Learning of my intestinal misadventures
the hotel owner advises a rigorous diet.
I should stay in my room for the time being.
If only to be close to the bathroom.
Bored with the prison of my room,
I go down to the hotel bar.
A little TV perched on a shelf
is broadcasting the funeral of that young musician
killed last night in a car crash.
People are no longer used to
death by natural causes
if a spectacular collision
can be considered
as a natural not a political cause.
I read in the paper
that there were five of them in the car
but we’ll remember the one whose
fiancée killed herself when she heard the news.
To remain in popular memory
events must have brutal connections.
Love riding on death.
It’s true I pay attention only to the
apocalyptic images that cross my field of vision.
I don’t listen to rumors and I’m indifferent to ideology.
Diarrhea is my only involvement
in Haitian reality.
From time to time the old servant woman, not as old as the owner but more workworn, brings me a very bitter liquid to drink. The older the women are, the more unpalatable their remedies. The owner whispers to me to pour it down the sink and go on taking my medicine. She recommends rest — the country won’t disappear in a week. How can I explain to her that time has become an obsession for me? We are not living in the same time frame even if we are in the same room. The past, though it defines how we make sense of the present, does not have the same weight for everyone.
I turn in circles in this room.
My security perimeter
is shrinking ever smaller.
I’ll write a book about life
around the hotel.
A man by the hotel entrance
looks at me a while
though he can’t quite remember who I am.
He reminds me of someone too.
It takes us five minutes to
bring blurry images from the past to the surface.
To think we were inseparable at one time.
We smile, then say goodbye.
As if we had never seen each other.
The only way to preserve the little that’s left.
This narrow street
was a wide avenue
in my memory.
Only the thick bougainvillea bush
remains the same.
I used to hide behind it
to watch Lisa who
I was already in love with.
I notice that some details
change into emotion
depending on the color of the day.
I see yellow like a drunk man.
That’s the state of someone with a fever too.
I make myself a rum punch and lie down.
In the darkness, I feel a hand on my forehead.
I pretend to sleep.
The two old ladies are close by.
They evaluate the situation.
Nothing too serious.
The fever has broken, one of them says.
I hear them go slowly down the stairs.
Galloping Rain
Suddenly the first raindrops fall and everyone runs for shelter under the marquee of the Paramount movie house. For a while, the guy at the ticket counter must think that Godard has become the star of Port-au-Prince. Once the danger passes, I am the only one who stays to watch La Chinoise in the giant theater filled with red staved-in seats.
After the film, I want to walk in the rain.
Up ahead, kids dance
naked under a curtain of water.
The rain gallops toward me.
I hear its music.
An emotion that rises up from childhood.
I go to those kids
playing soccer
in the rain.
Time is fluid.
It’s not that easy
to be in the same place
as your body.
Space and time united.
My mind begins to find rest.
Recovered is the primitive energy
I thought I’d lost
and the wonderment
I felt so long ago
watching the red top
that consumed my childhood
as it turned so fast before my wondering eyes.
Early in the morning
the little girl tries
to light the fire
to make the coffee
that will begin the day
for so many.
We climbed and climbed
the flank of this deforested mountain.
Our necks sweaty.
Noon beating in our throats.
Then at the summit, we discovered
the sea languorously
stretched out along the bay
like a courtesan
on her day off.
Nature immobile.
The sky
the sea
the sun
the stars
and the mountains.
I’d see the same thing
if I returned in a century.
I stand for a while
in this fine drizzle,
my face lifted to the sky.
Naked children from nearby streets
come and encircle me
as if I were a strange apparition.
I speak to them in Creole but that doesn’t work.
Their astonishment keeps me at a distance.
That’s when I understand
that speaking Creole is not enough
to become a Haitian.
In fact it’s too vast a name
to apply to real life.
You can be Haitian only outside of Haiti.
In Haiti people try to find out
if they’re from the same city
the same sex
the same generation
the same religion
the same neighborhood as others.
Those young boys who danced naked
in the rain, I decide
as I go back to the hotel,
did not want any adults to join their game.
Childhood is an exclusive club.
A Carefree Young Woman
I arrive at the hotel completely soaked and find my sister deep in conversation with the owner. We go up to my room so I can change. She stopped by after work to check up on me because my mother was starting to worry. In a dream she pictured me in some danger. That’s because now I’m in her sensitive zone. During the years I spent in Montreal, she never seemed so concerned as she is now when I’m only ten minutes away. You’re wrong, my sister tells me, she’s been worrying ever since you left. I’ll go see her tomorrow. My sister isn’t fooled by my mother’s subtle emotional blackmail. She knows her well. She has to come home at the same time every day, otherwise my mother gets it into her head to go looking for her in the streets of Port-au-Prince. How do you search for someone in a city of more than two million? My mother does just that. And nine times out of ten, she’ll find my sister.
One of my aunts told me that back when my father was still there, my mother was a carefree young woman. Capricious even. She lost her job after her husband left. She expected as much, but she always thought she’d find something in the private sector. But the dictator had erased the line between public and private. There was nothing but Duvalier, everywhere. Even behind closed doors. People whispered that he could hear what was being said in the bedroom. All territories belonged to him. That was the beginning of my mother’s long descent. It took decades of anxiety, frustration, humiliation and daily struggle to turn this proud and resistant woman into the fragile, worried little bird she has become.
My father always wanted my mother to join him. Despite her wild need to see him again, she did not want her children to grow up in exile. She wanted to give us a sense of country. One night when I was sleeping near her, I heard her murmur in a soft voice that she’d love to touch his face one last time. My father’s features were imprinted on her retina. She missed the weight of his body. She held fast for nearly half a century, divided between her man, her children and her country. She had all of them at once for only a brief time.