Part 5 (1/2)

”Never the Americans in Haiti again,” shouted one man. ”Remember what they did in the twenties. They treated our people like animals. They abused the konbit system and they made us work like slaves.”

”Roads, we need roads,” said another man. ”At least they gave us roads. My mother was killed in a ferry accident. If we had roads, we would not need to put crowded boats into the sea, just to go from one small village to another. A lot of you, when you go home, you have to walk from the village to your house, because there are no roads for cars.”

”What about the boat people?” added a man from a table near the door. ”Because of them, people can't respect us in this country. They lump us all with them.”

”All the brains leave the country,” Marc said, adding his voice to the melee.

”You are insulting the people back home by saying there's no brains there,” replied a woman from a table near the back. ”There are brains who stay.”

”But they are crooks,” Marc said, adding some spice to the argument.

”My sister is a nurse there with the Red Cross,” said the woman, standing up. ”You call that a crook? What have you done for your people?”

For some of us, arguing is a sport. In the marketplace in Haiti, whenever people were arguing, others would gather around them to watch and laugh at the colorful language. People rarely hit each other. They didn't need to. They could wound just as brutally by cursing your mother, calling you a s.e.xual misfit, or accusing you of being from the hills. If you couldn't match them with even stronger accusations, then you would concede the argument by keeping your mouth shut.

Marc decided to stay out of the discussion. The woman continued attacking him, shouting that she was tired of cowardly men speaking against women who were proving themselves, women as brave as stars out at dawn.

My mother smiled at the woman's colorful words. It was her turn to stand up and defend her man, but she said nothing. Marc kept looking at her, as if waiting for my mother to argue on his behalf, but my mother picked up the menu, and ran her fingers down the list of dishes.

My mother introduced me to the waiter when he came by to take her order. He looked at us for a long time. First me, then my mother. I wanted to tell him to stop it. There was no resemblance between us. I knew it.

It was an eternity before we were served. Marc complained about his boudin when it came.

”I can still taste the animal,” he said ”What do you expect?” my mother asked. ”It is a pig's blood after all.”

”It's not well done,” he said, while raising the fork to his mouth. ”It is an art to make boudin. There is a balance. At best it is a very tight kind of sausage and you would never dream of where it comes from.”

”Who taught you to eat this way?” my mother asked.

”Food is a luxury,” hesaid, ”but we can not allow ourselves to become gluttons or get fat. Do you hear that, Sophie?”

I shook my head yes, as though I was really very interested. I ate like I had been on a hunger strike, filling myself with the coconut milk they served us in real green coconuts.

When they looked up from their plates, my mother and Marc eyed each other like there were things they couldn't say because of my presence. I tried to stuff myself and keep quiet, pretending that I couldn't even see them. My mother now had two lives: Marc belonged to her present life, I was a living memory from the past.

”What do you want to be when you grow up?” Marc asked me. He spoke to me in a tone of voice that was used with very young children or very old animals.

”I want to do dactylo,” I said, ”be a secretary.”

He didn't seem impressed.

”There are a lot of opportunities in this country,” he said. ”You should reconsider, unless of course this is the pa.s.sion of your life.”

”She is too young now to know,” my mother said. ”You are going to be a doctor,” she told me.

”She still has some time to think,” Marc said. ”Do you have a boyfriend, Sophie?”

”She is not going to be running wild like those American girls,” my mother said. ”She will have a boyfriend when she is eighteen.”

”And what if she falls in love sooner?” Marc pushed.

”She will put it off until she is eighteen.”

We washed down our meal with watermelon juice. Tante Atie always said that eating beets and watermelon would put more red in my blood and give me more strength for hard times.

Chapter 8.

School would not start for another two months. My mother took me to work with her every day. The agency she worked for did not like it, but she had no choice but to take me with her. After all, she could not very well leave me home alone.

On her day job at the nursing home, she cleaned up after bedridden old people. Some of the people were my grandmother's age, but could neither eat nor clean themselves alone. My mother removed their bed pads and washed their underarms and legs, then fed them at lunchtime.

I spent the days in the lounge watching a soap opera while an old black lady taught me how to knit a scarf.

The night job was much better. The old lady was asleep when my mother got there and took over the s.h.i.+ft from someone else. My mother would go into the living room and open a cot for me to sleep on. Most nights, she slept on the floor in the old lady's room in case something happened in the middle of the night.

One night near the end of the summer, I asked her to stay with me for a little while. I was tired of being alone and I was missing home.

”If the lady screams, we will hear it,” I said.

”She can't scream,” my mother said. ”She had a stroke and she can't speak.”

She made some tea and stayed with me for a while, anyway.

”I don't sleep very much at night,” she said. ”Otherwise this would be very hard work to do.”

I felt so sorry for her. She looked very sad. Her face was cloudy with fatigue even though she kept reapplying the cream she had bought to lighten her skin.

She laid out a comforter on the floor and stretched her body across it.

”I want you to know that this will change soon when I find a job that pays both for our expenses and for my mother's and Atie's.”

”I wish I could help you do one of your jobs,” I said.

”But I want you to go to school. I want you to get a doctorate, or even higher than that.”

”I am sorry you work so hard,” I said. ”I never realized you did so much.”

”That's how it is. Life is no vacation. If you get your education, there are things you won't have to do.”

She turned over on her back and stared direcdy into my face, something she did not do very often.

It had been a month since I had seen Marc. I wondered if he had gone away, but I didn't want to ask her in case he had and in case it was because of me.