Making the Hook-Up (8 page)

“Mice? Mice are more afraid of you than you are of them,” she chuckled in disbelief.

“Oooh, that's where you're wrong, baby. If you see a mouse in the house, don't say a word…just get my ass out quick and don't mind having everything in my path demolished on my way out.”

“Whoa! That's bad. Not even a pet mouse?”

“Oxymoron…as far as I'm concerned.”

She didn't laugh out loud, but the thought of a full-grown man falling apart at the sight of a mouse was funny to her. She had several pet mice as a young girl and thought nothing of Diva
hopping in her lap to share a semiconscious little treasure she had literally “played with” to the brink of death. Yanni would wrestle its limp body from Diva's mouth, place it in a shoebox with a jar top of seed, grain and water, and when it had regained its strength, she would release it in a nearby field.

“Do you realize that you haven't flinched once, since we've been talking, Yanni?” He tightened his arms around her waist and slid his hands to the soft damp strip of mink between her legs, gently undulating her sopping-wet clit between his fingers.

“The lightning flashes scare me the most,” she said, closing her eyes and rolling her head back into the fleshy nest of his shoulder.

“I bet if I make you cum while you're watching the storm, you'll never fear thunder or lightening as much again. Do you think you can watch, while I break you off again?”

“I'll try.” Yanni nervously sat back in his lap and wriggled back onto Aden's pulsing dick. He moaned from her fear-induced tightness and rapidly bloomed to steely hardness.

He moaned in a whisper, “I don't think I've ever had a better fit.”

Still rolling her clit in its own juices, he started leisurely plowing his dick into her body from the back. He stopped only once, to spread her legs more widely apart by draping them across the arms of the chair, but immediately resumed his rhythmic expedition into her depths. While he explored her body from behind with his mouth, hands and cock, he started a gentle pep talk to calm and distract her. “A coward dies a thousand deaths, Yanni. You're no coward, baby. You couldn't have done what you've done in your life if you were a scaredy cat. You left a career some people would kill for, to become an artist. That took courage. You have to remind yourself that all it is, is just nature taking its course. It's only a positively charged cloud
and a negatively charged cloud bumping into each another. It's only precipitation.”

If it hadn't been thundering and lightning, and if they hadn't been in the middle of the fuck of both their lives, Yanni would have undoubtedly let him have it for talking to her like a child. Between strokes, she chuckled to herself,
A guy who's terrified of mice, giving me a pep talk about thunder and lightning? How many people have been killed by a mouse bite? But, daaamn, this man can FUCK!

Once again, he began to feel her hot inner flesh churning around his meat. She let go of all inhibitions and began a soulful, booty swirling bounce to counter his slow deep thrusts from down under. Now, oblivious to thunder, lightning or his endless chatter, Yanni crumbled under the skillful manipulation of his fingers and the slow rolling thrust of his hips. Aden, unable to hold out any longer, pulled her into him even tighter, and shuddered, rippling with several rounds of powerful spurts.

Together, they chased the final throes of bliss, until they lay powerless—Yanni, with her eyes closed, heart pounding, and a fuchsia meteor shower slashing the maroon curtain of her eyelids, enjoying the burning tingle of having been thoroughly fucked, enjoying the last soft pulses of Aden's penis, begrudgingly retreating from her, and Aden, collapsed beneath her, in the well-padded bedroom chair.

In spite of what she thought of his little lecture on “fear,” Yanni came to consciousness feeling a cross between love and adoration for the man who had only been an intelligent friendly voice for the last year. She swiveled her body around to face him and lovingly kissed him awake.

His eyes slowly opened and he smiled. “Wheeeeeeew!”

“Wheeeeeeew is right,” she whispered into his jaw, “but no more lectures on fear.”

“When did you start writing my curriculum?” he snapped back with a laugh.

“Tonight, mouse boy,” she quipped sternly. He cringed for a second, and then they laughed between kisses.

“And that bench stays here.”

“Not without me.”

“Oh, all right!” she sighed into his chest, still damp from the love they'd made. Love? Lust? Whatever it was, it was
on
.

 

 

 

 

 

I
owe my existence to the frantic coupling of two strangers in 1937 in the shallow and bloody waters of the Massacre River that separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. The story of this incident is told in hushed, awkward tones, on those rare occasions it is told at all, as if it is we who must bear shame for the indiscretion of my grandparents. My mother never speaks of it. She tries to distance herself from the geography of so much pain, and now, only travels to Haiti when absolutely necessary. It is not that she is ashamed of her mother, or the circumstances of her birth, but to imagine her mother and a stranger fleeing the Dominican Republic, hiding in the waters of the river while soldiers slaughtered people on both banks, only to seek solace in each other reminds her of a history she only wants to forget. Perhaps it is a history we all want to forget. But every morning when she stares in the mirror, or when she catches her reflection in a storefront, she is forced to remember.

I am fascinated by this story—this moment of desperation
and conception. I asked my grandmother about it once, when my husband Todd and I were in Haiti for a few weeks. I remember how she stared at me with milky eyes, her small hands, scarred from working in sugarcane fields in Dajabon, the first town across the Dominican border, and how she held her glass of rum and water so tightly I thought the glass would splinter in her hand. I took the glass from her, told her that she had almost hurt herself. She looked away and whispered, “Scars cannot bleed.”

Todd and I have been married for three years, together for over six. My mother refers to him as “Mr. America,” because in her mind, he represents the wholesome American image she has come to resent. We met at the University of Nebraska, but after our twins were born, I insisted we move to Washington, D.C. because if we stayed in that cold, remote place, our little brown babies would always be more mine than his. I try to explain to Todd what it means to be Haitian but it's hard for him to understand that there are places in the world where power outages are commonplace, and the majority of the population wallows in poverty—where no matter how rich or poor you are, you want the same thing: an end to the chaos, a breath of fresh air, a moment of peace. It is hard for him to understand why I would want to be in that place. But it is hard for me to understand why I would want to be anywhere else.

My husband and I have been to Haiti together twice. The first time, he brought a case of bottled water, and found it inexplicable that I wouldn't speak to him for a week, afterward. The second time, he brought ten bottles of mosquito spray. Every night, we would swelter beneath the mosquito netting of our bed, and when we tried to make love, he made me nauseous with the aerosol stench of insect repellant.

Then, upon our return, in the airport in Miami, he kissed the ground, and was subject to two weeks of the silent treatment.
For the sake of our relationship, we keep international travel to a minimum. But now, I have this need to go to Haiti, because it is the only place in the world that truly feels like home. My grandmother is getting older, the country is getting worse, and if I don't go now, the places I remember, the people that make it home, will no longer be there. My grandmother lives in Ouanaminthe, the first town on the Haitian side of the Massacre River. I don't understand why she chooses to live so close to a place of horror but sometimes I think that she can't bear to part with the memories, as if the farther away she gets from that place, the more she will forget. Her house is a small, cement affair. There are palm trees in the front yard and a small iron gate to ward off unwanted visitors. She often sits on her porch, staring toward the river, a distant look in her eyes. When she's like this, I can only watch her. A silence surrounds her that demands respect.

She and my grandfather worked on a plantation in Dajabon, cutting sugarcane. They didn't know each other, but they didn't need to. They shared the same condition. I have heard the stories of cane workers—days beneath a tormenting sun, cruel overseers, little pay, a life much like the slaves in America. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for my grandmother, a small woman in a big world that she could not hope to understand. When General Rafael Trujillo ordered all Haitians out of the Dominican Republic, she gathered her few belongings and wrapped them in her skirt. She ran from the overseers, and people throwing stones and marauding soldiers only to find more soldiers on both sides of the river. She found a shallow place and even beneath the moonlight, she could see that the water ran red with blood. The water was icy cold and as she waded in, a body floated past her. She waited, her heart stopping every time she saw the barrel of a soldier's rifle or heard the heavy footsteps of military boots plodding along damp soil. She heard the screams
of men, women, and children being slaughtered, the thrashing of limbs in water, the silence of death.

She closed her eyes and thought about her childhood, the sound of her mother singing, the smell of fresh laundry, her father's paintings. She didn't notice when a large man slipped into the water. She couldn't scream when he tapped her shoulder. She wanted to tell him to go away—that two were easier to spot than one, but she looked into his eyes and saw her fear mirrored there. As she lay in the water shivering, the small part of her heart still remaining opened up, and she wrapped her arms around this stranger. For hours, but perhaps it was only minutes, they lay there holding each other until she could feel his heart beating against hers, every breath of his followed by one of hers until she was certain that they were breathing for each other.

She did not protest when she felt his cold lips pressed against hers. She opened her mouth and felt respite at the warmth she found in his. His large hands unbuttoned her blouse, covered her breasts. They lifted her skirt, and turned her onto her back and held her as he entered her swiftly. He buried his face in her neck. She buried her face in his shoulder. With each thrust, the coarse fabric of his shirt scraped her cheek. She felt a tightening between her thighs. His chest seemed to hollow as he sobbed silently. Even after they came, he remained inside her. He remained inside her until young shafts of morning light gave witness to the carnage around them. Only then, did he withdraw and steal home, as silently as he had crept into the water.

She saw him again, later that day. His name was Jean-Marc. He was neither handsome nor ugly but from his demeanor, she decided that he was a good man. At first, they pretended not to recognize each other, but then he smiled a sad little smile, and again, her heart opened up. He reached for her hand and
she brushed his fingertips with hers. He took her to get warm clothing, a bit of food. She would have married him, my grandmother told me, but he was killed three weeks later as he snuck back into the Dominican Republic to find his younger sister. When she found out that my grandfather had died, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, throw herself in the river but instead, she found work as a maid with a well-to-do family. She gave birth to my mother. She finally did cry when she saw her daughter, an exact likeness of the man she knew but for a moment. And then, she hoped to never cry again. Instead, she lived as close to the river as her heart would allow, and talked to the waters as if they held the spirit of Jean-Marc.

There are no pictures of my grandfather. Sometimes, when I think of my grandmother's story, I imagine him, tall and strong, proud. I imagine the times he and my grandmother should have had, and when I do this, I cry the tears my grandmother cannot. There is no explanation for this. It is as if my grandmother's grief skipped a generation and now resides in me. And her grief is a burden I did not ask for, but one I bear. The tears I cry for her, for Jean-Marc are yet another thing Todd cannot understand. He knows the story, as he was there when my grandmother told us her saga and I believe that he truly mourns the tragedy, but he mourns it the way he mourns other atrocities—from a comfortable distance—a distance I cannot nor will not share.

My mother disapproves of my going back to Haiti. “Nothing good will come of it,” she told me. “And it's not safe.” But nothing good will come of not going, either. Just as Todd cannot understand certain parts of me, I cannot understand certain parts of my mother. I cannot understand her unwillingness to go home, but perhaps it is that her memories are stained with a different, more paralyzing brand of grief that holds her where she is. At the airport, she hugs me tightly, and I can feel wetness
against my chest when she pulls away. She stuffs a thick envelope into my hand, orders me to give it to her mother, not to open it. I beg her to come with us, but she shakes her head, hides behind a dark pair of sunglasses, grips the handles of the twins' stroller, the veins in her hands pulsing. As we head into the airplane, I think I hear her calling after us.

After we make it through customs, Todd and I are standing in front of the airport waiting for a cab. I am already irritated with him and the expression on his face. The air is heavy, thick enough that it takes effort to breathe. In the distance, we can see black plumes of smoke filtering through the sky as political dissenters burn tires. Cab drivers lean against their cars, sucking their teeth, inspecting passengers as they try to deduce who will pay the most for their services. At once, things are silent and loud, still and frenetic. It is a scene that can only be found here on my island. Todd is sweating, his tie hanging loose around his neck. His nose is wrinkled, as if he can't quite place a distinct and unpleasant odor. I pinch the soft skin beneath his elbow and he winces.