Haiti Noir

These words started a memory flood and I could clearly see the cane field and the old woman who had appeared from nowhere in front of me; the steps and clinking of the chain made her unmistakable. There stood Maloulou, tall as a coconut tree, eyes bright like the stars above, with a metal collar connected to a chain that ran all the way to one of her feet. Without giving me time to catch my breath, take in the realization that I was nose-to-nose with her, or dig into the blindness-inducing mixture to execute the plan that I had rehearsed hundreds of times in my head, she grabbed my left arm and asked, looking down at me, in a voice as big as she was, “Why did you follow me?”

I remember stammering the words, “I need… help…” while remaining mesmerized by finally being in the presence of the one who has inhabited Lakou 22 before it was Lakou 22; the one whom the people have named, accepted as just another neighbor, feared, and blamed for undoing their lives and taking away their children.

“Children should not be out at this time of night. And those who don’t listen pay for their stubbornness,” she said in a hoarse, ancient voice that sounded like the scolding of a hundred worried grandmothers.

Since I had gotten a bit light-headed from the heavy and pungent smell of asafetida that enveloped the air around her, I mumbled some inaudible words.

“You can follow me, but you can’t speak,” she said, peering down at me, her head wrapped in a tiyon, then beginning to move away.

“Uncle Solon,” I remember stuttering, determined to tell Maloulou why I had followed her. “You have to liberate Mother and me from Uncle Solon.” Stunned and still immobilized by fear, I managed to add in a feeble voice, “Telling Mother how he touches my bouboun when her eyes are turned away would have caused so much… more pain…”

Maloulou stopped and turned again to look at me, her face softly lit by the half-moon overhead, revealing tender and clear eyes that seemed to see right into the profoundest corner of my soul, and let out a big sigh.

From one of the many pockets in her long dress, she drew something out and sprinkled it atop my head and on my face, saying, “He will never touch you again.”

I continued crying as Maloulou patted my head with her heavy tree branch-like hands to calm me down. Her powdery potions on my face and her words must have had an impact. I could hear, but was no longer able to respond to her as she lunged into a story about a horse and life.

“Just remember, my child, you die a slave if you let this horse guide you. You must command the horse, through the mountains of life and the valleys of death. Just be sure to always do things that will put you on the good side of life,” she said. “Sa n fè se li n wè, we always reap what we sow, my child. I cannot leave you here now, can I?” She seemed to be concerned by my presence. Tightening her calloused left hand on my arm, she ploughed through the cane; the machete in her right hand pushing the blistery leaves away. At the end of the field, there was a small assembly waiting; even the mastiffs and bloodhounds were there, tranquil. Standing a short distance from the crowd, she asked twice, “Sa ki la?” What’s there? And an echo of voices responded, “Bwa n ap kloure.” We are nailing wood.

“Good. I am the woman of the mountain with no name who Makandal sent,” Maloulou said, still holding on to me. The name Makandal reverberated in a dizzying swirl in my head. Ma-kan-dal, I replayed, visualizing the bench way in back of the class where I sat, and Mr. Laborde’s mouth as he gave a history lesson one afternoon long ago.

“François Makandal: man, myth, but surely rebellious slave, who was burned at the stake, just like Jeanne D’Arc,” he had said in quick French to show the ease with which he spoke the language. “Makandal’s followers helped in killing some six thousand slave-owners in his six years of rebellion,” he added in his showy style. “Makandal freed himself and rose to the heavens, perhaps still roaming the Haitian skies and forests,” he laughed, “having baffled them and even us. However, myth is sacred, impermeable even. But remember, a myth is just a myth, a figment of our imagination. See you all tomorrow,” he ended, dismissing the class.

In my mind that night, while repeating the short description of Makandal over and over in the same way that I repeated the Bible verse, trying to make it all stick in my head, I had imagined the tall, dark, and muscular Makandal in his ascension, the same way I effortlessly believed that Christ, Elijah, and the Virgin Mary went up to the skies, in flesh and blood.

That’s when I finally understood Maloulou’s question, and the answer that came back was some sort of password. It became clear that she had journeyed with me into a world and time long forgotten, misunderstood, and lost within the flimsy confines of yellowed history books.