Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [12]
I hear someone’s faint crying. Oh God! What did he do to her? Then the door cracks open, and Nelly sticks her head out. Her dark hair hangs across her forehead in messy strands.
She comes out of the bathroom and hugs me. Her eyes are dark, hooded.
“We’ll be going now,” Clement says then.
Nelly turns away from me to look at the men. Fear whisks across her face. Ben is tracing his finger along a scar on his chin. “No problem, man,” he says.
He doesn’t appear anything like the man I met months before. His good looks are gone. There is a stiffness to his face. He has an empty stare. When he kisses Nelly on the lips, she doesn’t kiss him back. Ben’s cheeks harden and his neck tendons engorge. There’s this dangerous look in his eyes again. The one I’ve seen in cats’ eyes while they play with their prey.
We make a quick exit to the car. I am about to get into the vehicle when a wave of nausea rolls over me too fast for me to feel it coming. I dry heave for several long moments. When the nausea finally abates, my temples are pounding, and the sunlight suddenly seems too bright. I pull myself inside the car, taking deep breaths to calm down.
On the cusp of morning, we ride into the sunrise, past the big old two-story houses with porch swings and flower beds along the front walks, the beautiful old flamboyant trees that line the quiet streets and hold on to their bloody leaves.
“I was afraid he was going to rape me,” Nelly says. “That’s why I wouldn’t come out of the bathroom.”
“I was afraid he was going to kill me,” I say. “But I couldn’t just leave you there.”
The bumpy Kenscoff Road is quiet, and the damp air raises goose bumps on my skin as I look ahead into the breaking clouds, warm colors coming in to soften the sky—pinks and golds that blossom against the horizon like jungle flowers.
But as I suck in my breath, I can’t taste the sunrise. I’m looking over my shoulder. Because Ben knows where I live.
THE FINGER
BY GARY VICTOR
Port-au-Prince
Translated by Nicole Ball
With an agility that revealed an extensive amount of experience, Dread Lanfè leaned on his hands and, after a perfect pull-up, hoisted himself to the top of the wall that enclosed the property. Then he checked out the surroundings with eagle eyes. The premises were deserted. Except for a dog barking next door, there was nothing to disturb the silence. As soon as he was sure the way was clear, he put the fingers of his right hand in his mouth and made a high hoot that sounded exactly like the screech of an owl. Right away, his two accomplices, each carrying a canvas bag, popped out of the night. They climbed up the wall too. Dread Lanfè slung a .38 Uzi across his shoulder and walked quickly to the door indicated by the servant who served as informer for the job. Dread Lanfè stood still a moment to make absolutely sure the way was clear. The two German shepherds that might have stirred up the neighborhood had died a few minutes before, after they had swallowed—the pigs!—two pounds of meat spiced up with homemade poison. It was Grizon’s turn to act now. He was a former Tonton Macoute turned political activist, like Dread Lanfè. Grizon was famously expert at picking locks: he could force open the most recalcitrant doors, and it took him less than three minutes to open this one.
Dread Lanfè, his Uzi in hand, entered a dilapidated room with walls blackened by smoke. The scents of oil, spices, and spoiled food floated in the air. Pots and plates were piled in a jumble on shelves. A faucet was letting out a thin flow of water that was running in the darkness with a sinister hiss. He gestured to Grizon to close the door, then gave him the order to remain in the room and cover him. He liked to talk like the military, copy the way they acted and put on their look of mean dogs, to show that he was no petty thug but a political activist about to be integrated into the police force by the dictator—in exile at the moment—with the rank of inspector. If he had become a full-time thief it was because the bourgeoisie and the expat intellectuals had ganged