There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) Page 10

  — Leave her be, Libète said bluntly. Her pain is a kind that doesn’t desire comfort.

  Dorsinus scrunched his face, sniffed deeply, took another sip. What is this place becoming? he asked the open air. He lifted up his figurine, admiring his work.

  — Very good, Libète commented. For a blind man.

  — It’s nothing. A travesty. My worst work. He cast it into the flames.

  — Ay! What are you thinking? She grabbed a stick to salvage it. Dorsinus walked away.

  — Get back here! Libète called.

  But he was gone. Though he staggered, he had a set direction, as if possessed. To part with the land, the wealth of us all! he hollered. What a thing! Yon peche, he shouted for all, and for no one. A sin!

  None listened but Libète.

  He went up, down, walked footpaths among the golden weeds till the Sun abandoned the land. The few people he saw along the way he cursed. His mind was addled, weighted, his fingers frantically rubbing what hung around his neck.

  He emptied his bottle and dropped it to the ground. Reaching for his chest, his hand clutched something beneath his shirt, a talisman, his source of security.

  Darkness reigned.

  An hour or hours later–he did not know–he came down the mountain. What had been around his neck was there no longer. He stumbled to the community plot and was reduced to tears. The Moon was hollow, as if embarrassed by his show. He cursed, he pissed, he sank to the ground, he wept.

  And then one was upon him, an arm around Dorsinus’ neck, a hand over his mouth. The old man’s eyes were wide with fear–terrible and uncomprehending–and with a flash of strength he was able to tear the hand away and let his voice cry out in wonder: My eyes! I can see!

  Libète stirs.

  Not because of the subtle slide of a note under the door, but because the door–the one to her cell, the one formerly locked–is cracked open. A band of light sweeps into the room and rests on the wall, easing her out of her dreaming.

  She rubs at her eyes, squinting. Now she sees the note, white paper leaping out against the polished concrete floor. She stretches and moves toward the door. Wary at first, she tests to see if it is truly ajar. The door’s hinges creak as she rocks it back and forth. The paper now in hand, she unfolds it and holds it up to the light. The scribbled cursive is rushed and ugly.

  Ou bezwen soti. Kounye a.

  Moun ki touye Didi ap vini pou ou.

  — You need to get out, she reads aloud. Now. Didi’s killer is coming for you.

  Hand shooting to her mouth, she nearly drops the paper, but notices a final appended sentence. Go to the back wall.

  Could she trust the message? The card the night before was too obscure a warning to do her, Didi, and Jak any good.

  Jak. He’ll know what to do. She retrieved her shoes and book bag from the foot of the bed. In another moment, she was down the hall. She knocked on the door where Jak had been deposited. The lock was gone. No answer came. She tried the door and, surprisingly, it opened. No one was inside.

  She cursed, worry scaling her stomach’s walls. What is going on? Her mind revisited the note. The back wall.

  Viewed from above, the school’s layout was U-shaped. Her room was at its left peak on the second story. The entry gate crossed the divide between the two peaks, and Brown’s office was at its trough. There was roof access where she could reach the school’s back wall–she and Jak regularly snuck up to look out over Cité Soleil–but this was crazy. She would have no way to get to the ground, no way but hanging off and letting go. She’d certainly break her leg if she dropped from that height . . .

  She needed to try. Maybe Maxine had left the note? Or Véus? How many could even be on the school grounds at this hour?

  She slipped to the end of the open-air corridor, running fast and keeping low. Though it was late, the light in Brown’s office remained on. Holding her breath, she spied through his window, its slats cranked wide open. Brown sat at his computer, clicking away as he typed. Charles stood at his side, and the interpreter’s head kept drifting to the left, as if he were about to fall asleep. She ducked and slipped under the windows, pausing when she heard Brown speak.

  — This is shaping up poorly. Max left a while ago. She didn’t come up with anything.

  A moment later, Charles spoke. Maybe there wasn’t much to share. He paused. Or maybe Madanm Maxine didn’t want to tell you. You say she’s a–what’s the word–confidante? But is she really worthy of trust?

  — Her fee–her exorbitant fee, if you ask me–makes her trustworthy. The boy is still sitting tight?

  Charles said nothing, and Libète couldn’t see him.

  — Good, Brown said.

  Libète was perplexed. Jak wasn’t in his room. Why would Charles lie?

  — Get ready to move him first thing tomorrow. If she’s alone it will keep her off-kilter when the police come around.

  — Off what?

  — Dammit, you’d better learn your English if you’re going to stay my interpreter.

  Libète wanted to scream at them both but kept quiet and slinked away from the office. When she reached the wall she and Jak used to reach the roof, a conspicuous chair sat at its foot. Left for me . . .

  She hopped atop it and pulled herself up and onto the cinder-block wall. She stood and walked across the short span as if it was a balance beam. She reached the classroom roofs and scaled them. Where could they have moved Jak? The question still dogged her. She wondered if she should abandon this plan and instead seek out Véus. He could surely help. Maybe he had delivered the note but didn’t want to indicate his involvement in her escape? Adrenaline forced her forward.

  She sprinted along the roof’s margins, looking for anything else that might have been left for her. There were huge black cylinders to one side, used for storing water, and the tips of naked rebar poking from the edge of the wall. She flipped an upturned bucket at one corner, but there was nothing there that would let her safely rappel down the wall.

  Reaching the back end of the roof, she looked down.

  Bondye! What is that?

  There was a cart down below, adjacent to the wall. It wasn’t abandoned–it was strapped to a mule.

  — Psst! A person, a man on closer inspection, stepped out from an awning on the opposite side of Route 9, the long road bisecting Cité Soleil. She squinted. He used hand gestures to direct her to jump down.

  She paused. This was a dangerous game. Why would she jump? Why not climb off this roof, head back down the wall, close the door to her room, and return to bed? This was surely the more sensible course–but much at the school was not right. She trusted Maxine, felt sure she was playing Brown, but then what was motivating Brown? And where was Stephanie in all this? Had something befallen her?

  She thought back to the note. The one left for her last night had been benevolent, a warning. She wasn’t perfectly settled about this new one, but the handwriting seemed the same. Or was this a trick of her memory, borne from her desire to have them match? If she had heeded the original warning and been more cautious, Didi might still be fine and life unchanged.

  Libète wanted to shout at the man across the street to show himself, but knew she couldn’t without likely alerting others. He kept repeating his pantomime for her to jump.

  She looked down again and realized the cart was stacked with mattresses.

  A prayer escaped her lips, along with a curse. She lowered herself and hanged from the lip of the wall.

  She let go.

  She landed with a thud on the mattresses, and her legs broke her fall.

  The man slinked across the road with his face still obscured.

  — Eske ou byen? Came the worried question. Are you all right?

  She gasped. Uncle?

  — Wake up, Sophia. Please. I need your help.

  Magdala stands over Libète, holding a lit kerosene lamp. In the twilight between slumber and waking, she strikes Libète as menacing.

  — Wha–what�
�s the matter?

  — A baby is on the way. The mother-to-be’s father, he came to tell me, then left.

  — What?

  — I need an assistant. The hour is late.

  — To deliver a child? You’re a matwon?

  Magdala lifted Libète up by the arm, a show of surprising strength. Get up.

  Libète rubbed her eyes and tried to suppress a yawn. It’s not that–I’m willing. It’s just . . . I’ve never helped bring a child into the world. Her wakening mind traveled back to her time at the hospital. She had seen a number of deliveries, but never aided Sister Françoise. M pa kalifye, she sputtered. I’m unqualified.

  Magdala didn’t slow to listen. She sped around the room, collecting towels and sheets, a bedpan, all while holding her lamp high.

  — She’s already far along–grab that kettle, Sophia–but there are konplikasyon yo.

  — Complications?

  Magdala gave a grave nod.

  They stepped out of the shack to greet the still air and crickets’ songs. The stars here still marveled Libète; they were so very bright, unlike in Port-au-Prince, where city lights and smog drowned out their distant dancing. She thought her heart’s anxious thumping was audible, but stopped, listened close. There they were again–the drums, signaling something.

  — What’s that beating out over there?

  Magdala’s face tightened. Nothing. Just a dance.

  — At this hour?

  — We must go. Can you run?

  — I think. My toes . . .

  Magdala looked vexed.

  — I can try my best.

  They jogged in an entirely undignified manner, but birth was a time of seeming indignity.

  — There will be much blood, Magdala warned her, huffing.

  — I’m used to blood.

  Magdala eyed her warily. They continued down the main road to a solitary shack. Magdala’s bobbing light made their shadows buck and strain.

  As they approached the home, a cry shattered the quiet. A man–ostensibly the anxious soon-to-be grandfather who had called Magdala–tended a fire over which a pot of water bubbled to a boil. His whole body was a hollow arc stooped over the edge of the flame. Libète saw the prying eyes of weary children peeking from a nearby lakou. Whether from the cool or a creeping sense of wrongness in the air, Libète’s skin prickled.

  — Are there no women to help? Libète asked.

  — Mon dieu! A curdling scream came from inside, trailed by an agonized moan.

  — There is a neighbor inside with the girl, yes.

  — Isn’t this woman better suited to help than me?

  — I’ll need you both. Few are willing to help this one.

  Libète couldn’t understand the why of this, but followed Magdala anyway.

  They entered to a distressing scene. Weak candles laid about the room cast a macabre light. The woman helper sat, stunned, in the middle of the small square space on a ti chez ba, her hands covered in dark blood. The mother-to-be sat on the family’s upturned chodyè, their cooking pot. She was gaunt and pasty, and slumped feebly against the wall. Libète gasped upon realizing it was the pregnant girl she had seen just yesterday on the road.

  Magdala handed the lamp to Libète and pushed the helper aside. Thank you, Philomene. Sophia, hold the light over my shoulder. Délira, Magdala said, taking the mother-to-be’s hand and holding it tight.

  — Help us, said Délira, help – another curdling cry and moan. The girl’s eyes fluttered and the helper gasped.

  — Pran kouraj! Courage is what is needed now, Magdala said. Libète looked down. The bleeding was indeed profuse. Too much, Magdala remarked. Towels? Soap? Water? Magdala posed the questions to the open air. Philomene, still staring at her hands, merely turned her head toward the boiled water the girl’s father now let cool on the recho outside. Sophia, she said, spread the towels on the bed. We need to move her.

  Libète did not respond. Her minor surgical help had included handing tools to doctors and nurses in a pinch, but that was gun wounds, split knees, cut feet. A delivery, a new life, this was something else, this was . . .

  — Sophia!

  Snapped back into the moment, Libète remembered her alter ego.

  — Wi, Magdala. Sorry. Libète jumped toward the towels and spread them before returning to Magdala’s side. They pulled Délira up and did their best to shift her to the bed. More wails poured from her, and already the blood had spread down Libète’s clothes. Philomene, Magdala called, brace her from behind!

  Philomene floated over as if in a daze and threaded her arms under Délira’s armpits.

  As they washed their hands, Magdala leaned close to Libète’s ear, and spoke low and urgently. The blood, it’s more than I have seen before. Délira ap emoraji, hemorrhaging, to be sure. I need you here, and I need you now.

  Libète nodded. Hemorraghing, she had seen it before, when–

  — She is here too soon! She is early! Délira whimpered. I’m cursed, I know it–I’m certain!

  — When the baby comes we do what we can to make it on time, Magdala said. We take her as we find her.

  Magdala inspected the young woman, felt her abdomen. Magdala broke into a sweat, but her face and body were stern and resolved.

  — My dear, we are in an urgent time. Your child must come now, and you must help it.

  Another moan, and Délira’s eyes flitted and sank.

  — How are you here? Libète hisses. The new shock at finding her Uncle is too much.

  — In time, in time, he replies. Get under cover now. I’ll explain as we go. Libète pulled the offered sheet over her head and peeked out from beneath, expecting a quick getaway. Uncle gave a click and snapped the sisal reins tied to the mule. The animal refused to move.

  — Come on you dumb bèt! Uncle growled.

  — When did you get a milèt? Libète asked.

  — He’s new. Uncle hopped down from the lip of the cart and tried to slap the animal’s backside. Come on, come on, he entreated. No reason to hold things up!

  Libète laughed, and it felt palliative. Far too many times she had seen similar scenes play out, but Uncle was the insufferable beast and Libète the exasperated one. The dissonance between past and present experience with the man was jarring. In the wake of her Aunt’s death in the quake and their shared displacement in a tent encampment, she and her Uncle had been at perpetual odds. The aching, brutal hunger that set in when his profligacy took hold and he drank their money away. His endless threats culminating in capricious beatings. Darkest of all, was the night of her abduction and near kidnapping from their shared tent. It happened while her Uncle had slunk off to indulge his vices. When she was recovered, he had sworn to change his ways. She had given his word little weight–it was like a bucket with a hole, good intentions always seeped out and away.

  The mule finally budged, and Uncle gave a victory shout before biting his fist and looking around to see if anyone heard. He leaped back up on his cart and gave the girl a toothy grin.

  — Where are we going, Tonton? Libète asks from under the sheet.

  — Home, he says. You’re going home.

  She had been wrong about his promises this time. After the dark events that catapulted Libète into the middle of Benoit’s plot for office, Stephanie had soon arrived like a guardian angel, pulling Libète out of the camp and placing her in the boarding school. Uncle’s friendships based on shared drink and drugs vanished when he had none to offer. Unable to rely upon his wife’s business or Libète’s free labor, he had to scrape by on his own. A friend took pity and let him serve as a bouret man, lugging goods around Cité Soleil on his borrowed cart.

  After a time, Libète climbs up from the mattress to sit beside her Uncle, wearing the sheet like a shroud. Each time one of the wagon’s uneven rubber tires makes a full rotation, it results in a large bump.

  — To safety, he continues. I’m getting you away.

  — From what?

  — That’s for another to sha
re.

  She huffed. How did you get the note to me?

  — Get a note to you?

  — Under my door.

  — I left no such thing. His face drew back. I only have the note you passed to me.

  Alarm stretched across her face. She exhaled deeply. I left no such thing.

  — But of course you did.

  She punched his shoulder. I’d know if I did! Give it here! He reached into the breast pocket of his worn polyester sport coat, pulling out the paper. She devoured the contents: Bring your cart to the school’s back wall . . . midnight . . . something soft to land on . . . I need you . . . Libète.

  — These aren’t my words! she protested. She found her old self claiming her with each new breath. Where did you get this?

  He turned dark, his face not like she’d seen since the days in the camp.

  — Ah, Uncle, I’m sorry. She rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek, remembering he was illiterate.

  — A woman from the market brought it to me. Said it was passed to her. I had another read it to me, he mumbled. I thought it was from you. Because it said it was.

  — You’re right, Uncle. Of course.

  — If a note says it’s from a person, why wouldn’t it be from that person?

  — I understand completely, Uncle.

  — The thing, it makes no sense.

  — We’ll figure it out. Her mind raced. She compared her crinkled note with his carefully folded one. The same writing. Someone had infiltrated the school, or maybe co-opted someone from within to guide her out of her cell, to the roof, onto the cart. Maxine, perhaps? But this conclusion disagreed with her advice to stay put.

  — What should we do? he asked. Hide?

  She looked him hard in the eye. Whoever was behind setting her free would surely have been watching his plan unfold. No, she said. We wait.

  And so they did.

  They retreated to a corner of Bwa Nèf, as safe a haven as there could be in times like these. Libète sat beside her Uncle on a log, a small fire crackling in the bottom of a sawed-open oil drum. He held a knife in his hand and cut an orange in pieces. He smiled as he handed her a slice, and she smiled back, but weakly.