Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [8]
With one hand, Ben helps me out of the water. In the other hand, he’s holding a gun.
He fires toward the sky. Gunshots pop like firecrackers. The air is electric—people run around in circles and scream, boys hold their girlfriends’ hands. Leaving Ben behind, I plow through the madness to the side of the bar. I drop to the floor, crouching beneath the porch railing. There are too many people to see what’s happening; I am caught in a spiral of chaos and movement, charging, rushing, spinning, trampling. Just a sea of people and crashing movement. There is more running, sauve qui peut, and dizziness. I press my hands against my temples as two more gunshots shatter the air.
The other guy is gone. Ben calms down. He finds me in the crowd and asks me if I’m okay. There’s a dangerous flicker in his eyes.
I don’t go out that much anymore because Ben seems to materialize everywhere. Besides, there’s the embargo and the gas prices have skyrocketed, making it impossible to get around town. My father often spends half a day in a line to get his tank filled; no gas container allowed. I can only go to school three times a week. On school days, because of the traffic caused by the long lines, the alarm clock rings at four o’clock in the morning.
“C’est l’heure! C’est l’heure!” my mother chants each morning as she opens the windows for the mountain air to rush in.
We fetch water from a cistern built under the house for our bath and press our clothes with a smoky charcoal iron, whose hollow interior is filled with smoldering coals. High, spoutlike openings allow for the coals to be fanned when swinging the iron back and forth vigorously.
If there’s no electricity, I do my homework by candlelight. After I’ve studied a whole chapter on the French Revolution or read about la Négritude, there’s not much to do and I’m bored out of my mind.
I don’t remember giving him my phone number. But Ben calls.
We talk every night. I sit Indian-style, wringing, twirling the curly phone cord in my left hand, receiver tucked between my ear and left shoulder, until hours later it leaves hickeys on my ear. I tell him about my father. One moment Papa is normal, calm, quiet, in control, reliable; the next he is a wildeyed stranger, screaming so loud my ears sting. His eyebrows join together in a frown line across his forehead. His thin face is stern, lips latched tight, and his black-rimmed glasses magnify his furious eyes.
“If you ever need me to kick his ass,” Ben says, “I’m one phone call away.”
Ben is not that bad, after all. He might be dangerous—but he’s also fun. He doesn’t try to hide his trying to get into my pants. We have phone sex once, or so he thinks. I am only pretending, playing Tetris silently on my Game Boy. Maybe he’s faking it too.
I want to learn how to drive. Ben knows someone who knows someone else who works at the Department of Highway Control. I get my driver's license before I ever sit behind a wheel. I think that once I get the rectangular piece of colorful plastic, it will be easier to convince my parents to send me to driving school. Well, no. Papa says I am too impulsive to drive a car.
“Teach me,” I tell Ben.
Mom is okay with the lessons because I told her that Ben is a math teacher chez les soeurs. Truth is: Ben doesn’t exactly have a job. He was into stealing credit card numbers on the Internet for a while. Now, he admits just living off his mother’s retirement money.
That same afternoon, I am in the driver’s seat of his red Volkswagen. He spent the whole morning at a gas station, in an “embargo” line—his tank is full. The ashtray is polluted with cigarette butts;