Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [3]
papa found your tapes, he started yelling at me, asking if I was crazy keeping them, he is just waiting for the gasoline ban to be lifted so we can get out of the city, he is always pestering me these days because he cannot go out driving his van. all the american factories are closed, he kept yelling at me about the tapes, he called me selfish, and he asked if i hadn't seen or heard what was happening to man-crazy whores like me. i shouted that i wasn't a whore, he had no business calling me that, he pushed me against the wall for disrespecting him. he spat in my face, i wish those macoutes would kill him. i wish he would catch a bullet so we could see how scared he really is. he said to me, i didn't send your stupid trouble maker away, i started yelling at him. yes, you did. yes, you did. yes, you did, you pig peasant, i don't know why i said that, he slapped me and kept slapping me really hard until man-man came and grabbed me away from him. i wish one of those bullets would hit me.
The tar is holding up so far. Two days and no more leaks. Yes, I am finally an African. I am even darker than your father. I wanted to buy a straw hat from one of the ladies, but she would not sell it to me for the last two gourdes I have left in change. Do you think your money is worth anything to me here? she asked me. Some-times, I forget where I am. If I keep daydreaming like I have been doing, I will walk off the boat to go fora stroll.
The other night I dreamt that I died and went to heaven. This heaven was nothing like I expected. It was at the bottom of the sea. There were starfishes and mer-maids all around me. The mermaids were dancing and singing in Latin like the priests do at the cathedral during Mass. You were there with me too, at the bottom of the sea. You were with your family, off to the side. Your father was acting like he was better than everyone else and he was standing in front of a sea cave blocking you from my view. I tried to talk to you, but every time I opened my mouth, water bubbles came out. No sounds.
they have this thing now that they do. if they come into a house and there is a son and mother there, they hold a gun to their heads, they make the son sleep with his mother, if it is a daughter and father, they do the same thing, some nights papa sleeps at his brother's, uncle pressoir's house, uncle pressoir sleeps at our house, just in case they come, that way papa will never be forced to lie down in bed with me. instead, uncle pressoir would be forced to, but that would not be so bad. we know a girl who had a child by her father that way. that is what papa does not want to happen, even if he is killed, there is still no gasoline to buy. otherwise we would be in ville rose already, papa has a friend who is going to get him some gasoline from a soldier, as soon as we get the gasoline, we are going to drive quick and fast until we find civilization, that's how papa puts it, civilization, he says things are not as bad in the provinces, i am still not talking to him. i don't think i ever will, manman says it is not his fault, he is trying to protect us. he cannot protect us. only god can protect us. the soldiers can come and do with us what they want, that makes papa feel weak, she says, he gets angry when he feels weak, why should he be angry with me? i am not one of the pigs with the machine guns, she asked me what really happened to you. she said she saw your parents before they left for the provinces, they did not want to tell her anything, i told her you took a boat after they raided the radio station, you escaped and took a boat to heaven knows where, she said, he was going to make a good man, that boy. sharp, like a needle point, that boy, he took the university exams a year before everyone else in this area, manman has respect for people with ambitions, she said papa did not want you for me because it did not seem as though you were going to do any better for me than he and manman could, he wants me to find a man who will do me some