God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (24 page)
Read God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Online
Authors: Dimitry Elias Leger
Yes, they said.
Let's go then.
Alain raised an elbow to knife through the crowd, a trick learned a dozen Carnivals ago. Excuse me! he said. Coming through! Coming through! The crowd parted.
Pardon!
The friends charged the barricades of rubble blocking their way into the cathedral.
They ran, they giggled. The bride climbed a pile of rubble, then threw her flimsy bouquet at Alain and herself at Philippe standing on the other side of the pile, inside the church. They were dreamers, like everyone else, everyone around them, on the streets, on the radio, on TV, like everyone who has ever looked to a church for respite or a skyscraper for work and a living. They all sought the same thing. Alain had thought he knew what miracle he was looking for all this time. When he saw her, he realized he'd had no idea. Natasha was standing in the room next to the altar in the bowels of the National Cathedral. She wore a nun's robe and stood next to Monsignor Dorélien, who was going to perform the ceremony while holding on to a cane for what seemed like dear life. Natasha saw him first and stared with awe. The smile he saw on her face mirrored the one, a ballooning flash of joy, he felt explode on his own. Natasha's alive! She's alive! ALIVE!
And healthy and beautiful and wearing the one robe Alain suspected Natasha had dreamed of wearing all her life, a secret dream he knew she held without her ever articulating it. He smiled broadly at her with his entire face and body, his eye crinkling him blind. She did the same thing too, smile like a loon. Few people had ever seen Natasha Robert flash her full-blown toothy smile, and very few people had ever seen a young nun, in her nun robe, in a packed cathedral, abruptly stop nunning around to gasp and squeal, yes, squeal, at the sight of a young man. Alain swung Philippe and Fabiola toward Monsignor Dorélienâactually it was more like he flung them to the priest. They were practically airborne when they reached the front of the altar, and then, and then, and then, Natasha ran toward Alain, and Alain ran toward Natasha. Monsignor Dorélien looked up and said, Oh? Sister Hopstaken said, What? The crowd saw the young nun and the limping young man in the black suit hug each other with all their strength. They smashed into each other like atoms and they held each other tightly, tears running down their round cheeks. There was a tenderness to their embrace, a familial affection, onlookers were puzzled at first but they got it. They must be brother and sister. They must have thought each had died during goudou-goudou. Those types of reunions had been happening a lot all over Haiti since goudou-goudou. They didn't make headlines, but they happened, and they were wonderful to behold. Some onlookers sensed that the electricity between the
striking nun and the skinny man had carnal roots. Those particularly sharp onlookers included the president of the republic, the nun's husband, and Monsignor Dorélien, the man who had led the nun through the Eucharistic gauntlet. The priest fixed the politician in the eyes and told him to be cool. Wait, he suggested, until he saw what happened next. What happened next was the squealing nun peeled herself off the handsome young man and touched his face and told him, I'm so happy you're alive.
Me too, the young man said, and then the nun, composing herself with ceremonial solemnity, took a step back and said, I must return to work now. I hope you understand.
Surprise registered on the young man's face, but then so did respect and love, so he said, I understand. Go do your thing. You look great.
Thank you, she said. You should take these.
Natasha gave Alain the keys to her car. It's yellow and parked out in the back, she said. I saw Villard and Katherine earlier. They really can't wait to see you.
Thanks, Alain said, then he, too, took a step back.
Natasha gave the President, who was standing nearby, an apologetic look. She bowed nervously and showed him her nun's robe. He shook his head in amazement. Natasha summoned the warmth and resolve of Sister Robert and walked up to her soon-to-be ex-husband and whispered in his ear. In this robe and in this line of work, she said, I can best help you take care of our people moving forward.
Your courage after the quake inspired me. You can retire in peace now, Jean. You did good. It's my turn. My work has just begun.
The President shivered. No one had called him by his given name in a long, long time. Her tenderness moved him. So did her determination. He nodded his approval and said good-bye.
Bonne chance
, he said.
On tient le contact?
Bien sûr
, Natasha said.
In the pink Haitian crepuscule, everyone in the rubbled cathedral took his or her appropriate place, and the first wedding ceremony after the earthquake began. It went off without a hitch.
E
ights months later, a thin child was born in Miami. The earthquake taught us to expect the unexpected in life, didn't it? her mother told the child's ebullient father, Alain Destiné, adding, He seemed to have decided that you deserved a parting gift. The father named the baby Phoenix. Her uncle Jean called her Rose after the Alan Cavé song. Yes, the name of this child conceived in Haiti and born nine months after the devastating Haitian earthquake was Rose Phoenix Destiné. Her American friends called her Nicky. Nicky grew into a thin woman who didn't know much about her mother. She learned her father had lost the bottom of his right leg in a great earthquake in Haiti and was led to believe her mother disappeared around then too. Her grandfather and her grandmother from her father's side visited from Port-au-Prince frequently to shower her with gifts. Like clockwork, every other weekend, even after she moved to New
York City and then Paris to study art, Nicky had another visitor from Haiti, an aunty, her mother's twin, her father said. The nun ostensibly came to teach Nicky catechism and art. After Nicky became a successful artist in her own right and settled down in Miami, the nun continued to visit her regularly. By then they didn't talk art or religion much anymore. They took long walks and hung out on Lincoln Road. At night, they laughed at her father's attempts at cooking Haitian cuisine. The day he died, Nicky lamented she was completely alone in the world, an orphan. The kindly nun squeezed her hand and said, Not as long as I'm alive. Natasha then told her daughter the story of the love triangle and the disaster that surprisingly made everything right. All Nicky appreciated from the secret history of her parents was that, finally, she had someone on earth she could call maman. Like her mother, she hated to be alone.
H
eartfelt thanks, for their support through the journey to publication, to my agent, Robert Guinsler; my editor, Tracy Sherrod Fumi, and the team at Amistad and HarperCollins; and Edwidge Danticat; Junot DÃaz; Madison Smartt Bell; Andrea Lee; Gary Shteyngart; Dany Laferrière; my sister Yanick Léger; my big brother, Elias “Tilou” Léger, and his wife, Marie; my kid brother, Steve; uncle George Clervoix and his family; Tisha Shea Harty; Tjade Graves; Adam Bradley; Kelvin Bias; Jason Liu; Stéphane Vincent; Marvin Barksdale; Christian Provencher; Ken and Rebecca Kurson; Daniel Loedel; Geoff Shandler; and Chloe Tattanelli and her family in Florence. In Geneva: Anthony Nguyen; Linden Morrison; Marcus Brown; Fran Costello; Frédéric Savioz. In France: Marvin Agustus and Vanessa Huguenin; Dominic and Lauren Waughray; Mirjam Schoening and Henrik Naujoks; and Fabrice and Elisabeth David.
DIMITRY ELIAS LÃGER
was born in 1971 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Educated at St. John's University and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, he is a former staff writer at the
Miami Herald
,
Fortune
magazine, and the
Source
magazine, the seminal hip-hop monthly, and also a contributor to the
New York Times
,
Newsweek
, and the
Face
magazine in the UK. In 2010, he worked as an advisor to the United Nations' disaster recovery operations in Haiti after an earthquake.
God Loves Haiti
is his first novel. He lives between France and the United States with his family.
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GOD LOVES HAITI
. Copyright © 2015 by Dimitry Elias Léger. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-234813-5
EPub Edition January 2015 ISBN 9780062348142
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