There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) (21 page)

The peace along the road was broken before long. She heard shouting from among the corn, and saw Ossaint, Vernard, and Jezula.

— You’re harvesting my crop! Taking my work for your own! Jezula shouted.

— Shut your mouth. My land starts there, between that rock – Ossaint pointed to a larger stone along the roadside – and that stump. Always has!

The woman flew in front of him and jabbed a finger into the man’s chest. If that stone happens to move by your own hand it doesn’t let you claim the earth! You’re acting like . . . like an . . .
American!

His nostrils flared. He did not appreciate the insult.

Land ownership made for a complicated patchwork of parcels. Large plots had been divided and inherited and sold and subdivided and traded. Written titles meant little; often neither party in a dispute could read the frayed papers produced to bolster a claim. Blurred lines between plots were dangerous, Libète had learned. They led to flared tempers and thrown fists.

— You have no right!

— We’re out here all the time! Ossaint said. We never see you at work. So you want to redraw the lines and claim our crop. Getting fat off
our
sweat!

Libète walked past the marker stone often. She knew its location well, and also knew it had not moved. It was deep in the ground, and if it had shifted it would have left a noticeable indentation in its former place, or the ground would show evidence of tampering.

She felt the impulse to intervene turn over in her stomach.

She took one step toward them, but then returned to the center of the road.
Best not to get involved
, she whispered under her breath. She let their shouting drift and fade away as she continued her climb.

When the road’s two tines forked, she took the trail toward the fort. Partway up, she came upon Junior, Jeune’s mute son.

— Bonswa, Mesye Junior. His barrow had been covered, but overturned. He was frantically trying to return the items–rope, a pan, some long-handled tool–under its protective canvas. Libète’s voice made him stand erect. He forced a nervous smile.

— Where are you heading?

He made a pointed roof with his hands.

— Isn’t your home that way?

His smile twitched at its edge; a tick. He nodded, pointed over the hill and then made his hand a half circle. The smile took too much effort, and his face slid into a neutral mask.

She scratched her elbow.

— Do you . . . need help? She went to lay her things down.

No, no, no
, he said with his hands, and held his heart in gratitude.

— Dakò, she said.
Bondye beni ou
, God bless you. She proceeded up the trail, feeling his eyes prying into her back before he returned to the loose supplies.

The fort stood as it had. When she came close to it, she hollered, Come out you French bastards! I’ve come to kick you from our land!

Félix emerged with a half smile. Libète waved. She had yet to actually make him laugh.

He stood with arms crossed, his head pivoting to track her as she walked past. He followed behind slowly, respectfully.

— Are you well? he said.

— I am. A bit sore. You?

—
M fatigue tou
. I’m tired too.

She went straight to a spot on the floor that was shaded. She imagined it must have been a dining hall in days of old. She sat, careful to protect her modesty. His eyes slipped mechanically to her bare legs before returning to her face. He reprimanded himself for the lack of discipline. His lips tightened.

— You sleeping better? she asked.

— My dreams are . . . still dark.

Libète nodded knowingly. Her mind slipped to her most recent nightmare, one she remembered too well. Jak was bound on an operating table and was being tortured by masked surgeons. It was terrible.

— But it’s not that. I’m sleeping okay, he said. Anton had me fix his house’s wall. He rubbed his head. Loads of brick involved. Took all morning.

— Ah! Good! She looked him in the eye. Another inviting you back into the fold!

— Only because I’m good with a trowel and they can pay me less kòb than anyone else. How’s my mom?

— We were at the common plot all morning, doing our share. Libète played with a tall weed. She’s well. Misses you.

— I’ll come by soon. Tell her so.

Libète frowned. He said this nearly every day. I will, she said.

She looked down from her vantage and saw another truck pulling up to the gate hewn into the cliff.

— Seeing those trucks come and go. I don’t know. It makes me uneasy, Félix said. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Didn’t Rodriguez say the university was slowing down its work until the common plot was harvested?

— They already started in. Pulling up more bits of ground from all over it. ‘Samples.’

— And no one’s saying anything?

— They keep showing up with more goats, more chickens, more seed, more trees to plant. Holding up their end of the bargain.

He spit. I don’t like it, Félix said. They’re up to something.

— I could care less what they’re doing, she said, taking the pencil from her pocket. She unfolded the paper, busying herself. Félix squinted, looking at the back of her head. He didn’t believe a word she said.

She smoothed the paper out, revealing lines of microscopic type: repeating vowels, consonants, three-letter words, the simplest of sentences. Enough talk, she said. Ready for today’s lesson?

The second day at the Martinette villa was much like the first. With her internal clock busted from the odd hours kept since Didi’s poisoning, she stayed up late online, combing news sites, checking her e-mail and Facebook profile. Jak had joined her, but fell asleep in the wicker chair he had dragged in from another room. The laptop screen cast an eerie glow of changing color across her face.

She had searched for her name. There were the old articles and editorials that touched on her–she was familiar with all of them–and photographs–she had viewed every one–but they were pushed aside by a number of new news pieces, as if her past had been overwritten.

She was disgusted. Her enemies had indeed moved beyond attempts on her life to attacking her reputation.

Stories condemned her. They spoke of the sinister poisoning of a friend, an escape from imminent arrest, and a bizarre scene of damage as accomplices tore off a property’s door in Cité Soleil. Steffi, Jak, Didi–all were there, named and pictured.

It didn’t matter that the authors were most certainly paid off–this was how news so often worked in Haiti–but even some of the smaller presses and independent papers were picking up the story fragments and judging her without so much as a basic inquiry. All she needed was a phone and she could be in touch with the whole of Haiti. Clearing her name was her first imperative. She jumped into her e-mail and began drafting a statement. She’d have Jak look it over in the morning–he was good at honing her arguments and moderating her excesses.

She looked at the boy. Even in sleep he couldn’t quit his nervousness. He could try to mask it, but it was a gossamer veil. Her guilt crept in again.
Again,
I drag him into this. I dragged everybody into it.

Stirring, she turned the computer off and prepared for sleep. It was five o’clock, and new light was breaking out across the sky.

She sighed. Jacmel’s cooling sea breeze was nothing like the heavy air of Cité Soleil. She looked out the villa’s window at the sleeping sea town’s roofs.

There came a sound from down the hall: speech, loud and angry. It made her jump before realizing it could only be Laurent.

His chamber was a few rooms down. With feline steps she glided across the gleaming tile floor to peek in his room.

He sat perched over a desk. His words–those not clipped–were slurred, guttural mutterings she couldn’t make out. He was writing freehand on a thick pad of paper. A glass sat beside his left, writing hand and next to it a bottle of imported whiskey at its quarter mark. There was something else appointing the desk, blocked by his hunched form.
A framed picture
.

Libète meant to simply lean farther into the room but brushed against the door. It gave a terse creak; she gave a curse. Laurent jumped in his seat. With his alcoholic fog sucked away, he slammed the photograph to the table. He breathed unevenly and stood. Libète shrank back as he strode toward her and lifted his hand as if he was preparing to strike her. She cringed and braced herself.

The door slammed shut.

— Good progress, Félix. Libète stands up. You’ve been practicing.

He lays the pencil down. I’ve written the alphabet into the earth so many times the dirt could recite it.

— I wish we had more paper.

— Me too.

Libète bites her lip, as if there was something more to say. Well–I’ll be going. She begins folding the paper gingerly.

— Why don’t you teach others to read? Félix blurts.

— We’ve been through this.

— But I was thinking. You could do it in the church. Be a teacher. For everyone. So few of us can, and not many can teach so well.

She blushes at the compliment. I’ve said–

— I know, you’ve said, but . . . it’s selfish. You want to become part of Foche, no? What better way? Why are you still hiding out when–

Libète darkens, and Félix knows he has transgressed. She forces the paper together hastily and rips it before moving across the uneven stones, under the half-fallen archway, and out.

Félix sighs, flexing his fingers as he watches her go, and wishes he had something to occupy his hands. He retreats farther back into the cracked walls and curses himself.

— No questions! she shouts over her shoulder. We promised!

The path home was empty; daylight flagged. She muttered the entire way.

Didn’t he know she wanted to teach? Her pride clamored for it! To proclaim from the mountaintop that she was the most educated person on it! She was sick of feigned ignorance, her infantilization in all things, biting her tongue at stupidity when it reared its face, turning a blind eye toward small injustices, swallowing her thoughts and convictions on every subject from science to religion to national politics to–

Stop
. She breathed deep to regain her composure and slow her barreling train of thought.
This is wrong. I am wrong.

Without Magdala and Félix she had no release at all. The pressure of her lie built with nowhere to escape but their ears. Without them, honesty would become a fictive thing for her, like politicians’ truth, the International Community’s benevolence, like . . . she huffed.
God’s goodness
.

When she arrived home, the shack was empty. She was grateful for it.

She slid the brown paper into a cavity in the wall and slipped back into the yard. She patted the goat’s budding horns, tended their new piglet, and settled back down in the small rectangular plot that lay behind the house.

Magdala had let the small garden go around the time of Libète’s arrival, while still feeling the heaviness of Félix’s theft and shunning. Weeds had choked the beans and beets and cabbages. Libète may have never worked in fields before, but maintaining a family plot? That was at least familiar.