There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) (13 page)

She gasped.
Uncle?

— Wake up, Sophia. Please. I need your help.

Magdala stands over Libète, holding a lit kerosene lamp. In the twilight between slumber and waking, she strikes Libète as menacing.

— Wha–what’s the matter?

— A baby is on the way. The mother-to-be’s father, he came to tell me, then left.

— What?

— I need an assistant. The hour is late.

— To deliver a child? You’re a
matwon
?

Magdala lifted Libète up by the arm, a show of surprising strength. Get up.

Libète rubbed her eyes and tried to suppress a yawn. It’s not that–I’m willing. It’s just . . . I’ve never helped bring a child into the world. Her wakening mind traveled back to her time at the hospital. She had
seen
a number of deliveries, but never aided Sister Françoise.
M pa kalifye,
she sputtered. I’m unqualified.

Magdala didn’t slow to listen. She sped around the room, collecting towels and sheets, a bedpan, all while holding her lamp high.

— She’s already far along–grab that kettle, Sophia–but there are
konplikasyon yo
.

— Complications?

Magdala gave a grave nod.

They stepped out of the shack to greet the still air and crickets’ songs. The stars here still marveled Libète; they were so very bright, unlike in Port-au-Prince, where city lights and smog drowned out their distant dancing. She thought her heart’s anxious thumping was audible, but stopped, listened close. There they were again–the drums, signaling something.

— What’s that beating out over there?

Magdala’s face tightened. Nothing. Just a dance.

— At this hour?

— We must go. Can you run?

— I think. My toes . . .

Magdala looked vexed.

— I can try my best.

They jogged in an entirely undignified manner, but birth was a time of seeming indignity.

— There will be much blood, Magdala warned her, huffing.

— I’m used to blood.

Magdala eyed her warily. They continued down the main road to a solitary shack. Magdala’s bobbing light made their shadows buck and strain.

As they approached the home, a cry shattered the quiet. A man–ostensibly the anxious soon-to-be grandfather who had called Magdala–tended a fire over which a pot of water bubbled to a boil. His whole body was a hollow arc stooped over the edge of the flame. Libète saw the prying eyes of weary children peeking from a nearby lakou. Whether from the cool or a creeping sense of wrongness in the air, Libète’s skin prickled.

— Are there no women to help? Libète asked.

—
Mon dieu!
A curdling scream came from inside, trailed by an agonized moan.

— There is a neighbor inside with the girl, yes.

— Isn’t this woman better suited to help than me?

— I’ll need you both. Few are willing to help this one.

Libète couldn’t understand the why of this, but followed Magdala anyway.

They entered to a distressing scene. Weak candles laid about the room cast a macabre light. The woman helper sat, stunned, in the middle of the small square space on a
ti chez ba
, her hands covered in dark blood. The mother-to-be sat on the family’s upturned
chodyè
, their cooking pot. She was gaunt and pasty, and slumped feebly against the wall. Libète gasped upon realizing it was the pregnant girl she had seen just yesterday on the road.

Magdala handed the lamp to Libète and pushed the helper aside. Thank you, Philomene. Sophia, hold the light over my shoulder. Délira, Magdala said, taking the mother-to-be’s hand and holding it tight.

— Help us, said Délira, help – another curdling cry and moan. The girl’s eyes fluttered and the helper gasped.

— Pran kouraj! Courage is what is needed now, Magdala said. Libète looked down. The bleeding was indeed profuse. Too much, Magdala remarked. Towels? Soap? Water? Magdala posed the questions to the open air. Philomene, still staring at her hands, merely turned her head toward the boiled water the girl’s father now let cool on the
recho
outside. Sophia, she said, spread the towels on the bed. We need to move her.

Libète did not respond. Her minor surgical help had included handing tools to doctors and nurses in a pinch, but that was gun wounds, split knees, cut feet. A delivery, a new life, this was something else, this was . . .

— Sophia!

Snapped back into the moment, Libète remembered her alter ego.

— Wi, Magdala. Sorry. Libète jumped toward the towels and spread them before returning to Magdala’s side. They pulled Délira up and did their best to shift her to the bed. More wails poured from her, and already the blood had spread down Libète’s clothes. Philomene, Magdala called, brace her from behind!

Philomene floated over as if in a daze and threaded her arms under Délira’s armpits.

As they washed their hands, Magdala leaned close to Libète’s ear, and spoke low and urgently. The blood, it’s more than I have seen before. Délira
ap emoraji
, hemorrhaging, to be sure. I need you here, and I need you now.

Libète nodded. Hemorraghing, she had seen it before, when–

— She is here too soon! She is early! Délira whimpered. I’m cursed, I know it–I’m certain!

— When the baby comes we do what we can to make it on time, Magdala said. We take her as we find her.

Magdala inspected the young woman, felt her abdomen. Magdala broke into a sweat, but her face and body were stern and resolved.

— My dear, we are in an urgent time. Your child must come now, and you must help it.

Another moan, and Délira’s eyes flitted and sank.

— How are you here? Libète hisses. The new shock at finding her Uncle is too much.

— In time, in time, he replies. Get under cover now. I’ll explain as we go. Libète pulled the offered sheet over her head and peeked out from beneath, expecting a quick getaway. Uncle gave a click and snapped the sisal reins tied to the mule. The animal refused to move.

— Come on you dumb
bèt
! Uncle growled.

— When did you get a
milèt
? Libète asked.

— He’s new. Uncle hopped down from the lip of the cart and tried to slap the animal’s backside.
Come on, come on,
he entreated.
No reason to hold things up!

Libète laughed, and it felt palliative. Far too many times she had seen similar scenes play out, but Uncle was the insufferable beast and Libète the exasperated one. The dissonance between past and present experience with the man was jarring. In the wake of her Aunt’s death in the quake and their shared displacement in a tent encampment, she and her Uncle had been at perpetual odds. The aching, brutal hunger that set in when his profligacy took hold and he drank their money away. His endless threats culminating in capricious beatings. Darkest of all, was the night of her abduction and near kidnapping from their shared tent. It happened while her Uncle had slunk off to indulge his vices. When she was recovered, he had sworn to change his ways. She had given his word little weight–it was like a bucket with a hole, good intentions always seeped out and away.

The mule finally budged, and Uncle gave a victory shout before biting his fist and looking around to see if anyone heard. He leaped back up on his cart and gave the girl a toothy grin.

— Where are we going,
Tonton
? Libète asks from under the sheet.

— Home, he says. You’re going home.

She had been wrong about his promises this time. After the dark events that catapulted Libète into the middle of Benoit’s plot for office, Stephanie had soon arrived like a guardian angel, pulling Libète out of the camp and placing her in the boarding school. Uncle’s friendships based on shared drink and drugs vanished when he had none to offer. Unable to rely upon his wife’s business or Libète’s free labor, he had to scrape by on his own. A friend took pity and let him serve as a
bouret
man, lugging goods around Cité Soleil on his borrowed cart.

After a time, Libète climbs up from the mattress to sit beside her Uncle, wearing the sheet like a shroud. Each time one of the wagon’s uneven rubber tires makes a full rotation, it results in a large bump.

— To safety, he continues. I’m getting you away.

— From what?

— That’s for another to share.

She huffed. How did you get the note to me?

— Get a note to you?

— Under my door.

— I left no such thing. His face drew back. I only have the note you passed to me.

Alarm stretched across her face. She exhaled deeply. I left no such thing.

— But of course you did.

She punched his shoulder. I’d know if I did! Give it here! He reached into the breast pocket of his worn polyester sport coat, pulling out the paper. She devoured the contents:
Bring your cart to the school’s back wall . . . midnight . . . something soft to land on . . . I need you . . . Libète.

— These aren’t my words! she protested. She found her old self claiming her with each new breath. Where did you get this?

He turned dark, his face not like she’d seen since the days in the camp.

— Ah, Uncle, I’m sorry. She rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek, remembering he was illiterate.

— A woman from the market brought it to me. Said it was passed to her. I had another read it to me, he mumbled. I thought it was from you. Because it said it was.

— You’re right, Uncle. Of course.

— If a note says it’s from a person, why wouldn’t it be from that person?

— I understand completely, Uncle.

— The thing, it makes no sense.

— We’ll figure it out. Her mind raced. She compared her crinkled note with his carefully folded one.
The same writing
. Someone had infiltrated the school, or maybe co-opted someone from within to guide her out of her cell, to the roof, onto the cart. Maxine, perhaps? But this conclusion disagreed with her advice to stay put.

— What should we do? he asked. Hide?

She looked him hard in the eye. Whoever was behind setting her free would surely have been watching his plan unfold. No, she said. We wait.

And so they did.

They retreated to a corner of Bwa Nèf, as safe a haven as there could be in times like these. Libète sat beside her Uncle on a log, a small fire crackling in the bottom of a sawed-open oil drum. He held a knife in his hand and cut an orange in pieces. He smiled as he handed her a slice, and she smiled back, but weakly.

— Thank you, Uncle. He gave a meek nod.

They faced the nearby lane so that they could at least see someone approach. Their conversation was mostly perfunctory: about weather, new violence in the slums, marriages and deaths, business, and a host of unchallenging things that fill one’s thoughts and permit a retreat from the dull pains of life.

Partway through a recounting of his day’s hauls through Bwa Nèf, her Uncle stopped midsentence.

— Do you think–the one behind this all–could it be . . .
him
?

She knew at once he spoke of his son, Davidson. The young man had fled the night of Benoit’s arrest, recruited by the villain along with other youths to catapult themselves into a pitched battle with the local contingent of UN peacekeepers. It was believed all over that the troops had been kidnapping and prostituting local girls.

— Maybe, she told him. It was appealing: in all of the intrigue in which she found herself embroiled, perhaps her cousin was a watchful presence and protector after all. It’s a comforting thought, no?

His face was laden with sadness or regret, Libète couldn’t tell which. A very comforting one, he said. He reached for the orange, shared another piece, and retreated into himself.
A good man
beneath it all,
she mused. Mèsi, Tonton. For everything.

— The least I could–

— Psst! Psst!

Libète shot up. The soft, vulnerable version of herself was engulfed in an instant. Who are you? she barked. What do you want? She dropped her orange into the flames and picked up a rock. She stood, arm cocked, her body again tense and mean.