Haitian national anthem sheet music

Haiti Final Paper- Please Read Thoroughly BEFORE Requesting To Do

Develop a 8- to 10- page, typed, double-spaced essay focusing on the representation of Haiti, Haitian people, or the Haitian dyaspora.

PICK ONE ARGUMENT WITH ONE,

EVERYTHING INSIDE BOOK BELOW WILL BE PRIMARY SOURCE,

UTILIZE OTHER BOOKS PROVIDED AS SECONDARY SOURCES

8-10 PAGES LONG

CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

PLEASE UTILIZE ALL THE INFORMATION PROVIDED

Examine how your chosen text explores what it means to be of Haitian descent in the New World. What is the significance of Haitian and Haitian Dyasporic traditions as they are portrayed here? How does this work reiterate or complicate claims about Haiti? How does it address or reinforce discriminatory practices, particularly as it relates to the intersections between race, class, gender, nationality, or sexuality?

Please find a strong point of view, on which to base your discussion and remember to take into account the context and to stress why your argument matters.

Event though this is a longer essay, you should still focus on 1 argument only.

In order to develop this argument, you will address a specific aspect of 1 of our primary texts to develop a unique thesis that will guide your entire essay. You are also expected to develop in-depth textual analysis as well as incorporate 2 secondary sources to support your claim.

You should choose a particular angle to analyze your chosen text and position yourself within a scholarly debate by engaging with at least 2 pieces of literary criticism. Make sure to have an original argument supported by criticism rather than a summary of someone else’s argument. You need to cite any outside sources consulted, even if you do not cite the text directly. Failure to do so would constitute plagiarism

Your reader will look for your essay to do the following:

- Offer a specific and arguable claim which fully addresses the assignment, is based on close reading of textual detail, goes beyond summary and description, and is sustained throughout the paper

- Have a provocative title that refers to your thesis

- Show complexity of thought; it should grapple with complications and contradictions, rather than ignore or simplify them

- Demonstrate clear, unified, and coherent organization; rhetorical strategies such as “sign-posting” help achieve this

- Avoid the “laundry list” syndrome (e.g. paragraphs that begin with “And another example of this same idea is X.”)

- Establish an appropriate balance between providing evidence and analyzing that evidence

- Show your contribution to a scholarly debate. You should not merely summarize or paraphrase the essay or book you use at outside criticism. Instead you need to voice your own opinion and take a position about a specific aspect of the text(s) under study

- Use conventions of academic writing properly, such as citing sources properly (MLA format). Be careful with grammar!

BOOKS: PDFs BELOW

Allende, Isabel. Island Beneath the Sea (ISBN: 9780061988257). SECONDARY

Carpentier, Alejo. Kingdom of This World (ISBN: 9780374537388). SECONDARY SOURCE

Danticat, Edwidge. Butterfly’s Way (ISBN: ISBN: 9781569472187). SECONDARY SOURCE

---, ed. Everything Inside (ISBN: 9780525521273). PRIMARY SOURCE

the butterfly's way

Also by Edwidge Danticat

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Krik? Krak!

The Farming of Bones

the butterfly's way

VOICES FROM THE HAITIAN DYASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES

EDITED BY Edwidge Danticat

The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States Copyright © 2001 by Edwidge Danticat

All rights reserved.

"You and Me against the world," by Martine Bury, copyright © 1999, is reprinted by permission of the author. "Restavek" is from Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American by Jean-Robert Cadet, copyright 1998, reprinted by permission of the University of Texas Press. "The Million Man March" by Anthony Calypso, copyright © 1998, first appeared as "The Chicken Bone Express" under the pen name, Tbnven Bolewo, in Tea for One and appears here by permission of the author. "Present Past Future" by Marc Christophe is adapted from the poem "Present Passe Futur" which appeared in Le Pain De L'Exile, copyright © 1988, and is reprinted by permission of the author. "A Cage of Words" by Joel Dreyfuss, copyright © 1999, first appeared in The Haitian Times and is reprinted by permission of the author. "Another Ode to Salt" by Danielle Legros Georges first appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Volume 9, copyright © 1995, and is reprinted by permission of the author. "America, We Are Here" by Dany Laferriere, copyright © 1987, first appeared in his book Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? (David Homel translator, Coach House Press, Toronto) and appears here by permission of the author. "Homelands" by Marie-Helene Laforest first appeared in slightly different form in Diasporic Encounters (Liguori Editore, Naples, January 2000) and is reprinted by permission of the author. "Made Outside" by Francie Latour first appeared in a slightly different form in The Virginian-Pilot, copyright © 1995, and is reprinted by permission of the author. "Something in the Water ... Reflections of a People's Journey" by Nikol Payen first appeared in The Crab Orchard Review, copyright © 1997, and is reprinted by permission of the author. "The White Wife" by Gary Pierre-Pierre first appeared in Essence Magazine, copyright © 1998, and is reprinted by permission of the author. "Haiti: A Memory Journey" by Assoto Saint is from Spells of a Voodoo Doll, copyright © 1996, and appears by permission of Michele Karlsberg, Estate of Assoto Saint. "Looking for Columbus" is from Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, copyright © 1996 by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. "Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti," by Babette Wainwright, copyright © 1999, first appeared in slightly different form as "Fencing in the People" in Sheperd Express, April 15, 1999 and is reprinted by permission of the author. All other contributions first appear here by permission of their respective authors, copyright © 2001.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The butterfly's way : voices from the Haitian dyaspora [sic] in the United States / edited by Edwidge Danticat.

p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-218-7

1. American literature—Haitian American authors. 2. American literature—20th century. 3. Haitian Americans—Literary collections.

4. Danticat, Edwidge, 1969-

PS508.H33 B88 2001 810.9'97294'0904—dc21

00-064085

10 9 8 7 6 5

CONTENTS

Introduction, Edwidge Dantkat

CHILDHOOD Present Past Future, Marc Christophe Dyaspora, Joanne Hyppolite Restavek, Jean-Robert Cadet Homelands, Marie-Helene Laforest Bonne Annee, Jean-Pierre Benoit Haiti: A Memory Journey, Assotto Saint Black Crows and Zombie Girls, Barbara Sanon

MIGRATION Another Ode to Salt, Danielle Legros Georges America, We Are Here, Dany Laferriere A Cage of Words, Joel Dreyfuss The Red Dress, Patricia Benoit Something in the Water ... Reflections of a People's Journey, Nikol Payen Haiti: A Cigarette Burning at Both Ends, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel My Suitcases, Maude Heurtelou The White Wife, Garry Pierre-Pierre You and Me against the world, Martine Bury Mashe Petyon, Katia Ulysse Pour Water on My Head: A Meditation on a Life of Painting and Poetry, Marilene Phipps

HALF/FIRST GENERATION Chainstitching, Phebus Etienne Made Outside, Francie Latour The Million Man March, Anthony Calypso In Search of a Name, Miriam Neptune Reporting Silence, Leslie Casimir Vini Nou Bel, Annie Gregroire Home Is ..., Sophia Cantaue Map Viv: My Life as a Nyabinghi Razette, Marie Nadine Pierre Exiled, Sandy Alexandre

RETURN Lost Near the Sea, Leslie Chassagne Adieu Miles and Good-bye Democracy, Patrick Sylvain Looking for Columbus, Michel-Rolph Trouillot Do Something for Your Soul, Go to Haiti, Babette Wainwright

A Poem about Why I Can't Wait, Gina Ulysse

FUTURE Lazarus Rising: An Open Letter to My Daughter, Myriam J.A. Chancy

Contributors Glossary

if you don't know the butterfly's way, you will pass it by without noticing: it's so well hidden in the grass.

—"Ten O'clock Flower" Jean-Claude Martineau

INTRODUCTION

I have the extremely painful task of beginning this introduction on the same day that one of Haiti's most famous citizens, the radio journalist Jean Dominique, was assassinated. I woke up this morning to a series of increasingly alarming phone calls, the first simply mentioning a rumor that Jean might have been shot while arriving at his radio station, Radio Haiti Inter, at six thirty in the morning, for the daily news and editorial program that he co-anchored with his wife, Michele Montas. The next few calls declared for certain that Jean had been shot: seven bullets in the head, neck, and chest. The final morning calls confirmed my worst fears. Jean was dead.

The following hours would slip by in a haze as I went to teach my classes at the University of Miami. When I came back to my office that afternoon, there were still more phone calls and e-mails from relatives, friends, and acquaintances who could not believe what had happened. In those real and virtual conversations, the phrase that emerged most often was "Not Jean Do!" During the varying lengths of time that many of us had known Jean Dominique— either as a voice on Haitian radio or in person—we had all come to think of him as heroically invincible. He was someone who expressed his opinions freely, seemingly without fear, criticizing groups as well as individuals, organizations, and institutions who had proven themselves to be inhumane, unethical, or simply unjust. Of course, Jean's life was too multifaceted and complex to fully grasp and make sense of in these very early hours so soon after his death. All that seems undeniably compelling and memorable about him right now is his exceptional passion for Haiti and his profound, often expressed longing to see all Haitians realize the full potential for greatness that our forefathers and foremothers had displayed when they had battled their way out of slavery almost two hundred years ago, to create the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.

I can't even sort out now, under this full assault of memories, the exact moment I met Jean Dominique. As a child in Haiti, I had heard his voice on the radio so many times, and as an adult in New York, had seen him at so many different Haiti-related gatherings that I can't even pinpoint our first meeting. However, I do remember the first time we had a lengthy conversation. It was at an art exhibit at Ramapo College in New Jersey in the early 1990s. Jean was in exile, yet again, after the Haitian military had deposed the democratically elected government and had raided his radio station.

That night, Jean and I talked at length about the paintings, which I remember much less vividly than the extreme nostalgia that they evoked in him, the hunger to return to his home and his radio station in Haiti as soon as he could.

A few weeks later, our mutual friend, the filmmaker Jonathan Demme, asked Jean and me to work with him on a project about the history of Haitian cinema. Every week, the three of us would meet on the Ramapo College campus to discuss Haitian cinema while some communications students watched and videotaped us. My job was to find prints of the films that we would discuss; Jean's was to help us all understand them by putting them in context as Jonathan questioned him about technique, style, and content.

The task of finding the films proved to be a herculean one. Many of the filmmakers themselves had lost track of their own prints during nomadic lives in exile under the Duvalier regime. However, in our videotaped sessions each time we would mention a film title to Jean he would proceed to describe at length not only the plot of the film, but details of the method of its distribution and the political framework surrounding it. The film Anita, for example, made by the talented Rassoul

Labuchin, told the story of a servant girl whose experiences are much like those described here by Jean-Robert Cadet in "Restavtk." According to Jean, Labuchin had traveled with the film from province to province and had shown it to peasants in the Haitian countryside. Jean had done something similar himself when he had broadcast on Radio Haiti Inter the Kreyol soundtrack of a film based on the classic Haitian novel Gouvemeurs de la Rosee (Masters of the Dew) by Jacques Roumain. This was something he was extremely proud of because, when he visited the Haitian countryside, the peasants for whom he had such extreme admiration and respect would tell him how they had recognized themselves and their lives in the words of the novel.

At the insistence of some of his friends in New York, Jean would occasionally participate in a television or radio program dealing with the injustices of the military regime in Haiti which by then had killed almost five thousand people, including among them the businessman Antoine Izmery and the Haitian justice minister, Guy Malary, people Jean had known. After Malary's death, Jean appeared as a guest on a panel on The Charlie Rose Show and was seated in the audience at a taping of The Donahue Show where the subject was Haiti. During the taping, Jean squirmed in his seat, while Phil Donahue held up the stubbed elbow of Arlete Belance, who had been attacked with a machete by paramilitary forces. After the taping, he seemed almost on the verge of tears as he said, "Edwidge, my country needs hope."

Our Haitian cinema project came to an end at the end of the school semester. However, Jonathan, Jean, and I would occasionally meet in Jonathan's office in Nyack for further discussions. One day, while driving to Nyack with Jonathan's assistant Neda, Jean told us about a word he had rediscovered in a Spanish film he had seen the night before, Guapa!

While puffing on his ever-present pipe, Jean took great pains to explain to us that someone who was guapa was extremely beautiful and courageous. Demanding further clarification, Neda and I would take turns shouting out the names of women the three of us knew, starting with Jean's wife.

"Michele is very—" "Guapa!" he yelled back with great enthusiasm. This was one of many times that Jean's vibrant

love for life easily came across. On that guapa day, Neda had to stay in Nyack, so she gave me the car and told me to drive Jean

back to Manhattan. I refrained from telling her that even though I'd had my license for three years, I had never driven any car but the one owned by the driving school where I had learned. When I confessed this to Jean, he wisely offered to drive. We drove for hours through New York's Rockland County and the Palisades, and then in New Jersey and over the George Washington Bridge, finding ourselves completely lost because Jean was trying to tell some hysterical story, smoke a pipe, and follow my uncertain directions all at the same time.

When we finally got to Manhattan late in the afternoon, Jean turned the car over to me. He seemed worried as I pulled away from the sidewalk and watched until I turned the corner, blending into Manhattan traffic.

* * * The democratically elected government was returned to power soon afterward. The next time I would see Jean would be at his and Michele's house in Haiti.

"Jean, you're looking guapa," I told him. He laughed. It was wonderful to see Jean move about his own walls, surrounded by his own books and pictures

and paintings, knowing that he had been dreaming about coming back home almost every minute that he was in exile.

Later at dinner, Jean spoke mournfully about those who had died during and after the coup d'etat: Antoine Izmery, Guy Malary, and later a well-loved priest, Father Jean-Marie Vincent. Adding Jean's name now to those of these very public martyrs still seems unimaginable, given how passionately he expressed his hope that these assassinations would no longer take place.

"It has to stop," I remember him saying. "It has to stop."

The plane that took me from Miami to Haiti the day before Jean's funeral seemed like a microcosm of Haiti. Crammed on a 727 for an hour and thirty-six minutes were young rich college students returning from Miami-area college campuses for the weekend, vendors— madan and mesye saras traveling with suitcases filled with merchandise from abroad, three male deportees being expatriated from the United States, a cluster of older women in black, perhaps also returning for a funeral, and up front the former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returning from a speaking engagement at the University of Miami. That we were all on this plane listening to flight announcements in French, English, and Kreyol, seemed to me somewhat unreal, as would most of the events that would unfold up to and after Jean's funeral at the Sylvio Cator stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince.

On the plane, I couldn't help but recall one of the many conversations that Jean and I had had while lost in the Palisades in New York that afternoon.

I had told him that I envied the certainty with which he could and often did say the words, "My country."

"My country is sufFering," he would say. "It is being held captive by criminals. My country is slowly dying, melting away."

"My country, Jean," I said, "is one of uncertainty. When I say 'my country' to some Haitians, they think of the United States. When I say 'my country' to some Americans, they think of Haiti."

My country, I felt, was something that was then being called the tenth department. Haiti has nine geographic departments and the tenth was the floating homeland, the ideological one, which joined all Haitians living in the dyaspora.

I meant in another type of introduction to struggle to explain the multilayered meaning of the word dyaspora. I meant to borrow a phrase from a speech given by Gerard Alphonse Ferere, Ph.D., at the Haitian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on August 27, 1999, in which he describes diaspora/dyaspora as a term "employed to refer to any dispersal of people to foreign soils." But in our context used "to identify the hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in many countries of the world." I meant in another type of introduction to list my own personal experiences of being called "Dyaspora" when expressing an opposing political point of view in discussions with friends and family members living in Haiti, who knew that they could easily silence me by saying, "What do you know? You're a Dyaspora." I meant to recall some lighter experiences ofbeing startled in the Haitian capital or in the provinces when a stranger who wanted to catch my attention would call out, "Dyasporal" as though it were a title like Miss, Ms., Mademoiselle, or Madame. I meant to recall conversations or debates in restaurants, parties, or at public gatherings where members of the dyaspora would be classified—- justified or not—as arrogant, insensitive, overbearing, and pretentious people who were eager to reap the benefits of good jobs and political positions in times of stability in a country that they had

fled during difficult times. Shamefacedly, I would bow my head and accept these judgments when they were expressed, feeling guilty for my own physical distance from a country I had left at the age of twelve years during a dictatorship that had forced thousands to choose between exile or death. However, in this introduction, I can't help but think of Jean's reaction to my dyaspora dilemma in a conversation we had when I visited his radio station while in Haiti one summer.

"The Dyaspora are people with their feet planted in both worlds," he had said. "There is no reason to be ashamed of being Dyaspora. There are more than a million of you. You are not alone." Having been exiled many times himself to that very dyaspora that I was asking him to help me define, Jean could commiserate with all those exiles, emigres, refugees, migrants, naturalized citizens, half- generation, first-generation, American, Haitian, Haitian-American men, women, and children who were living here in the United States and elsewhere. Migration in general was something he understood extremely well, whether it be from the provinces, the peyi andeyo, the outside country, to the Haitian capital or from Haitian borders to other shores. Like many of us, what he wanted to see ultimately was a Haiti that could unite all her sons and daughters, be they inside or outside.

Before Jean's death, I had been hopeful that this book would give voice to some singular experiences of an admittedly small but wide- ranging fragment of the Haitian dyaspora in the United States. After his death, I find myself cherishing the fact that the people whose lives are detailed and represented here do travel between many worlds. This book for me now represents both a way to recount our silences—as in Leslie Casimir's "Reporting Silence"—and to say good-bye—as in Patrick Sylvain's "Adieu Miles and Good-bye Democracy." However, we are not saying good-bye to a country, but to a notion that as "Dyaspora" we do not own it and it does not own us. At the same time, we are also saying, in the words of Dany Laferriere's essay, "America, We Are Here." And we are not, as Joel Dreyfuss reminds the world in his essay, "A Cage of Words," just people from "the Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere," but also people who "have produced great art like that of Ireland and Portugal. . . great writers and scholars like those of Russia and Brazil." And great heroes like Jean Dominique.

A few weeks before Jean's death, Patrick Dorismond, a Haitian-American man, was gunned down by a New York City police officer in a Manhattan street across the bridge from where another Haitian man, Abner Louima, was beaten, then sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn precinct by a police officer. I ask myself now what Jean— as he inevitably would have had to report these events on his radio program—must have said about these incidents, which so closely resemble the atrocities that Haitians over the years have fled Haiti to escape. It has not been lost on us that of three black men tortured and killed by police in New York in the past two years, two were Haitian. Reading the essays in this book again after these events impels me to think of the many more pages that could be—and will be written—about our experiences as people belonging to the Haitian dyaspora in the United States. But anyone who has ever witnessed a gathering of the likes described by Jean-Pierre Benoit in "Bonne Annee" or Barbara Sanon in "Black Crows and Zombie Girls" knows our voices will not be silenced, our stories will be told.

In her essay, poet and painter Marilene Phipps writes, "Painting and Poetry are my battlefields. . . Living in another country, I use my pen or my brush to voice incantations to a particular world that has created me and, to a certain extent, now uses me to re-create itself." In this collection, the writers define themselves as well as the worlds that define them, through tragedies, like the deaths of Jean Dominique and Patrick Dorismond, but also through celebrations like the New York, Boston, and

Miami street parades that followed the end of the Duvalier regime in 1986. Or through voices like that of Joanne Hyppolite turning a sometimes dreaded word in her favor, celebrating her "dyaspora" status, reminding us that we are not alone.

"When you are in Haiti, they call you Dyaspora," writes Hyppolite. "... you are used to it. You get so you can jump between worlds with the same ease that you slide on your nightgown every evening."

Guapa!

CHILDHOOD

PRESENT PAST FUTURE

Marc Christophe

What will I tell you, my son? What will I say to you, my daughter? You for whom the tropics Are a marvelous paradise A blooming garden of islands floating In the blue box Of the Caribbean sea What will I tell you When you ask me Father, speak to us of Haiti? Then my eyes sparkling with pride I would love to tell you Of the blue mornings of my country When the mountains stretch out Lazily In the predawn light The waterfalls flowing With freshness The fragrance of molasses-filled coffee In the courtyards The fields of sugar cane Racing In cloudy waves Towards the horizon The heated voices of peasant men Who caress the earth With their fertile hands The supple steps of peasant women On top of the dew The morning clamor In the plains the small valleys And the lost hamlets Which cloak the true heart Of Haiti. I would also tell you Of the tin huts Slumbering beneath the moon In the milky warmth

Of spirit-filled Summer nights And the countryside cemeteries Where the ancestors rest In graves ornate With purple seashells And the sweet and heady perfumes Of basilique lemongrass I would love to tell you Of the colonial elegance of the villas Hidden in the bougainvilleas And the beds of azaleas And the vast paved trails Behind dense walls The verandahs with princely mosaics Embellished With large vases of clay Covered With sheets of ferns Pink cretonnes Verandahs where one catches A breath of fresh air During nights Of staggering heat By listening to The sounds of the city Rising up to the foothills I would love to recite for you The great history Of the peoples of my country Their daily struggles For food and drink Tireless people Hardworking people Whose lives are a struggle With no end Against misery Fatigue Dust In the open markets Under the sun's blazing breath I would want to make you see The clean unbroken streets

Straight as arrows Bordered by the green Of royal palms and date palms in bloom I would love to make you admire The shadowed dwellings The oasis of green Of my Eden I would carry you On my shivering wings To the top of Croix D'Haiti And from there Your gaze would travel over These mountains These plains These valleys These towns These schools These orphanages These studios These churches These factories These hounforts These prayer houses These universities These art houses Conceived by our genius Where hope never dies.

DYASPORA

Joanne Hyppolite

When you are in Haiti they call you Dyaspora. This word, which connotes both connection and disconnection, accurately describes your condition as a Haitian American. Disconnected from the physical landscape of the homeland, you don't grow up with a mango tree in your yard, you don't suck keneps in the summer, or sit in the dark listening to stories of Konpe Bouki and Malis. The bleat of vaksins or the beating of a Yanvalou on Rada drums are neither in the background or the foreground of your life. Your French is nonexistent. Haiti is not where you live.

Your house in Boston is your island. As the only Haitian family on the hillside street you grow up on, it represents Haiti to you. It was where your granmk refused to learn English, where goods like ripe mangoes, plantains, djondjon, and hard white blobs of mints come to you in boxes through the mail. At your communion and birthday parties, all of Boston Haiti seems to gather in your house to eat griyo and sip kremas. It takes forever for you to kiss every cheek, some of them heavy with face powder, some of them damp with perspiration, some of them with scratchy face hair, and some of them giving you a perfume head-rush as you swoop in. You are grateful for every smooth, dry cheek you encounter. In your house, the dreaded matinet which your parents imported from Haiti just to keep you, your brother, and your sister in line sits threateningly on top of the wardrobe. It is where your mother's andeyb Kreyol accent and your father's lavil French accent make sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible music together. On Sundays in your house, "Dominika-anik-anik" floats from the speakers of the record player early in the morning and you are made to put on one of your frilly dresses, your matching lace-edged socks, and black shoes. Your mother ties long ribbons into a bow at the root of each braid. She warns you, your brother and your sister to "respect your heads" as you drive to St. Angela's, never missing a Sunday service in fourteen years. In your island house, everyone has two names. The name they were given and the nickname they have been granted so that your mother is Gisou, your father is Popo, your brother is Claudy, your sister is Tinou, you are Jojo, and your grandmother is Manchoun. Every day your mother serves rice and beans and you methodically pick out all the beans because you don't like pwa. You think they are ugly and why does all the rice have to have beans anyway? Even with the white rice or the mayi moulen, your mother makes sbspwa— bean sauce. You develop the idea that Haitians are obsessed with beans. In your house there is a mortar and a pestle as well as five pictures of Jesus, your parents drink Cafe Bustelo every morning, your father wears gwayabel shirts and smokes cigarettes, and you are beaten when you don't get good grades at school. You learn about the infidelities of husbands from conversations your aunts have. You are dragged to Haitian plays, Haitian bah, and Haitian concerts where in spite of yourself konpa rhythms make you sway. You know the names of Haitian presidents and military leaders because political discussions inevitably erupt whenever there are more than three Haitian men together in the same place. Every time you are sick, your mother rubs you down with a foul- smelling liquid that she keeps in an old Barbancourt rum bottle under her bed. You splash yourself with Bien-etre after every bath. Your parents speak to you in Kreyol, you respond in English, and somehow this works and feels natural. But when your mother speaks English, things seem to go wrong. She makes no distinction between he and she, and you become the pronoun police. Every day

you get a visit from some matant or monnonk or kouzen who is also a tnarenn or parenn of someone in the house. In your house, your grandmother has a porcelain kivet she keeps under her bed to relieve herself at night. You pore over photograph albums where there are pictures of you going to school in Haiti, in the yard in Haiti, under the white Christmas tree in Haiti, and you marvel because you do not remember anything that you see. You do not remember Haiti because you left there too young but it does not matter because it is as if Haiti has lassoed your house with an invisible rope.

Outside of your house, you are forced to sink or swim in American waters. For you this means an Irish-Catholic school and a Black-American neighborhood. The school is a choice made by your parents who strongly believe in a private Catholic education anyway, not paying any mind to the busing crisis that is raging in the city. The choice of neighborhood is a condition of the reality of living here in this city with its racially segregated neighborhoods. Before you lived here, white people owned this hillside street. After you and others who looked like you came, they gradually disappeared to other places, leaving you this place and calling it bad because you and others like you live there now. As any dyaspora child knows, Haitian parents are not familiar with these waters. They say things to you like, "In Haiti we never treated white people badly." They don't know about racism. They don't know about the latest styles and fashions and give your brother hell every time he sneaks out to a friend's house and gets his hair cut into a shag, a high-top, a fade. They don't know that the ribbons in your hair, the gold loops in your ears, and the lace that edges your socks alert other children to your difference. So you wait until you get to school before taking them all off and out and you put them back on at the end of your street where the bus drops you off. Outside your house, things are black and white. You are black and white. Especially in your school where neither you nor any of the few other Haitian girls in your class are invited to the birthday parties of the white kids in your class. You cleave to these other Haitian girls out of something that begins as solidarity but becomes a lifetime of friendship. You make green hats in art class every St. Patrick's day and watch Irish step- dancing shows year after year after year. You discover books and reading and this is what you do when you take the bus home, just you and your white schoolmates. You lose your accent. You study about the Indians in social studies but you do not study about Black Americans except in music class where you are forced to sing Negro spirituals as a concession to your presence. They don't know anything about Toussaint Louverture or Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

In your neighborhood when you tell people you are from Haiti, they ask politely, "Where's that?" You explain and because you seem okay to them, Haiti is okay to them. They shout "Hi, Grunny!" whenever they see your grandmother on the stoop and sometimes you translate a sentence or two between them. In their houses, you eat sweet potato pie and nod because you have that too, it's made a little different and you call it pen patat but it's the same taste after all. From the girls on the street you learn to jump double-dutch, you learn to dance the puppet and the white boy. You see a woman preacher for the first time in your life at their church. You wonder where down South is because that is where most of the boys and girls on your block go for vacations. You learn about boys and sex through these girls because these two subjects are not allowed in your island/house. You keep your street friends separate from your school friends and this is how it works and you are used to it. You get so you can jump between worlds with the same ease that you slide on your nightgown every evening.

Then when you get to high school, things change. People in your high school and your neighborhood look at you and say, "You are Haitian?" and from the surprise in their voice you realize that they

know where Haiti is now. They think they know what Haiti is now. Haiti is the boat people on the news every night. Haiti is where people have tuberculosis. Haiti is where people eat cats. You do not represent Haiti at all to them anymore. You are an aberration because you look like them and you talk like them. They do not see you. They do not see the worlds that have made you. You want to say to them that you are Haiti, too. Your house is Haiti, too, and what does that do to their perceptions? You have the choice of passing but you don't. You claim your dyaspora status hoping it will force them to expand their image of what Haiti is but it doesn't. Your sister who is younger and very sensitive begins to deny that she is Haitian. She is American, she says. American.

You turn to books to lose yourself. You read stories about people from other places. You read stories about people from here. You read stories about people from other places who now live here. You decide you will become a writer. Through your writing they will see you, dyaspora child, the connections and disconnections that have made you the mosaic that you are. They will see where you are from and the worlds that have made you. They will see you.

RESTAVEK

Jean-Robert Cadet

"A blan (white person) is coming to visit today. He's your papa, but when you see him, don't call him papa. Say 'Bonjour, monsieur' and disappear. If the neighbors ask who he was, you tell them that you don't know. He is such a good man, we have to protect his reputation. That's what happens when men of good character have children with dogs," said Florence to me in Kreyol when I was about seven or eight years old. Before noon, a small black car pulled into the driveway and a white man got out of it. As I made eye contact with him, he waved at me and quickly stepped up to the front door before I had a chance to say "Bonjour, monsieur." Florence let him into the house and I disappeared into the backyard. Almost immediately I heard him leaving.

At the age of five I had begun to hate Florence. "I wish your manman was my manman too," I told Eric, a little boy my age who lived next door. One day while we played together, Eric's mother pulled a handkerchief from her bra, wet its corner on her tongue, knelt down on one knee, and wiped off a dirty spot on her son's face. Eric pushed her hand away.

"Ah, Manman, stop it," he said. I looked at her with bright eyes. "Do it to me instead," I said. She stared at my face for a moment and replied with an affectionate smile, "But your face is not

dirty." To which I answered, "I don't care. Do it to me anyway." She gently wiped at a spot on my face, as

I grinned from ear to ear. My biological mother had died before her image was ever etched in my mind. I cannot remember

the time when I was brought to Florence, the woman I called Manman. She was a beautiful Negress with a dark-brown complexion and a majestic presence. She had no job, but earned a small income from tenants who leased her inherited farmland. She also entertained high government officials as a means to supplement her income. Her teenage son, Denis, was living with his paternal grandmother and attending private school. Florence claimed that her husband had died when her son was ten years old, but I never saw her wedding pictures.

I came into Florence's life one day when Philippe, her white former lover, paid her a surprise visit. He was a successful exporter of coffee and chocolate to the United States and Europe. Philippe lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with his parents, two brothers, and a niece. He arrived in his Jeep at Florence's two-story French country-style house in an upper-class section of the city. A bright-eyed, fat-cheeked, light-skinned black baby boy was in the backseat. Philippe parked the car, reached into the back seat, and took the baby out. He stood him on the ground and the baby toddled off. I was that toddler.

Philippe greeted Florence with a kiss on each cheek while she stared at the toddler. "Whose baby is this?" she asked, knowing the answer to her question.

"His mother died and I can't take him home to my parents. I'd like you to have him," said Philippe, handing Florence an envelope containing money.

"I understand," she said, taking the envelope. He embraced her again and drove off, leaving me behind. Philippe's problem was solved.

My mother had been a worker in one of Philippe's coffee factories below the Cahos mountains of the Artibonite Valley. Like the grand blans of the distant past who acknowledged their blood in the veins of their slave children by emancipating and educating them, Philippe was following tradition. Perhaps he thought that Florence would give me a better life.

"Angela," yelled Florence. "Oui, Madame," answered the cook, approaching her. "Take care of this little boy, will you? Find him something to eat," she instructed. Angela picked

me up. "What's his name?" she asked. Florence thought for a moment and said, "Bobby." Florence did not want another child, but the

financial arrangement she had with Philippe was too attractive for her to turn down. Every night I slept on a pile of rags in a corner of Florence's bedroom, like a house cat, until I was six years old. Then she made me sleep under the kitchen table.

Florence did not take care of me. From the time I entered the household, various cooks met my basic needs, which freed Florence from having to deal with me. I was never greatly attached to any of the cooks, since none of them ever lasted for more than a year. Florence would fire them for burning a meal or for short-changing her when they returned from the market.

As I got older, I learned what kind of day I was going to have based on Florence's mood and tone of voice. When she was cheerful, the four-strip leather whip, called a matinet, would stay hung on its hook against the kitchen wall.

I knew of two groups of children in Port-au-Prince: the elite, and the very poor, the restaveks, or slave children.

Children of the elite are often recognized by their light skin and the fine quality of their clothes. They are encouraged by their parents to speak proper French instead of Kreyol, the language of the masses. They live in comfortable homes with detached servants' quarters and tropical gardens. Their weekly spending allowance far exceeds the monthly salary of their maids. They are addressed by the maids as "Monsieur" or "Mademoiselle" before their first names. They are chauffeured to the best private schools and people call them "ti (petit) bourgeois."

Children of the poor often have dark skin. They appear dusty and malnourished. In their one-room homes covered with rusted sheet metal there is no running water or electricity. Their meals of red beans, cornmeal, and yams are cooked under clouds of smoke spewed out by stoves made of three coconut-size stones and fueled by dry twigs and wood. They eat from calabash bowls with their fingers and drink from tin cans with sharp edges, sitting on logs while being bothered by flies. They squat in the underbrush and wipe themselves with rocks or leaves. At night, they sleep on straw mats or cardboard spread over dirty floors while bloodsucking bedbugs feast on their sweaty flesh. They walk several miles to ill-equipped public schools, where they depend on lunches of powdered milk donated by foreign countries that once depended on the slave labor of their ancestors. After school, they rush home to recite their lessons loudly in cadence before the Caribbean daylight fades away, or they walk a few miles to Champ-de-Mars, the park, and sit under street lamps to do their homework while moths zigzag above their heads.

Restaveks are slave children who belong to well-to-do families. They receive no pay and are kept out of school. Since the emancipation and independence of 1804, affluent blacks and mulattoes have reintroduced slavery by using children of the very poor as house servants. They promise poor

families in faraway villages who have too many mouths to feed a better life for their children. Once acquired, these children lose all contact with their families and, like the slaves of the past, are sometimes given new names for the sake of convenience. The affluent disguise their evil deed with the label restavek, a term that means "staying with." Other children taunt them with the term because they are often seen in the streets running errands barefoot and dressed in dirty rags.

Restaveks are treated worse than slaves, because they don't cost anything and their supply seems inexhaustible. They do the jobs that hired domestics, or bonnes, will not do and are made to sleep on cardboard, whether under the kitchen table or outside on the front porch. For any minor infraction, they are severely whipped with the cowhide implement that is still being made exclusively for that very purpose. And, like the African slaves of the past, they often cook their own meals, which are composed of inferior cornmeal and a few heads of dried herring. Girls are usually worse off because they are sometimes used as concubines for the teenage sons of their "owner." And if they become pregnant, they are thrown into the streets to earn their living as prostitutes. The boys are discarded to become shoeshine boys or itinerant gardeners.

I was a restavek in the making. Raising me as such was more convenient for Florence, because she didn't have to explain to anyone who I was or where I came from. As a restavek, I could not interact with Florence on a personal level; I could not talk to her about my needs. I could not speak until spoken to, except to give her messages that third parties had left with me. I also did not dare smile or laugh in her presence, as this would have been considered disrespectful—I was not her son but her restavek.

My tin cup, aluminum plate, and spoon were kept separate from the regular tableware. My clothes were rags and neighborhood children shouted "restavek" whenever they saw me in the streets. I always felt hurt and deeply embarrassed, because to me the word meant motherless and unwanted. When visitors came and saw me in the yard, I was always asked. "Tigargon [little boy], where is your grownup?" Had I been wearing decent clothes and shoes, the question would have been, "TV monsieur [young gentleman], where is your mother or father?"

Every night in my bedding under the kitchen table, I wished that either I or Florence would never wake up again. I wanted to live in the world of dreams where I sometimes flew like a bird and swam like a fish. But in the dream world I always stopped to relieve myself against a tree, causing me to awake in a puddle of urine.

Returning to the real world was a nightmare in itself—I was always trying to avoid Florence, the woman I called Manman. Every day I wished Florence would die in her sleep—until I made a most frightening discovery. While cleaning the bathroom one early evening, I noticed a small canvas bag tied into a ball under the sink. Curious, I opened it and found several pieces of bloodstained rags. Suddenly my heart raced, and I became convinced that Florence was going to die. I had a strong desire to ask her where the blood came from, but I couldn't. I was allowed to speak to Florence only when she questioned me or when I had to deliver a message from a third party.

The thought of Florence dying was real in my mind. Sometimes I sobbed, asking God to take back my wish for her death. I began to watch Florence closely, staring at every exposed part of her body, trying to find the source of the blood. I spied on her through keyholes whenever she was in the bathroom or in the bedroom.

One hot and muggy afternoon, after she pinched me and pulled me by the skin of my stomach because I had forgotten to clean the kitchen floor, she gave me a small bag of laundry detergent

labeled Fab, and a bottle of Clorox bleach. "Go to the bathroom and wash the rags in the bucket," she commanded with rage. I uncovered the metal bucket and saw a pile of white rags soaking in bloody water. I reached in the bucket and scrubbed each piece until the stains began to fade. I vomited in the toilet and continued with my chore.

After a small eternity, Florence opened the door. Fresh air rushed in and I filled my lungs. My ragged shirt was soaked with sweat. I looked up and realized for the first time that Florence was the tallest woman I had ever known. After she inspected the rags, she said, "Now soak them in the bleach. Tomorrow you can rinse them." As I followed her instructions, I stared at her feet, searching again for the source of the blood.

The following day, without being told, I scrubbed the rags again, one by one, and rinsed each piece. As I hung them to dry over the clothesline in the backyard, Florence came out to observe. "After they're dry, fold them and put them in this," she said as she handed me the small white canvas bag. I took it from her, scanning her arms and legs for scars. She had none.

I replied, "Oui" instead of the usual "Oui, Manman." At the end of the day, I followed her instructions and placed the bag on her bed. From then on, every month, Florence handed me the small white canvas bag with laundry detergent and commanded me to wash its contents.

Every day I lived with anxiety, wondering how soon my only guardian would die from bleeding. Since I had to wash the rags in the late evening in the bathroom, I assumed that Florence didn't want anyone to know about the bleeding. I though that it was a secret she wanted me to keep.

As I walked through a neighbor's yard one day, I noticed a small light blue cardboard box with the word Kotex on it in a garbage can. I walked toward the box and stopped. I wanted the box to make a toy car, with Coke bottle caps for wheels and buttons for headlights. While no one was watching, I took the box quickly, put it under my shirt, and fled. I hid it behind a bush at the side of Florence's house, waiting for free time to make a toy. After midday dinner, Florence lay down on her bed for her afternoon nap and called me in to scratch the bottom of her feet. I once heard that this was an activity female slaves used to perform for their mistresses. I despised this routine because I had to kneel at the foot of the bed on the mosaic floor, causing my abscessed right knee to hurt and ooze a foul-smelling liquid. Whenever I fell asleep at her feet, she would kick me in the face and shout, "You're going to scratch my feet until I fall asleep if I have to kick your head off, you extrait caca (essence of shit), you son of a whore." As Florence slept, I quickly left the room, thinking of the Kotex box I had hidden away. Once outside I crouched down and pulled the treasured box from the bush. I noticed several rolls of cloth material inside. I unrolled the first once and discovered a big bloodstain on it. Confused, I dropped it and went back to the neighbor's yard. I watched everyone's exposed skin surreptitiously, hoping to discover the source of the blood. I returned home and disposed of the box.

I sat under the mango tree in the yard with my catechism trying to memorize as much as I could in preparation for my first communion. As I recited passages, I visualized myself wearing long white pants, a white long-sleeved shirt, red bow tie, and shiny black shoes. Entering the church with my classmates, I was at the communion rail, the priest said, "The body of Christ," and I answered, "Amen" as I opened my mouth to receive the Host. I didn't imagine a big dinner reception with a house full of friends and relatives who brought gifts and money for me, but I was certain that I was going to have my first communion because my school—Ecole du Canada— was preparing a group of students for the sacrament. I was probably eight or ten years old at the time.

During classes on Saturday afternoons, everyone was eager to answer questions and display his

knowledge of the Bible and catechism. Every class started the same way. Teacher: What is catechism? Students: A catechism is a little book from which we learn the Catholic religion. Teacher: Where is God? Students: God is in heaven, on earth, and everywhere. Teacher: Recite the Ten Commandments of God. Thou shalt not have other gods besides me. Thou shalt not. . . Thou shalt not. . . Everyone responded to every question and command in unison and with enthusiasm. At the end of

the class, we told each other with gleaming eyes what our parents planned to prepare for dinner the day of the first communion. It seemed that everyone's parents had been fattening either a goat or a turkey. Some talked about their trip to the tailor or the shoemaker. Everyone had a story to tell— even I, but my stories were all made up. During every trip back home, I thought about the First Commandment and wondered why Florence worshipped several other gods immediately after she returned home from church. She must have known about the Ten Commandments, because I read them in her prayer book every time she visited her neighbors.

Saturday evening, the week before confession, the students were very excited, knowing the day of the first communion was getting closer. After class, everyone told stories of how his shoes and clothes were delivered or picked up. At home, I searched Florence's bedroom for new clothes and shoes and found nothing that belonged to me. I wanted to ask Florence if she had purchased the necessary clothes for me, but I could not, since I wasn't allowed to ask her questions. I considered asking her anyway and taking the risk of being slapped. But I couldn't vocalize the words—my fear of her was too intimidating. Thursday afternoon, I searched again in every closet and under the bed and found nothing.

I began to worry. Maybe she forgot, I thought. I placed the catechism on the dining-room table as a reminder to Florence. She placed it on the kitchen table instead. "She remembers," I said to myself with a grin.

Friday afternoon, the evening of confession, a street vendor was heard hawking her goods. "Bobby, call the vendor," yelled Florence. I ran to the sidewalk and summoned the woman vendor, who had coal-black skin and was balancing a huge yellow basket on top of her head. Several chickens with colorful plumage were hung upside down from her left forearm. Once in the yard and under the tree, she bent down and placed the pile of poultry on the ground. Florence's cook assisted her in freeing her head from the heavy load. After several minutes of bargaining, Florence bought two chickens. I felt very happy, thinking that a big dinner was being planned to celebrate my first communion. But deep down inside, a small doubt lingered. Saturday morning, the eve of my first communion, Florence left in a taxi. I had never been so happy. "Manman went to buy clothes for my first communion," I told the cook, smiling, dancing, and singing. She paid no attention to me, but the expression on her face dampened my festive mood. By noon a taxi stopped in front to the house. I ran to see. It was Florence, carrying a big brown paper bag. I danced in my heart as I fought against the urge to hug her, knowing she would slap me away.

She walked in without saying a word. I went inside and fetched her slippers. She changed into another dress and began to supervise the cook, who was preparing dinner. In the early afternoon, after

I finished my chores, I approached Florence with a pail of water and a towel and began to wash her feet. She was sitting in her rocking chair, sipping sweet hot black coffee from a saucer. With pounding heart, I spoke, "Confession is a