God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (19 page)

PART IV

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.

The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.

—Psalm 46

        
CAGED BIRD SONG

T
he glory of He who moves everything penetrates the universe and shines in one part more and, in another, less. This idea, learned from Dante, of course, had energized Natasha in the past and fueled her faith. It made her feel like she visited heaven when creating art, a heaven that took most of His light. And now she had seen things that should not be told, and she thought, What I was able to store up of that holy kingdom in my imagination may not be enough to get through my travails and life.

More or less around the time her husband, a veteran cynic, and her boyfriend, a robust atheist, experienced fresh sparks of faith, the object of their affections, a self-proclaimed Caribbean-born daughter of Dante and the most devout Catholic they knew, lost her faith in the fog of disaster. The fog of natural disasters had a lot in common with the more well known fog of war. The confusion caused by the chaos of war and battle, which had
been practically patented by the Americans since World War II, shrouded Port-au-Prince. The notable difference between the fog of disaster and the fog of war, however, may be that the state of perplexity created by natural disasters comes with the added deprivation of a specific asshole for victims and revenge-seekers to blame for their rotten luck. The pacifying anger that comes from blaming other nationalities, ethnic groups, or religions for stunning sudden losses escapes those struck by disaster. So does its temporary relief from grieving and rebuilding. Without righteous rage, what are you left with? Are you reduced to a baby's pre-sentient state of frustration? In this new near-fetal position, Natasha struggled to keep a handle on her sanity. Guilt, furthermore, braided through her memories of the very flawed adult she had become. She had reason to believe her boyfriend had died because she locked him in the closet in a room near the top of a building the earthquake had brought low. As if practically killing the man she loved wasn't enough, her cuckolded husband's subsequent surge of courage and strength in the face of the calamity that befell their island further shamed her. Regret and sadness made her feel like a living scarlet letter. Alain died because of me. My husband was a good man I treated shabbily. There's nothing I can do to change any of those things. Heaven will have no place for me. Why am I still alive and not in the appropriate circle of hell for adulteresses? Why? The answer had yet to arrive despite her vigils under a weeping statue of Jesus on a
cross in the cathedral she had chosen to call home since the disaster. After the earthquake, survivors had moved to live everywhere and anywhere around town and the countryside. They lived in parks, mostly, but also in yards and gardens and golf courses and soccer fields. Natasha made her home in the dark and dank catacombs of the National Cathedral. The cathedral's tone of grave and perpetual mourning matched her mood well. Like a giant tomb. Strangely, no other survivors joined her. Her only company was a dying old priest who slept in a cot in his former office in the decapitated church.

They sat together in the lone room with a roof, bathed, during the day, by light filtered to a rainbow kaleidoscope of hues by a stained-glass window. When not crying or praying, Natasha passed the time listening to Monsignor Dorélien, wondering how she screwed up her shot at heaven so completely when life's fragility should have given her better ways to spend the finite time she had. How could you have forgotten to be grateful for the loves in your life? How could you abuse them so? Monsignor Dorélien, for his part, simply wished the child would eat something.

You should go out and find him, the priest said out of the blue one afternoon.

You should rest, Natasha said.

What's today's date? He asked.

February fourteenth, she said.

Ah, it's Valentine's Day, he said. Is that why you're so grumpy? You miss him, don't you?

Who?

The boy.

You mean, my husband.

No, I mean the man you love more than Jesus.

Father, you blaspheme. That's not funny.

Monsignor Dorélien started to laugh, but the mirth got blocked by his collapsed lungs and reverted to a cough, a choked rattle so violent it scared away the black vultures that had been waiting on top of the church's pink walls for his corpse.

You should leave me be, the priest whispered once his coughing fit subsided, exhausted. I'm done. I'll die as soon as your sad eyes turn away.

I can't, the young girl whispered, eyes welling with affection.

The priest, who was gray like a damp sheet and so close to death you could almost see the angels standing guard check their watches, lifted a trembling hand and placed it on Natasha's hand. The girl grasped the hand so hard it almost hurt him. This is new, the priest thought. Since Natasha Robert had been a child she had one quirk: she hated to be touched. She was a wonderfully pleasant girl. She was quick, kind, and pretty, with flowing heaps of curly hair that attracted people's attention like bees to honey. She also had the pretty girl's desire to deflect attention, to be seen as a madonna and not a doll or trophy. Of all the orphans and young people Monsignor Dorélien had taken under his wing in his sixty-year career, Natasha
Robert was unique in that she asked for precious little—from the church, God, or her fellow man, especially men. Instead, she was a giver, an eager-to-pleaser. She gave kindness, inspiration, sympathy, and humor. She strove to give her community beauty. She yearned for security and the comfort of reliable routine, like everyone else, but she did not actively seek it from the people around her. We are all children and would prefer to behave like children at our happiest, the priest knew, but this child, by fate or nurture, worked hard to hide her inner child, even when she had been a child and had every right to petulance and selfishness. Once she entered the cathedral that fateful day as a preteen, she developed into something of an actress. She liked to pretend to play the role of the charitable adult in charge that most of us often avoided or performed clumsily. She was a sweetheart at it as long as you didn't touch her.

Something had changed in the child since the disaster, Monsignor Dorélien feared. When she found him buried alive in his office in the back of the cathedral, she had summoned all her strength, and God's grace with more than a few deargodhelpmes, to pull cement blocks off him as quickly as she could. Which was natural and typical of Natasha, Monsignor Dorélien knew. What was new was the desperation and pitch of her cries for help once her strength began to falter. Those cries were heartrending. Monsignor Dorélien almost wished he had died so he could have been spared hearing the anguish in the child's
voice that day. The men who eventually joined her in saving what little of him was left under the unbearable embrace of the massive slabs of granite seemingly doubled their efforts to quiet the hysterical child.

For a long while afterward, the girl stared at the wounded priest in dumbfounded silence. She seemed elated that her prayers for his rescue had come true, but she couldn't understand why her prayers for others', notably Alain's, did not. The ideas of atheists sneaked up on her. Life was just a game. Life had no deeper meaning for humans than it had for animals. There was no heaven, and there certainly was no hell. There was no God. There was good luck and there was bad luck. Luck was to be prepared for and seized or frittered away. Bad luck was meant to be endured and shrugged off. Everything passed with time. There are an awful lot of coincidences. Blame yourself for your poverty. Credit your genes, genius, and moxie for your wealth. Hate Dad. Beauty was mathematical. Making money was art. What money bought best were toys. Evolve or get out of the way. What about the conscience? she thought. What did the atheists have to say about the source of pangs of guilt, and the soul, that stupid, bigger-than-you essence of yourself that craved harmony and love with everything and everyone in its environment? Where do they seek comfort in the days after everything they believed in, like justice and love, has fallen apart or disappeared altogether? Things don't fall apart just in Africa. They fall apart everywhere. Everywhere. Anytime.

I wasn't ready for the apocalypse, she said.

What apocalypse? Monsignor Dorélien said.

You know, the earthquake, Father, the slight twitch of dirt that killed almost everyone we loved in the city the other day.

Child, please. That wasn't the apocalypse. Do you believe that after the apocalypse, you'd still have the luxury to sit around and feel sorry for yourself? Here I thought you'd finally lost the rose-colored glasses you wore all the time.

But, Father, if that disaster wasn't the apocalypse, an end of all things, what was it? Punishment? That's what some people believe, you know.

A test, child. Goudou-goudou was a test. That's all it was. A test. You've read your share of Bible stories. You know God puts the people he loves the most through the worst sacrifices. If you ask me, this is one of the easiest tests we've faced in a long time.

The priest chuckled, then coughed.

Why do you say that, Father?

Well, for one, it wasn't subtle. It was so loud I still can't hear anyone more than a meter away from me. Every Haitian alive knows it happened, got its message, and responded to it in a way that revealed the limits and strengths of their character and faith. They now know full well how to improve their standing with God and Jesus based on their behavior. Jesus still loves them, but they will find lying about who they are and could be to themselves much
harder. Second, the damage the earthquake caused was mostly physical! Rebounding from physical loss, even on that scale, should be a piece of cake for a people who so ably recovered from decades of slavery. The old Port-au-Prince was a city they inherited. The new city will be the one they create for themselves. It's a rare opportunity to start over fresh. You don't get many of those in this life. Can they? Can you? It's not a bad question. You could be facing worse challenges, you know.

Intellectually, that makes sense. Emotionally the whole thing is baffling.

I know it is. Which leads to my third point: the earthquake was the latest sign that God loves Haiti.

He what?

He loves you. Of course God loves Haitians. Why else would He encourage us to keep our faces pressed against the windows of great American and European wealth and grandeur, so close yet so cruelly far, like a nation of Holly Golightlys? Why else would He chin-check us every couple of years with trying natural disasters—an earthquake here, a few hurricanes there, with a dash of floods? Why else would He constantly tempt our rich and powerful to be corrupted by short-term profits in an almost barren world? Finally, why else, dear child, would God make our life so hard yet so sweet on an island so beautiful yet so, so fragile? Think about it: The moral of most stories in the Bible is that God's chosen people, Adam, Eve, Abraham, the whole lot, will constantly be asked by Him
to make the greatest personal sacrifices possible to honor His mysterious glory. The way we Haitians suffer misfortune, deprivation, and disproportionate foreign enmity is right in line with the fate of chosen peoples throughout history. Biblically speaking anyway. God may love us too much, I'd say.

The old priest was either completely daft, Natasha thought, or taking her to a deeper understanding of things than she could handle at her age and in her current frazzled state. Before Monsignor Dorélien could continue his sermon for one, a boom filled the room. A strong breeze from an opened-and-slammed door rushed in. Candles flickered. Dorélien gave Natasha the nod to go see who had entered the church. Natasha walked into the large main hall and stood next to the altar. For the first time in a long time, she felt no fear. One reason she'd sought refuge inside a severely damaged church despite public warnings for all Haitians to avoid going inside buildings before they were inspected by the authorities on account of the risk of aftershocks was because she secretly dug the idea of being killed by a cathedral's tumbling walls. There was something artful about getting buried alive by a cathedral. Maybe even having her head crushed or heart speared by a toppled crucifix.

In the church that evening, however, Natasha was in no mood to die. She felt fine, with the first glimmers of inspiration for her life's next act. A test? she thought. She liked tests. Miraculously, the tears that seemed permanently painted in
the corner of her eyes had dissipated. She turned her back to the altar and faced . . . a mob. About twenty young men holding candles and megaphones and shovels in their hands stood at the end of the cathedral's long hall. They looked to be in various stages of exhaustion. They were laborers, gravediggers, probably, and their day had been long. Once they saw her, they erupted in song. They sang a hymn of beauty and optimism with such vigor Natasha clutched her chest:

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;

How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:

How great Thou art, how great Thou art!