Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [14]
"A play?" Guy affectionately stroked the boy's hair.
The boy had such tiny corkscrew curls that no amount of brushing could ever make them all look like a single entity. The other boys at the Lycée Jean-Jacques called him "pepper head" because each separate kinky strand was coiled into a tight tiny ball that looked like small peppercorns.
"When is this play?" Guy asked both the boy and his wife. 'Are we going to have to buy new clothes for this?"
Lili got up from the floor and inclined her face towards her husband's in order to receive her nightly peck on the cheek.
"What role do you have in the play?" Guy asked, slowly rubbing the tip of his nails across the boy's scalp. His fingers made a soft grating noise with each invisible circle drawn around the perimeters of the boy's head. Guy's fingers finally landed inside the boy's ears, forcing the boy to giggle until he almost gave himself the hiccups.
"Tell me, what is your part in the play?" Guy asked again, pulling his fingers away from his son's ear.
"I am Boukman," the boy huffed out, as though there was some laughter caught in his throat.
"Show Papy your lines," Lili told the boy as she arranged the three open gourds on a piece of plywood raised like a table on two bricks, in the middle of the room. "My love, Boukman is the hero of the play"
The boy went back to the corner where he had been studying and pulled out a thick book carefully covered in brown paper.
"You're going to spend a lifetime learning those." Guy took the book from the boy's hand and flipped through the pages quickly. He had to strain his eyes to see the words by the light of an old kerosene lamp, which that night—like all others—flickered as though it was burning its very last wick.
'All these words seem so long and heavy," Guy said. "You think you can do this, son?"
"He has one very good speech," Lili said. "Page forty, remember, son?"
The boy took back the book from his father. His face was crimped in an of-course-I-remember look as he searched for page forty.
"Boukman," Guy struggled with the letters of the slave revolutionary's name as he looked over his son's shoulders. "I see some very hard words here, son."
"He already knows his speech," Lili told her husband.
"Does he now?" asked Guy.
"We've been at it all afternoon," Lili said. "Why don't you go on and recite that speech for your father?"
The boy tipped his head towards the rusting tin on the roof as he prepared to recite his lines.
Lili wiped her hands on an old apron tied around her waist and stopped to listen.
"Remember what you are," Lili said, "a great rebel leader. Remember, it is the revolution."
"Do we want him to be all of that?" Guy asked.
"He is Boukman," Lili said. "What is the only thing on your mind now, Boukman?"
"Supper," Guy whispered, enviously eyeing the food cooling off in the middle of the room. He and the boy looked at each other and began to snicker.
"Tell us the other thing that is on your mind," Lili said, joining in their laughter.
"Freedom!" shouted the boy, as he quickly slipped into his role.
"Louder!" urged Lili.
"Freedom is on my mind!" yelled the boy.
"Why don't you start, son?" said Guy. "If you don't, we'll never get to that other thing that we have on our minds."
The boy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At first, his lips parted but nothing came out. Lili pushed her head forward as though she were holding her breath. Then like the last burst of lightning out of clearing sky, the boy began.
"A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people. Not only those people whose dark hollow faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once more the last caress-es from the hand of a loving father, a valiant love, a beloved friend."
It was obvious that this was a speech written by a European man, who gave to the slave revolutionary Boukman the kind of European phrasing that might have sent the real Boukman