Claire of the Sea Light (24 page)

“Claire Limyè Lanmè Faustin.” Her father was trying to get her attention. But he didn’t even need to call out her name. She was already listening for any word, every word from him. But she did not want to look at him. She did not want to see him sad. She did not want to make him sadder. She thought she heard tears in his voice when he asked Madame Gaëlle, “You will not change her name?”

This is why he had said her full and entire name. He wanted to remind Madame Gaëlle of it. Claire Limyè Lanmè Faustin. This would always be her name.

And what else, Claire wondered, would he ask Madame Gaëlle to change or not to change about her? She might never
sleep in the same place as her father again. Would they even visit the cemetery on her birthday?

Her father was now saying something about a letter he’d given to Madame Gaëlle. Maybe the letter would explain more than he had been able to. Maybe it would make her understand everything. But no words could ever do that. She knew that because even if, like Msye Caleb, she could write the most wonderful letters, she could never write a letter that could explain how she was feeling at that moment.

It was then that she raised her hand. She thought she would pretend she was in school pointing her index finger up to the sky to get their attention. That way, she wouldn’t have to look at either of them.

They would also realize that she was always going to be a good girl, that she wasn’t going to fight them or disobey, that she would always do what they said. But even if she was going to live with Madame Gaëlle, she wanted her things. She wanted her school notebooks and her uniforms, and even if Madame Gaëlle had fancy beds in her house, she wanted at least the quilt that draped her cot, the quilt her father said had belonged to her mother. So she kept her head down and her hand raised and she told them that she wanted her things, “Bagay yo.”

Rather than speaking, her father looked in the direction of the shack and pointed to it with an index finger, showing that he agreed she should go get her things.

She wanted to walk the long way, through the crowd, for this was surely her last walk to the shack when it was still
hers, but she sensed that both her father and Madame Gaëlle were in a hurry, that they wanted to get the entire thing done with, so she walked quickly, and soon she was opening the unlocked door and peeking inside the shack. But it was pitch-black inside, as dark as when she would wake up in the middle of the night needing the latrine and was too scared to get up even to use the chamber pot. But it wasn’t her fear of the dark that prevented her from going all the way in. That darkness was already familiar to her. She knew her way through it.

What kept her from going in was feeling like she had been kicked out, like her home was no longer hers. So she looked back to where her father and Madame Gaëlle were sitting and she noticed they were no longer following her with their eyes. Instead they were each looking at different parts of the beach, trying not to look at each other, so she took advantage of that moment when she knew she was on each of their minds, but in different ways, and she pulled the shack door closed and ran.

She ran through the alley that snaked between the shacks, up to the coco de mer palms at the entrance of a path that led to the lighthouse. Her sandals became entangled in some ylang-ylang creepers that bordered the trail where sandstones turned to hill gravel, then mountain rock. She was relieved when, at last, the trail curved and made an incline up toward Anthère Hill.

Most of the houses on Anthère Hill had high concrete walls topped with bottle shards, conch shells, and bougainvillea vines. The bougainvilleas, she knew, grew so easily, so
fast, that they crossed individual walls, creating unintended canopies. The canopied and uncanopied trails zigzagged up toward the lighthouse and Mòn Initil.

The higher she climbed, the breezier it got and the brighter the stars became. The moon seemed larger, more silver than white. The air was much cooler and the sound of the waves faded, though it did not fall away completely. The only voices she now heard were coming from the lighthouse and from the paths between the houses. Muffled conversations were punctuated by giggles from people who sounded as though they were tickling one another.

She heard a dog bark. That bark was echoed by another, then another, until a chorus of barks from large-sounding dogs had been started. Dogs barking—especially big, fat-sounding dogs—always meant you were not welcomed. She heard yardmen’s voices hushing the dogs, talking to them as though they were people, telling them to calm down. To be sure she wouldn’t be seen, she headed toward the dark, empty houses at the edge of the hill, the newer and larger houses that were occupied only a couple of weeks a year.

She stopped to catch her breath, leaning against the last wall before the hill abruptly ended at a cliff. The wall felt cool against her arm and smooth too, as though it were on the inside of a house. From up there, the view was clear as always, and she could now see part of the beach. She couldn’t see her shack or the palms behind it but, even with her eyes closed, she would have been able to point in its direction, along with the bungalow where Msye Sylvain lived with his
wife and twelve children and grandchildren. When he wasn’t out at sea, Msye Sylvain sold pen tete, breast-shaped bread, which he and his brood baked in a clay oven that was even now flaming.

She couldn’t see her father or Madame Gaëlle just then, but she knew where Msye Xavier, the boat builder and metal forger, was, because from the hill the sparks coming from Msye Xavier’s tools looked like tiny fireworks. She saw Madame Wilda, who weaved her nets in a low chair behind her house by candlelight. She also saw Msye Caleb’s place, because the girl who stayed with Madame Josephine was cooking something, and the girl was illuminated by the cooking fire and the lamp hanging from a post in the outdoor kitchen. Claire saw the white-clad, ghostlike silhouettes of Madame Josephine and her friends from church. These familiar people and the fires that made them visible to her, these points of light, now seemed like beacons calling her home.

But no, she was not thinking of going back.

Suddenly there were more lights. More people were coming forward with lamps. Then one person (her father? was that his voice?) called out her name. Then many others called her name too.

There were so many people calling her name that their voices made their way all the way up the hill to her.

She could hear the men on the gallery of the lighthouse calling out her name too.

She almost answered.

Could this be a song? she wondered. Could her name being called out by dozens of people be a song?

Could it be a new song for her next game of wonn?

For a circle of one.

She continued uphill until she found herself on a flat plot of land behind one of the empty Anthère Hill mansions. The land seemed as though it had just been cleared by fire. The earth was still warm beneath her sandals.

Her father liked to say that in a few years Mòn Initil would no longer be useless or initil since very rich people had figured out that they could burn it down, flatten it, and build their big palaces there. Soon it would have to be called Mòn Palè, or Palace Mountain.

She could no longer see the beach, so they wouldn’t be able to see her either. She stood for a long time, alone, in the middle of that newly scorched field. Her name was being called from the lighthouse by two or three men whose voices she could easily identify if she thought long enough about it, but she was no longer even tempted to answer.

Maybe they’d think that, like Msye Caleb, she was lost at sea. Her father would be the most worried about her being
lost at sea, although he would hide it. He wouldn’t show his worry to his friends and neighbors. And not to Madame Gaëlle. But he would no longer have to worry. She would go away. She would go away on her own. She would go where he would never think to come and find her. Like the fugitives in Madame Louise’s stories—les marons—she would hide inside what was left of Mòn Initil.

She would be the girl at the foot of the sky. She would find a cave large enough inside Mòn Initil to live in, and at night she would lie on beds of ferns and listen to the bats squeal and the owls moan. She would dig a hole to catch rainwater for drinking and bathing. And she would try very hard not to disturb the marooned spirits who had found refuge there before her. She hoped that there would be no snakes because she was afraid of snakes, though she could learn to live with them if she had to.

But she wouldn’t spend all her time there; she would come out every day to watch the beach. She would watch the fishermen go out at daybreak to lay their nets, then return at midday or late in the afternoon. When her father would look up at Mòn Initil from the sea, he would be looking at her without realizing it. He would be sad, but maybe he wouldn’t leave the beach or Ville Rose. Maybe he would stay, just as he had when she was living with her mother’s family. He might stay close by, waiting, hoping for her to return one day.

She’d heard some of the fishermen’s wives say that the spirits of those who’d been lost at sea would sometimes come ashore to whisper in their loved ones’ ears. She would make
sure he felt her presence too. She’d sneak down at dusk to collect fallen coconuts and grab salted fish left out to dry and she’d stop by and say a few words in her father’s ear while he slept. That way she would always be in his dreams. She would go away without really leaving, without losing everything, without dying.

She stood in the middle of the scorched field for a long time, imagining this life as a maroon. She waited for the voices from the lighthouse to die down, until she heard none at all, then she walked past the wildflower field around the lighthouse, and back down through Anthère Hill, to the edge of a much lower butte so that she could see the beach once again.

She was hoping to see her father, hoping to catch one more glimpse of him before she went back up the hill to make her total retreat into Mòn Initil. Then wouldn’t he be sorry.

From the lower butte now, she could see that most of the lamps had disappeared, as had the people carrying them. The bonfire had been put out. There were no more lights to be seen, except the moon and the stars and Msye Sylvain’s clay oven and Msye Xavier’s forging tools and Madame Wilda’s candles and net and Madame Josephine’s outdoor kitchen lamp. Everyone else, it seemed, had gone in for the night. Or into their own darkness.

Maybe they wouldn’t miss her after all.

A warm burst of air brushed past her, rising, it seemed, at that very moment, from the sea. It reminded her of a sensation she sometimes had, of feeling another presence around
her: of noticing only one branch of a tree stir while the rest remained still, of hearing the thump of invisible feet landing on the ground, of seeing an extra shadow circling while she was playing wonn. She would sometimes feel the gentle strokes of fingers traveling up and down her back, then lingering ever so lightly at the nape of her neck. She couldn’t always pin down the moment these things would start, then stop, so she would call them rèv je klè, waking dreams.

She’d had these types of dreams for as long as she could remember. Soon after they occurred, she would search for signs that something, someone might have actually been there. She would search the ground for footprints, flower petals, sparkly feathers from angel wings. And usually there would be nothing.

But just then, as she was looking down from the butte, she saw Madame Gaëlle running with a lamp in her hand and her shiny, silver-looking gown glowing in the moonlight. And when she saw her father, brightened on the edge of the water by Madame Gaëlle’s lamp and satin gown glow, and when she saw other people approaching them with their lamps, forming a circle as if they were a sun, something felt different.

In the middle of the lamp circle, half of which was now in the water, she saw someone pull a man in a red shirt out of the sea. Like a dying fish, the man’s body jerked about. Madame Gaëlle and her father were standing together in front of him.

The man reached up, grabbing both her father’s and
Madame Gaëlle’s legs, nearly pulling them both down on top of him. Her father pulled himself back, regaining his balance. Madame Gaëlle fell forward on her knees, landing on the sand near the man. Who was he? she wondered. Could it be Myse Caleb, whom the sea had taken this morning? No. He was gone, they had mourned him, and this man was too wide to be her father’s friend.

She thought she heard people shouting her schoolmaster’s name: “Ardin! Ardin!” as if to wake this man from the sea.

She started running farther down the hill, past the jacaranda trees, down to the gravel path, then back through the ylang-ylang vines. Then she stopped on a hibiscus-covered precipice to look down once again. She saw her father and a few other men bend down and join Madame Gaëlle on the sand. They grabbed the man’s waist and turned him on his back. Then she saw Madame Gaëlle lower her face and put her mouth on the man’s mouth, as though to kiss him.

Her father turned back to face the shacks on the beach. He was moving his arms wildly, as if to call for more lamps, more people, more help. Or maybe he was simply feeling helpless, feeling just like she was now, afraid.

More people started coming and more lamps. So many people now that they were blocking her view and she could no longer see the red-shirted man, Madame Gaëlle, or her father. She continued down the hill, running so fast that she slipped on some loose gravel stones and fell. She popped back up, then started running again, leaving her sandals behind.

She ran and ran, down toward the alley of coconut palms behind her home.

She thought this too could make a good song for the wonn.