he changed into lover. He brought her food, delicious food, and took pleasure in watching her eat, sometimes feeding her himself, but each day he brought less, so that finally Marie was starving even as she ate.
She could have tried to jump out the window, but she would only have succeeded in breaking her neck. And what was she escaping to? She could have pounded and yelled at the door, but the crafty landlady was against her. People’s hearts tend to understand the side with money, the side that pays the bills. What is another young, ruined girl, after all?
* * *
Often the Frenchman drank in the small room, and the alcohol would make him homesick for Cannes, for his wife and two boys.
“Why don’t you stay home then?” Marie pouted.
He narrowed his eyes at her, as if considering the implications of the question. “Because I never love them as much as when I am here.”
“Tanpi, too bad,” she said, smirking, and then he would hit her. It always ended like this, and so after a while she found herself hurrying to this point to get it over.
Afterward, he would be filled with remorse and passion. His eyes would tear, and he would give her extra gourdes to buy herself something nice. “You don’t understand, ma petite nègresse. I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.”
Marie wondered at the horror of this being true.
One time only the Frenchman took her on a trip out of the capital. They traveled to the coast, to a resort on the beach where one of his UN buddies was giving a party. Marie was excited because this appeared a step in making their relationship public and permanent. He parked the car in a gravel lot with a long dirt track to the beach, fenced jungle on either side so the locals were kept out.
As they walked, small girls appeared from behind the trees and pressed against the fence, holding bunches of bananas. When the Frenchman came close, they began their chants: “Baa-naaan-nan. Baaa-nan-naan.” Up and down the road they sang like birds, small girls who reminded Marie of herself at seven or eight years old. Would they, too, eventually become the girls moaning and pleading in the dark along the Champs de Mars?
The Frenchman laughed and pointed, thinking their hawking charming, but Marie shook with fury. She hissed at them, “Pe la! Shut it!” But of course the girls saw her nice dress, her well-fed stomach, and wanted that for themselves, ignoring her.
Finally the Frenchman chose an especially scrawny girl who looked half-starved and bought the largest bunch she had. When they arrived at the resort, a crowd was out on the terrace dancing. Most of the men were European; all the women were black.
“I’ve brought the banana girl,” the Frenchman announced as Marie carried the bunch in behind him.
She burned with humiliation, but she could do nothing. All eyes were on her, expectant, so she lifted the bananas on top of her head and danced slowly around the floor, pulling off and handing a banana to each man and woman she passed. The Frenchman clapped, delighted, but Marie understood she was nothing more than those girls standing in the dirt.
* * *
When the Frenchman wasn’t around, she often went to her father’s abandoned house. In its cloistered emptiness, she tried to see a future that wasn’t the obvious one she was headed toward. She tried to recall the days spent there with Jean-Alexi, the only bit of happiness she could summon. When the Frenchman returned to the island the next time, she wore her best dress, and as soon as he had a few drinks, she broached her plan.
“I’d like to go to France.”
“Yes?”
“Could you help me? I want maybe to be a teacher, like my maman.”
“A teacher doesn’t have a pute for a daughter.”
She wanted to slap him across the face, but she knew it would cost more than the momentary satisfaction was worth. “That’s the problem with you people. You believe history only moves in one direction. Sometimes it slides backwards, sometimes it just gets mashed up.”
“I like you right here. Waiting for me.”
* * *
Next, Marie turned to her only other hope, Uncle Thibant. Since he couldn’t read, she hired a messenger to tell him her request — pay for her boat passage to Miami or she would come to the village and tell everyone what Tante Josie had done to her. Not only that, Marie would be sure to get her fired from the pink house. “No matter what it takes, I will ruin Tante, tell him that. But tell him I love him.”
When Uncle Thibant showed up in the capital, he looked older and more frightened than she remembered. It was his first time in Port-au-Prince. She took him out for dinner, and he fidgeted, not eating a bite. “I never knew what she done to you.”
“You knew, or you didn’t want to know. But I never blamed you, Thibant. I figure you and me are just the weak in the world.”