Visiting with los pitouses
Sunday afternoon before our departure, Bill goes up the mountain with Mikaela to collect everyone: Piti and Eseline and Ludy; Wilson and Charlie. They will all sleep downstairs in the big house, so we can set off at the crack of dawn.
I stay behind to spend a little more time with my parents. What that amounts to these days is sitting around, not doing much of anything. Seldom is my father interested in a game of dominoes anymore. (Who can blame him when he always loses?) He prefers to nap, even though he has already slept until noon, when with much cursing and protesting on his part, and much cajoling and promising that he will soon be allowed to go back to sleep, we bring him to the table for lunch.
Visiting with my mother has its own challenges. Her disease has not yet reduced her to a sleeping child, but its toll on her actually frightens me more as a writer. She is losing language. Whole sheets of it have fallen away, planks of family history, elaborate stories, complex structures of syntax that she once could command in two languages. Nothing is left but a pile of pronouns, weak verbs, random words that she picks up, baffled as to what they are for. She wants to tell you . . . what was it? And if she remembers what it was, where are the words for telling it to you? I scramble to supply them, a desperate multiple choice, as she gets more and more agitated. But even when I’m sure I’ve nailed the one she is looking for, Mami shakes her head, no, no, no. It should come as no surprise, as even in the best of times, when her mind was sharp, my mother did not like me putting words in her mouth, especially on paper.
What she most enjoys these days is singing childhood songs and lullabies, like the ones I sang for Ludy last year on the road. She can remember bits and pieces from “Brinca la tablita,” “Arroz con leche,” “Estaba la pájara pinta,” and one of her favorites, “Himno a las madres,” a sappy hymn to mothers, impossible to sing dry-eyed. Old roles die hard.
Today, she and I sing along with a CD I found of Dominican childhood songs. Finally, needing a rest, I bring up that Bill and I are going on a short trip tomorrow. “We’ll be back next Saturday. Just so you know.”
“A trip?” she asks. “Where?”
“Actually, right next door.” Do I tell her? Why is it even at this late age, I continue to be a child, wanting my mother to know what I’m up to? “We’re visiting Haiti.”
“Haiti?” She shakes her head vehemently. “You don’t . . . you can’t . . . I mean . . .” Her hands fly up, gesturing manically, as if she could grab the words she wants out of thin air.
I can tell what has happened. She has seen the footage on television: the earthquake and all the subsequent updates.
“Oh, Mami, don’t worry. Where we’re going is a part of Haiti where there wasn’t an earthquake.” It’s a half-truth, since we will be visiting Port-au-Prince on our way back from Moustique. But I’ve already upset her enough.
“Where . . . how will you . . . you know . . .”
Most times I know what she means, but this time I’m stumped. The best thing to do when this happens is change the subject, so as not to frustrate her further. I ask her if she remembers the lullaby about the baby who grew wings and flew away. I start singing it, and she joins in.
That night, after dinner with our fellow travelers and my sister, Bill and I say our goodnight to the pitouses. We won’t wake them tomorrow, as we’re leaving so early.
As we enter the room, Mami’s face lights up. She points an index finger at Bill and bursts out laughing. “You . . . you . . . I know you . . .” She has recognized him. It makes Bill’s day.
“And I know you, Mami,” Bill laughs back. “And I know Papi, too,” Bill adds, as my father has opened his eyes from his side of the bed, wondering, no doubt, about this male intruder in his all-female family. “We’re a family,” Bill adds. “Thank you, Mami and Papi, for letting me join your family.”
“Oh, you’re very welcome.” My mother giggles flirtatiously, still vulnerable to male praise. How is it my spouse, who hasn’t lived with this old woman and man half as long as I have, always knows the right things to say to them?
Later, when I tell Bill that I messed up and told Mami that we were going to Haiti, and that she got all agitated, he reassures me. “She’s already forgotten about it. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
But I do worry. Perhaps it’s why that night I dream I am on a trip with Mami, just her and me, in the silver pickup. Our destination is a house that looks like the houses in Moustique, where a party has assembled, friends, family, even her daughters who can’t have been born yet, because when I turn to tell her we’ve arrived, my mother is the young woman I know only from her wedding photographs.
July 5, on the road to Moustique again
Packing up the pickup
Very early Monday morning, we wake up our fellow travelers, sleeping in scattered bedrooms in the downstairs part of my parents’ house: Piti and Eseline and the baby; Wilson and Charlie; Mikaela.
An hour and a half later, we still haven’t left. With the help of Piti, Charlie, and Wilson (I have enough sense to steer clear), a frustrated Bill is still trying to figure out how to fit all the supplies, gifts, and luggage into the pickup, and leave enough room for five of us to ride inside with the baby, and Charlie and Wilson in back. Each time Bill successfully jigsaws the sacks of rice and ground corn and oatmeal and beans, the large canisters of oil and vinegar, the dozens of cans of tomato paste, bags of coffee, bars of chocolate, boxes of spaghetti and macaroni, and two duffel bags stuffed with clothes, it turns out he has forgotten a suitcase or the bags of brown sugar or the six racimos of plantains or the damn bottle of Clorox. The sun rises. My beloved is sweating.
At one point, my sister comes down the front steps in her nightgown, wondering why we haven’t left at the crack of dawn. She hangs out with us, playing with Ludy, and serving up bowls of oatmeal to whoever is taking a break from helping Bill solve the luggage jigsaw puzzle. We advise Eseline not to eat and to take the Dramamine I remembered to bring with me. In an inspired moment, which we will later recall with gratitude, my sister goes up to the kitchen and brings down a bunch of plastic shopping bags, “in case the Dramamine doesn’t work.”
Finally, the gifts and supplies and luggage are piled high in the back. Wilson and Charlie climb on top. The rest of us pose in front of the laden pickup, and my sister snaps a picture. At the bottom of the driveway, Charlie climbs down to open and close the gate behind us, as Don Ramón already left for home hours ago at the crack of dawn.
At the border
We arrive at Dajabón, and the consuls were right. Neither Bill nor I recall the market being this busy the last time around—maybe because it was Friday, midafternoon, and business was winding down.
Soon we find ourselves trapped in a river of traffic; the one road to the bridge-crossing is jammed with trucks, handcarts, mule carts, motores, people. No way we can move forward, or backward, as the crowd has closed behind us.
Our cell phone rings. It’s one of the consuls, who got the number from Señor Ortiz. There’s a welcome committee at the border that’s been waiting for over an hour for our arrival. Where are we?
I explain that we are a couple of blocks away. But we’re not moving.
Where is your escort?
What escort?
The military escort that was supposed to meet us at the edge of town and open up the way for us. What kind of a car are we driving?
Car? “We’re in a pickup.” I hear a pause at the other end before the information is repeated, “They’re in a pickup, silver, the husband is driving.” He must be talking to the soldiers on a walkie-talkie or another cell phone. Something in his tone tells me that he now understands why the military escort missed us. They were probably expecting a Mercedes driven by a chauffeur.
Since we can’t turn around and drive back to connect with our escorts, I climb out to look for them. The traffic is two-way on this packed thoroughfare, but I seem to be walking in the wrong lane. Waves of peopl
e keep carrying me backward. Carts threaten to overrun me. Finally, I spot four boys—really, they don’t look more than sixteen—dressed in camouflage with rifles and helmets. It’s as if we’re to be escorted into a war zone, not just into Haiti.
“Hi,” I call to them. “Are you our escorts?”
They look me over. I can see they don’t believe I’m the important person they are supposed to escort to the border: black jeans with the bottoms already muddy, clunky Birkenstock-type sandals, a blouse missing a button, hair needing a comb.
What finally convinces the soldiers is when I dial the consul on the cell phone I thought to bring along. “I’ve found them,” I report. “We’re on our way.”
It takes us over forty minutes to travel the two blocks. The soldiers push ahead, on foot, two on each side of the pickup, moving people to the edges, clearing the way. Every few feet we have to stop where two or three trucks, parked across the road, are blocking any passage. The soldiers grow weary and mean. One of them gets rough with a young Haitian boy, shoving him out of the way, sending him flying. I roll down my window and shout for him to stop. He can’t hear me. I call to his buddy, who is closer by, but he has whipped out his cell phone and is reading his text messages.
“Roll up your window!” Bill shouts at me, as yet another basket of fly-laden fruit is thrust in at us.
The river of people is curious about this big silver fish getting through. They press their faces on the closed windows, motion to the wares they are carrying. Mikaela giggles nervously and waves. Soon we’re all waving, Piti wagging Ludy’s little hand. Only Eseline looks blank-eyed, dizzy. The Dramamine is not working.
But we can’t open the windows for her to throw up, not in this crowd. Thank goodness the plastic bags are handy.
Finally, we’re driving under the archway and into the inner yard where the welcoming committee is waiting in the hot sun. There are a couple of military men in uniform, the Haitian consul incredibly dressed in a full suit, and two Dominican consuls, one in a jacket, the other in a more reasonable guayabera, which probably looked fresh two hours ago. I introduce myself, Bill, Mikaela, our Haitian friends. A reporter from a paper in the capital steps forward, wielding a microphone. His photographer gestures for us to stand snugly together so we can all fit in the picture.
“What do you have to say to us, Julia Alvarez, about Haiti?” the reporter asks.
Out of the depths of some college survey course, or maybe the research reading I’ve been doing, arises a remark made by José Martí. “Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the two wings of a bird that can’t fly unless they work together.” Later, I will discover that my memory only half-served me: José Martí did indeed make the remark, but he was speaking of Cuba and Puerto Rico, not Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The members of the welcoming committee are each asked, in turn, what they think. They all elaborate the same sentiments. Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two wings, two brothers, two nations on one island. The rhetoric has never been the problem.
The sun is bearing down on us. The Haitian consul, who is carrying a cell phone in each hand, periodically brings one up to his ear and starts talking. Everyone has other appointments to get to, much more important fish to fry than this ragtag group of travelers. But the reporter needs something juicier. Something that will make the people back at the home office in the capital think it was worth sending him and a photographer five hours north to interview a writer who doesn’t look very important.
“So what will you be doing in Haiti?” the reporter asks.
I explain I’m just visiting the families of some Haitian friends whose wedding I attended last year.
Later, a friend will send me a link to the article that appeared in Hoy. How I came to the border to collect facts for a history book I am writing on Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It seems I’m not the only one spreading news that I do not know to be certain.
The speaking landscape
It’s well past noon before we finish with the farewells at the border. But before we can proceed on our trip, Piti has several errands to run in Ouanaminthe.
I’m feeling impatient, as I know all about errands in our part of the world—they can take all day. With four months of planning, Piti was supposed to have everything ready at his end. “Kids are like that,” Bill reminds me. They wait till the last minute; they figure you’ll take care of stuff for them; they read their text messages instead of doing their crowd control. Bill doesn’t have to add what we’ve both realized over the course of the last year. Piti—and by extension, Eseline, and Ludy—are now our kids. Maybe it’s not as easy to have them as I thought.
Piti directs Bill to a side street where we park in front of a compound of small concrete houses surrounded by a stone wall. This is where the moneychanger/visa procurer/border smuggler has his operation. Piti needs to exchange some pesos for gourdes to leave with Eseline. He and Bill disappear inside, and after about ten minutes, I wonder if they’ve been kidnapped or what.
I climb out of the pickup, ready to go in search of them, when I happen to gaze across the street. BANQUE PATIENCE, the sign on a shop reads. These banques—which are not banks, as I first assumed, but places where you can buy lottery tickets—will turn up everywhere, Patience being a popular name for them. Patience! Okay, I tell myself, climbing back into the pickup. Minutes later, Bill and Piti emerge from the gated compound.
Throughout this trip, this will keep happening. A sign on a store front, the logo on a T-shirt, graffiti on a wall will catch my eye with a pointed message. After several occurrences, I’m convinced that Haiti is speaking to me. Most often it’s the tap-taps with their prominently displayed names. Just when I need a reminder, a tap-tap named CONSCIENCE will go by, or L’AMOUR DU PROCHAIN (Love Your Neighbor), or HUMILIACION, or, at the nadir of the trip, when Bill and I are bickering, a tap-tap pulls up alongside us with the name in English—I kid you not—MY LOVE ON THE LINE.
Next stop is a cell-phone store to buy a chip so that Piti’s phone can work in Haiti. The problem we soon encounter is that the stores don’t really have inventory, just odds and ends that fit one brand and not another. When we finally find a chip that we’re told will work, we decide to try it out before we leave the shop. I dial Señor Ortiz, who has returned to Port-au-Prince, to tell him we are now in Haiti.
He answers with caution in his voice. Since I heard his title, I’ve been wondering what exactly a ministro consejero does. Now I know. A ministro consejero deals with people like me. Pesky faux-nieces and -nephews, who are not even related to the mayor, asking for favors.
I thank him for our nice welcome at the border. How right he was about market day. And because this is my last chance to ask, I mention that we have a Haitian traveler whose visa has expired. I don’t know if the silence at the other end means Señor Ortiz’s blood pressure has again shot up or that the chip has stopped working. But finally, I hear his long sigh. “What is his status?”
Status? I have no idea. I ask Piti. He has no idea. “We have no idea,” I tell Señor Ortiz, though I suspect the answer is “illegal.” Then mercifully for both of us, the phone signal drops. About ten minutes later, as we’re driving out of Ouanaminthe, the phone rings. It’s Señor Ortiz. There is a person at the consulate in Port-au-Prince who will try to help us acquire whatever visa it is that Piti will need to reenter the Dominican Republic. He gives me her name. But we must be there first thing on Friday morning, as the office closes midday and will not reopen till Monday.
“Poor guy,” I say, handing the phone back to Piti. I swear I’ll never do this again. It’s no fun being the cause of somebody’s high blood pressure. Part of the reason I haven’t enjoyed our farm project half as much as Bill is that since I have the language, I’m usually the one delivering the bad news, firing the drunk manager, pestering the ministro consejero.
The little hospital with a big heart
Our first stop is Milot, twelve miles southwest of Cap-Haïtien. We’re
scheduled to visit Hôpital Sacré Coeur, a small Catholic hospital where several friends who are physicians have been on mission trips. Bill was planning to volunteer even before the earthquake, now with more reason. We had told our contact that we would arrive by ten, so Bill can check out the facilities for a future trip. But by the time we pull up in front of the hospital, it’s close to midafternoon.
The hospital used to be a small sixty-eight bed facility. But in the days after the earthquake, it was turned into a triage center for the trauma victims pouring in from the capital six hours south. Both the hospital and the town vowed not to turn anyone away. As a result, the hospital now has over four hundred beds, the excess housed in tents across the street, and the town is packed with refugees and the families of the victims.
This far out—almost six months since the earthquake—many of the patients are in rehabilitation, learning to use their artificial limbs. One boy is doing his physical training exercises with the help of a perky, blond physical therapist from California. My eyes are drawn to his artificial limbs, so it isn’t until I look up that I notice the T-shirt he’s wearing: FLY, it reads, then an acronym, no doubt some travel company. T-shirts, too, begin to join the landscape conversation. On our fourth day in Haiti, en route to Port-au-Prince, when our spirits are flagging, and Bill and I are at it again, we will pass a woman wearing a T-shirt that reads: STOP BITCHING: START A REVOLUTION.
Everywhere, we spot volunteers in blue and green scrubs, nurses and doctors and occupational therapists, from the States, from Europe, from Russia, Australia. A middle-aged nurse from Ireland greets us, her hazel eyes sparkling with energy. She has been here for three months, and no, she is not going native, she jokes when she sees me eyeing her graying cornrows. “But let me tell you one of my little charges got a treat, playing with what she calls ‘doll’s hair.’ ”