Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [97]
“Anmwe!” a woman near the front door screams. Nobody moves to help her. “Anmwe!” she screams again, before slumping down in a chair to cry. She probably turned away for less than a second. Now her suitcase is gone.
When I glance over at Miranda, she is yawning. Then she turns her back to the front door. She looks like she’s studying the rusty single-propeller plane idling on the runway, ready for boarding.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” I hear myself say in a forced bright voice as I pick up my scuffed backpack to line up behind her for another passport check. We are last in line and will probably have to sit together on the plane.
“So where are you from?” she asks me.
“I’m Haitian.”
“Of course you are.”
What does she mean by that? Something like rage rises in me. There are some clients I know will push my buttons. She probably hasn’t read a thing I sent to her personal assistant. An hour late and she just waltzes in completely unruffled and expects it all to fall into place because she has someone like me sweating the details. Naturally, she’s one of those lucky people who can’t imagine what it means to worry about mundane details like money. Which is never far from my mind these days.
“Our neighbor’s nanny is from Haiti. Solange.”
Please don’t ask me if I know her.
Miranda continues in her blithe staccato: “How long did you live here in Haiti?”
The short answer is “not long,” but I never say this right away. I first explain that my parents were born and raised in Haiti, where I was born. Grandmère Lucille took care of me until I was two, while my parents finished college and looked for jobs. Then we moved to the U.S., where my classmates asked me if I stuck pins into Vodou dolls. Oh, and if we were responsible for AIDS.
Yet wherever we lived, our house was filled with Haitian music, proverbs, legends, paintings, sculptures, and the earthy scent of rice with wild black mushrooms. Living in Haiti was a state of mind, and my parents were ambivalent immigrants who passionately nurtured their memories. Even so, no matter how hard they tried, each passing year felt like the tide ebbing, making them strangers to their own homeland. Philippe and I ended up speaking English at school and at home, and hearing Creole only when my parents spoke to each other. We always understood what they were saying, even though we couldn’t speak the language ourselves. The technical term is auditory comprehension, not the same thing as fluency.
It’s only three days. I can fake anything for that long.
“Only a few years, but don’t worry, I’m fluent in Creole.” Could she see right through me, or was I just being paranoid? With some people, you know exactly where you stand. A conservative political commentator once wrote an editorial in the International Herald Tribune about the “Tahitians” on their boats to Florida. I wrote a letter to the editor, pointing out that those poor “Tahitians” would have had quite a long way to row if they ever wanted to reach Florida.
But Miranda isn’t like that. Maybe the sad state of my birthplace is embarrassing me, though I will never admit that to her. It’s complicated to try and explain how I can be proud of a place most people see as a hopeless basket case. So I have to be a ruthless editor, slashing away at paradox to clear a path of understanding.
“My parents left Haiti because of Papa Doc Duvalier. They both received scholarships from the French government to study in Paris, where they met.” I try to sound nonchalant and not intent on pleasing her one way or the other. Try to make her like you without being obvious. Desperation is a turnoff. Never let them see you sweat. It makes those people anxious.
I want some positive response from Miranda, but she remains uncommitted as we climb the rickety steel steps into the plane.
“Would you prefer the window or the aisle?” She shrugs off my question and takes the window. Thank goodness, because I get vertigo. The plane rattles down the runway, bouncing us up and down like a