to faceless bodies that jostled for space, pushing and shoving, squeezing one behind the other, like the pods inside a pomegranate. Everyone wanted a chance to see the Angel of Mercy in person.
“I want you to form two groups,” a disembodied voice boomed through a megaphone. “If you have a letter that says your appointment is today, stand on my right. If you do not have a letter with your appointment date, stand on my left.”
From our position in the crowd, Manman could not discern where the speaker’s right or left was. She did what she’d always done: joined the line with fewer people in it, the line where no one was hurling curses at the sky and spitting angrily on the pavement.
“Get out of my way! Move! Padon kò-w!” The crowd scattered, as if shots had been fired. Men and women shoved and elbowed one another roughly, as if they were fighting for their lives. “Make way! Make way!”
Like flour in a sieve, the bulk of the crowd sifted through one side and a few lumps remained on the other. Manman secured my hand in hers, pulling me toward the lumps that remained in the sieve. Someone from the opposite side yelled something about having an appointment but not the letter to prove it.
“Then you do not have an appointment,” the voice in the megaphone replied in Creole. “And if you do not have one, I suggest you go home and wait for it to arrive in the mail.”
“The mail!” a man howled. An explosion of laughter ensued. “We have mail in Haiti now?” Everyone, even Manman, laughed.
When the voice in the megaphone said, “Or you can all go home and use your passports as kindling,” a heavy silence fell on the crowd. The sea of bobbing heads had been parted by the powerful gatekeeper. Only a select few would have the chance to hope and plead and cry today.
Just as the moon had made way for the sun earlier, the gatekeeper stepped aside and let us in. Manman, in her hunter-green battle gear, did not get a chance to wield any of the weapons she brought along: a wedding picture with my father in that too-big suit, a snapshot of my sisters with tear-stained faces, another picture of my father looking particularly lonely in the faraway country where heavy woolen clothing was too often necessary.
The gargantuan being I expected to see was a bespectacled little man in charcoal-colored slacks, starched white shirt, suspenders that made an X on his back, and flip-flops that slapped the marble floor with each seemingly directionless step. His skin was the color of a dried corn husk—not quite yellow, not quite beige. He was not white like a page in my composition notebook, but everyone called him “Blan” just the same. His eyes were the blue of waters too deep to swim in. Deep like that place in the ocean from which people seldom returned. But his bottomless-blue eyes were not interested in drowning us today.
With a sweeping motion of his arms, the consul invited us into his office. Perhaps he had met his secret quota of humiliation for the day. Perhaps his hands ached from crushing family after family with his Application Denied stamp. Perhaps he had grown tired of telling mothers and children to try again in six months or a year. Perhaps my green dress brought us good luck. “It was those psalms,” Manman later declared. “They worked like magic!”
The consul signed Manman’s papers hastily, as if some unseen hand were guiding his, forcing him to write his full name here, put his initials there, stamp that coveted seal of miracles in all the necessary places. Manman could not snatch the documents out of his hands fast enough. Within days we would be in an airplane, flying toward the unknown. I would see my father again for the first time in a decade. I had forgotten everything I was supposed to remember about him; everything except the name by which I would never be allowed to call him: Frisner Desormeau.
Manman was beside herself with happiness. She had her hair done, her nails and toes painted victory red. She would be with Papa again for the first time in much too long. As the day of our departure approached, a broader smile than usual skipped on her lips. The faraway look that had been in her eyes since the day Papa left gained greater distance, like a speedboat disappearing beyond the horizon. Manman’s dreamy eyes followed the speedboat that held her future, hoping that it would not fall from the flat edge where the sun rises out of the sea.
STRANGE FRUIT
Manman wrapped ripe sweetsop in the prettiest nightgown she owned. She tucked the bundle in a corner of her carry-on bag under the most delicate panties I’d ever seen. She would surprise Frisner with those: the fruit, the nightgown, and the panties. He would be grateful. He would wonder how in God’s name he survived without her for so long. How had he lived without her always thinking of him, always bringing him things like the only fruit in the world that had the power to melt his heart! Their happily-ever-after would resume with the first bite.
Manman had heard of people’s fruit being tossed out by customs inspectors on the other side, but was certain that no one would bother hers. The nightgown and delicate panties were parts of a brilliant strategy: no stranger with an ounce of decency would touch a woman’s underwear. Manman swore that her sweetsop would be as safe as a ja of gold buried under an unmarked tree in an orchard. No one would discover them. In a few hours, Frisner would taste all things past, present, and future in the succulent pulp.
My little sisters, Karine and Marjorie, daydreamed about the joys New York would bring: pretty dresses, new shoes, new ribbons for their hair, a doll like the one that disappeared from the upstairs bedroom. There would be candy by the ton. Life would be fun, fun, fun!
I daydreamed about what I would do once I reached New York too. I would find Yseult Joseph, my best friend, who was living there now. We would mend our friendship like the hem of a good dress that got caught in a thorn bush. We would patch the holes time created between us. We would be as close as we had been before she went away. We would be inseparable; this time forever.
I wrapped the six oslè I owned in a handkerchief and put them in the small purse that contained all the possessions Manman said I could take with me to the new country. Yseult and I would play oslè again.
Going to New York was like dying. We could not take most of our belongings with us.
On the night before we left, Manman gave away our dining table, the tablecloth, our dishes (even the good ones), our spoons, and every last grain of rice, sugar, and salt in the pantry. She gave away our pillows, the sheets on the bed, and the bed itself. Manman said we wouldn’t need those old things. She said we would have new lives and new possessions to go with them.
Manman could not wait to reach New York. She could not wait to see Frisner again. She’d petitioned the consul in Port-au-Prince for years, begging him to approve her application. “My children need their father,” she told him as tears leaked out of her eyes. She was overjoyed when the plane finally landed at JFK.
The worry lines that had been permanent fixtures on her face vanished. But when the cruel inspector at customs went through her carry-on bag and did the unthinkable, the lines instantly returned.
The inspector’s trained nose had gone straight to the corner of Manman’s bag where she’d hidden the sweetsop. He reached into the bag and removed her delicate panties—with a gloved pincer grip, as if they were soiled. He pulled Manman’s pretty nightgown out of the bag, shaking the silk away from his body as if it were an animal that needed to be quarantined. The sweetsop Manman attempted to smuggle rolled out onto the table and stared back at her. Her secret had been revealed. The inspector’s eyes accused her of an unspeakable crime. He did not ask questions. He did not have time to prosecute and punish her properly.
Dump the funny-looking crap and keep moving. There were thousands
