Haiti Noir

All I want is so simple: a shower with real water pressure and an insect-free room to sleep in. But it’s hard to sleep when I can tell I have failed to impress Miranda Wolcott. I end up not sleeping and imagining all of my worst fears: flying cockroaches and rats crawling over my body and bats entangled in my hair. Did I mention how scared I am of insects and rodents?

The next morning we travel to the border, then down to Hinche. We visit Alexis’s cooperatives and hear long talks about the hairy Creole pigs and their importance to small farmers, the dangers of deforestation, the need for sustainable agriculture and food security. Manuel and I quickly become buddies. I sit in the front seat and chat with him as he drives us to our next destination, two pros in the travel business, trading horror stories and talking shop. Now Miranda, on the other hand, is getting the star treatment from Alexis. I wonder if they know each other from somewhere else, the way they’re so chummy. Maybe he’s softening her up for the Big Ask. Sure. That’s what I tell myself when I get annoyed at how he fawns over her.

As we’re standing on the banks of a river that is shallow from the drought, Alexis looks more serious than I’ve seen him. “This is the Massacre River, where in 1937, the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the slaughter of at least twenty thousand Haitians.” No one says a word. We stare at the river. “It was a genocide, an act of ethnic cleansing. This river ran red with Haitian blood.”

I feel a sick heaviness in my chest and try not to picture bloated corpses floating past us. No one moves-as if in silent agreement, we want to honor the dead. Then Alexis turns around and leads us across the river, hopping from stone to stone. On the other side, we push through tall stalks of sugarcane and stop in silence at a scarred tree.

“Here was a Dominican prison,” Alexis says. “Only this tree survived, a silent witness to history.”

We finally reach an unassuming wire fence. A factory billows smoke in the distance.

“This is the real border,” explains Alexis, “but most people don’t realize that.”

There’s a group of farmers up ahead, waiting for us. I feel lightheaded from the sun and my exhaustion, and now I’m supposed to say something to introduce myself. The phrases I copied from the Creole grammar book are right here in my tiny reporter’s notebook. When my turn comes, I stand up.

Sweat tickles the hairs on my upper lip. I clear my throat. “Mwen rele Fabienne,” I start to read aloud, but my hands are trembling and the words are swimming off the paper and sliding into the earth. I clear my throat and squint at my notebook. I try to hear my mother’s voice speaking Creole, to imitate what she would have said. It’s no use. My voice trembles while I sniff back tears.

“You’re crying,” says one of the farmers. I look up and recognize his face. Earlier, when we were walking through his land, he had spotted me and called out in Creole, “You’re Haitian, aren’t you? I can tell by your beautiful skin.” But now his voice is sharp: “You’re crying, but we’re the ones with a reason to cry.”

I have a reason too. I can understand my parents’ language but can’t use it here, now, for a simple greeting. I can translate long speeches from Creole to English for Miranda, yet can’t string together one simple sentence when I need to. I am functionally illiterate in what should be my mother tongue, a fumbling tourist in what should be my homeland. The farmers stare at me in silence, and I look down at the ground, wishing it would swallow me up.

The farmers begin to tell stories of being threatened and forced to sell their land so a free-trade zone can be built. “We will fight for this land until we die!” they yell, waving their machetes. But some say they’re afraid of what may happen if they don’t sell. Alexis listens to all of it along with us, then he asks if there’s a way they can put their heads together.

“What people learn with their eyes, they don’t forget,” he says. He holds up a small poster of a big fish ready to eat a little fish, with other small fish swimming away in fear. His next poster shows all the little fish biting the tail of the big one. “Are fish more intelligent than people?” he asks.

The farmers murmur, shaking their heads.

“You need to unite in your battle,” he adds, “then we can accompany you.”

The farmers applaud Alexis and gather around him, all talking at once. Miranda is beaming, like a woman in love.

The next day we survive the bruising ride over bumpy dirt roads to Hinche, where I volunteer to help out with interpretation for a radio interview in French.

“Are you Haitian?” the interviewer asks me.

I pause before replying. I mention that my grandmother Lucille was from a village near here.