Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [106]
Moah was completely turned off from sex after looking at that half-dead man. The sight of the man’s limp, grayish, flaky, peeling penis fixed itself in her brain. Over and over she saw the maggots crawling around his pubic area. At that moment, she could have just joined a convent.
Later and for the remainder of the day, Haba stayed in bed with a headache and a mild fever. Soon after she had sent Moah to the garden to collect leaves, Haba’s best friend, her cousin Clotide—whom she called Titide—flung the door of the one-room house open. Clotide’s voice was the perfect match for her flamboyant personality. Her dark brown flesh jiggled under her orange muumuu with bold yellow sunflowers. Moah crouched under the window, waiting to hear what the two women would say as they lay next to each other, chatting in Haba’s bed.
“Come on, Haba. You have to talk about it. They found him hugging a dead dog, his only friend since they let him out of jail three years ago.”
“Three years ago? He’s been out for three years? Where’s he been?” Haba turned onto her back to look at Clotide’s face.
“They say mostly roaming around like a lost soul. You wouldn’t know that now. Within two hours, Lamercie had found out and sent her people to collect him from the side of the road where he and his dog had been dumped. She’s totally cleaned him up. Two of the girls who serve under her told me they saw him and he looks great. I guess Lamercie finally got to him. I guess, judging by his state, her magic worked. It’s like a second Lazarus.”
“That stuff’s all bullshit. She’s got no more power than the fart I’m about to lay if you don’t leave me alone.”
Clotide reached over Haba’s head to the makeshift table where there was a pail of water. She grabbed the cloth, squeezed it, and wiped her cousin’s face with it.
“It’s been sixteen years since the incident and thirteen of those he spent in jail and you still can’t forgive him?”
“Forgiveness is not for the giving; the offender has to earn it.”
Haba tried to do what she usually did when she was in church. She tried to block out her surroundings and visualize God. Everyone saw her as a devout person. Last week Sister Imadresse stopped her after church to tell her how serene she looked during mass and asked her if she ever saw God during her peaceful moments.
Haba attended three services a day if they had them. But people had no idea that church was where she went to curse God. She knew for sure that God would be in church and he couldn’t avoid her there; so she went religiously. In her mind she’d called him all the bad words she knew at least a thousand times. She spent days making up words and thinking of bad thoughts to throw at God.
“I heard he named the dog after you, Habakkuk.”
“He should thank the missionary who convinced my illiterate mother to accept that ugly name in exchange for a bowl of food.”
“Haba, don’t be so mean. I heard he really loved that dog. He used to save the scraps of cornmeal they gave him and feed the dog through the hole in the wall of his cell. And the dog never left his side. That’s loyalty.”
“Something he knows nothing about.”
“You can’t blame the man. They arrested him and didn’t even give him a trial.”
“Titide, if you came to torture me, it’s working.”
“Okay, answer me this one question and I’ll go away.”
Haba lifted the compress from her head to look at Titide’s round, brown face.
“Tell me: when you saw him, didn’t your heart beat faster? Didn’t your knees go