Making the Hook-Up (9 page)

“Why did you do that?”

“Stop looking like that.”

“Like what?”

I bite my lower lip. “Never you mind.”

A cabdriver finally decides we'll pay him enough and throws our bags into the trunk of his beaten Mercedes. Todd and I climb into the backseat, and as the car lurches toward downtown Port-Au-Prince, we hold each other's hands so tightly, I can no longer feel my fingers.

Driving in Haiti is a peculiar thing. There seems to be no reason nor rhyme as to how fast people drive, where in the road people drive, or any other traffic rules I am accustomed to in the States. By the time we arrive at the Hotel Montana, where we
will be staying for a night before heading to Ouanaminthe, Todd looks peaked. I forgive him the heavy sigh of relief he exhales as he shoves a few dollars into the driver's hands.

Our room is rather bare, but well appointed. This hotel, it seems, is one of the nicer ones in town. But the towels, though clean, are worn. The cakes of soap in the bathroom are so thin, it's a wonder how anyone could properly bathe himself. The bed is old and small, and the air-conditioning coughs on our sweaty skin ever so faintly. Todd takes a shower, and I lie on the bed, naked and waiting for him. It has been a long day for both of us. I wish my mother were here. I don't like not having a clear understanding of why I am here. I'm hoping that I won't regret the decision to bring my husband along. But nonetheless, I am glad Todd is here, because he is home and Haiti is home and I want to savor the experience of these two homes together.

When he comes out of the bathroom, all the steam from the bathroom enters the room and the air thickens. I can literally feel sweat covering my skin. Todd smiles shyly, and my lingering irritation disappears as lightly as a whisper. He lets the towel around his waist fall to the floor and crawls into bed, atop me, his damp skin clinging to mine. His cock is hard, momentarily resting against my left thigh before he is inside me and we're struggling to move against each other but already, I feel sharp spirals of pleasure working their way up my legs. We make love so quickly that afterward I can hardly believe that we've even touched. Todd falls asleep first, but I lie awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, wondering about the sound of my grandfather's voice.

We wake early the next morning, and through the dirty window we can see that the sky is still dark with plumes of smoke. We take breakfast in our room—mangos, toast and cheese. And then we sit, bags packed as if we are afraid to move
forward from this point. I call my mother, assure her that things are fine but I can hear the doubt in her voice. Perhaps, I hear the doubt in mine. Finally, Todd stands up.

“We'd best get going.”

I smile. “Yes. My grandparents are waiting for us.”

Todd looks confused, but he gets our bags and soon we are driving on what passes for roads, towards Ouanaminthe. We pass mile after mile of sugarcane fields and dark sweaty men stare at us as we pass by, sucking their lower lips, machetes paused in midair, and you can tell that they'd rather strike themselves than one more stalk of cane. And then, their machetes fall as if they are thinking, next time, next time I'll have the courage. Working in cane fields is brutal, bitter work. Men and even women spend twelve hours a day beneath the unforgiving island sun, as their skin is shredded by the brambles about. My grandmother has told me stories of how she used to tend to her friends' wounds as they lay on the dirt floor of the servant quarters late at night, using a poultice and strips of old clothing to hold back blood and infection. She would tell me of the guilt she felt when she was moved from the fields to the master's house, watching her friends from the comfort of a kitchen or sitting room window, and then the relief of no longer having to toil alongside them. It is strange—so many years later, very little has changed in the cane fields of this island.

When we arrive in Ouanaminthe, that sense of anticipation is gone. There is not much to see here. It is a small town that looks like most towns in this part of the country, in every part of the country. The houses are worn cement blocks, all the windows open. There is a small market with a sad array of wares, a few bars, and other shops. And on a small dirt road so close to the water that I can taste the Massacre River in my mouth, there is my grandmother's house surrounded by a black iron fence. For
some reason, I expect to see her standing in the dust of her front yard, but her lot is empty, save for the coconut trees, standing naked, skeletons of fertility.

As we park in the small driveway and close the gate behind us, my grandmother appears in the doorway and I gasp, gripping Todd's hand. As his fingers curl around mine, it feels like they are wrapping around my heart, holding it safe. Looking at my grandmother reminds me of the trees in her yard; she looks like a ghost of the woman I knew growing up, of the woman I saw in the black-and-white photos in my mother's albums. But her eyes, a deep blue, shine as she drinks me in, cautiously steps toward us. When she opens her arms, I know exactly what she looked like as a younger woman; what she looked like before grief formed a home in her features.

She leads us into the house and we sit at a small table, Formica, cracked and wobbly. In the center of the table is a pitcher of lemonade and three clean glasses. She pours for Todd first, then me, and finally herself before sitting down. I remove my mother's envelope from my backpack and slide it across the table to my grandmother whose eyes water as she traces the edges of the envelope with one knotted finger.

“Your mother couldn't come?”

It is less of a question, more a statement of fact. I shake my head and gently cover my grandmother's hand with mine. “She stayed behind to watch the twins.” Beneath the table, I nudge Todd's knee with mine, and he pulls their pictures from his wallet, smiling proudly as he lays them on the table.

“Miriam,” my grandmother whispers.

I smile, but there are tears streaming down my cheeks and I don't quite understand why. “Jean-Marc and Sebastien; we named them Jean-Marc and Sebastien.”

She nods slowly; swollen arcs of tears rest on her lower
eyelids. “They look like your grandfather.” She turns her head to the side, toward the river, and rests the palm of her hand against her breastbone. “Yes. They look like your grandfather.”

I can only take her word for this. The only images of this man in my mind are pieced together from years of my grandmother's stories—the same stories repeated over and over as if to tell a few stories many times will take the place of the life she and my grandfather did not have, stories she should have had. I study the pictures of my children and all of a sudden I miss them. I've been so wrapped up in being home and not understanding why I'm here that I haven't had time to miss their sweet and sour breath, their coos, their chubby hands and feet. I want to bring them here, when the time is right, when we can look at the Port-au-Prince skyline and not see smoke, when we can walk down the street and not worry about the children being kidnapped for ransom. Everyone here thinks Americans are rich. In many ways, they are right. But I don't want my children to be victims of that fact. I want that perfect time to be sooner than later. And I want my mother here as well, so that we will be four generations of my family standing on our native soil. I want a lot of things. It is the nature of my people to want things we do not know how to have.

Until Todd and I started visiting Haiti, I hadn't been here since I was ten years old. Back then, we came to Haiti every summer but that last visit was special, almost idyllic. We were sheltered from the island's truths. My father shinnied up coconut trees, his pants rolled up his thin calves, and threw down coconuts that my mother cracked open with a machete. We ate
douce,
a kind of Haitian fudge until our lips shriveled in protest. My brothers and I swam and stared at each other under water, marveling that there was water on this earth clearer than anything we had ever seen. One day, while my mother shopped in the city, my
dad took us away to La Citadel, a fort, and as we climbed and climbed and climbed, my father told us stories of warriors and freedom and I knew that this was the happiest I would ever see him. I remember thinking how much cooler my parents were in Haiti than back in the States.

And then, they took us to Ouanaminthe, and as we approached the town, all the smiles and laughter disappeared and in a far too brief moment, I thought I might never remember what my parents looked like when they were happy. My mother fidgeted in her seat, my father gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white, and my brothers and I sat nervous and knobby kneed, trying to understand why all of a sudden, things were so different.

There was my grandmother, who smelled like lavender and rum and spoiled us rotten with sweets and attention and long walks. But then she and my mother would disappear for hours at a time. We were under strict orders not to follow them. We'd pester my father for an explanation, but he would brush us off, look toward the river, then distract us by carving puppets or telling us more stories. Finally on the second to last day of our visit, my father lay down with my brothers for a nap, and left to my own devices, I was determined to find my mother. I set out through the gate and followed the trickling sound of water until I reached the banks of the Massacre River. I knew nothing about the river, then, but I saw a bridge in the distance, and I saw soldiers and rifles. It was just like something in a movie. And there, maybe twenty feet from where I was standing were my mother and grandmother, kneeling as they ran their fingers through the water. Their lips were moving but I couldn't hear them. I walked toward them, but they didn't notice me until I was standing next to them, and even then, I had to clear my throat. When they looked up, at the same time, I remember
thinking that they looked like paper dolls because their profiles were so alike. And I remember that they were crying—their eyes were red like blood—their eyes were so red that I could not recognize them as women who gave me life, women who loved me. The sight of them scared me so much that I ran back to my grandmother's house and crawled into bed with my father, resting my head against his chest so I could smell his cologne and hear the beating of his heart. We never spoke of that moment, and the next day as we drove away, I stared at my grandmother's figure through the rear window and she had that same look in her eyes—hollow, desperate, lonely.

The first few days of my visit with my grandmother pass without event. We talk about the children and my parents and my brothers and my job. When Todd is exploring the town, mixing with the natives, as he calls it, we talk about him. My grandmother likes him, his simplicity, the tenderness he shows me. She says you can trust a man who looks at a woman the way he looks at me. She says my grandfather looked at her that way. When I ask her what way, she sucks her teeth and looks at me with disgust. “You,” she tells me. “You are in many ways like your mother. You take the things around you for granted.”

At night, Todd and I lie beneath mosquito netting, our bodies damp and heavy. “Is it always like this?” he asks.

“It's an island.”

“Seriously.”

I sigh. “Haiti has always been hot, will always be hot. I don't question it and thinking hard right now would just make me hotter.”

Todd chuckles. “I can think of a more enjoyable way to make you hotter.” He traces a line from my chin to my navel, and gently nibbles my earlobe, but I push him away.

“It's too hot for that sort of thing.”

“It's never too hot.”

“Then this will teach you a lesson about never saying never.” I can feel him pull away in the darkness. I don't need to see his face to know that he is pouting. I thought I would feel closer to him, being here with him, but mostly I am annoyed by his presence. He is keeping me from what I should really be doing, whatever that is.

“Maybe it was a mistake for me to come,” he says.

“I wanted you to be here,” I whisper. I know I don't sound convincing.

“What you wanted and what really is are two different things. I feel like you're expecting something of me without telling me what that something is.”

I turn away from him, wrapping my arms around myself. “I'm tired. Go to sleep.”

I lie perfectly still and pretend to fall asleep until I hear his snoring. My slumber is punctuated by a torment of slain bodies and cruel soldiers with white, freakishly large teeth and the husks of small children floating in massacred water.

The next morning, Todd wakes up before me, and when I stumble into the kitchen, he and my grandmother are sitting at the table drinking coffee. He refuses to look at me, but I kiss him on the forehead and sit down, rubbing my eyes.

“You look like you had a terrible sleep,” my grandmother says.

“Bad dreams.”

“There are no other kinds in this place.”

To hear the resignation in her voice only saddens me. I am overwhelmed by her hopelessness, by the hopelessness I see in the faces of the men and women and children all around me. I spend the day with my grandmother. When she goes to the river to talk to my grandfather, I go with her and she doesn't
protest. Instead, we walk together and we are silent, but again her lips are moving, as if she is filling him in on our visit, his great-grandchildren, the details of her life. In my mind, I talk to him too. I ask him if he ever found his sister, if it was worth all this pain to go back for her. I ask him to send my grandmother some sign that he actually hears her. The river is much smaller now than it was then; it is more a stream than anything else. The soldiers are still there, but they hardly pay attention to anything other than their gossip and the cigarettes they smoke. The river is still shallow and dark and when I run my fingers through the water, it is a frightening kind of cold that demands escape. I can hardly imagine it, the people fleeing, thrashing through midnight waters, dead bodies floating to the surface, the water running red. But I can hear echoes of their screams as the water runs around rocks and a child splashes about in the water under the watchful eye of her mother. When my grandmother and I finally look at each other, I wonder if I look the way my mother did when I stumbled upon them so many years ago.