Manman
My birth
brought your death
your blood
a lavalas
in rainy season.
Papa buried the placenta
with orange seeds
and watered them
with tears.
Papa told me
you were a Mother Tree
and your great-grandmother
was a princess,
from the first people
who named us
Ayiti,
the Land of Mountains.
She fell in love with a mawon,
a runaway who hid in caves
and climbed mountains
to freedom,
then returned with his princess
to fight the French.
Papa does his best
to hide
the ashes
in his heart.
He makes tables, chairs,
cedar coffins
to sell in his shop.
Your older sister, Tante Lila,
never married.
She moved in with us.
When she braids my hair
it’s always too tight.
The dresses she sews
hang loose on my body,
as thin as a gazelle.
Whatever she cooks
always needs salt.
Not like Cousin Phebus,
whose food
makes our tongues dance.
Tante Lila prays the rosary
every day,
scolds me
when I climb
my favorite mapou,
the sacred tree.
So I keep
our secret.
How in the forest
when I touch the trees—
barks grainy, knotted,
or peeled slick smooth—
I see shapes in the wood
calling me to carve them.
I feel the heartbeat of their roots
pulse through my bare feet.
The trees sing to me.
Inside each one
of them
a tiny spark
of
you.
Friendliness and Understanding
AUGUST 15, 1934
HINCHE, HAITI
When the section chief
finishes reading to us,
gathered in the muggy heat,
no one says a word.
Was he expecting applause?
They say the section chief—
at first respected,
now detested—
helped sòlda Ameriken yo
kill Caco resisters
steal our land
and force us like slaves
to build roads.
“Friendliness and understanding? Hmph.”
The air is thick
with resentment
and relief.
Surely things will be better now.
For the first time in my fourteen years,
I see the Haitian flag raised
from its lower
position at half-mast,
and the drapo Ameriken an,
always higher till now,
lowered, folded,
and taken away.
My Friend Fifina
I’ll never forget
the first time I saw her
when the school year started.
In the courtyard of the Mission School
I sat apart from the others
drawing a bird
in red earth with a twig
from Mapou.
“That’s beautiful.”
Her voice arrived first,
warm honey and butter.
I looked up and saw skin
the color of glowing dark walnut
her soft cheve swa
a silky braid down her back.
A marabou,
those we consider
the most beautiful.
“I’m Fifina.”
I stood up, wiped my hands
on my skirt.
“I’m Lucille.”
We walked back to the classroom
inside me
a sunrise.
Trust
At the Bassin Zim
waterfall,
where Papa taught me to swim
in the rivière Samana
and dive in underwater caves,
the light-jeweled water
caresses the cliff.
I teach Fifina to swim,
first holding her
as she floats on her back
her black hair fanning out
like angel wings.
When I sense
her body relax,
trust the water,
I let go.
Listen
Fifina and I perch
high like birds
on Mapou’s branches
for hours.
I press my ear
against the side stripes
of Mapou’s bark,
Fifina next to me.
“Don’t you hear anything?”
Her mouth
rises in a smile,
but she
never laughs at me
never makes me feel
my head’s not on straight
never says
that I look like a boy.
“I don’t hear anything,”
says Fifina.
“If I told you
Mapou sings to me,
what would you think?”
“I’d think you’re lucky!
Tell me what you hear,”
she says.
“I hear a woman’s voice singing,
and when I close my eyes,
behind my eyelids
I see flashing lights,
like bird wings
fluttering in the sun.
“It doesn’t make sense
until I fall asleep.
Then they all come together
in my dreams. I used to
try and draw them,
but now I want to carve,
like Papa.”
Fifina holds my hand
and squeezes it.
“You have a gift.”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I promise.”
That makes me smile,
our secret to keep.
Our feet swing free
from Mapou’s branches.
We talk of what
shape our
lives will be
when we start our own school
where girls will learn
more than we do at the Mission School.
We’ll make our own book,
with her mother’s leaf-medicine recipes
and my drawings of the plants.
We’ll teach girls how to carve, sew, draw, climb trees.
We’ll teach girls the songs of trees, flowers, birds, butterflies,
the sun, moon, mountains, clouds.
Mapou listens
to our dreams
falling like gentle rain
on her leaves.
When it’s time to go home
we climb down carefully
Mapou’s branch in my hand
to chase away
snakes.
Mine
Each mapou
is special,
a resting place
reposwa
for the ones before us
still with us,
ever since our land
born from fire
stood up high from the sea
to make mountains
behind mountains.
Those who serve the spirits
say they know exactly
what makes mapou trees sacred.
“Trees are God’s creation,
but He made them mute,”
says Sister Gilberte
when I tell her
about my Mapou.
“The Church or the spirits,
you can’t serve them both.”
To stay in school,
I keep my silence.
Still,
Mapou sings to me.
Days of Blood
“Bonjou, Ti Sè!”
Fifina calls out.
She calls me Little Sister,
which I love.
We’re both the same age,
but
she looks more
like
a grown woman.
“Bonjou, Fifina.”
Her name
a swelling sail
in the wind.
Today she stands
as I climb my beloved
Mapou.
“Come on.”
I stretch out my hand.
She shakes
her head
looks down at her feet.
“I can’t anymore,
because of the cloth.”
“What cloth?”
“To catch the blood
between my legs.
It’s pinned to my panties
but if I move too much
the blood trickles down.
I have two
so I can boil the other
clean with soap.”
My stomach starts churning,
bubbling with nausea.
So that’s what’s different.
I can smell her blood,
mingled with sweat and soap.
Will she start thinking of
boys and babies,
and forget our school
and me?
“How long
do you bleed?”
“It only lasts a week,”
she says.
“Seven whole days?
Doesn’t it hurt?”
“It did at first,
but Manman held me
when I cried.
“She said the bleeding was
the song of the
moon
in my body.
“Then she made me a tizan
from wild mushrooms and herbs.
It helped with the pain.
“Don’t be afraid,
Ti Sè.
“I’ll tell you
my mother’s recipe,
when your days
of blood begin.”
I close my eyes
to fight tears
fear
anger.
Nothing will ever
make me stop climbing
or carving.
Carving
With a knife
in my hand
I don’t think.
As I carve next to Papa,
on a smaller stool,
he stops from time to time
to look at my work.
Sometimes
he nods his encouragement
or says “not bad”
or a rare “well done.”
I happily hum
those little songs
those
lullabies
inside me
around me
beneath and above.
Songs of the Mother Tree.
Pine or cedar,
oak or mahogany
mostly I carve
birds.
Or the same two shapes.
One sun-round face.
One black full moon
in her arms.
A mother whose face
I can’t remember
and whose songs
I can’t forget.
Drawing Numbers in the Air
Thank goodness
Fifina helps me
with math.
If the Sisters knew
how bad I am at it,
they might give up on me,
although they say
math is for boys
and we don’t need to learn
it as much.
Fifina disagrees,
like Cousin Phebus.
I especially hate
multiplication and long division.
The numbers can’t stay
in place
long enough for me to calculate.
To see them
and hold them in place,
I have to write them in the air
with my index finger.
Fifina never laughs at me
when she knows
I’m doing this
under the desk.
“How will you know
you’re not being cheated
when it comes to money
if you can’t do the numbers?”
she asks me gently.
“That’s why they don’t care
if we learn it.”
At our school,
Fifina will be
doing the figures
and teaching math.
Mission School
Fifina and I
sit together at school
and listen
to Sister Gilberte,
the curly white hairs
on her chin
dancing as she talks.
I always ask her about
the country she came from.
I’ve decided one day
I will travel the
world
with Fifina
to see “where the street
makes a corner,”
as our saying goes.
After all my questions,
one day Sister Gilberte gives in.
After class,
she shows us
a map in a book,
puts her finger on
a jagged shape
called Europe,
then points to
a tiny patch.
Her country,
Belgium.
She shows us a postcard
from her mother
of a gray land
pressed flat by low clouds.
“Those clouds are so heavy
they’ll smother the fields,”
I say. “Is that why you came here?”
Would I want to leave home
if I had a chance?
Fields of Blood
“I’ll tell you a story.”
Sister Gilberte’s big leather book
is stained and smells moldy
but she holds it open
on her lap
with the care
of a priest
holding his Bible.
“My fiancé fought
on one of those fields
in a war
they said
would end all wars.
“I went to live
in a city of women,
a béguinage
where women make laws
and decisions together.
“For hundreds of years,
they’ve existed.
“Walled cities were our home
when men went to war
or the Crusades.
“We took such good care
of each other
that when the men returned
many of us stayed there.
“If we could do that then,
we can do anything now.”
She shows us
a faded photo
of a young man in a uniform,
moon face, thin lips.
“André was a university student
in Louvain,
where my father was his teacher.”
“What’s a university?”
“A place where
men read big books
and tell others
what’s in them.”
“Why only men?
Are they priests, too?”
“Let me finish my story!”
Sister Gilberte’s face
moves from sunlight to cloud.
“André was a man of peace,
but he went to war
to defend our country.
“They found his body
“hanging over barbed wire
shot through with bullets.
“Our country
became Europe’s battlefield,
filled with blood and bones.”
She takes off her glasses
and rubs her eyes.
“Within a month,
I took my vows
to marry Christ.
“I made a choice
to leave my old life behind
“as far as I could.
“And here I am.”
Her eyes are red-rimmed.
“The trouble with love
is the cracks in your heart
never mend.”
She blinks fast,
bites her lip.
Can any love be worth
those tears and cracks
that nothing in the world
can ever mend?
May that love
of blood and gray clouds
of heart-burnt ashes
I’ve seen Papa suffer
pass me by.
DECEMBER 10, 1935
Sixteen
Today Tante Lila wakes me
with my favorite breakfast,
akasan drizzled with honey,
black coffee
with brown sugar.
She kisses my cheek,
her lips cold and dry.
“Happy birthday, my niece.
“You’re a woman now,
even if you don’t
look like one yet.”
She glances down
at my chest
and sighs.
“At your age
I was already
bleeding
and men were lined up,
begging to marry me.
“Of course those days
are long gone. And it
sure doesn’t look like
those things
will ever happen to you.”
This time I had to speak up.
It was my birthday, after all.
“Tante Lila, are you saying
you think I’m ugly?”
“Well, you’re not pretty.”
Finally, she says what she thinks.
So what? I want to shout,
but instead I’m
blinking back tears.
She doesn’t see me.
And I know she never will.
I decide not to care.
She’s not Manman,
who I know
would never say that.
Anger tears at my appetite.
“Hurry up and finish.
Your father has a surprise.”
Papa’s Gift
Papa gives me
a piece of pine
the size of his palm.
He turns it
over and over.
His smile
is like the sun
breaking through clouds.
“Our eyes don’t see
how wood
is alive,
like water.
“Look for the shapes
that hide in the wood.
“Listen to what
the wood wants to be.
Look hard and listen
before you use your knife.”
Then he gives me
my own carving knife,
like his but smaller
mother-of-pearl handle
sharp, sleek blade
gleaming in the sun.
“Thank you!”
I am dazzled by the light
on its blade.
I will sleep
with my knife
safe
under my pallet
strap it to my belt
in the leather sheath
Papa made.
My knife
will never leave me. ...
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