Chapter Sixteen
Andrea’s heart ached at the sight of her thin little body perched on a rock by the side of the road. Arms and legs with little extra flesh emerged from tattered garments. Her dress seemed to be pieced together from different fabrics, well worn with holes in the hem and the edge of the sleeves.
As Andrea moved closer, ever so slowly so as not to scare her, she noticed sores all over the little girl’s legs. Her fingernails looked as if she’d been digging in dirt for days. Her hair was tattered as if it hadn’t seen a comb since she was born. She couldn’t have been more than three years of age but Andrea and Brian didn’t know for sure since she was also talking or, at least, crying the words, Mama et Papa.
“Hi sweetie. Where’re your parents?” Andrea took a clean hanky from her purse to wipe away the tears and dry her runny nose.
The little girl, eyes big as saucers, leaned away from Andrea’s touch but then scooted closer when she saw Brian. “Do you know where my mama went?” she asked in a hesitant way.
“No I don’t, but maybe we can help you find her. What is your name and how old are you?” Andrea sat on the curb beside her. Brian stood watch.
“I am named Camilla and I ‘ave five years old.” Her tiny voice quivered. She sniffed. “My mama et papa left me alone three day ago and I ‘ave no food. I am ‘ungry.”
“Well, let’s get you something to eat before we go in search of your parents.” Brian held out his hand but Camilla folded them behind her back.
“He come?” She looked to Andrea for an answer.
“He’s a friend.” Andrea took her hand and followed as Brian led the way towards the restaurant they’d just left. The trio walked back inside just as the waiter was clearing the dishes from the table they’d vacated.
“You cannot bring that dirty child in here.” The manager quickly ran toward them. “She is a child of the street. We do not feed child of the street.”
Andrea moved to block the woman’s view of Camilla. “But she is hungry, and her parents are missing.”
“Parents go missing all the time in Haiti. We cannot feed all the children who are left behind. If their parents do not care what becomes of them, why should I?” The irate woman placed indignant hands on her hips.
“We’ll order some food to take with us then.” Brian took his wallet out of his pants pocket.
“Humpf. As you wish, but you can not feed all of them.” She walked toward the kitchen and beckoned the waiter to take their order.
While Andrea and Brian waited for their food, the little girl spent her time looking in all directions as if she had never been inside a restaurant before. “I wonder what he meant by ‘all of them’?” Andrea spoke quietly so only Brian could hear.
“I’m sure I don’t know. I’ll ask the waiter when he returns with the food. Her parents have vanished, so maybe this ties in with Trent and Diane’s disappearance.”
•
The waiter returned shortly with the few morsels of food that Brian and Andrea had ordered. There were few things on the menu for a starving child. Brian drew him aside while Andrea took Camilla outside to eat across the street where they’d found her.
“What did your manager mean by all of them? Are there a lot of street children?”
“There are many hundreds of children in Haiti who have no parents.” He placed the wet towel over his arm and crossed his legs in a relaxed pose. “Some parents sell their children to people who put them to work because they cannot afford to keep them. Some are stolen from the village they live in to work for their captors.”
“Aren’t there any laws to prevent this type of thing?” Brian’s voice moved from shocked to indignant.
“Yes, there are laws, but for the most part people ignore them. The children eventually run away and end up on the streets where they are used for their body, or they become slaves to someone else. They know there is no place to run and since they are uneducated, they don’t have any way to earn a living except to work for someone who will feed them a little and let them sleep somewhere protected from the weather. She is probably one of them.” He nodded his head in the direction he’d seen Andrea and Camilla go.
Brian had a hard time digesting this piece of information as he walked slowly back to Andrea. He watched Camilla wolf down another bite of food. To imagine her little body being used for someone’s perverse pleasure was incomprehensible. He reached Andrea and pulled her aside.
“Well?” He saw a tear begin to appear at the corner of her eye.
Brian hardly knew where to begin. “The children are sold or stolen for manual labor or worse. We need to do something…for this one at least. Maybe there are some Christian organizations where children could receive better care and love. Suffice it to say, we can’t leave her alone until we find out where her parents are, if she even has parents anymore.”
•
The trio moved to a bench located in a little park nearby. Camilla stuffed the second half of her sandwich into her mouth but then sat back and patted her stomach. “I am full.” She hiccupped.
“You have not eaten very much.” Andrea gave her a drink from the bottle of water they’d purchased at the restaurant. “You can take the rest with you to eat later if you wish. This sandwich is yours. Camilla, where do you think your parents went?”
“Dey always go to the ceremonies at night after I am supposed to be asleep. Sometimes I ‘ave follow them though. Tree days ago, they left like the time before and the time before that, but dey don’t come back the next morning. I went to the place of de ceremony. No one was dere, so I return home. I wait but no one come.” Camilla yawned.
“So Camilla, you don’t work for someone then?” Brian wanted to be clear about her situation.
“No, I am not restavec. But maybe I will have to sell myself to live, non?” Her eyes watered, clearly not looking forward to this choice either.
“What’s restavec?” Andrea rubbed the little girl’s legs and arms in an attempt to find any invisible injuries. “Why would you have to sell yourself? Do you mean to sell your body for…for…” Her voice had risen to a high pitch by this time.
“Andrea, calm down. I’ll tell you later. Camilla, we are not going to let you sell yourself. We’re going to find someone to look after you until we can find your parents.” Brian stood, trying to decide where they would go with their new friend.
Andrea nodded her head in agreement but looked toward Brian.
“We are?” Her voice almost hissed. Only Brian could hear. “How are we going to do that do you think?”
Brian gave her a look that Andrea had a hard time interpreting, but she was willing to let him lead the way if he had a plan. “Why not take us to your house so we can begin the search for your parents.” Camilla smiled for the first time as she took off for the east side of town.
“Come, come.” She waved them along excitedly. “You help, non?”
The walk took them past the harbor and along the seashore for about a mile. Andrea pointed out the blue-green ocean washing up on the white sandy beach. Camilla seemed oblivious to her surroundings. She continued to skip towards her home.
“Oh, Brian look.” The trio walked up an embankment. “Those houses look no better than wood boxes.”
Even though larger than any box either Andrea or Brian had seen, these hovels were made of very flimsy wood with holes cut for a door and a couple of windows. Camilla led them to one and stepped through the door. Andrea stifled a gasp. The floor was only hard dirt. The furniture consisted of one chair-less table and there did not appear to be any beds in the one-room home. “How many of you live here?” she asked the little girl.
“Just ma mere et papa.” Camilla lapsed into her native dialect. “I also ‘ave two sisters but they are older. I ‘aven’t seen them in a while. I think they are restavec.” This last statement was made without any emotion to the surprise of both adults. “Ma pere ’ave been out of work for a long time. Dere is no mo
ney.”
“I can’t imagine what this restavec is.” Andrea led Brian outside behind Camilla.
Camilla responded to her question at last. “Restavics are slaves. Parents sell de children. Dey can’t afford to keep them.”
Brian grabbed Andrea’s arm and led her away from Camilla’s hearing. “The owners of these little ones use them physically or for manual labor. I think there are a lot of these kids. In fact the restaurant manager said there were hundreds. Sometimes the children are stolen and, as you can see by Camilla’s attitude, it’s an excepted way of life here, although there is a law protecting the children from all this.”
“Why that’s horrible.” Andrea’s eyes filled up with tears as she thought of this little girl living that way. “What kind of people are they anyway?”
“Very poor people, with no welfare system to feed them when ‘papa’ is out of work. Did you notice anything inside that could tell us what happened to her parents?”
“There was so little to see. What a way to live! Maybe we ought to go to the site of the ceremony and see what we can find out there.” Andrea looked around at all the other wood box homes. There were no people in sight.
“I am assuming that the ceremony is Voodoo. But you’re right. Maybe someone will tell us something.”
Brian spoke to the little girl first. “Camilla, will you take us to the place of the ceremony?”
Camilla cringed. “I am not supposed to go dere. It is for the grown people.”
“This is daylight and you can stay hidden once you show us where they are held.” Brian crouched down to her level.
“Okay.” There was no smile for Camilla’s protectors. She began to walk in the opposite direction they’d come from. As they passed the next hut, a smallish woman appeared in the doorway.
“Do you know this little girl?” Andrea and Brian spoke in unison.
He looked in her direction. “We seem to do that a lot.”
The woman ignored their interchange. “Oui, she is of the Demer family. They ‘ave not been seen here for a while.” Three children wrapped themselves around her legs. “Who are you?”
Brian looked at Andrea before he spoke. “We are tourists. While we were walking, we noticed Camilla crying by the side of the street. We told her we would try to find her parents. Do you know where they went?”
“Fuf-f-f-f, no one knows nothing here. We mind our business. People disappear a lot lately. How can you find her parents when no one knows anything?”
“When you say people have been disappearing a lot lately, what do you mean by lately?” asked Andrea.
“Well, maybe for the last year or so. People have not come back from the ceremonies. They just disappear and even the Mambo does not know where they have gone to.”
Andrea’s ears picked up the new name. “Mambo? Who is that?”
“Why the high priestess, of course!”
“But I thought they were called Houngan.”
“The priest…he is Houngan. De Mambo is a woman. Dey take turns visiting de people. .” The woman turned to go back into her hut.
“Wait, please. The Mambo doesn’t know but does the Houngan?” Brian reached out to grab her shoulder and then pulled his hand back. “Can anyone else tell us what has happened to these people? How many are we talking about anyway?”
“No one knows, I tink. We just hear about people disappearing.”
“Thank you for you time, Mrs. ???”
“I am Mrs. Benedictan. But no one must know dat I talk to you.” She seemed to shrink in size as they looked at her. “I am afraid they will come for me next.”
“We won’t tell anyone,” promised Andrea. “What will happen to Camilla if her parents are not found?”
“She will be a street child until someone makes her restavec.” The woman sighed. “Dat is the way ‘ere.” She returned to her hovel. Her children giggled at the silly tourists and then followed her inside.
“Not if we can help it.” Brian stalked off after the child. Taking her hand, they proceeded towards the tree line. Before they had gone three feet inside the wooded area surrounding a large meadow, another figure appeared from a different direction. He stalked toward them appearing to have a purpose. Brian and Andrea placed their bodies in front of Camilla and waited until this large, black man was close enough to talk to.
“Can you tell us where the parents of Camilla Demer are? They seem to have disappeared from a ceremony held somewhere around here three nights ago.” Brian was not above asking anyone for the information they required to get to the bottom of this latest twist in their mystery. This new development was somehow connected to the disappearance of his friends, he was sure, since everything seemed to point to this island and the strange goings-on here.
“I know nothing of any Demers or of any disappearing people. I am Houngan here. Do you want to know about our ceremony, maybe?”
“Since we are new to your island, I was not sure that we could know about your ceremony.” Andrea pulled Brian out of earshot of the priest and asked “Brian, do we want to get involved in this Voudoo thing? Does this not fall into the category of astrologers and psychics, things that the Bible warns us about?”
“I will do anything to find out what happened to Trent and Diane. What about you? This thing is leading us in the direction of the ceremonies. Maybe we can be really careful and not actually get involved.”
“Okay, Mr… we would really like to know more about Voodoo. Do you have the time now or would you like us to come back another time?”
“It is getting dark, and I think that the little one needs to be in bed. Why not come back tomorrow night about this time, with no one else, eh? And then we will teach you about Voodoo.” The Houngan actually made a lot of sense, so Andrea and Brian began the slow journey back to the hotel. Andrea had thoughts questioning the appropriateness of this course of action, but neither she nor Brian could see any other way to find out the answers they felt they needed to find the Michners.
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