Haiti Noir

“It wasn’t a show.” My voice was smaller than usual. My mother and father took turns reassuring me. Of course it was all just a show, there’s nothing to be scared of. Their words were like water trickling over stone. Later, when I told her about it, Grandmère Lucille said I was right, it was a good sign. But she never did explain what she meant. That’s the way she was, always an enigma.

If only Grandmère Lucille could see me now. I have her spiral notebook, where she wrote her unsent letters and jotted down the names of herbs and what they do. There is a family legend that when Grandmère Lucille worked as a maid in Haiti, she had used her leaf medicine to save a black American woman’s life. Who knows? I might have to save someone’s life too. When I once asked her about it, Grandmère Lucille replied with a typical Haitian proverb: “Only the knife should know the heart of the yam.” Another secret she would never tell, and now it’s too late. It was frustrating always being told to mind my own business, when all I wanted was to make sense of things. Still, I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and this little notebook is all I have.

A woman calls my name, and my heart sinks. Her hair is cut in a smooth white bob. She’s slender and prettier than the photos I saw online.

“Fabienne, is it? Fabienne, I’m terribly sorry for the wait,” she says with that Boston Brahmin accent that immediately makes me think of the Kennedys. No surprise there. Miss Porter’s, Radcliffe, English, magna cum laude.

We shake hands. Her sunglasses are propped jauntily on her head, showing off gray-green eyes, those high cheekbones that age gracefully, and lightly freckled skin without makeup or a trace of sheen. Even more annoying is that she’s actually smaller than she appears on television. I suck in my stomach and straighten my back.

Her sleeveless white linen shift is completely unwrinkled. The dress I instantly recognize as Eileen Fisher, that New York designer whose cheapest organic cotton tanks are still fifty bucks. The kind of clothes Philippe’s wife buys all the time. Way out of my league.

“Anmwe!” a woman near the front door screams. Nobody moves to help her. “Anmwe!” she screams again, before slumping down in a chair to cry. She probably turned away for less than a second. Now her suitcase is gone.

When I glance over at Miranda, she is yawning. Then she turns her back to the front door. She looks like she’s studying the rusty single-propeller plane idling on the runway, ready for boarding.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” I hear myself say in a forced bright voice as I pick up my scuffed backpack to line up behind her for another passport check. We are last in line and will probably have to sit together on the plane.

“So where are you from?” she asks me.

“I’m Haitian.”

“Of course you are.”

What does she mean by that? Something like rage rises in me. There are some clients I know will push my buttons. She probably hasn’t read a thing I sent to her personal assistant. An hour late and she just waltzes in completely unruffled and expects it all to fall into place because she has someone like me sweating the details. Naturally, she’s one of those lucky people who can’t imagine what it means to worry about mundane details like money. Which is never far from my mind these days.

“Our neighbor’s nanny is from Haiti. Solange.”

Please don’t ask me if I know her.

Miranda continues in her blithe staccato: “How long did you live here in Haiti?”

The short answer is “not long,” but I never say this right away. I first explain that my parents were born and raised in Haiti, where I was born. Grandmère Lucille took care of me until I was two, while my parents finished college and looked for jobs. Then we moved to the U.S., where my classmates asked me if I stuck pins into Vodou dolls. Oh, and if we were responsible for AIDS.

Yet wherever we lived, our house was filled with Haitian music, proverbs, legends, paintings, sculptures, and the earthy scent of rice with wild black mushrooms. Living in Haiti was a state of mind, and my parents were ambivalent immigrants who passionately nurtured their memories. Even so, no matter how hard they tried, each passing year felt like the tide ebbing, making them strangers to their own homeland. Philippe and I ended up speaking English at school and at home, and hearing Creole only when my parents spoke to each other. We always understood what they were saying, even though we couldn’t speak the language ourselves. The technical term is auditory comprehension, not the same thing as fluency.

It’s only three days. I can fake anything for that long.