There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) (31 page)

She pushed the door harder, and a shrill scream let out, a woman’s.

— They’re gone! He’s gone, you dogs, you sons of bitches! Just leave us be!

It was Madanm Manno, whimpering from where she sat on a living room chair. On seeing the children, she grasped her chest and collapsed to the ground with a yelp.

Jak moved to her and patted the woman’s back, whispering comfort.

Libète had other concerns. Is anyone else here? Libète barked. Madanm Manno shook her head with a cry.

Libète began walking through the different rooms, inspecting the damage. Paintings ripped, chair cushions slashed, tables upended. Everything was in disarray. Where’s Laurent? she asked.

Eyes clenched, Madanm Manno opened her mouth, but nothing could escape. She sobbed instead of spoke.

— Where is he? Jak said softly. Do you know what happened to him?

— He ra-
an
, she slurred. Ran. Into the water. They tried, they tried to get him. The three men, those who came, and they shot at him, but he swam out, swam away, swam off. I don’t know if . . . I think that he’s . . .

— What?

— Dead! she sobbed.

— You saw it all?

— I did.
I did!

Libète clouded. And how did ‘they’ get inside?

The mere asking of the question made the woman burst into new plaintive sobs. She let her hands open, and a few thousand gourdes notes fell from them.

Jak stood up, repulsed. Libète shook her head, a sneer on her face. We get our things, she said to him, and we go.

They rushed up the stairs. More damage: vases shattered, cabinets ajar, drawers pulled out. What were they looking for? She entered her room, seeing her clothes littering the floor. The computer was gone.

— They ripped up my notebook, Jak hollered. Most of my pictures! And Mesye Lizard’s home is broken!

A minute later they reentered the hallway at the same time.

— Do you have your pack? Jak nodded. The open door to Laurent’s room caught Libète’s eye, and she went down the hall to inspect it.

It was the most lived in, and the most upended. The desk lock was busted, and Stephanie’s portrait was just a broken frame in a mess of glass. His manuscript papered the floor again. His phone was gone, but who knew if it was stolen or was with him when he dove into the sea? All other trinkets and knickknacks, everything of value, had been taken as well.
What were you after?

She stepped back into the hall. Jak stepped out from the stairwell that led to the roof. His shoulders slumped.

— What did you see up there?

He just shook his head, eyes watering. It’s not good. I found this among all the bread crumbs and feathers. A small note. I think they missed it.

I’ll meet you where the old Martinettes rest best.

The penmanship was chaotic, scattered. The last letter’s tail left a grim trail across the scrap. Still, it was unmistakably by Stephanie’s hand.

— I think he was trying to get a return message off. But had to run.

She read it again.
Where the old Martinettes rest best . . .

The two looked at each other, searching the annals of their memory, puzzling over the seeming riddle. They thought of all of the places they had been with Stephanie, with Laurent, the Martinettes. Was it too obscure of a clue, something only the siblings would know? Finally, Jak’s eyes sparked, and the mere suggestion of knowledge tripped a line in Libète’s mind.

The cemetery!

City of the Dead

Wap mande simityè si l pa bezwen mò.

You’re asking the cemetery if it doesn’t need the dead
.

They leave Madanm Manno among the wreckage she had wrought.

Jak says farewell, despite everything. Libète does not.

Libète mounts the bike, brings it to life, and the two pull away, fast and foolhardy and reckless.

— Slow down! Jak cries.

She takes a wild, skidding turn.

— You wanna miss Steffi? She’ll leave us behind!

They speed along the southern edges of town, their horn causing all in the street to part. She has Jak wear the headscarf, anything to disguise themselves as they cut across town. Her pack is tucked deep in the sidecar with the boy and his things. He bows his head and holds his hands to his eyes. Libète thinks something is caught in his eye, but then he doesn’t remove them.

Reality, dogged as it was, had caught up with them. It took hold of her friend and dragged him down. She gave herself over to hot hatred rather than fear.

The shoreline was visible, spied in the gaps between blurring trees and homes, appearing animated, like a flipbook. They passed the old customs house, edged around the green grounds of École Frere Clemente, and wove in and out of a series of tight, emptied-out lanes between buildings and shops before reaching the city of the dead.

They went around to the side, avoiding the main gate as Stephanie always did, and deposited the bike near a gap in the block wall on its southern side. The wall was covered with advertisements, political graffiti, and the remnants of posters. They stepped through the entryway.

There were few souls about.

Stephanie had brought the children here. She took a perverse pleasure, it had always seemed, in walking through the colorful landscape of crypts that looked like miniature churches, gravel crunching beneath her feet. Libète edged among the low and decrepit tombs with her arms inevitably crossed and top lip in a bunch. Jak was more circumspect, trailing behind both, and he could be heard whispering prayers.

The last time they had come, Stephanie had walked very slowly. She cleared away a bit of weed that had invaded a tombstone’s lettering or removed an encroaching hibiscus plant and plucked the red flower gingerly.

— What are you doing? Libète had asked.

She smiled. Tending the dead, I suppose.

Stephanie led them to a columned mausoleum, its marble polished and facade well kept.
FAMILLE MARTINETTE
was chiseled above. She laid one of her collected blooms on the shaded stone ground. She sat and smiled. Can we stay? For a bit? While I write?

Libète rolled her eyes.

— But it’s not even your family, Libète said. You’re like a branch, just . . . grafted onto the Martinette tree.

Jak slapped Libète’s arm.

— What? It’s the truth. We haven’t visited Elize’s marker in months. He was your real father.

Stephanie forced a sad smile. She took out her pen and laid her feelings down on her note pad. Jak went and sat close to the woman, in the shade and out of her view. He mouthed something to Libète, but she couldn’t follow. He formed the silent words again:
Di
‘
desole
.’
Say ‘sorry
.’

Libète had rolled her eyes and walked off, picking up a fallen stick to poke and prod tombs.

— She’s being foolish, Steffi.

Stephanie continued her writing without looking up. She’s being Libète, Stephanie replied.

Libète heard the words; they made her broil. She knew Elize so well, and yet Stephanie rarely asked her about him. To have one right before you who could help illuminate where you came from, to fill in deep holes in your memory, wouldn’t that be a gift? To Libète, it was silly for a writer who committed so much to paper, memorializing the most trivial of details, to choose the holes.

Days like those with Stephanie, full of endless time together, seemed so innocent to Libète now. They had nearly driven Libète mad, but now, it was what she longed for most.

The other people in the cemetery today were sedate. Some were carrying out their duty to the dead, clad in black mourning garb. Two middle-aged men were despondent, or maybe just world-weary, laying under the few sickly trees and seeking solitude. The only noise came from those using the cemetery as a shortcut, either returning from the Carnival festivities or moving toward them.

She spun around, her Sun-drenched and fear-racked mind making her so very tired.

— Jak, I’m confused. Which way–which way was it to the Martinettes’?

He pointed resolutely, as a compass does north. They wound through more grave markers.

Dimanche’s villainy was a blow. When he disappeared, forced into hiding years before, she had imputed nobility to him. Now he was just another person trying to use her for his own ends. Just as Stephanie did. Just as her Aunt Estelle had. She was like a well-worn prop, trotted out to say the precocious
bon mot
or spout justice and peace to those who hoped oh-so-fervently that hope was not lost.

She was tired of this adult world she was inheriting. Tired of the deadly games, the rank injustice of all they had built. She felt like lying down under one of the cemetery’s bowed trees, closing her eyes, and never having to pry them open again . . .

Steffi
. Libète thought of her immaculate clothes. Her styled hair. Her lavender scent. Her careful ways. Her practiced perfection in speaking, writing, and caring.

Libète thought of what she would tell Stephanie if she saw her. She would vent all: that Laurent was probably dead and it was Stephanie’s doing. That leaving Libète and Jak in Jacmel had been an unforgivable offense. Libète sighed. That facing this terrible world would have been all right if Stephanie had just kept her close, so that love–or whatever fiction of love they shared–could sustain her.

Each step toward that damned mausoleum made her blood boil, so that when Stephanie revealed herself, Libète could only stop.

The two children, for that was what they were, stared at their guardian.

She was hollowed. Sallow cheeks, new lines under her eyes, hair in knots.

Jak stepped forward. Libète could not.

Libète watched him move toward her, his arms out, until he reached Stephanie and gave an embrace that was desperate and relieved and whole. And her eyes filled with tears. His arms wrapping around her validated the burden she chose to carry.

Libète stood there, numb. Stephanie wore the hurt on her face and extended a begging hand, beckoning her to come close too. But Libète still could not.

Stephanie parted from Jak. He was reluctant to let go. She sat him down on the mausoleum steps tenderly. She started toward Libète.

This is your fault.

Stephanie’s eyes still watered.

Your brother is dead.

Their eyes connected again before words could be spoken, before touch could be exchanged. Libète’s lips parted.

—
You abandoned me to the–

Stephanie took her and hugged her fiercely. Libète tried to accuse, but Stephanie’s arms closed tightly. The words, they could not form, and hatred, it could not stand.

Libète fell limp, letting Stephanie keep hold of her till they both collapsed to their knees.

— Cheri, cheri, cheri,
Stephanie said
.
My dear girl. How I’ve
missed
you!

Libète simply shook in Stephanie’s arms, her tears dripping down the woman’s back.

— Libète, Jak shouted suddenly.
Run!

Libète’s heart leaped before her legs could follow. From within the shadows of the mausoleum stepped Dimanche.

The corn stalks rise above her head. She is grateful for the chance to hide among the rows before knocking them down.

Less than a week.
The flames, the masks, the command to go spring to her mind.

She slashes, cutting stalk from root. Again, and again, till the sweat drips down into her clothes. She channels everything into those cuts. She begins to cough, and she cannot stop.

Her body shakes as if in a fit, and her throat is on fire. She wonders, could it be? Her pills had given out long ago, but she thought the gathering storm of disease had passed without making landfall. Suddenly, the heaving subsides.
No, surely not.
Surely she was fine. She resumes her slashing.

— Sophia? Where are you? Libète hears the words but doesn’t stop her cutting. Sophia?
Sophia!

Libète finally lowers her blade.

— Wi, Magdala?

— Are you well?

— I am.

— You seem . . . burdened. Not even a word for me this morning.

— It’s nothing.

— Why don’t you join us, over there? She pointed. With the other women? There’s no need to be alone.

Libète wiped her brow, shielded her eyes. I’m fine over here. She swung her blade again.

Magdala’s hand grasped Libète’s wrist at the apex of her swing. What is
happening
, Sophia? Their faces were close, noses nearly touching. Libète could not meet the woman’s pleading eyes. You’ve not acted this way since, well, since you arrived.

— Please, just . . . just leave me be. She sniffed back tears.

— You act as one who isn’t loved.

— You don’t know what I’m fleeing from, Magdala. Or where I’m going.

— So put down your blade, your sharp words, and tell me.

Libète finally let her body slacken and the machete dropped from her grasp to slip into the ground.

— My dear, dear girl, she cooed. I’m here. I’m here. The Good Lord, he’s here.

— He’s put me–putting me–through hell. This – she shuddered –
suffering
, it has no purpose. No matter where I go, what I do, every path leads me back to pain.

Magdala took this in quietly.

— We all suffer. If you saw each person’s path, from start to finish, you’d see such anguish and hurt. I’m just a woman, never having left the mountain, but I know things. You can’t outrun the Lord and his plans, the joys they hold, and the pains. You can only learn how to handle the pain. Me, myself, I’ve learned how to
use
it.

Libète looked up through tears. Magdala continued. When my parents were ripped from me, and I saw their dead bodies, and touched them, I was destroyed. The sadness, it tore me to pieces. Magdala looked to the sky. And I knew I was beyond repair. And yet, a neighbor came along to comfort me. When I was hungry and couldn’t provide for myself, another came along to feed me. When my husband left, there was another friend who lived on with me. Even you, arriving to be with me when Félix was hated by all. It was all one helping the other. Now I store up comfort and hope to pass it along to the next one who is hurting.

Magdala sighed. Pain is a question I have no answer for. The why of it. And I’ll take it up with God and the Virgin Mary when I see them. But I can often see a purpose, and opportunity, no matter what has been taken. I just don’t see them right away.

— I have to leave, Magdala. I’ve been ordered to leave, and I’m scared, I’m so very scared. Her voice was tiny. The woman held her at arm’s length and searched Libète’s face.

— Who? Who would make you go? Those brutes with the dog?

— The . . . the Sosyete. Though Libète’s eyes were closed, she felt Magdala’s hands stiffen around her own.

— They summoned you?

Libète answered with a moan. Magdala stroked Libète’s head, time and again, and leaned in to whisper. Sophia, whatever you are, whoever you are,
you’re mine
. God’s given you to me, and I won’t let them make you go. They would have to kill me.

— You’re wonderful, Libète whispered.

Magdala patted Libète’s head once more. Now, please, you must stand up. Libète rose. I don’t want the others to see and ask questions. Anything involving the Sosyete is dangerous. But we’ll think of . . .

Libète looked up into her face, a thought sparking. Magdala clapped. We’ll appeal to a higher power!

Libète did not follow. God?

— Ha! Ha ha! No. I mean
Janel
. That woman–she has authority! She’ll have an idea, some way to get them to let you stay. Come now. She lifted the erect machete and restored it to Libète’s palm. The end of hope is the end of us all. Don’t you forget it.