Behind the Mountains Read online

  I read the letter to her, translating it from the French into Creole. Then Sò Grace asks me if I can write a reply to her daughter.

  The daughter was studying at a university in Québec and was writing to tell her mother that she was doing well in her studies and that she had met a young man whom she wanted to marry. Sò Grace beams when I read and interpret this for her. At the same time, she seems so sorrowful that she has been carrying such good news in her money apron and has not been able to read it.

  She gives me five dollars to buy paper and an envelope to write a reply to her daughter. The rest I am allowed to keep for myself.

  She tells me to write to her daughter how happy she is that her daughter is almost an engineer, and to ask if she is sure about the young man. Is it the right time to marry? Will the marriage not distract her from her studies, halt the beginning of her career?

  I write exactly what she says, pretending that she is giving me dictation, like Madame Auguste in class.

  I am careful with my handwriting, and the letter comes out neat with no mistakes.

  Now I think I will do the same for Papa. I will write him letters that only he can read.

  I quickly began my letter. I planned to tell him so much that I was too shy to tell him in front of the others.

  Dear Papa,

  We miss you.

  Your daughter, Celiane

  I was surprised so little came out in my letter. Maybe I don’t know my own father anymore. Maybe he has changed. Maybe I have changed.

  Even though Papa sends us pictures regularly, it is hard to imagine what he looks like in his everyday life, in the place where he works, in the house where he lives. I am even more worried now that I will not know what to say to Papa when I see him again.

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21

  We wake before dawn to go to the market. At that time of the morning, a gray mist hangs in the air, dew over everything. It is very calm but a little cool at the same time. Manman makes me wear an extra blouse over my dress. Halfway down the mountain, when the sun comes up, I can take off the blouse.

  My job is to carry the peanut confections while Manman carries the coconut ones.

  Along the way, we meet other vendors walking down to the market. Some are carrying plantains, breadfruits, mangoes, and corn to sell. Others are carrying cocoa and coffee beans.

  We must cross a river before we can reach the market. Manman and the other vendors always try and find the shallowest spot in the river for their crossing. Then we remove our shoes, raise our skirts—the men roll up their pants—and we wade across with baskets of different weights on top of our heads.

  The market is very lively on Saturdays, even more so than on Wednesdays. Manman does not have a stall, because she is not a big vendor like Sò Grace or the others who sell things in larger quantities. Manman usually sets her winnowing trays near Sò Grace’s stall, and Sò Grace doesn’t mind if Manman benefits from the shade from her stall because Manman buys cloth from her now and then.

  Sò Grace is taking out some of her best cloth when we arrive. Soon Manman goes off to send the cassette to Papa. I have decided not to send my letter until I can think of more to say.

  While Manman is gone, Sò Grace walks over to where I am sitting behind Manman’s tray of sweets and says, “My daughter is coming for a visit soon.”

  “Is she, Madame?” I say.

  Sò Grace bends down, picks up one of Manman’s coconut candies, and bites into it. Then she reaches into her money apron and gives me twenty-five gourdes, which is much more than the dous is worth.

  “When I spoke to her on the telephone,” she says, “my daughter told me your letter was the best letter that I’d ever had written for me. She said she could hear my voice in the letter.”

  LATER

  Moy met us at the fork in the road when we returned from the market. Manman was more tired than usual. She had a headache.

  Moy gave me a gentle tap on the head as a greeting, like he always does. When you look at him, not thinking that he is your brother, Moy does appear rather handsome. He is tall and thin, like Papa, and he wears loose and airy clothes that he makes himself.

  Even though he and Manman are not on the best of terms, Moy takes Manman’s basket and carries it the rest of the way home.

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22

  We are at Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial’s house for Sunday supper. Granmè Melina made my favorite dish, green peas with rice.

  Granmè Melina is young for a grandmother. Both she and Granpè Nozial have strong, firm bodies. They still work their own fields. They do not live with Manman because they say it would make them age faster having someone looking after them.

  Behind Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial’s house are the graves of Granmè Melina’s parents. Every year on the Day of the Dead, Granmè Melina cleans the graves to honor her parents.

  While I am washing the pots in the yard, even though I am not trying to listen, I hear Granpè Nozial and Manman talking about Moy.

  “You cannot keep him under your skirt for the rest of his life,” Granpè Nozial tells Manman. “He is a young man, Aline. Young men are like young bulls. They must fight their way through everything.”

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 23

  I keep thinking about Papa. When he was here, some nights after working in the fields, he would stand in the yard with Moy and me, and together we would look up at the sky and watch the stars fall. Though he would not speak, Papa would look sad when a star fell out of the sky. It was as though the world was changed somehow, and not for the better.

  Things were sometimes very bad for Papa, like when his crops failed and he had to sell some of his land to repay his debts. He was too proud to ask his younger sister, Tante Rose, for money.

  Papa finally left for New York because he was worried that one year things would become too difficult to bear: A hurricane could hit, or the crops could fail and we would have nothing at all.

  It was a childhood friend of Papa’s, Franck, who sent him the invitation papers. Franck has several restaurants in New York and offered Papa work at one of them. Papa was supposed to go for only a few months, but then he stayed.

  Three years ago, Papa’s friend Franck sent invitation papers to the American consulate for Manman, Moy, and me. We have already had all of our physical examinations, and as soon as we receive word from the consulate, we will be able to join Papa in New York.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24

  Tonight we had a rain shower. Thérèse and I were doing homework together when the rain began. When I was younger, I used to be afraid of lightning and thunder so I would hide under a sheet during rain showers.

  When Papa was here, he and Moy would soap themselves then rush out in the rain in their underpants. Thérèse and I wanted to go out for a rain bath, but Manman would not let us.

  Moy went out rain bathing but hurried back inside, saying the rain was too cold. There were bits of hail the size of rice grains in it.

  Thérèse was so happy to see Moy in his underpants that she laughed and laughed, her laughter sounding even louder than the rain pounding on the tin roof.

  I love to hear Thérèse laugh. It is a very free laugh. Thérèse never covers her mouth when she laughs. She just lets it out with all her might. Her whole body bounces. Her neck twists. Her chest rattles. Her hands wave wildly in the air, as though they were dancing.

  Manman says that Thérèse laughs like someone who was raised with pigs and donkeys. I believe Thérèse laughs like someone who thinks she may never laugh again.

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25

  Manman was very tired today when she came home from the market. This happens to her sometimes. She gets so fatigued that her bones ache. Her head still aches, too.

  Before she went to bed, I made her some ginger tea and Moy boiled a yam for her. I could tell she didn’t have much of an appetite, but she ate the yam because it was one of the few times that Moy has ever put pot to fire.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27

>   Manman has decided to skip the market tomorrow. Instead we are going to the city to visit my father’s sister, Tante Rose.

  We have not seen Tante Rose since the summer. Madame Auguste will not have class next week, on All Saints’ Day and the Day of the Dead, so we are going to the city. While we are gone, Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial will look after the fields and the cows for us.

  I am glad we are going to see Tante Rose even though I don’t especially like the city.

  “There is city family and there is country family,” Manman often says. “Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial are your country family. Tante Rose is city family.”

  Tante Rose comes to visit us in the summer but never stays for long. She does not like that we have remained in Beau Jour when we could be living in Port-au-Prince.

  When Tante Rose was my age, she left the mountains and went to live with a family in the capital. After a few months the family threw her out, so she went to live in an orphanage. The people who ran the orphanage sent her to school. She studied hard and became a nurse.

  Papa used to brag a lot about Tante Rose. If anyone asked about Tante Rose—people who still remembered her from when she was a girl—Papa would answer, “My sister is working at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, curing the sick.”

  When the men who used to work with Papa in the fields wanted to tease him, they would say, “Victor, you do not look like you have a sister who is a nurse. You are a peasant. You have big dusty toes. Why would you stay here and live like this when you have a sister in the city?”

  People never understand why anyone would choose to stay in the mountains when they could be living in the city.

  I can see many advantages myself to living in the mountains as opposed to the city. For one, there are fewer people here. When Manman, Moy, and I go to the capital, I always feel like I am being pushed and shoved by crowds of people. Even when we are in a taxi with Tante Rose, there are always people surrounding the taxi.

  “People get lost in the city,” Manman says. Not lost in the same way people usually get lost when they are looking for a place they cannot find. People in the city, Manman says, know where they are going, but they still feel lost, as though they are looking for themselves.

  No, the mountain does not have an advanced school yet. Moy has to go to Léogâne to attend his tailoring classes. But all in all, like Manman and Papa, I love these mountains, the vetiver and citronella plants along the trails, the rain tapping on the tin roof, even the fog that shifts from place to place in the afternoons.

  I love the rainbows during sun showers. I love the shortcuts through the cornfields, the smell of pinewood burning, the golden-brown sap dripping into the fire. I love sleeping on a sisal mat on the clay floor in Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial’s one-room house, and eating in their yard while listening to Granpè Nozial’s stories.

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28

  We walked down the mountain to Léogâne and found a camion that was just filling up. There’s a hibiscus garden painted on the sides of the camion and a red flamingo in the middle of the garden. I wanted to ask Moy what he thought of them, but he seemed far away in his thoughts. He must be thinking about Port-au-Prince and all the things he will do once he gets there. Moy loves the city. When he is there, he looks at everything as though with new eyes.

  Now and then, Moy’s friend Bòs Dezi is hired to paint a camion in Léogâne. Moy has helped him on some, so it’s possible that Moy has painted part of the camion we are in, or at least one of the others we’ll see on our way to Port-au-Prince.

  Manman arranged with the driver for three seats. I chose the window. We were bringing some yams for Tante Rose, which we fit under our seats.

  As the camion became more and more crowded, I looked out the window, watching all the vendors of colas, peeled sugarcane, fried plantains, fried pork, and sausages. I wanted to have a piece of sugarcane, but I did not dare ask Manman. If I bought the sugarcane, after chewing the juice out, I would have to throw the pulp out the window sometime during the ride and Manman hated when people did that. It would dirty the road, especially since it was a recently repaved road, and it was thanks to this repaved road that the usual time of the trip to Port-au-Prince would be cut by half. That is, until we reached all the blokis within the city limits, in Carrefour. Whenever we go to the capital, the traffic starts piling up in Carrefour, all the way to the bus depot in Port-au-Prince.

  Manman was sleeping by the time we reached Carrefour, where everything slowed down, just as I had expected. Moy, on the other hand, was springing to life again, watching everyone and everything.

  There were more tap taps than camions in Carrefour. Tap taps are smaller than camions and are open in the back. We call them tap taps because people tap on the side twice—sometimes more—to signal that they want to get off. Many tap taps have names. I spotted one called Wyclef, for a Haitian singer who lives in America. On the front was a phrase, in English, from one of his songs—“Your love is my love.”

  Some of the other tap taps had even longer phrases written on the sides, words that were designed as beautifully as the pictures. There were declarations of love—“Sophie, Je t’aime.” “Marlène, I love you”—and proverbs such as “The empty sack does not stand,” “Sweet syrup draws ants,” and “Little yams make a big pile.” I liked that last one most of all because I was beginning to feel like Manman, Moy, and I were tiny yams in a very big pile.

  Carrefour was full of shops, all with their own beautiful signs: beauty shops, mechanics’ shops, schools everywhere, often next to colorful lottery sheds announcing winning lottery numbers. Carrefour was loud, too, with music blasting from some of the stores and a general noise of hundreds of people talking at the same time.

  Soon after I got used to all the noise, I fell asleep. The next thing I remember is Manman shaking me to say we had arrived at the bus depot in downtown Port-au-Prince.

  LATER

  Tante Rose was excited to see us, nearly jumping for joy as she embraced each of us.

  Tante Rose is not married and she has no children. Two young nurses who work with her at the hospital rent rooms from her. There is a young man who looks after her house when Tante Rose is not at home, as well as a woman who cooks for her and washes her clothes. That woman, Esther, has a daughter, Nadine, who is about my age and who lives in the house, too. Nadine is her mother’s shadow and helps her with everything.

  Whenever I am in Tante Rose’s house, I always think that if Manman moved to the city to work, it would be like that with her and me. She would work in someone’s house and I would help her with her work.

  Even with the workers and renters, Tante Rose has two rooms left for us. The room I am sharing with Manman has a soft bed. Moy is staying in a smaller room near the living room.

  Unlike Papa, Tante Rose is not interested in leaving Haiti. She has her work, which she likes very much, and she enjoys her house, which she had built piece by piece, room by room, over many years.

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29

  I went up on Tante Rose’s roof this morning. From the rooftop, you can see a lot of the capital: the seaport, the presidential palace, the markets downtown, and even the airport.

  In the afternoon, Tante Rose took us to Champs de Mars to see a karate movie Moy wanted to see. I liked some of the fights in the movie because they seemed like a dance.

  My favorite part of the outing was after the movie when we happened on a concert near the national palace. The music was full of guitars and drums, and there was a line of women dancing on the stage as they sang the choruses.

  Tante Rose and Moy danced together in the back of the crowd. Moy likes Tante Rose a lot. When they are together, it is as though they are the same age: Moy acts a lot older than he is and Tante Rose acts a lot younger than she is.

  I am beginning to like Port-au-Prince.

  LATER

  We call Papa on the telephone at Tante Rose’s house. A big treat for us. Talking to him and having him respo
nd almost in the same breath.

  Papa’s voice sounds so warm, like heated milk with cacao when he says, “Celiane.”

  I say, “How are you, Papa?”

  “I am well,” he says. “How is school?”

  “School is fine,” I say.

  I was still tongue-tied when I gave the phone back to Manman. I plan for so long about what to say to Papa, but put him on the phone and what comes out, anyen, nothing.

  Tante Rose, who heard me mention school, says, “Soon you will have to come to school here in the city. That is unless you go to New York first, of course. I want you to know that your papa is not the only one who can help. I have a friend at the consulate who is going to make a special exception for the three of you and get you to New York much faster.”

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 30

  I realize now why Manman came to the city. It was only partly to visit with Tante Rose. Last night at supper, she told Tante Rose that she’s been feeling more tired than usual and has been having headaches, and she wants Tante Rose to have a look at her.

  “Aline, I am not a doctor,” Tante Rose said. “You must see a doctor.”

  So then and there it was decided. Manman will go to the hospital with Tante Rose this morning and have one of Tante Rose’s doctor friends examine her.

  LATER

  I wanted to go to the hospital with Manman, but she said no. As soon as Manman and Tante Rose left for the hospital, Moy went off to buy some paint for Bòs Dezi. To pass the time and to keep myself from worrying too much about Manman, I made the beds, reviewed my lessons, and then went downstairs to help Esther and Nadine prepare the midday meal.