Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States (9 page)

That morning found me fussing with the contents of my knapsack, trying to get to some important notes from a recent meeting. Dashing in late to the eight-thirty meeting already under way, I arrived in time for the tail end of a heated debate about the nutritional value of the meals fed to refugees. These meetings were, for the most part, a waste of time because no one intended to rectify any wrongdoing; not really. So far as I could gather, the interpreters' meetings were held for sheer appeasement, an answer to our complaints of exclusion from the seven o'clock meetings with high-ranking government officials and asylum officers.

Today's hot debate was centered on a memo warning us against fraternizing with the "migrants," an offense that would not go unpunished. The list was long in its definition and examples of fraternizing were thoroughly spelled out, so there would be no misunderstandings. The content of the memo was the end result of yet another recent problem. It was rumored that military personnel and interpreters were beginning to establish intimate relationships with some of the migrants and the purchase of luxury items such as shampoo, conditioners, permanents, hair grease, and in some instances clothes on their behalf, was proof of this foul act. I was particularly embarrassed when one interpreter was caught on video accepting money from the migrants in exchange for a definite place on the next plane to Miami—a promise he was unauthorized to make.

Near my assignment's end, repatriation offered a free ride to refugees who had failed to prove a "credible fear" of persecution and were consequently to be returned to Haiti. I reluctantly volunteered to accompany them back. Though the two-day journey promised to be a grueling experience, I was prepared to make any sacrifice to return to my homeland after fifteen years of unintended absence.

It cost the U.S. approximately one million dollars per day to run the camp, and each repatriation neared $100,000, so filling the cutter to capacity was a must before we could be on our way. I arrived at the pier to find three other ships, housing a total of fifteen hundred refugees, ready to leave. We were scheduled for a 9 a.m. departure but were running late. On a good day, the deck fit five hundred bodies comfortably, if they were aligned sardine-style. Our ship housed only two hundred people on board, thus the holdup. Six-and-a-half hours later, with only fifty bodies added to the count, we were given clearance to leave so as to avoid an evening departure, when the ferocity of the Windward Passage would peak. I was escorted to my two-by-four cabin, which I believed to belong to some high-ranking officer. It offered me the privilege of a private bathroom half the size of the room. A pinup of Kathy Ireland graced the tiny closet door. A navy-blue jumpsuit, the only visible item of clothing, dangled solo in the darkness.

As the only civilian and the only woman working on the U.S.
Escanaba,
a Coast Guard cutter—the steel shark that guarded our national "security" in the form of international "drug busts"—I was at everyone's disposal twenty-four hours a day and partly responsible for maintaining order on board, whatever happened. En route, clandestine discussions held by the refugees and me in the camp were openly voiced here on the ship. Both the refugees and I found comfort in our mutual distrust of the asylum process. I had often overheard conversations corroborating these allegations from higher-ups. Programmed to spit out whatever numbers Washington entrusted them to produce that day in the name of efficiency and a job well done, these functionaries lost neither sleep nor appetite over the desperate accounts of a people whose destiny lay in their hands. "How are those numbers coming along?" was the question of the day, every day.

I remember being told the story of one twelve-year-old boy from Cite-Soleil: He was so thin that a thumb and index finger alone could have encircled his thigh. With tears rimming his eyes, he fought to keep from crying as he explained his dilemma. After the coup, his father had gone out to search for oil. When his father failed to return, his mother sent him out to search for his father and instead he found his father's corpse. He finally made it home, only to find his mother riddled with bullets, murdered by soldiers seeking revenge on democracy supporters. His family supported Lavalas, the people's movement, and for that he was wanted by the authorities.

Then there were two teenage girls, stocky, angry, and confused by the unexpected turn of events that left their lives upside down. It was as if someone had scrambled up a puzzle and asked them to fix it. They complained nonstop, frustrated by their inability to see what stared them right in the face. "I'm going to kill myself," one said. "What do I have ahead of me? I'm not going to Miami despite the fact that the Section Chief killed my parents in front of me. The only reason I was spared rape was because I had my period. I managed to get on a boat, and now I'm returning to the hell I thought was behind me." Though she put on a tough exterior, I told her to reverse it and to let her toughness flow from inside. This would enable her to better deal with life's unexpected blows. The human spirit is so resilient, its elasticity often surprised me, I told her enthusiastically. So far as I was concerned, she had already dealt with the most difficult part. But then again, I was merely speculating. I suppose I'll never know for certain from what she fled nor exactly what awaited her. "But that's all God's business isn't it?" I said. She smiled.

Dinner calmed everyone down somewhat. All concerns, needs, and worries finally began to drift with the fading day. Hours later when the sun made way for the moon and the stars, the chaos of the day began to subside, as did the buzzing of those returning home. No longer were there conversations about hypocrisy, distrust, and injustice. All had come to accept that which was most dreaded— returning home. There was a hush now, the ferocity of the clouds and the strength of the wind had calmed everyone's frustration and demanded silence.

Some time during the dark morning I was awakened by frantic pounding on my cabin door. It was one of the soldiers, breathlessly ordering me to tend to an emergency. He disappeared long before I could become coherent enough to ask for an explanation. I made my way up the tiny steel staircase, to find a robust fifteen-year-old unaccompanied minor under restraint, the girl I had been consoling that afternoon. It required the strength of three men to hold down this poor child convulsing in a screaming fit. Finally, she was pinned flat on her stomach while another serviceman tied her feet together. Two sailors simultaneously struggled to handcuff her hands behind her back as a fellow Haitian was instructed to hold her head fixed to one side.

We were entering the mouth of the Windward Passage. The wind fiercely rocked our vessel while lightning illuminated the dark, angry sky. Roaring thunder drowned my conversations, pulling rain from the clouds and pouring it over our bodies. This outburst caused some to grumble explanations of a jilted lover, others claimed her insanity came by way of a hex from the other woman. As she went in and out of piranha-like biting fits, a thinly built, gray-haired, mild-mannered man from the girl's native town of Jeremie accounted for her epileptic history. She had been fine for both his and my conversation of earlier that day. It seemed that the young lady I had tried to dissuade from suicide had manifested these feelings after all. Eventually she was subdued with her hand and foot securely tied to a pole on the flight deck. Lightning ripped across the sky and spotlighted her crucified shadow followed by the sky's disapproving grumble. I wrapped her in a wool blanket to shield her from the wind.

What was to have been a two-day voyage turned into a week of drifting in the Atlantic between Haiti and Cuba, in preparation to intercept incoming refugees even before the ink on President Bush's newly imposed executive order could fully dry. My trek through the Middle Passage dragged me through the murky road of history, determined to make me feel a pain that was centuries deep and supposedly resolved. Yet this nightmare gnawed so deep within me, not even my assimilationist lifestyle could mitigate it.

Witnessing two hundred fifty bodies enroped in slave-ship fashion on deck to be baked by the summer blaze or soaked by impulsive skies if nature willed left me feeling helpless and uneasy. We seemed to be going backward—in time—in history. But time spoke softly, gently unveiling its truth before me. The pieces of my parents' past, which they had difficulty talking about, were gladly exhibited through the troubled spirits of those who sat before me to translate their perplexities. An Abyssinian-looking beauty sat before me complaining about the factory where she worked sewing bras. A mandatory eighteen-hour day with no lunch and no break except those to fight off advances by her boss who promised her, in return, a raise of fifteen cents per hour. But this was mild compared to the threats of death received by her husband, whose goat had wandered off into a section chief's yard and fed on his garden. Or the woman whose community group was plastered with photos of a rooster and Aristide, thereby making her a candidate for death. Young men complained that Haiti was so plagued politically that their congregation for any reason, even for church, left them suspect of political activities. Or the tailor who was commissioned to make clothes for the sister of a certain section chief who, disagreeing with the asking price of her new dress, sicced her brother on him. Others reached the camp by happenstance, as one gentleman explained that he'd been fishing and fell asleep.

I'll never forget my first reintroduction to Haiti. We were nearing the pier when a refugee pointed to Gonaives, and Port-de-Paix, up north. "There's Mole Saint Nicolas," exclaimed a young man, proudly explaining the century-old U.S. desire to construct a military base there. This would be strategically ideal since Cuba and Jamaica, the other two largest countries occupying the Caribbean basin, are a stone's throw away. The fog revealed a sketch of our intended destination, the ship chaplain pointed to Sacre Coeur, a century-old landmark church. I gazed in disbelief, reflecting vaguely on the times when this cathedral served as the ultimate sanctuary for me and my family for Sunday mass some two decades ago.

The refugees were instructed to return their yellow I.D. cards, at last relieved from the tight wrist-squeezing of plastic bar-coded bracelets. Their curiosity about what lay ahead provided an occasion for me to give a briefing outlining the final phase of the procedure. At the wharf they were met by Red Cross personnel, sometimes accompanied by U.S. Embassy officials, who dealt with politically complex cases. The returnees were given an exit interview and fifteen Haitian dollars, which many claimed was insufficient for their long journey home. That day, the string of armed Haitian military officials awaiting their disembarkation left many fearful for their lives. Panic was lent validity by concerns about being followed home by the same would-be attackers who had been responsible for their initial departure. The U.S. military promised safety, but even if they hadn't, the Haitians had no means to negotiate. So they halfheartedly, yet peacefully, disembarked. When the ship was nearly vacant, I caught a U.S. State Department staff member handing the bag of I.D. cards to Haitian soldiers. Confused and frustrated, I looked for an ally until it dawned on me that no one on board remotely shared my concern.

On the return trip, the calm night sky twinkled on the ocean while angry phosphorescent waters pounded at the ship from bow to stern. The ordeal cast me into a four-day bout with insomnia. Even the ocean, hard as she tried, was unable to cradle me to sleep. For each night while they weathered the cold winds on deck, I wrestled with the displaced faces that haunted me in my cabin while I lay nestled in wool blankets. With their concerns and uncertainties etched deeply into their faces, strong and tired eyes imposed inquisitive gazes, looking for answers I also sought.

Meanwhile, back in the captain's dining room I began wondering to what I owed the honor of past-life luxuries—cloth napkins, sterling silver flatware, and china actually used and not only displayed. And waiters, four waiters who stood post on each corner of the table, eager to tend to the captain's every need. The quality and size of one's portions matched one's rank. Contrary to the migrants' restricted diets food flowed nonstop in the forms of soup, salad, entree, dessert, coffee, followed by the point of the dinner invitation. The closing conversation was to get an assessment of my personal limitations regarding the perils of my assignment. In other words, to size up the distance I would go for my people and my two countries, one that had my allegiance as a birthright, the other hoping to win it.

Despite the hazardous duty conditions, which had already claimed the life of one interpreter, I volunteered to be lowered by rope from the cutter into a tiny motor raft in an attempt to negotiate with prospective refugees on behalf of the United States government. Looking at the flimsy craft in the middle of the hungry, shark-infested waters, I felt the pressure of pleading to win their confidence as their boat repeatedly threatened to capsize. The sun began its descent and my sneakers were soaked from the puddle that collected in our motor boat. One of the teenage boys leaned on the bow. Their ragged sail was tied to the flimsy pole that struggled to hold it. "Why should I go on the ship, why should I trust you?" asked a dark-skinned man in his early twenties, turning up his nose as if he literally smelled something foul. I was lost for an adequate response except,
I'm all you've got here and you have to believe in my good intentions.
And besides, I was unprepared to watch them drown.

The mother wore only the bottom half of what used to be a dress, her shriveled sagging breasts dangled lifelessly against her badly scarred body. With dark spots and welts all over her back, her hair was ravaged and she spoke in delirium, a blur. "My sister, my baby," she muttered. Each time she tried to express herself, she was unable to add any more information to where she had left off. "My aunt and her baby were with us on the boat, the baby became ill. She plunged in the ocean with the baby saying she could no longer stand the suffering," explained the young man. "She's not good in her head," he finished.