There is a Land (A Libète Limyè Mystery) Read online

  — Come along, the old man said with surprising sternness. Libète obliged, glad to be pulled away from the young man and his piercing eyes.

  — I’m Prosper, he hollered feebly. Prosper, he repeated.

  Dorsinus and Libète trudged up the path back to Magdala’s home. Her senses now regained, Libète retracted her arm from the old man.

  — Don’t you touch me, she said crossly.

  — Byen, byen, byen. He let go like he’d just touched a live wire. But come away from all that business. We must pretend it didn’t happen. For Madanm Magdala’s sake.

  Libète followed, feeling Prosper’s curious eyes still upon them.

  — What do you mean, for her sake?

  — The one. He’s her son.

  — The one who lost?

  Dorsinus looked back over his shoulder and shook his head. Of course not. He clicked his tongue. The one who won. The one who ran. He pointed. Félix, he said. The one who is lost.

  She tried to steal a glance. Magdala’s son was now in the distance, all of a few inches tall, moving up a hill, soon to vanish behind its crest. Félix.

  She wondered if this one also sneaked glances over his shoulder, back at her. What did he witness when their eyes met? Did he see her for who she was, or for who she is?

  The one who ran, Libète repeated. The lost one.

  The rally’s jubilation climbs to the sky. The children hear the crowd while still a mile off from the football fields that host them. They quicken their pace.

  There was no better place to play football, no better place to watch matches unfold, than the Centre de Tri de l’Athlétique d’Haïti. Set toward the northern boundaries of Cité Soleil, it had joined disused fields together and transformed them into sports pitches. The complex was proof resurrection was real. Here was grass and turf. Here were hot meals for youth. Here were rules and sensible consequences for their breaking. Here was order. A picture of what life could be.

  The perfect place to host their rally.

  The sports club was the progeny of Robert “Boby” Duval, a former national football player and another victim of the Duvalier dynasty, Haiti’s dictatorial presidents. In 1975 he had been tossed into Fort Dimanche, a notorious prison. Many who entered disappeared forever in its bowels, but others, like Duval, were merely tortured and eventually spit back up. Duval transmuted this experience and became a human rights activist. L’Athlétique d’Haïti came into being sometime in the nineties.

  — Hurry it up, you two! Libète calls to Jak and Didi. We’re not far now!

  The plan for the day was simple: gather at the fields, and from there the march would begin. They would head en masse to the large industrial complex that housed Global Products S.A., Benoit’s factory that produced cheap T-shirts for rich people an ocean away. Such sweatshops offered jobs, but their substandard wages enriched their owners and mired the workers in subsistence poverty. The youth congress leadership decided they would march from one end of the huge complex’s front wall to the other seven times, decrying it as “Jeriko” and demanding that the factories–pillars of dehumanizing global capitalism–fall. This had been Libète’s idea.

  Many would already be at the pitches for early Independence Day matches. Others would come for the live music and performances and stay through speeches meant to challenge and provoke, and, at their best, trigger the youths’ imaginations.

  Violence had surged in Cité Soleil in 2012 and continued up to the present. Armed robberies increased, murders boomed, gangs again divided the community. It could be dangerous just going about daily business. This was ruinous for a people living hand-to-mouth. The year 2014 would be different, Libète resolved.

  Libète had founded the youth congress with Jak and Didi a few months before, dreamed up in between the tedium of classes spent mastering le subjuntif and solving for x and y.

  The congress was inspired by Haiti’s legislature–not as a model of success, but rather its complete lack. They decided another form would have to do. Delegates were selected from different youth organizations and schools, two from each of Cité Soleil’s thirty-four sections. Though they as founders were only fourteen years old, members as old as nineteen had been willing to join and follow their lead. Each was expected to organize the youth within their own communities to fulfill the congress’s aims: service and protest. In doing so, members lifted up the community with literacy classes, by cleaning the streets, with beautification and tree planting, and in arts with a social message. In just four months, they led with low-cost initiatives that had begun to bond Cité Soleil’s fractious zones together.

  Stephanie had offered to set up meetings with foreign NGOs. While many delegates appreciated the prospect of outside funding, Libète, as chief moderator, staunchly opposed it. We do this ourselves, she had said. We show that Haitians can solve Haitian problems. Between the business with Benoit, the congress, her voice on the radio, and coverage in newspapers, she was revered in Cité Soleil–a public figurehead when Jak and Didi, lesser-known, had contributed just as much. But these two believed in her as a leader and president of the congress and did all they could to support her.

  — Wait up, Libète! Jak called.

  Libète frowned.

  The trek to the fields felt interminably long to Libète. Jak’s leg slowed them as it always did, broken and set poorly back during douz . This was how January twelfth was known, a shorthand used to sum up the horrors of the day in 2010 when the earthquake struck–and all that followed. He and Libète had both nearly been murdered in the days preceding douz by the man who had killed Claire and Gaspar, the mother and child Libète and Jak had found on the outskirts of Bwa Nèf, their neighborhood. Libète had been spared physical injury at his hands, but Jak was not so lucky. His twiglike leg had been wrenched and ruined, much like his relationship with Libète, whom he had blamed for all his woes. Like the leg, the relationship was mended, but not quite as it was. Not so innocent as before.

  — Sorry, Jak. Libète slowed and let him and Didi catch up.

  Didi was also not what one would call fast. She moved at a contented pace, eager to laugh and joke rather than reach the place to which she was going–destinations were never as pleasurable as the trip. She did impersonations that were wickedly on point, and she could bring Jak and Libète to a halt, doubling them over in laughter with her takes on their least-liked teachers. After just one encounter she had already mastered Mr. Brown and his false sweetness. The levity helped Libète check her impatience. Having these two anchors to slow her tendency to dash off every which way was good for her.

  On mild days in Cité, when the streets were calm, the trio would go to the football pitches to watch afternoon scrimmages. Their celebrity meant an entourage of younger children often tried to tag along, but those minutes and hours were much-coveted private moments where the three could laugh and be at ease and the trappings of school and national prominence could be stripped away. Where they could simply be themselves. Be children.

  When they arrived at the fields they took up a place at the back of the crowd, in the stands, which offered a view of the whole assembly. To Libète, it was majestic. There had to be at least two thousand people there, maybe more. Even the media had shown up–a few cameramen stood at the stage. Sweeping her head from left to right, she took it all in. She felt an unexpected calm. She had greater ambitions, dreamed of crowds twenty times this size, but still felt a contentedness in this momentary anonymity, a sense in her spirit that humility, despite her ways, was a good thing.

  Garcelle, long-winded and opinionated, was still at the microphone, giving her speech that had undoubtedly gone well beyond its allocated five minutes. Libète didn’t even care.

  At the opposite end of the stand, Libète was pleased to see Rit and Therese, who had been some of her most hated neighbors from her early days in Bwa Nèf. She waved to them, and they waved back.

  Others in the stands started to notice Libète, Jak, and Didi. Murmuring broke out, first
sweeping the stand before spreading further. Eyes began turning, and Libète demurred from the attention, outwardly at least. Inside, it fed her.

  Suddenly, from the stage, Marco, the delegate from Cité Boston, pushed Garcelle aside. Make way for the prezidan!

  Garcelle was none too pleased. Libète signaled self-effacingly–no, no, I couldn’t!–but the rising applause pushed her on. She soon had her book bag slung over one shoulder and was withdrawing her notebook and speech. She started toward the stage and noticed that Jak and Didi remained in the stands.

  — Come with me, she mouthed, giving a beckoning tug of her head.

  — No, he said. That’s okay.

  — Didi?

  — I’m fine from back here. Go for it, my heart. Libète turned toward the stage.

  — Wait–where are those sweets? Didi said. I like a good snack with my show. Libète smiled, extracted the bag from her pack, and threw them to Didi.

  Libète made her way to the stage, and the crowd parted down the middle. She took to the microphone as Garcelle sat down with her arms crossed. Libète smiled, straightening the sheets of paper. They were unnecessary security. She had her speech written on her heart.

  — My friends, it is a good day to see you all. A good day to gather! To remember what this day means for us. Independence. Freedom. These are powerful! They take us back to the days before the earth beneath our feet was claimed so very wrongly by those who enslaved its people, its resources, and those who they later imported, our forbearers . . .

  Didi mouthed the speech along with Libète. She had heard it many times in recent days. She turned to see Jak rapt, a broad smile on his face. There was much betrayed by that look; his was no simple admiration. She looked down sadly at the sweets in her lap.

  — But my friends, we must realize that this independence has been in jest. A fraud. How can we say we are free when we are enslaved by systems that thrive off our misery? We are shackled by poor jobs. Guns carried by foreign troops who police our ground. Charitable organizations that give less than they take. A government that cows to the mandates of foreign countries rather than us, the sovereign people.

  Already the crowd was caught up in her words.

  — How long? Didi whispered to Jak abruptly.

  — What? he asked, pulled from his reverie. What do you mean? His eyes were still fixed on Libète.

  — Depi kilè ou te renmen li?

  He looked at her, shocked. How long have I – he gulped – loved her? That’s a–a silly question. He looked down, rubbing his hand on his kneecap. A silly question, he repeated. Absurd.

  Libète’s words continued echoing over the field, but their meaning fell away to this pair.

  — She is my best friend, he said, like my . . . like my sister.

  — But you’ve never had a sister, Jak.

  — Still–what a thing to ask, Didi!

  — It’s all right, Jak. It’s obvious, I think. Obvious to everyone. Everyone but her.

  — Really? Jak was horrified at the thought.

  They sat in a new quiet, their attention only slowly returning to Libète’s speech.

  — As we fight and struggle, I want you to know something: I will die for you. Would you die for me? Maybe we don’t need to give our lives, not entirely. But to find true freedom, real independence, we will need to sacrifice, just as our forbearers threw off their chains. To die to ourselves. To our selfishness. To the desire for revenge that grows from petty slights as well as serious wrongs.

  Jak touched Didi’s arm, squeezed it. His face was set in earnestness. Her own heart leaped a bit.

  — Thank you, he said. For telling me. I must be more careful not to let it show.

  She gave a sigh and a tight-lipped smile. Wi, she echoed quietly, careful not to let her own feelings show. She reached down to the bag and tore a piece of the sweet, popping it into her mouth.

  — So stand with me, Libète proclaimed, in protecting one another, in being willing to lay down your life for that of your friends, maybe even your enemies. This is the only way–

  Libète craned her neck. There was shouting now, rising from the stands. She tried to speak louder, but some incident had stolen the crowd’s attention. All eyes turned from the front of the proceedings to the back. Libète swallowed her words. Her own searching eyes landed on Jak, his face set in horror, before she noticed that Didi was laying on the ground, writhing.

  Chache Lavi

  Chache lavi detwi lavi.

  Looking for life destroys life.

  Magdala is quiet much of the morning after the fight between her son and Prosper. Libète had observed her from a distance, while seated under the shade of the nearby mapou tree. The woman moves deliberately between tasks: boiling noodles for breakfast, putting water out for her fowl, washing Libète’s dirty clothes. Now she roasts coffee beans before grinding them down with a mortar and pestle for the market. Her pounding echoes the drumming Libète heard in the distance the night before.

  — Madanm, can I help you?

  Magdala looks up, cocks her head, blinks. She returns to her work. Magdala’s mind is clearly elsewhere–Libète notices she crushes the coffee beans too much.

  Dorsinus already knows comforting Magdala is beyond him. For once, Libète wishes he would speak. She wishes to understand.

  She approaches him as he gives Saint-Pierre some leaves and dried corn stalks to chew.

  — What happened here, Dorsinus?

  — Eh? He too was trapped inside his head. He simply muttered, Dark things, dark things.

  — But what?

  He held up his hand to silence her. Dark things have come, dark things are coming.

  Libète suddenly wondered if she was safer with this bunch than the vicious dogs and their owners.

  She sat behind the shack on an old stump used for extracting cane juice, watching the Sun rise higher and illuminate this new, foreign land. A mother hen strode before Libète, searching for food as its chicks trailed close behind. Libète needed to be away for a bit, to hear her own thoughts, to plan rather than react.

  They might not be far off . . .

  She shuddered.

  Anger and fear grabbed her again, shook her, and seeped through cracks in her heart. She tried to control them and the crowding, terrible memories they brought. In . . . out, she breathed. In . . . out, she told herself. She closed her eyes, trying to still the swirling memories, but found herself swept away:

  Bullets slipping through night-covered flesh

  Faces ghoulish, color twirling fast

  Silent Didi laid out, empty, flat

  She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, quelling the tears before they could well up, trying again to plug the breach through which the memories poured.

  In, she breathes . . .

  Endless farewells, tortured good-byes

  Water below, above

  Cycle’s ceaseless spin

  . . . out, she exhales.

  Dieudonné. I reached them. I’m safe, she tried to reassure herself. I’m safe.

  For now, a prickly voice not her own added from low and deep inside her.

  Libète’s hand trembled as she slipped off her headscarf, letting sunlight massage her scalp and rub into her skin. She was grateful for the Sun above: it was the only thing familiar here.

  Taking in her body helped defy the past and ground her in the moment: here, now. Her broken feet, wrapped toes, and ashy knees; her clothes just barely concealing her shoulder’s unsightly scar from the bullet wound suffered those years before. She was glad she was spared seeing her face’s sad reflection and her eyes devoid of fire.

  She longed to be the version of herself that existed in days gone by–elegant braids, lovely clothes, even modest jewelry passed on to her by Stephanie. But it wasn’t just the external things. She longed for the inner adornments that had also been abandoned these past long months. Her courage. Her certitude. Her faith.

  Shit. She ran her hands through her short hair. Her sc
alp itched terribly.

  She looked to the mountains, Haiti’s natural towers. Her vantage point offered the same vistas as the prior day’s climb up the country road, but now she was closer to the fields and saw the narrow terraces where every inch of arable land was cleared for planting. Even tiny bits of earth where only desperation could cause anyone to expend seed. Small, dark shapes dotted the landscape. They were people, of course, cultivating the land, cooking near homes perched on hazardous roads, all with their own worries and fears and families.

  What if . . .

  She looked to the distance. She could see the glint of a blade, a row of people working a single square of the patchwork earth.

  I could . . .

  She viewed them dispassionately–they were not her fellow neighbors, not friends. No, simply objects of curiosity to be studied, their lives stores of facts she might need . . .

  — Sophia, is it? The question made her jump.

  — Wi? she sputtered, shielding her eyes to look up and take in the asker’s face. Prosper.

  — I don’t know you, he said. You’re not from here.

  It was a dumb thing to say. So very obvious. She simply nodded.

  He wore a cap now, and long shorts that nearly met the tops of his well-worn rubber boots. His shirt seemed nice for passing a day in the fields; that appeared to be where he was going, attested to by the machete extending from his hand. She cringed at memories of young men in Cité Soleil with their own blades, sharpened for decidedly different ends. His lip was split and swollen from the fight.

  — When did you arrive? he asked.

  — Last night. Libète’s mind raced. With Dorsinus, she added. How much can I share?

  — Are you one of his?

  — His what?

  — His children.

  She swallowed hard. She hadn’t concocted a reason for being in Foche. Only a name. She’d need more than that!

  — No, she said. We’re not related. She cringed inwardly.

  — And your home, then? Where are you from?