Haiti Noir (19 page)

“Gwo Manman had a good, happy, comfortable life with me,” Foufoune argued back. Only Miriam would be so callous as to talk to her that way at this horrible time. Puits Blain had become unsafe, hadn’t Miriam heard? It was just like her to pretend things were not what they really were. Wasn’t it only a matter of time before their mother would have been robbed, or worse? Any number of things could have happened to her. What did Miriam have to offer Gwo Manman anyhow? Selling rice and beans to a bunch of sweaty passersby was hardly a life of luxury.

“I talked to Gwo Manman often,” Miriam said. “I called her after I knew you’d left for work. She hated the life you forced her to live. If you had sent her back to me, she’d be alive today.”

“How you talk!” Foufoune snapped. “Why didn’t you come get your dear mother if you were so concerned about her well-being?”

“And have you send the police after me at the airport? You had yourself declared her legal guardian. You just bring Gwo Manman’s body back to me or I swear you will pay.” Miriam slapped the phone shut.

Sympathy clouds hovered over Brooklyn, D.C., and Miami: places where relatives of the deceased lived. More rain fell over Puits Blain, but the heat spell would not be broken. Miriam put the phone back in her apron and focused her attention on the massive pots bubbling with aromatic food. Her house and place of business—a respectable concrete-block two-story—would soon fill with mourners. But first she would finish cooking. Death and mourning always made people famished.

Word scurried via scared rèstavèk children all the way to the stalls lining the cemetery’s wall, where Gwo Manman’s friends sold bottles of a cure-all the old woman swore by. The oil might not have extended her life by a minute, but just before she died Gwo Manman had looked for the last bottle of lwil maskreti she owned and clutched it as if it would go with her to the next place: the Last Department. The thick brown oil did nothing but spill on Foufoune’s pretty rug. Ki te mele m. She didn’t care.

* * *

Grudgingly, Miriam shut down her business and opened the house to visitors who came to shake their heads and grunt. Je wè, bouch pe. What was there to say? Gwo Manman was made to leave her home and die in a place whose name was like rock salt inside her mouth. The Gwo Manman everyone knew never would have allowed herself to live or die anywhere but in Puits Blain.

Miriam dutifully wore a black dress and positioned herself near the doorway to welcome visitors/spectators and set the tone for the gathering—a dark theater in which she would be a reluctant star. All eyes would be on her tonight. Po dyab, pitit. Take heart, my dear! The uncooked goat meat she had prepared went to Jean-Jean, a tip for the job she hired him to do.

“Mèsi, mèsi, Miss Miriam,” he had said, quivering at his good fortune. Miriam had also thrown in the change he returned from the sacks of cement she sent him to buy. She would have him seal the latrine after the funeral. “Mèsi! Mèsi!” Jean-Jean sometimes lost his stutter when he saw money.

There were a few faces in the house Miriam did not recognize. Death dragged impunity in its wake, so no one was turned away. Gwo Manman would have been pleased. The more mourners the merrier!

Faces brightened when the subject inevitably turned to Rhum Barbancourt. Miriam had always suspected that their mother’s delectation for rum was another reason why Foufoune had flown down to Puits Blain years prior, packed up a few of Gwo Manman’s clothes, and taken her away.

“I don’t want to live in America,” Gwo Manman had protested. “I am too old for that. What will I do there? I’m afraid of the cold. I don’t want the snow. I want to live in my country.”

“Gwo Manman, please.” Foufoune had swatted the air around her with dismissive hands. “Look around you! Puits Blain is all dust, don’t you see? You’ll be happier with me in America.” Besides—this she had thought but dared not say— I work too hard to have my mother live like this. Foufoune sent enough money monthly to keep her mother living very well, but Gwo Manman insisted on sitting with the stall keepers behind the cemetery. She liked the taste of Barbancourt in her mouth. She liked that wild drum music. Rumor was that she had a boyfriend. No, boyfriends—at her age! She liked to be shirtless under the noonday sun; said it had healing powers:
That’s why I never get sick!
she’d say.

Gwo Manman cursed the day she’d allowed Foufoune to take her away. But admitted she had been curious about the foreign place too. She had dreamed of being able to say that she went there once. Only once. And came back. But Foufoune had tricked her. There was never a return ticket.

Foufoune arrived several days later with Dona Malbranche’s body in a gorgeous coffin.

“You look well,” Miriam remarked upon seeing her sister for the first time since she came and took Gwo Manman away years ago. Not a single crease in Foufoune’s flawless features. Hair, as usual, in a classic chignon. Foufoune had always been the beautiful sister, “the one who’s going to amount to something,” everyone, even Gwo Manman, would say.

“And you haven’t changed,” Foufoune said, eying the tufts of unruly gray around Miriam’s temples, the head tie she must have borrowed from a charcoal vendor, the rust of subpar living in her sunken eyes. Koshon Mawon! The words tickled Foufoune’s lips, but she did not speak them. There were stains on Miriam’s skirt: blood, no doubt—probably from cutting off fish heads to make soup. Koshon Mawon! Long ago when they attended Anne Marie Javouhey elementary school, Foufoune and her girlfriends had made up a song which they liked to sing whenever they saw Miriam approaching:

Miriam Malbranche is dumber than a twig
Her mother, her sister:
No one wants her
Not even a wild pig …

Miriam threw her arms around her sister, saying: “We have only each other now.”

Foufoune, in turn, kissed her on both cheeks.

That night while Foufoune rested, Miriam paced under the flamboyant tree. Gwo Manman did not die peacefully— that much she knew. She suffered. Li soufri. Miriam held her belly. She wanted to scream, but swallowed the pain.

A few other relatives flew to the island to say their goodbyes. They booked rooms at Hotel Flamboyant, where the pool sparkled and massive generators guaranteed the power would stay on. They brought laptops in order to meet deadlines; they still had to make a living. Nouyòk pa lan jwèt a moun, surely Miriam understood. Business reports and dissertations did not stop for death.

No one planned to stay Down There too long after the services. They all led busy lives. They would spare a day or two, and then mount their winged friend to return to their respective chapters in their respective storybooks. During the services, however, they would be most dedicated, most single-minded, most unwavering in their show of grief. They would not be reproached. By the time they were through, all of Puits Blain would know just how much they loved the old woman they hardly knew.

* * *

The stained glass inside église Saint Pierre rattled with their screams. Eyes darted between the pews to see who was crying and how many teardrops were actually shed. Some of the practiced mourners would have outdone themselves had the body been displayed. They felt cheated.

The procession to the cemetery boasted an impressive number of those who had succumbed to sezisman. Long-lost cousins swooned, dropping down in front of moving cars. There were wreaths galore (more flowers than Gwo Manman had seen in life). The affair cost many, many thousands; everyone was duly impressed. The casket, copper of course, came with a sixty-year moisture and water seal warranty—just in case. (
You know Haiti and hurricanes,
the dealer had said). Gwo Manman’s burial clothes—an elegant mother-of-thebride two-piece—were precious. Pity no one got to see how prettily she was dressed. And who among them would have discerned how much she loathed the outfit?

These clothes make me look like a clown,
Dona would have said, if she could have seen herself.
I look like a madigra mal maske.

At Miriam’s house after the interment, there was no place to punch a pin. Everyone ate their fill. Barbancourt 5 Star flowed like Saut d’Eau’s waterfall. A young man complained there was not enough ice. His drink was not cold enough. “In this heat, the mourners need ice. Where is the ice?” he wanted to know.

“Why are you here?” Miriam asked the disgruntled mourner. “Did you know that the woman whose funeral you attended never once owned a refrigerator? But does that matter? You want ice. We’re out of ice. Don’t move. I’ll see to it that you get your ice.”

Foufoune asked Miriam what was wrong.

“We’re out of ice,” Miriam said, shaking with disgust. “This boy is crying for ice. We’re out of ice.”

“Where is the ice?” Foufoune asked, desperate to do something—anything—right. The parched earth under her feet had shifted when she watched her mother’s coffin being worked like an oversized pacifier into the tomb’s mouth. Tears had spurted out of her eyes when she heard Miriam scream: “Not again, Manman! Don’t leave me again, Manman!” Foufoune’s heart had softened. She realized then that she did, in fact, love her sister. And Miriam loved her.

Burning tears stood in Foufoune’s eyes. It took burying their mother to see that she could never have despised her own flesh and blood. And Miriam had been so generous. So selfless. Miriam had been the one who handled every detail of the funeral. Trying to plan it from thousands of miles away was a logistical nightmare. Perhaps Miriam was right about everything else. Perhaps she should have sent their mother back to Haiti to live. Perhaps Gwo Manman would still be alive today.

“I’ll take care of getting more ice,” Foufoune said. She would crawl on her knees all the way up to Caribbean Market and carry bags of ice on her head, if that was what Miriam wanted. One day she would tell Miriam that she regretted taking Gwo Manman to the live with her in the States. One day she might even ask for forgiveness. Her sister had been right all along: Gwo Manman belonged in Puits Blain. She knew that now. How could she have been so selfish? So blind? Her mind raced with regret, but what came out of her mouth was: “Where can I go to get more ice?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Miriam said. She summoned Jean-Jean, who barely looked like himself in his fine funeral clothes. His work clothes were in a satchel by the outhouse, which he would start sealing “after the last mourner leaves,” as Miriam had instructed him when he arrived much earlier than he was told. Pending jobs made him uneasy. The sooner he sealed the hole, the less of a chance Miriam would have to change her mind; and the sooner he would get the rest of his money.

“Leave your shovel behind the house,” Miriam had instructed him before the funeral. That thing was like an extension of his hand. He carried it everywhere, always hoping someone would hire him. “You can start tonight,” Miriam had added, to his delight. She had read the impatience in his eyes, though she was the one who could no longer wait once word had reached her ear about some sneaky schoolgirl who had dropped her newborn into a nearby latrine. A suspicious houseboy had followed the trail of blood from the outhouse to the girl’s thighs, and she’d confessed. Jean-Jean almost slipped into the hole and died himself, when frantic neighbors sent him down there with a bucket on a rope to try and scoop out the remains.

“I remember your mother well,” Jean-Jean said. The thought of getting paid in just a few hours had cured his stutter for now. “She was a good person.” Gwo Manman always had a kind word for him. He would do anything, anything at all, for the Malbranche family.

“We need ice,” Miriam told him.

“I’ll get it,” replied Jean-Jean. For once, no one seemed to care where his hands had been.

Miriam embraced her sister, saying, “Pran kouraj. You did what you thought was best.” She lifted up her hand and her voice: “A toast to Gwo Manman!”

Someone gave Miriam a fresh bottle of rum. She put it to her mouth and drank. She passed the bottle to Foufoune.
Do this in remembrance of me.

“To Gwo Manman,” Foufoune said. The liquid burned her throat on its way down. She was not a drinker. Her petite frame had never been able to meet rum on its own terms. A single sip would send her head spinning. But for Gwo Manman … just this once …

When Jean-Jean returned with the ice, the disgruntled mourner thanked him and drank and toasted for several hours before he stumbled out of the house. Foufoune, too, continued to toast her departed mother until her stomach churned and her thoughts began to swirl. Everyone was now stumbling with five-star grief. Foufoune teetered toward the bathroom. It was occupied, but she could not wait.

“Of course,” Miriam said when Foufoune, trembling like a little girl, asked her sister to escort her to that wooden stall behind her house. It had been years since she last used it, but if memory served her correctly, it would be pitch-black inside and densely populated with flying roaches. She would have waited, if she could have, but the rum had instigated a riot inside her stomach and everything she’d ever eaten in her life was seconds away from a violent uprising.

Miriam listened as Foufoune retched into the thirty-foot drop.

“Water.” Foufoune could barely say the word. She would splash her face with water; surely that would make her feel better.

“Yes,” Miriam responded. “I’ll get you some.”

Miriam returned to the house for a pitcher. Jean-Jean was leaning against the wall, an anxious look in his eyes. The last of the stumbling mourners kissed her goodbye and said, “Be strong.”

Miriam filled the pitcher and headed back to the outhouse.

Foufoune slurred something Miriam did not understand as she bent over the latrine, vomiting—too intoxicated to care about the stench or the roaches. Her chignon was still intact, Miriam noted.

The back of Foufoune’s neck was bare, except for the heart-shaped links of a gold chain which Miriam had given to Gwo Manman one Mother’s Day—purchased with money she should have used to extract a molar that was so infected it ended up costing her half of her bottom teeth. Miriam wondered if Foufoune had taken the necklace off their mother’s neck after she died, or if Gwo Manman had willingly given it away.