Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [6]
Now, in a different time and place, that same fear and horror gripped her yet again. As the clamor grew louder, a wail pushed itself past her lips. The entire tent city seemed to be alive with commotion. The news that Odette, the lady lougawou, was about to be dealt with brought ecstasy to many.
A small group of stick-wielding women were already inside her makeshift tent. She felt an arm around her neck, which was followed by the tearing sound of the front of her dress and then a slap at the side of her head. All she remembered saying was: “Ki sa m te fè?” What did I do?
As the torrent of slaps continued, she wrapped both her arms around her head. Had it not been for a police pickup that was parked nearby, her body would surely have been hacked. Even in the presence of the officers, some managed to land a kick or a slap.
In the police truck, the destroyed city was not as visible, a less structured darkness now shielding the living and the dead from each other. The Andalusian horses were galloping ahead of them. Odette turned to the young police officer who sat next her to bring this to his attention, then she changed her mind. Instead, she raised her eyes to the sky, which was the brightest she had ever seen it and teeming with stars. She tried to search for her own star, but could not find it. It had forsaken her and dashed out of the heavens, it seemed, very long ago.
THE RAINBOW’S END
BY M.J. FIEVRE
Kenscoff
I’m sitting in my father’s chair—a tattered and tired office chair that I’ve lugged to the porch. It is showing its age: scarred faux leather, armrests sprouting prickly stuffing, scents of Papa in the fabric. Half shaded by an acacia tree, I am sipping rich, dark café au lait, scattering a bit on the ground first, just like my father does, to feed our ancestors. The air is soft with breeze and sweet with roasting coffee, the few clouds in the sky moving like fishing boats out on the Caribbean Sea. The voices of the neighborhood rise and fall in spurts. Outside the prisonlike gates of my parents’ house in Kenscoff, young girls balance buckets atop their heads, up and down the graveled roads. Sun-wrinkled women sell huge mangoes and homemade peanut brittle, while boys in cutoff jeans run in circles with makeshift kites or push around trucks made from plastic bottles.
Papa struts from the house. A dark beard nearly covers his entire face. This angled face is also mine. Only fear and distance make it seem less familiar. My father’s hair is still wet from the shower. His I-am-home clothing is worn and comfortable: a stretched-out sweater, blue chinos, and old wool socks. The skin crawls on the back of my neck and the pit of my stomach crashes into my pelvis. My father’s presence always makes me uncomfortable. He’s more of a jailer than a father. I don’t like his grim outlook on the world and the way he tries so hard to make a father and daughter out of us when we are in fact complete strangers.
He walks around behind me in his cramped, thin shoes, places his hands on the back of the chair, and asks, “What are you doing, Magda?”
I can’t see his face now but I know his eyebrows are furrowed in curiosity. I take a deep breath, push my wild furious loathing into a soft, horrible place inside myself, and I swallow. “Thinking,” I say.
He sits in the rocking chair next to me, elbows on knees, with his whiskered chin in the palms of his hands, and sighs. Then he picks up the magazine I have been reading, clutches it in his calloused and rough hands.
“I don’t think a girl should be allowed to go to nightclubs until she’s eighteen,” he says.
I nod my head up and down, like a bobble doll, pretending to be interested.
Papa looks at me. “You don’t like me much, do you?”
I raise my shoulders in annoyance. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He takes a deep breath.