of paternity in the civil registry. Euzélie knew that Joseph’s father would eventually relent and legally recognize him, one day or another. In the meantime, she made sure her son got the best education possible. She wanted to make him an independent man who would not depend on anyone’s goodwill. She wanted to give him the best chances to succeed in a country where poverty prevailed.
In the beautiful house where they lived in Le Cap, a maid looked after Joseph when Euzélie was absent. When there was no school, it was out of the question to let him hang around outside. Bad habits, the mother feared, are too easily adopted. Of course, it was also out of the question to isolate him from his friends in the neighborhood, all the more because they were from good families. A child must also have fun. Homework did not prevent time for soccer, jacks, or marble games.
The Laroche boy was not, by nature, very talkative. But at the mere mention of marbles, he perked up. He liked to challenge his friends in a good game and make a clean sweep of his opponent’s treasure. Doomed was the one who lost; he’d go home with his head down and swear to take revenge as soon as possible. However, to save face, the loser could redeem himself in a race. The small group rushed forward. Whoever first reached the Hyppolite Bridge that crossed the river was declared the winner. This was not Joseph’s favorite exercise. He was not a gifted sprinter, despite what his pals might have thought. They begged him to let them have a lead; they believed him to have the upper hand because the bridge was built by…a Laroche!
Joseph’s childhood was a time of innocence and freedom from care, a time for discovery and initiation into traditions. Surrounded by his mother and by youngsters his age, Joseph lived an existence that brimmed with the energy, the vitality, the essence of his country.
On some afternoons, he attended cockfights41 in an open-air arena in the outskirts of the city. The gamblers crammed around a circle to watch two gallinaceans furiously trash each other by striking though the feathers with reinforced spurs. “I like when the rooster gets mean,” an old man explained to Joseph, the first time he came. “When two mean roosters face off, that makes for an entertaining fight. It is very interesting to see them switch from defense to attack mode.” He added, “You know, my boy, this is a metaphor for our own Haitian identity.”
Sometimes too, after dark, the Laroche boy attended story-telling evenings, mostly held on Saturdays. Historian Claude Dauphin explains that “stories play a fundamental role in building the Haitian child’s imaginary world. It is inseparable from Voodoo, theater, and music, and sometimes musicians accompany the teller. These stories come alive, thanks to the master storyteller’s virtuosity, and transport the audience to a fantastic, magical world.”
Men, women, and children gathered in a crowded courtyard, standing or seated on the ground. The stories captivated the audience, suspended between past and present. Everyone laughed, exchanged pleasantries, and let go of all worries. “Krik!”42 the storyteller started fervently. “Krak!” the crowd replied right away.
Then began a beautiful journey into the past through stories of Bouki and Malice.43 Through their adventures, crafty animals like Anansi44 and Brother Rabbit45 taught Joseph that, in life, the shrewder ones often win.
But more than the stories and the roosters and the games with other boys, what Joseph Laroche loved above all else were those moments he spent with his mother. Whenever she stepped away from her business, he could enjoy her company. He liked having her all to himself. She congratulated him on his good grades as he excitedly told her about school. On the playground, he explained, other children made fun of him—all on account of his grandfather, believed to have practically populated the whole of Le Cap by himself. Euzélie Laroche burst into laughter, just like every time someone reminded her how extraordinarily fertile her father had been.
Yes, it was true: Henri Laroche was a ladies’ man. He was charming and attractive and was not afraid to try his hand at marriage—over and over. The result? Upon his death, in 1876, he left behind “between twenty-eight and thirty children,” among them Euzélie, and about sixty grandchildren, among them Joseph. It’s become impossible to count the number of Laroche descendants in Le Cap. But as Christina Schutt points out, Henri Laroche never walked away from his responsibilities. “He eventually acknowledged all of his children, something many men did not do at the time in Le Cap, or anywhere else in Haiti. He’d go to City Hall and legally recognize the children in small groups of five. It was quite peculiar.”
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Euzélie wished her father were still alive to pass his valuable knowledge to his grandson, as tradition required. He would have told him the history of his family and his country. With Henri Laroche gone, Joseph’s grandmother Louisette took on the job of sharing the family lore every time she stopped by the house.
Louisette—whom everybody affectionately nicknamed Lisettine—was a down-to-earth and honest woman who worked as an ironer, an occupation that required strong arms and legs. She walked several miles every day to pick up bundles of clean linen from the rich families in Le Cap. She smoothed out and carefully folded the linen at home, before making the return trip to the owners’ houses for delivery and compensation. Although she did not get paid much, “all work is noble,” Lisettine told Joseph, showing him an iron box filled with hot coal. Thanks to her work tool, this old box purchased long ago with her meager savings, she had raised with dignity the two children she had with Henri Laroche before their separation: Euzélie, born in 1862, and Bertrand, born in 1865.
For Joseph, Lisettine’s visits were always enchanting, even though she never failed to grumble a little while passing the threshold. She found fault with the house, which she deemed unclean, or with the food, which she believed left a lot to be desired. She reprimanded the maid for a fork stored with the spoons, or a bedsheet placed on the wrong shelf. She inspected every room, every piece of furniture, and noticed the thinnest layer of dust. Nothing ever met her approval.
Although Joseph feared his grandmother’s strict rules, remnants from the hard life she’d lived in the past, he nevertheless loved her very much—for her kindness and for the stories she shared about his family and Le Cap. Some of these stories, he’d heard a thousand times, and yet he did not tire of them. He asked to hear them again.
“Your great-grandfather, Henry Laroche, was a white man,” Lisettine began in a high-pitch voice, “a soldier in a garrison here in the north.” She continued, “One day he came across a free woman of color. She turned his head.” Lisettine asked, “Do you know what a free woman of color is?” (Joseph shook his head, eager to hear what happened next.) “Well, it means that this black woman was no longer a slave, as opposed to the rest of the black population. Her name was Hellène François. She liked Henry Laroche, and he liked her back.” Lisettine smiled. “So, they knew each other in the biblical sense and that is how your grandfather was born.” She became pensive. “But during that time, even when they were not slaves, people worked with their hands as much as with their head. And because your grandfather did both well, he rapidly learned the craft of shoemaker. You see these leather shoes you are wearing? Well, he made things like that.”
As her mother revived the memory of the late Henry Laroche, Euzélie watched her son’s eyes light up. Both Euzélie and Lisettine answered Joseph’s questions with candor. The boy was curious about everything, and his mother appreciated that. Was it not the sign of a brilliant mind? He would go far. That was a certain. His mother believed it.
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Only once did Euzélie elude Joseph’s questions. That night, as it was getting late, Joseph was worried about his mother, who still hadn’t returned home. He paced the house, irritable and impatient. When she eventually returned, she didn’t return his hug. She remained silent. When he tried a smile, she kept her stony expression. He understood that something serious, even terrible, had happened. But what? He remained in the dark until the next day,
