Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti (35 page)

She moved tentatively, trying to spot any sign of Lionel.

— Don’t worry about him, Libète, called Marjorie, a heavyset woman who lived next to the unhappy couple. He’s been gone all day. The woman was doing the wash in front of her tent and intuited who Libète was trying to avoid.

— Thanks, Marjorie. Is Marie Rose about?

— She is. Just inside, I think.

— I’m coming! Libète heard Marie Rose’s voice sound from inside the tent. A moment later the flap pulled aside and she appeared.

— Why are you stuck in your tent? Libète asked.

Marie Rose offered a wide smile and Libète gave one in return. It was a rarity to see Marie Rose smile, especially since the incident those few weeks before. Marie Rose’s condition had improved dramatically since Lionel had beaten her, and her face was restored to its perfect, beautiful symmetry. More important than beauty, her vision had returned, just as the blan doctor had predicted.

— I stepped inside for a few minutes, to sit and rest. I have two things to give you, Libète. The child’s eyes widened. One is a piece of news—

— And the second? Libète interjected.

— A gift, for you. To thank you for your help. I’ve had to hide it from Lionel these past few weeks. Libète noticed she was holding something behind her back.

— A gift? Really? Show me!

She revealed the present. It’s a cap I knit for you, Marie Rose said.

Libète tried to hide her disappointment but failed.

Marie Rose, saddened by the reception, hid her emotions. Well, I know it’s getting too hot to wear for now, but I thought it would be good later, when it cools. You could wear it to keep your head warm and hair dry.

Libète took the deep purple cap in hand. She softened a bit.

— Thank you, Marie Rose. Really. It’s beautiful, a work of art. You’re kind to do this for me. It will be so good when cold. Libète hugged the woman around her waist and Marie Rose patted her sweetly on the back.

— Pssst! Psssst!

Marjorie was trying to signal them. They turned to look at her and saw her pointing down the lane. They peered down, shielding their eyes from the Sun and saw Lionel buying some fruit from the Queen of Spain.

Libète slipped down the tight passage between tents without a word, and Marie Rose called out.

— The news! I forgot to tell you the news! Later, Libète, later!

**

With plans scuttled twice in one day, Libète was still determined to use her free afternoon well. She had been thinking about who she might be able to help, and a place rather than a person sprang to mind.

She arrived at the hospital after the morning clinic was closed. Libète stood in the doorway for a few moments, touching the chipped paint of the wall, surveying the convalescing bodies at rest, and listening to the staff’s quiet murmuring before stepping inside.

She moved like a knowing trespasser, having neither medical need nor a patient to visit to justify her presence. She looked about for someone with authority to explain herself, but seeing none, started to look upon the faces of the sick.

An older man lay to her left, his vacant expression grabbing her attention. He stared toward the ceiling without blinking, and she watched him closely.

— Mesye, she whispered. Are you alright? Are your eyes working? I don’t see them closing.

He gave no response. She reached out and touched his hand, and he blinked before looking at her out of the corner of his eyes.

— I am alright.

— And what is on the ceiling that you are watching so closely, mesye?

— Hmm? I suppose I’m waiting for God to show his face, waiting for him to take me.

— I don’t know that you’ll find him there, but I hear he shows up in strange places. Maybe I can wait and keep watch with you?

— Eskize’m, manmzèl. What are you doing here? Is this man your family? The feminine voice was stern, and the accent sounded irregular. She turned to see its owner.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the blan doctor. A gold cross dangled about her neck that Libète hadn’t noticed before.

— No, dokte, I do not know him.

— Then why are you here? Are you sick?

Libète sighed. Yet again, this doctor did not remember her.

— I am not sick. I came hoping to give treatment.

— Excuse me? The doctor slanted her head while her eyes, enlarged because of her thick lenses, registered confusion.

— I am here to help. If you’ll have me help.

The doctor was slow to respond.

— But we don’t need you. We have a staff here, you see.

— Please. I wish to help. I have time. My teacher has challenged me to learn compassion, to do what I can to lift the burdens of others.

The doctor did not know how to respond to Libète’s sincerity.

— Yours is an interesting teacher. What’s your name? You look familiar.

— I’m called Libète. And I’ve been here before. I brought my friend some weeks ago, the one with the bloody eye who was beaten by her husband.

— Ah, the little neighbor! I remember, now. Yes…I remember. The white woman’s demeanor changed in an instant, softening. I’m Sister Françoise, of the Sisters of Mercy.

— A Catholic Sister? But aren’t you a doctor? Where are, you know — she hovered her hand over her head — your coverings?

— Ah, but I’m a nun
and
a doctor. And my order doesn’t require me to wear the habit.

— I’ve never met a doctor nun before. Today is a special day!

The doctor nun smiled. Maybe you can help, Libète. A janitor is out for the day, sick. You could do his job? Collect rubbish from the bins around the room? We take it to the back of the compound, set it in a pile, and light it on fire.

Libète nodded excitedly. I can do that.

— Good. Be careful to look out for sharp things, metal things. They shouldn’t be in there but sometimes are. Do you think you can do that, empty the rubbish and not touch sharp things?

— If it is a way to show solidarity with the sick, then yes, I can do that, Sister Françoise.

Libète set to proving herself to the doctor nun. She didn’t want her thinking a Protestant child would do a worse job than a Catholic one and worked quickly. She made her rounds to the bins like a dutiful physician, visiting each one and adding its contents to a large black bag the doctor nun had given her. At each stop she spoke with the closest patient regardless of whether they were an aged woman, a girl her junior, or a middle-aged man. She introduced herself and wished each one well and moved on if this didn’t lead to conversation.

After piling the trash, the doorman, a man named Charles, came around and held a lit match to it. Libète watched the flames slowly overtake the waste. She imagined the rubbish to be her own pain and relished seeing it reduced to black ash and smoke. She waited for the flames to die before stepping back into the ward to leave, returning to the old man with the empty face as she made for the door. She bid him farewell, and he offered a grin in return and lifted his resting hand in a small wave.

— Libète! Sister Françoise called right before she exited. I want to speak with you.

Libète moved to the nun’s office at the back of the ward. She was bent over and looking through the bottom drawer of a low filing cabinet.

— Where are you living, Libète?

— Twa Bebe. In the tents.

The nun looked up. Ah, the camp. She stood and placed what she had sought in the drawer into Libète’s hand, some foreign food in silver wrappers. This was done without a word of explanation, neither asking if the child wanted them nor for a show of gratitude.

— Thank you for your good work, Libète. I was greatly pleased. I would like it if you might come again. Not to empty the rubbish, as that is the job of another, but simply to speak with the patients, to…”show solidarity with the sick?”

Libète smiled for the second time that day.

— I can do that.

Cholera spreads in Cité Soleil.

The hospital, normally quiet in the late hours of a Sunday afternoon, is bustling. Libète, after leaving Elize in his malarial state, comes upon the gates flung wide open as volunteers are covering the yard with tarpaulins in anticipation of new patients. Diagnostic tests are being run on those believed to be the first to contract the disease in the slum.

St. Sebastian’s is close to Route 9 and Route 9 can be taken to the Artibonite River and the Central Plateau, the source of the outbreak. The infection is not often detected after contamination, so the contaminated unwittingly carry the virus with them from the countryside, like the burgeoning suitcases they bring back from their travels.

There are already many here who fear that they have been infected, staggering into line while tended by nurses. As Libète approaches, one man has brought an old woman in a wheelbarrow, bringing to mind the nights and days following the quake. Libète shudders.

The man goes about in a frantic rush to find help and leaves the old woman to sit as the Sun finishes its day labor and starts its evening commute. She overhears the worried man say that she came from her home in the Artibonite, and many of her people there have since become infected. It is almost certainly cholera, and they must help her, he says. They must help her now!

Libète comes close to the poor woman and looks at her closely. Her eyes are half closed and mouth agape, her body shrunken. She looks like a desiccated corpse left in the open air.
Only the Devil can conceive a more undignified way to die. You drink water to survive and then shit the life right out of you.

There is the woman’s odor, too. Libète is grabbed by the smell of the living corpse’s waste, soaking the bottom of the barrow.
Why am I even here?
she asks herself, feeling discomfort in spying upon the misery of others.

She knows the answer to her question.

She touches the woman’s upper arm, careful to avoid contact with her choleric hands. At the touch, the woman lets out a low moan.

Libète whispers into the woman’s ear in her softest voice. My friend, you are not alone. The doctors, they are very good, and they will help you, with God’s help. Be at peace, my friend, be comforted. She closes her eyes and begins murmuring a prayer.

— Libète! Come away from her! The words are sharp, too sharp, and they cut into Libète. Her eyes bolt open as she is snapped out of prayer. Sister Françoise accompanies the worried man.

— Dokte, I was simply praying for—

— Not now. She is stern, and pushes Libète away with her hip, careful not to touch the girl with her gloved hands. The doctor leans in close to the woman and checks her vital signs.

— Dokte, I am sorry to interrupt…but I came hoping that I might help once more.

The Sister held up one hand to quiet the girl. This was not the friendly doctor who is in control, but the one Libète first met after the quake, the one who works as if death lurks around every corner.

— Nurse, the Sister calls. Get this woman a bed and an IV immediately!

Where there is question as to the other patients’ afflictions, there is none here.

Libète tugs at the doctor’s white coat.

— Sister Françoise, please hear me. I am sorry for my absence. For not explaining. I should have told you why I left. But I want to help, as I did before. Please, I need to—

— Not
now!
she yells. I don’t need children running about the hospital!

Libète looks away. She bites her lip. The Sister is afraid, no doubt, and overwhelmed. But there is something else in her words, and Libète understands what is left unsaid.

It is a sense of abandonment.

Libète walked away saddened.

**

The doctor nun’s words stung, more than she realized. Libète went and sat on the roadside as the Sun set. She watched the taptaps and buses leave Cité Soleil, shooting out and away from Port-au-Prince and into the country, away from the problems and difficulties plaguing life there.
That’s not the way—you know escaping is not the way.

She offered a short prayer for herself and ailing Elize.

Bondye, you are a difficult God to follow. You know that, don’t you?

Every answer I seek, you know.

But you stay silent.

You don’t speak to fill the empty spaces.

You let the innocent suffer and bad people get away.

I don’t understand you or your ways, not at all.

But help me to understand, or else I might die.

Amen.

The activity along the roads was quieting down as people prepared to start the work week anew the following morning. Her stomach clamored for food, and Libète stood, wiped the dirt from the back of her white dress, and began the walk home. The Moon turned its face away from the world, so her path was lit only by the high beams of the rare truck lumbering past.

There was a mercifully cool breeze, so at least sleep would come more easily in her suffocating tent. Even before the Sun departed, the clouds were heavy and it was evident there would be more rain. Lances of lightning flashed brilliantly out over the sea, and Libète kept looking over her shoulder in hopes she’d get to see the fleeting bolts before they departed and left behind menacing thunder.