Haiti Noir

Thick mud clogged Foufoune’s mouth, her nostrils, her ears. Her head was heavy with mud-was it mud? She could not move her legs. Dear God, help me, she tried to say, but the words could not make it past the gunk in her throat. She attempted to lift her hands toward the strange dappled light filtering out of the darkness, but the movement caused her to sink even deeper.

Miriam covered the hole with a sheet of plywood. Soon Jean-Jean would pour concrete, turning the latrine into a memory. She sighed heavily as she returned to the house. Jean-Jean was standing like a shadow on the porch, waiting for her to give him the word. The sooner he started, the sooner he would be done. The sooner he would be paid.

“Everyone is gone,” he said.

“Then get to work,” Miriam told him. It had been a long day. She was tired, but took comfort in knowing that her mother and sister had both returned home to her in Puits Blain. This time to stay.

DEPARTURE LOUNGE BY NADINE PINEDE

Cap Haitien

Drenched in sweat. A bad idea to wear black cotton, even if it hides stains. A worse idea to lie to my boss at The Well-Seasoned Traveler and tell him I’m fluent in Creole. So he booked me as a private tour guide for Miranda Wolcott, who has her own show on the Food Network. The best thing about her show is that huge house in Westport. Now she’s writing a cookbook on “Caribbean fusion,” and she wants to include Haiti.

I’ve been waiting at Toussaint Louverture International Airport an hour to meet her flight coming in from Kennedy before we fly north together to Cap Haitien. We have only three days, which is way too short, but Miranda has to be back in time to tape her Easter special. We’re traveling with two Haitians from Plant for Peace, some nonprofit group. Not that anyone can seriously believe planting trees can change the world. Anyway, they’re taking care of security, plus the van and driver.

There was no way I would tell anyone my real reason for coming. What could I say? My dead grandmother told me to do it? It started like this: A few months ago, my phone rang in the middle of the night. I picked it up and heard those bleeps you get when someone’s trying to send you a fax. So I lurched to the fax machine, thinking it must be a last-minute itinerary. All I got was a blank sheet.

First thing in the morning, I called New York and asked them what was so important that they tried to fax me in the middle of the night. Josette, the new executive assistant from Paris, was as charming as usual, but she insisted no one from the office had sent me anything yesterday. She liked to speak French to me so she could correct my pronunciation. A nice way of feeling instantly superior.

Then my mother called. She’d just been to church to light a candle for Grandmère Lucille who died two years ago on that day. We talked about her for a while. I was just about to hang up when out of curiosity I asked her what time of day Grandmère Lucille died.

“Three-thirty. Why?”

“In the morning, right?”

“Of course. You don’t remember how we tried your cell?” I’d turned it off after a fourteen-hour day dealing with one client’s stolen luggage and another’s food poisoning, and then that valerian tea had knocked me out. One of my biggest regrets.

“No reason. I have to go now. Love you. Bye.” I looked at the fax. The time stamp was three-thirty a.m.

The next night I dreamed Grandmère Lucille was angry with me, but she wouldn’t tell me why. Then I dreamed she was crossing the street, only it was a street in Haiti, and she was waving over at me to join her, but my street was in New York and there was too much traffic. When it was finally safe for me to cross over, she was gone.

After a month of this, I couldn’t take it anymore.

Which is why I lied to get this job. That, and the fact that bankruptcy is staring me in the face. And I have no idea how I’ll make it through this week.

The news is bad. Haiti is suffering the worst drought in years. The rainy season is months away, yet people still pray for a miracle. Haiti’s floods are as violent as its politics, sweeping away entire villages. What used to be forest is now something more like a desert. There’s a Haitian proverb for hard, brutal rain during bright sunshine. The devil is beating his mother. Grandmère Lucille explained that one for me. The sunshine is the devil laughing, and the raindrops are his mother’s tears.