God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) (5 page)

Around them a few other children, dressed like Xavier, chased a plastic blue-and-white soccer ball in the little bit of free space still available. They did so quietly, as if still warming to the concept of fun in their strange new world. They seemed to not to want to disturb their shell-shocked neighbors and relatives. Death had taken ownership of the city in one fell swoop. The kids rightly suspected she would not relinquish her grip gently. To fight for release from her cruel stroke, these coming days would take more energy than Alain had. He just wanted to go home, take a bath, and sleep. Maybe forever. That would be nice.

We need your help, Xavier said. The people who came to help speak only English. No one else from Fort National speaks it well enough to follow them. Philippe, my neighbor who led us here, can't translate what they're saying. Since you speak good English, I told them you could translate for us.

How did the boy know I spoke English? Alain thought. Not that the question mattered much. He was tired. His first and only instinct at the moment was to recoil from the world around him. He wanted nothing more than to jump into a car and hurry to his father's house on Place Boyer and climb into his bed and lie there for a month or a year or two. That his car lay on its back and his house could be in the same shape bothered him, but not more than the exhaustion of looking so many hurt people in the face.

Everything's going to be all right, the boy said again, as if reading his mind. Come with me.

The boy pulled Alain's arms like he expected Alain to have the ability to get up and stand on his own two feet with no problem. Alain stood on his two feet with no problem.
Merci
, Alain whispered.

De rien
, the boy said.
Viens
.

Allowing himself to be tugged toward the three humanitarians and their crowd of eager beneficiaries, Alain Destiné stuck out his square jaw, flashed his battle-tested negotiator's grin, and soon began shaking hands with a businessman's winning handshake. Martin, Mariana,
and Adam, they were doctors, two Canadians and a Peruvian. While bandaging and dispensing painkillers to the group of earthquake victims still mobile enough to come to them, they briefed Alain on Haiti's status. Seven-point-two magnitude earthquake, thousands dead, most of Port-au-Prince and Léogâne destroyed. As Alain tried to digest the news, locals pressed him to tell the doctors to come help a dying child or parent or sibling or neighbor lying about somewhere around the park or in the rubbled city beyond it. In the middle of the action, tugged at all sides, feeling useful, Alain briefly felt a surge of his old adrenaline. But the effort was tough. The back of his neck began to sweat. The noon sun and heat felt like they were closing in on him. The smell of mass deaths, plangent and sour, started to fill the park, sapping him. Alain had to shake hands with his left hand because the right one was still no good and hurting. Keeping the boy close to him, Alain steadied himself. As had happened to him whenever his self-esteem perked up, he found himself thinking of Natasha.

Where are you, baby? You should be here, he thought.

For the first time since the earthquake, he thought of the woman he loved, the same woman who, when they last saw each other, seemingly an eternity ago, locked him in a closet and said good-bye to him. It was never meant to be for us, was it? Alain could now begin to concede.

Dr. Mariana was the least Latina-looking Mariana Alain had ever met. She had red hair, green eyes, freckles, and a
nose too big for her face. She turned out to be the leader, or at least the spokesperson, of this troika of saviors. They came from the Canadian Red Cross; they were student trainees on a mission of observation only, but the scale of the disaster had forced them into duty. She said there indeed had been earthquake. In turn, Alain played translator, relaying the information to the crowd as loudly as he could. They nodded at the news with no emotion. An earthquake?! Of course! Only God could test us like that, their faces said. Fuck God, Alain thought. Xavier looked up at him, again, as if he'd read his mind, as if to tell him that resistance was futile. The earthquake was massive and unprecedented, Mariana said. The earthquake originated somewhere between Carrefour and Léogâne and caused extensive damage, destroying most homes. Even the United Nations lost its headquarters and dozens of staffers. The event made headlines around the world, and the world had responded with an outpouring of sympathy and support for Haiti. Billions of dollars were being gathered. An unprecedented collaboration between American military forces and charities from everywhere had been working all through the night to stabilize the situation and bring medical and other aid to everyone. The only reason Marianna and her colleagues were already in place was because they were in town attending a workshop at the Canadian Embassy when the earthquake struck. After a night of caution, they came out first thing in the morning to do reconnaissance for a damage assessment report.

As if she anticipated his next question, Mariana announced that the President was alive. The plane he was to take at the time of the earthquake was destroyed, and the President was bruised but alive and kicking. He was working closely with the United Nations and the international community in a temporary office near the airport to get help to Haiti as quickly as possible. And the first lady? Alain asked. Everyone looked at him like he was crazy, like, Where did that question come from? Alain squeezed Xavier's shoulder during the silence that preceded Mariana's answer. No news on the first lady, Mariana said.
Pauvre diable
, an elderly woman standing next to Alain said.

Alain went light-headed and his knees buckled. Little Xavier held him up until a couple of older guys noticed and came to help. To everyone's surprise, Alain pulled himself out of his fainting spell. Fine, he said to no one in particular, let's be grateful for what we still have. Our president is alive and doing his part. Let's do our part.

He ordered the able to help the weak stand and form a line to receive basic care from the nice Canadians. More Canadians came, and they came with the good stuff. For lunch, the refugees ate crackers and drank a sip of water. When dinnertime came, they ate the same things. Be grateful, Alain said to everyone as he helped distribute the food. Be grateful.

Over the next couple of weeks, Alain slept a dreamless two to three hours a night on a military-gray cloth covering
a piece of cardboard in a tent pitched on a grassy patch in the park. After the blue embers of dawn filtered through the tent's seams, he sprang up, sat, and listened to the sounds of the new world he had come to inhabit in Park Pigeon. A dog sniffing about. The clang and hiss of a giant pot being cleaned by Yanick, the camp's designated chef. The soft hiss of a child pissing. The boy Xavier had refused to stray more than a meter away from Alain since they'd met. Pre-earthquake, Alain had greeted new days with as many push-ups and sit-ups as he could muster no matter where he was. Today, he barely had enough energy to keep his eyes open. One of his legs was broken and without the benefit of casts was healing in all sorts of ugly shapes. His washboard abs, which used to give him a boxer's confidence that he could bounce back from any punch, were gone. Aches and inertia made Alain move like an old man in the days after the earthquake. He was wasting away and uninterested in doing anything about it, not even going home to Place Boyer. Instead, he lay awake on his cardboard for as long as he could until just the second before his new buddy, Philippe, the diminutive, cornrow-wearing leader of their refugee camp, who, it should be said, had turned out to be an even better leader in disaster relief than Alain was, came looking for him.

Alain was embarrassed by the brokenness of everything. The simple fact that Philippe did not look like he wanted to flee and find a corner in which to vomit at each sight, smell, and sound of their damaged compatriots in the refugee camp, as Alain did, kept convincing Alain that he was
truly weak but should at least stick around to help. So he lay in his hot tent, wondering how he could die in a way that Xavier, Philippe, and their new dependents would forgive him for. He assumed no one suspected his posttraumatic stress disorder was leading him to contemplate suicide. He wrongly suspected that no one would care if he died. So many people had died in the quake and daily in the camp, how many tears could anyone muster for a cripple's parting, even if he was useful as the camp's resident translator? The problem was, life in the camp, ironically enough, made suicide fairly difficult. With Philippe softening aid workers with his soul brother–community leader act, Alain worked as a closer, hammering out arrangements with aid agencies to secure his little community precious necessities like food, water, hygiene kits, tents, his-and-hers toilets, separate men's and women's showers, and even lamps and lights to scare off potential rapists, thieves, and demons in the wee hours. Alain's ability to glad-hand and fake a condescending, look-at-these-poor-unlucky-Haitians, aren't-we-noble nod with the fey Canadian or haughty Frenchman or perky American in charge was offensive, but it translated into supplies for the families of Park Pigeon, so no one called him on it. The work still added to his depression, though. Under little Xavier's ever-present and ever-watchful eyes, Alain was careful to stay upbeat and solution-oriented. His compassion cup ran over—when in public. He had always been a good actor. Everyone, especially the foreign visitors, seemed too preoccupied and overwhelmed by Haiti—All
that natural and stunning beauty! All those vacant, shocked faces! All those glistening bodies! The Middle Ages–level misery!—to scratch his smiley surface to see the morbidity that had spread over his soul like a cancer. These people never asked the obvious questions—You're from Place Boyer, what are you doing here? Place Boyer was unaffected by the earthquake, why don't you go home? Why are you still living in a tent? Isn't it dangerous here?—and Alain didn't have to figure out an answer.

Place Pigeon and the surrounding parks along the Champ de Mars teemed with thousands of earthquake refugees. They lived five or more people to a tent fit for two. They were cramped, tired, hurt, grieving for all the people and things, a world really, they had lost during the thirty-five-second earthquake. How can an event be so short and cause so much damage? People talked about that day, that quake, and their terror all the time. Oh, there were cries for help everywhere. All the survivors remembered hearing them as they made their way, or were made to make their way, out from under tons of rubble. But you had to ignore them, didn't you? Or you were made to ignore them by the sheer scale of your powerlessness, your infinite meekness? I can't believe we got to live.

My dear dead Natasha,
Alain wrote, furtively, in the diary he began keeping in his tent.

Why did you leave me? I mean,
leave me
leave me. Oh I know why you left me, but where did the strength to
do so come from? I know I approved of the marriage. I encouraged you to find a patron for your art. I needed more time. You needed a nicer life ASAP. I got it. The President's not a bad man. A weak man, a man without a courageous bone in his body, but he was wise enough to take the quasi-love you made available to him. You gotta give him credit for that. We would have had great stories to tell our children after you left him for me to whom you rightfully belonged. Yeah, I said it. Belong. I owned you like you owned me. I'm sorry.

I don't know what to do with my life now. I survived the earthquake. I can't believe I survived the fucking earthquake and you didn't. I'm supposed to be grateful. It's some kind of miracle. I ain't grateful. You alive is the miracle I would have preferred. The rest, I'm ashamed to admit, is noise. Thousands of people like you are dead. Estimates are wild. I've heard numbers as high as 100,000! But nine million of us remain, no matter what the number of earthquake deaths settle at. Probably half that number still living wishes they were dead too; they persevere. I can't. You should see their toughness as work. I'm not them. I can't handle life anymore. My nerves are shot. My own shadow scares me. I refuse to leave the refugee camp. I cannot bear the thought of the world beyond it, my father, our house, our society, and the flow of talk of books, politics, profits, children, beaches, football, travel, America, reconstruction, rubble, God. Maybe the earthquake shook away my
Haitianness, our supposed innate capacity to grin and bear all God's sick jokes. I don't know. I'm being useful in the country's darkest hour. I have a job, handling relations with foreigners who come around to offer help. I got our camp food, water, tents, first aids kits, even hygiene kits for girls, soccer balls, toilets, showers, even occasional police patrols. I have my own tent, lamp, pen, pad, cardboard to sleep on, crackers to eat, water. When it rained last night, I got mud too. I used it as a pillow. Might as well. My hair is falling out. The pillow was soft and gooey. Tasty too. Just kidding.

I have a roommate in my tent, just one roommate. A privilege. (Privilege, as you liked to point out, had a way of always finding me. It does even now in this damaged new world. At this rate, I'll probably have my own cabin in the Devil's cruise ship in hell.) Most people are piled in four to six in their tent. My roommate is a preternaturally mature orphan from nearby Fort National. He could be the Son of God, but I'm too afraid to ask. The last thing I want these days is to give my conflicted feelings about God a face to hate. I like the kid. He keeps me calm. You see, Natasha, I don't want to do anything with my life now that you're dead. I feel the country died too. Life as I knew it died that January afternoon. The new world is for the brave. I do not feel like one of them. Assuming you're in heaven—surely adulterers go to heaven—you have to tell me how to join you as quickly as possible. Send me a sign. You have to help me figure
out a way to gracefully escape whatever is trying to pass as life here on earth after Ragnarok. It's gotten harder to kill yourself in Port-au-Prince since the quake, believe it or not. Or maybe mustering energy to do anything but lay in my tent—it is a nice tent; it's from Taiwan—and play-acting at public servant will wear out soon. Some invisible damage I suffered internally during the quake may end me. It's become a common phenomenon. We bury more seemingly unhurt people in the camp each day. It's like they decide to not wake up. We bury more of these people than we help mothers give birth! An old lady or man or child sits in a corner staring into space for days on end, looking stunned, just shocked, that the earthquake did what it did to them and then they either close their eyes and tumble from their seat onto the dirt or someone touches their unblinking face and discovers their souls had long fled their bodies.