Krik? Krak! (3 page)

Célianne spent the night groaning. She looks like she has been ready for a while, but maybe the child is being stubborn. She just screamed that she is bleeding. There is an older woman here who looks like she has had a lot of children herself. She says Célianne is not bleeding at all. Her water sack has broken.

The only babies I have ever seen right after birth are baby mice. Their skin looks veil thin. You can see all the blood vessels and all their organs. I have always wanted to poke them to see if my finger would go all the way through the skin.

I have moved to the other side of the boat so I will not have to look
inside
Célianne. People are just watching. The captain asks the midwife to keep Célianne steady so she will not rock any more holes into the boat. Now we have three cracks covered with tar. I am scared to think of what would happen if we had to choose among ourselves who would stay on the boat and who should die. Given the choice to make a decision like that, we would all act like vultures, including me.

The sun will set soon. Someone says that this child will be just another pair of hungry lips. At least it will have its mother's breasts, says an old man. Everyone will eat their last scraps of food today.

there is a rumor that the old president is coming back,
there is a whole bunch of people going to the airport to
meet him. papa
says
we
are
not going to stay in port-au-prince
to find out if this is true or if it is a lie. they are selling
gasoline at the market again, the carnival groups have
taken to the streets, we are heading the other way, to ville
rose, maybe there i will be able to sleep at night, it is not
going to turn out well with the old president coming
back, manman now
says,
people are just too hopeful, and
sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against
us. people will believe anything, they will claim to see the
christ return and march on the cross backwards if there is
enough hope, manman told papa that you took the boat,
papa told me before we left this morning that he thought
himself a bad father for everything that happened, he says
a father should be able to speak to his children like a civilized
man. all the craziness here has made him feel like he
cannot do that anymore, all he wants to do is live, he and
manman have not said a word to one another since we left
the latrine, i know that papa does not hate us, not in the
way that i hate those soldiers, those macoutes, and all
those people here who shoot guns, on our way to ville
rose, we saw dogs licking two dead faces, one of them was
a little boy who was lying on the side of the road with the
sun in his dead open eyes, we saw a soldier shoving a
woman out of a hut, calling her a witch, he was shaving
the woman's head, but of course we never stopped, papa
didn't want to go in madan roger's house and check on her
before we left, he thought the soldiers might still be there,
papa was driving the van real fast, i thought he was going
to kill us. we stopped at an open market on the way. manman
got some black cloth for herself and for me. she cut
the cloth in two pieces and we wrapped them around our
heads to mourn madan roger. when i am used to ville rose,
maybe i will sketch you some butterflies, depending on
the news that they bring me.

Célianne had a girl baby. The woman acting as a mid-wife is holding the baby to the moon and whispering prayers.. . .
God, this child You bring into the world, please
guide her as You please through all her days on this earth.
The baby has not cried.

We had to throw our extra things in the sea because the water is beginning to creep in slowly. The boat needs to be lighter. My two gourdes in change had to be thrown overboard as an offering to Agwé, the spirit of the water. I heard the captain whisper to someone yesterday that they might have to
do something
with some of the people who never recovered from seasickness. I am afraid that soon they may ask me to throw out this notebook. We might all have to strip down to the way we were born, to keep ourselves from drowning.

Célianne's child is a beautiful child. They are calling her Swiss, because the word
Swiss
was written on the small knife they used to cut her umbilical cord. If she was my daughter, I would call her soleil, sun, moon, or star, after the elements. She still hasn't cried. There is gossip circulating about how Célianne became pregnant. Some people are saying that she had an affair with a married man and her parents threw her out. Gossip spreads here like everywhere else.

Do you remember our silly dreams? Passing the university exams and then studying hard to go until the end, the farthest of all that we can go in school. I know your father might never approve of me. I was going to try to win him over. He would have to cut out my heart to keep me from loving you. I hope you are writing like you promised. Jesus, Marie, Joseph! Everyone smells so bad. They get into arguments and they say to one another, "It is only my misfortune that would lump me together with an indigent like you." Think of it. They are fighting about being superior when we all might drown like straw.

There is an old toothless man leaning over to see what I am writing. He is sucking on the end of an old wooden pipe that has not seen any fire for a very long time now. He looks like a painting. Seeing things simply, you could fill a museum with the sights you have here. I still feel like such a coward for running away. Have you heard anything about my parents? Last time I saw them on the beach, my mother had a
kriz.
She just fainted on the sand. I saw her coming to as we started sailing away. But of course I don't know if she is doing all right.

The water is really piling into the boat. We take turns pouring bowls of it out. I don't know what is keeping the boat from splitting in two. Swiss isn't crying. They keep slapping her behind, but she is not crying.

of course the old president didn't come, they arrested a lot of people at the airport, shot a whole bunch of them down, i heard it on the radio, while we were eating tonight, i told papa that i love you. i don't know if it will make a difference, i just want him to know that i have loved somebody in my life, in case something happens to one of us, i think he should know this about me, that i have loved someone besides only my mother and father in my life, i know you would understand, you are the one for large noble gestures, i just wanted him to know that i was capable of loving somebody, he looked me straight in the eye and said nothing to me. i love you until my hair shivers at the thought of anything happening to you. papa just turned his face away like he was rejecting my very birth, i am writing you from under the banyan tree in the yard in our new house, there are only two rooms and a tin roof that makes music when it rains, especially when there is hail, which falls like angry tears from heaven, there is a stream down the hill from the house, a stream that is too shallow for me to drown myself, manman and i spend a lot of time talking under the banyan tree, she told me today that sometimes you have to choose between your father and the man you love, her whole family did not want her to marry papa because he was a gardener from ville rose and her family was from the city and some of
them had even gone to university, she whispered everything
under the banyan tree in the yard
so
as not to hurt
his feelings, i saw him looking at us hard from the house,
i heard him clearing his throat like he heard us anyway, like
we hurt him very deeply somehow just by being together.

Célianne is lying with her head against the side of the boat. The baby still will not cry. They both look very peaceful in all this chaos. Célianne is holding her baby tight against her chest. She just cannot seem to let herself throw it in the ocean. I asked her about the baby's father. She keeps repeating the story now with her eyes closed, her lips barely moving.

She was home one night with her mother and brother Lionel when some ten or twelve soldiers burst into the house. The soldiers held a gun to Lionel's head and ordered him to lie down and become intimate with his mother. Lionel refused. Their mother told him to go ahead and obey the soldiers because she was afraid that they would kill Lionel on the spot if he put up more of a fight. Lionel did as his mother told him, crying as the soldiers laughed at him, pressing the gun barrels farther and farther into his neck.

Afterwards, the soldiers tied up Lionel and their mother, then they each took turns raping Célianne. When they were done, they arrested Lionel, accusing him of moral crimes. After that night, Célianne never heard from Lionel again.

The same night, Célianne cut her face with a razor so that no one would know who she was. Then as facial scars were healing, she started throwing up and getting rashes. Next thing she knew, she was getting big. She found out about the boat and got on. She is fifteen.