Haiti Noir

Word scurried via scared rèstavèk children all the way to the stalls lining the cemetery’s wall, where Gwo Manman’s friends sold bottles of a cure-all the old woman swore by. The oil might not have extended her life by a minute, but just before she died Gwo Manman had looked for the last bottle of lwil maskreti she owned and clutched it as if it would go with her to the next place: the Last Department. The thick brown oil did nothing but spill on Foufoune’s pretty rug. Ki te mele m. She didn’t care.

***

Grudgingly, Miriam shut down her business and opened the house to visitors who came to shake their heads and grunt. Je wè, bouch pe. What was there to say? Gwo Manman was made to leave her home and die in a place whose name was like rock salt inside her mouth. The Gwo Manman everyone knew never would have allowed herself to live or die anywhere but in Puits Blain.

Miriam dutifully wore a black dress and positioned herself near the doorway to welcome visitors/spectators and set the tone for the gathering-a dark theater in which she would be a reluctant star. All eyes would be on her tonight. Po dyab, pitit. Take heart, my dear! The uncooked goat meat she had prepared went to Jean-Jean, a tip for the job she hired him to do.

“Mèsi, mèsi, Miss Miriam,” he had said, quivering at his good fortune. Miriam had also thrown in the change he returned from the sacks of cement she sent him to buy. She would have him seal the latrine after the funeral. “Mèsi! Mèsi!” Jean-Jean sometimes lost his stutter when he saw money.

There were a few faces in the house Miriam did not recognize. Death dragged impunity in its wake, so no one was turned away. Gwo Manman would have been pleased. The more mourners the merrier!

Faces brightened when the subject inevitably turned to Rhum Barbancourt. Miriam had always suspected that their mother’s delectation for rum was another reason why Foufoune had flown down to Puits Blain years prior, packed up a few of Gwo Manman’s clothes, and taken her away.

“I don’t want to live in America,” Gwo Manman had protested. “I am too old for that. What will I do there? I’m afraid of the cold. I don’t want the snow. I want to live in my country.”

“Gwo Manman, please.” Foufoune had swatted the air around her with dismissive hands. “Look around you! Puits Blain is all dust, don’t you see? You’ll be happier with me in America.” Besides-this she had thought but dared not say- I work too hard to have my mother live like this. Foufoune sent enough money monthly to keep her mother living very well, but Gwo Manman insisted on sitting with the stall keepers behind the cemetery. She liked the taste of Barbancourt in her mouth. She liked that wild drum music. Rumor was that she had a boyfriend. No, boyfriends-at her age! She liked to be shirtless under the noonday sun; said it had healing powers: That’s why I never get sick! she’d say.

Gwo Manman cursed the day she’d allowed Foufoune to take her away. But admitted she had been curious about the foreign place too. She had dreamed of being able to say that she went there once. Only once. And came back. But Foufoune had tricked her. There was never a return ticket.

Foufoune arrived several days later with Dona Malbranche’s body in a gorgeous coffin.

“You look well,” Miriam remarked upon seeing her sister for the first time since she came and took Gwo Manman away years ago. Not a single crease in Foufoune’s flawless features. Hair, as usual, in a classic chignon. Foufoune had always been the beautiful sister, “the one who’s going to amount to something,” everyone, even Gwo Manman, would say.

“And you haven’t changed,” Foufoune said, eying the tufts of unruly gray around Miriam’s temples, the head tie she must have borrowed from a charcoal vendor, the rust of subpar living in her sunken eyes. Koshon Mawon! The words tickled Foufoune’s lips, but she did not speak them. There were stains on Miriam’s skirt: blood, no doubt-probably from cutting off fish heads to make soup. Koshon Mawon! Long ago when they attended Anne Marie Javouhey elementary school, Foufoune and her girlfriends had made up a song which they liked to sing whenever they saw Miriam approaching:

Miriam Malbranche is dumber than a twig
Her mother, her sister:
No one wants her
Not even a wild pig…

Miriam threw her arms around her sister, saying: “We have only each other now.”

Foufoune, in turn, kissed her on both cheeks.

That night while Foufoune rested, Miriam paced under the flamboyant tree. Gwo Manman did not die peacefully- that much she knew. She suffered. Li soufri. Miriam held her belly. She wanted to scream, but swallowed the pain.