Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti (38 page)

The back of the SUV is open and another tall man moves toward René, preparing to receive Libète like an illicit cargo.

Both men stop and look at something Libète does not see.

Down the road, lights flicker from behind a wall and a siren sounds. The tall man is startled and the driver shouts to him. He rushes back to the SUV, its wheels spinning furiously, trying to gain traction in the loose gravel. René drops Libète in a panic and she lands with a dull, painful thud. He shouts after the fleeing vehicle, like an abandoned child, Wait, wait, don’t leave me!

The truck with the sirens closes fast, tearing into the warehouse yard in pursuit of the SUV, but it has sped away. The truck slows down and a man jumps out from the passenger side before the truck resumes its chase.

René is going out of his head, cursing his drugged brain and flimsy legs. He runs to the left, before taking a few steps in the other direction. Reaching into his pocket, he throws his phone as far as he can and it lands in a sea of knee-high weeds and grass. He finally settles on a direction for his escape, and runs for the closest place where others are to be found, back to Twa Bebe.

The two vehicles are entirely out of sight, blocked from view by the hulking warehouse. Their sounds, furious engines and shrill sirens, fade quickly. Libète turns the attention she can muster to the foot chase playing out in the dark. She is still bound, and the pursuer, the Officer, chooses to chase after René instead of free her.

René is taller, with long legs, though his breath does not come easy. His desperate wheezing can be heard even at the distance of half a football pitch. The Officer is shorter and stockier, but quick.

But not quick enough. René outpaces his pursuer and begins to pull away.

— Stop, yells the Officer. I’ll shoot you!

René does not stop.

— I’ll shoot!

René continues. A shot is fired, its blast and sound and light tearing through the blackness.

René falls to the ground.

— Oh, God, oh please, no! René shouts as he drops to the ground and out of view.

The Officer is upon him.

Libète can see nothing. There is the sound of a scuffle, of more fearful pleading on René’s part, and more berating of René on the Officer’s part. The Officer drags René back toward the warehouse.

The captor is now captive, his hands cuffed behind his back. The Officer says nothing in response to the man’s pleading for a doctor, nor his attempted bribes. The Officer throws him against the wall and he crumples to the ground, saying one word over and over again:
mercy
—
mercy
—
mercy
.

— There’ll be none for you, you bastard, the Officer growls.

That voice. So familiar
…

Dimanche comes to Libète’s side and cuts the ropes that trap her feet and hands. She cries out as blood begins circulating through them again, causing as much pain as relief.

— Are you alright? he says gruffly, elevating her back and head. Though a conquering hero, there is shame in his eyes, and he cannot hold her glassy stare.

She strains to speak.

— Yes, Dimanche, now I can say that I am, and will be, alright.

She sees the gathering from a way off, wondering what had brought so many people together. Numbers on that order meant one of two things: something very good, or more often, something very bad.

For the past two weeks, she had been Marie Rose’s shadow, watching her movements and caring for her, hoping to pull her out of the mire into which she had sunk.

If Libète was honest, her well of compassion was running dry. Responsibility for two households was taking its toll. Other women in the camp rallied around Marie Rose at first, but their own burdens saw them soon return to their own taxing children, men, homes, and jobs.

A chief frustration was that time spent caring for her meant neglecting her lessons with Elize. This tested the old man too. Despite his talk of love and compassion, he proved more irritable with each missed lesson. After skipping the day before and feeling his displeasure, she resolved it would not happen again. She left Marie Rose sitting upon her stool, assured the woman of her imminent return, and bid her adieu.

Moments after leaving, new freedom welled up inside Libète. Being released from her friend’s problems was liberating. This sense made her feel guilty, and she dwelt upon this the entire walk to Elize’s shack.

She found the old man seated on a sack of rice outside his front door. Titid sat next to him, resting on his porcine haunches.

— Our student has made time for us today, eh, Titid? He said this in French. Not surprisingly, the pig didn’t reply.

She bristled at his remark. Bonjour, Professeur.

— Don’t take offense, Libète. I am only upset because I must share you. These short times make my long days worthwhile.

She nodded and gave a small smile. Still, a heaviness of heart weighed upon her.

— Let’s walk, he offered. It would do me some good.

Libète helped him up off the white nylon sack. He held tight to her wrist until he could steady himself.

— Shall we go the usual way? Libète asked. Their circuit around the marshes usually took an hour and was a relief from the dull austerity of his shack.

— No. I have something else in mind for today. He turned toward the vast ocean. She followed, and they walked without speaking for nearly a minute.

— You are troubled, Libète.

— I am.

— You’re upset?

She paused for a moment, thinking carefully. No. But I am growing tired.

— Of what?

— Of solidarity.

— At eleven years old, that is a problem, he said.

— I have done what you asked these past weeks. I’ve learned solidarity. Or at least about it. But sometimes, it is too heavy. Sharing in another’s burdens when my own are not so small…it’s like adding links to my own chains. I love to love. I feel it changing me. But I am finding my limits.

— You are becoming wise, I think. We all have limits.

They walked in silence another minute, which Elize broke.

— Another wise friend once told me that the best people in the world live alongside the worst in the slums. Here, the easy road means thinking only of oneself. You can lie, steal, betray, and it is accepted as a way of life. But the best people rise above this. They learn the art of sacrifice. They take the long, hard road. Though it produces suffering, they transcend their suffering.

— I want to walk that road, Professeur, I do. But I don’t think I was made to.

— You must persevere then, Libète—

— Stop it!

— What?

— Ignoring what I say. You give no
answers
. It seems like you withhold them to feed me, spoon by spoon, waiting to give them in some later lesson.

— I withhold nothing.

— Then
help
me. Give me more so I can understand!

Elize retreats into his thoughts as they edge closer toward the sea.

— We learn from life lived together, struggling together to find the answers we seek, he says.

— More doubletalk.

— No. I mean it. I cannot teach everything because I am still learning. I’m only a few years further down the road.

— That doesn’t help me. I’m lost.

— Then I am not sure I can help you.

Libète prepared to walk away.

— Wait! I brought you here for a reason. Look at the shore. What do you see?

She shrugged. Trash. Rubbish. It’s everywhere. Floating in the water, sitting on the sand.

— Anything else?

— No. That’s all that’s here.

— Then you don’t see it. Beauty is here, Libète. Look at the ocean expanding before your eyes. Feel the sand at your feet. The breeze cooling us. You must cling to the beautiful things, even when they are blemished and stained. For me, when I am made desperate by all that’s wrong in the world, all its evil, I retreat into beauty. I come here to pray often. I sit and talk to God and wait for him to answer.

— Prayer does nothing to change things. Neither does beauty, Elize. Though she used his name rather than title, he did not show offense. If I stop to admire grains of sand, feel the Sun upon my skin, and lose myself in blue skies, the suffering continues. The world keeps spinning. My hunger is not satisfied. Evil leads to more evil.

— You cannot change the world alone.

— But if no one joins with me, then what can I do?

Elize sidestepped the question and decided to walk back, mumbling something about how tired he had become. Libète followed but her anger did not abate. When they reached the shack, she muttered a farewell and told him she would come again soon.

The long walk home left her with uneasy thoughts. She dreaded returning to Marie Rose and her consuming depression, to her Uncle and his selfishness, to yet another long, boiling night trapped inside her tent and the walls of her mind.

Coming upon the large crowd was the first thing to shake her from her dire thoughts. She approached the outer edge of the crowd, a semi-circle of people of all ages. Her curiosity pushed through her grim thoughts just as she forced her way through the tightly packed people.

— What has happened here? she asks a stranger, unable to see what lay at the center of the throng.

— There has been a death, comes a whispered reply.

— A death? In the middle of the road? What killed him?

— What killed her, you mean? another said. Herself, said Mackendy, one of her neighbors. She did it to herself.

— A crazy woman, she borrowed a knife and cut herself right here in the middle of the road.

Libète began to shake with dread, hoping against fear. Who is the woman?

— The one living—the one who lived—there.

He lifted a finger, pointing to Marie Rose’s empty tent.

The police station is mostly dark, and mostly quiet. Libète sits in Dimanche’s office and eats some old rice put before her, left over from another’s earlier dinner. A silver mug of cooling coffee exhales its last bit of steam. The drug’s effects weaken and her mind clears. It is only now, as she shifts the last few grains about her plate and dwells upon all that happened, that her emotions catch up with her.

There was no satisfying resolution to her attempted abduction. Much to her dismay, René was not pierced by a bullet. The coward was so scared when Dimanche fired his gun that he fell to the ground imagining he was hit. The fleeing SUV had sped over difficult terrain on which the dilapidated police vehicle couldn’t compete, breaking a shock strut and bringing the pursuit to a halt. The escape meant much of the police’s investigatory work was wasted. The fruit of their investigation was René, and he was rotten at best.

After getting picked up by another police truck, Dimanche’s band of officers took the villain outside the station for a late night “interrogation.” Why out there? Libète had asked innocently. So that his blood wouldn’t dirty the floor, came the answer. Libète didn’t say another word.

The door to Dimanche’s office swung in abruptly, the surprise making Libète jump and drop her spoon. Dimanche, in all his imperiousness, moved toward the chair behind his desk and slid into it, nursing his fist.  He looked exhausted, but stared at Libète intently. Though she was taxed near her limit, she locked eyes with him too. She had been pushed around enough this evening.

— So how are you—

— What did he say—

They spoke at the same time, cutting the other off. Dimanche waved a hand, as if to say “speak.”

— Has René said anything?

— Nothing useful. As long as he’s more afraid of his business associates than he’s afraid of us, he won’t talk. I’d like to kill him but it’s not worth it. Dimanche clicked his tongue twice. Not yet, at least.

His frankness made Libète bat an eye.

— How did you know to follow René?

— He had been going all over Cité Soleil collecting the names of girls for foreign scholarships. Word of his work came to me.

— He told me that story, Libète said. But why did that mean anything?

— His organization is fake. A front used to identify vulnerable girls.

She felt a twinge of sadness knowing there was no scholarship waiting for her. She wished the officers outside would hit him a few more times for his lie.