Drifting. Katia D. Ulysse

      THE LEAST OF THESE

      There was a time when you could drop a fishbone in Puits Blain’s soil and it would grow into a whale. During those days, wealthy gran nègs nicknamed Puits Blain “Sweet Place.” It was far enough away from their mansions in Pétionville, but close enough for a Saturday-morning jaunt to some great-aunt’s mud-and-thatched-roof hut. How serene it all was back then! Even snakes knew to keep their eggs in the old cast-iron pots in the calabash grove. No one knew how those pots got under the calabash trees; it had been generations since anyone even cared to ask. Some said ancestors used those pots to cook the medicine that clamped slave women’s wombs shut. No matter. Manman always scolded my sister and me whenever she caught us playing near those pots. As soon as she would look away, we’d go right back to our games.

      Manman went the way of the ancestors years ago. She died of a broken heart on account of the fact that Papa sold her land right out from underneath her, and went on to scatter his own seed from Port-au-Prince to Port-de-Paix.

      Freda and I came to the United States to study. My sister had such a way with books that she earned a top spot at the John Hopkins School of Medicine. I, on the other hand, had only songs in my brain. Morning, noon, and night, all I wanted to do was write songs. Most days I woke up with one in my head—intro, bridge, and all—like a Christmas gift that had not been there the previous night.

      Freda and her medical degree returned to Puits Blain when Hurricane Jeanne orphaned more children than anyone could count. Her house/clinic was not far from where we grew up. The mud huts had been replaced by concrete-block dwellings. As for the calabash groves, someone sold those gourd, limb, and root. The old cast-iron pots were gone too. Sweet Place had become a maze of alleyways; few people made it out, not to work or interact with outsiders. Each house—with its crown of twisted rebar—received an additional bedroom (or a second floor) as soon as a dollar dropped by. The dream was always to add one more room; one more story on the rooftop, until the house came close to resembling a gran nèg’s mansion. Not much sweetness left in Puits Blain now; just layers upon layers of dust.

      Sometimes Freda’s orphaned children seemed to die just from the dust. I’d been tempted once or twice to

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