Haiti Noir

Radios were forecasting a beautiful Friday morning. Not a cloud in the sky over Port-au-Prince. As for the neighborhood roosters, it seemed as if they’d been waiting for this very morning to launch their songs into the world. A multitude of cock-a-doodle-doos echoed through the neighborhood of Pacot.

Ahhhhh! Rosanna thought, as she slipped into her favorite blue jeans and an airy white cotton shirt. What a wonderful day for a trip.

Rosanna’s aunt Solange had already put the daily work in motion. The servants were all on their feet. The one responsible for sweeping the front yard was wielding his broom like a soldier answering “Taps.” Dusters in their hands, the cleaning team had started the daily routine aimed at eliminating every particle of grime resting on every surface of the property. Melanie, the cook, whose task it was to make coffee, poured spoonfuls of grainy Rebo onto a piece of muslin cloth that she used as a coffee filter. Soon enough, the aroma of coffee spread throughout the house.

“Chérie,” Aunt Solange called to Rosanna from somewhere on the property, “Melanie has already prepared you some sandwiches for the road. How about a cheese omelet before you go?”

Aunt Solange was the proud owner of two large stores in Port-au-Prince’s commercial district. The first one was a boutique with an assortment of expensive European ladies’ dresses. It was there that the elegant demoiselles of Port-au-Prince shopped for their Pierre Cardin, Escada, or Oscar de la Renta gowns, which automatically bestowed a sign of distinction on any woman who aspired to be a part of the city’s high society. In the second store, one could find a selection of luxurious home furnishings from all over the world. That was where the rich people acquired the sofas, beds, decorative lamps, modern refrigerators, and other ornaments that beautified their homes. Needless to say, Aunt Solange was wealthy. Her primary residence was in the old neighborhood of Pacot, an area full of splendid clustered gingerbreads and terraced villas that looked as though they had been sculpted out of the neighboring hills. Lovely antique furniture filled the house as in a museum. Some rare pieces from Europe and Asia made Aunt Solange’s collection one of the most valuable in the country. Paintings with themes ranging from female nudes to carnival, pieces by famous Haitian artists-including Préfète Duffaut, Bernard Séjourné, and Edouard Duval-Carrié-added the final touches. Parked in her garage were two silver cars: a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW. One would have sworn that these vehicles had never been driven through the streets of Port-au-Prince, since they remained so shiny and clean all the time, thanks in part to Solange’s young driver Da, who treated them as though they were his own.

“Ah! This omelet is so good,” Rosanna declared, sitting across an elaborately carved dining room table where she and her aunt often ate breakfast overlooking a lush hibiscus and azalea garden. “Melanie is the master of omelets.”

“Melanie is the mistress of everything,” her aunt playfully corrected her. Melanie had been cooking for Aunt Solange for more than twenty-five years now, longer than Rosanna has been alive. Melanie had started working for Solange back when Rosanna’s parents had fallen in love while pursuing their studies in engineering at the École des Sciences. They had married soon after and a year before graduation Rosanna was born. One Saturday morning, they’d decided to take a day off from studying and parenting and had left six-month-old Rosanna with Solange, who was also the baby’s godmother. A fine rain was falling on the road as they returned from the beach in the dark. The surviving passengers from the camion that hit them claimed that they never had a chance. The camion driver did not see their small jeep until the last minute; as the justice of the peace report put it, the vehicle was as flat as a communion wafer.

Solange was grateful that her brother and his wife had been wise enough to leave the child with her. Having never married and with no children of her own, she saw it as a sign that she was meant to look after the girl for the rest of her life, which is why Rosanna’s sudden desire to go on a trip alone to Les Cayes to research her mother’s roots alarmed Solange to no end. When Rosanna’s parents died, everyone had agreed that Solange was the best person to raise the girl. But now that she was a stunningly beautiful young woman-as beautiful as the corpulent nudes by Solange’s famous painters-everyone would want to claim her, including her mother’s family, who had barely even visited during the twenty-one years that Solange had been taking care of her.