Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [66]
She heard the unzipping of the pants and the thump of his footsteps when he dropped the gun on the cement. “Tanpri ede mwen!” she cried. Please help!
Her supplications had absolutely no effect on the aggressor. He had shaken off his momentary lapse of judgment in feeling sorry for her and was now saying to himself, Another crime, why not? Even though society had placed people like this girl above his stature, his life, his physical prowess, and his gun, would always get him what he wanted. In the end, the begging and praying meant little to him. Physical violence was the only thing those people would respect.
With this in mind, he grabbed Rosanna’s arms and legs and stretched her out on the floor. He threw himself on top of her, stamping his lips roughly on her face. She squirmed out of his grasp and tried to roll away, scraping her skin against pebbles on the floor. She balled her fists and managed to squeeze her wrists free from the duct tape. Then, before he could reach her, she yanked the blindfold off her face.
The room was a gray square with unfinished cement blocks piled on top of one another; the roof was made of rippling tin. Up front was a padlocked black metal door to which this man probably had the key.
While she was contemplating a way out, the man grabbed her by the arm and threw her against a wall. He was using even more force than before. He squeezed her left arm and twisted her right one behind her back, trying to join them, perhaps to tape them together again.
She felt both her shoulders snap, the pain throbbing through her entire body. She had no more to lose. She had to keep fighting. For the first time since the guard had pulled the tape off her mouth, she began screaming. She screamed as loud as she could, and for every scream, every push, every punch she tried to throw, he countered with one of his own. She tried to bite him. He clung to her, pressing his body against her so tight that each of her movements echoed his. He picked her up and slammed her down on the ground, throwing his body’s weight on top of hers, pinning her to the concrete. They started rolling together on the floor, and as she struggled to break away, he took the opportunity to snatch up her skirt with an unsettling rage. Her courage was flagging. She was exhausted. Her screams seemed completely useless. No one was coming.
Rosanna cried out one last time. At that moment he raised her leg, chafed raw from the floor, and she felt something like a hot iron on the outside of her genitals, something like fire between her legs.
She opened her mouth to scream even louder, but this time no sound came out. There was just a feeling of suffocation as the iron attacked her flesh. The man grunted and shrieked with an animalistic joy. The pain grew so unbearable that she could no longer yell. He, however, was laughing as he hammered his hips into hers. Finally, the pain became so intense that she lost consciousness.
At Solange’s house, her cell phone rang again.
“Hello. Madame, it’s me. Is the money ready?” the deep voice snapped sharply.
“Sir,” Solange said in a quavering voice, “I can give you two hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars. That’s all we could put together.”
“What! You’re leaving the half-million behind and talking about two hundred thousand? Madame, I’ll call you later.” Bang! The same message showed up on the cell phone’s screen: Private number.
While Solange waited, it felt to her as though the entire city was in mourning. Above the hills, a series of curling black clouds, sympathy clouds, draped the sky like a flock of bad-omen birds. Her eyes puffy from crying, Solange scolded herself between sobs. She should have never let that girl go to Portail Léogâne. She should have agreed to the halfmillion dollars that the kidnappers were demanding. She should have told Davernis to take Rosanna directly to Les Cayes.
Her philosophical neighbor tried to reason with her: “Madame, if the kidnappers were following your Rosanna, they would have found a way to get