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slipped from my hands. I let myself go. Just last year I said to my
mother, suffering from diabetes and refusing to stick to her diet, “If
you don’t do what’s needed, you won’t see your little granddaughter
grow up.” Three months earlier, I had invited my father to come see
me in Minnesota. A rare chance to get a tourist visa. I still hear him
telling me over the phone, “Mwen pa ko ap mouri, m ap gen tan
vwayaje. I ain’t dead yet, I’ll have time to travel.” Telling me he would
live for a long time and would have time enough to see the land of
Uncle Sam. The last time I heard my brother’s voice on the phone, he
was getting ready to go to france. Just a hello. The call was dropped.
Dreams? I had them. for my children. for myself. But the greatest
one was to give back to my parents a little of what they had given to
me. Has nature stolen my dreams? Has she taken away my friends?
Ah Télumée, even had we held on to the reins of the horse, nature
would never give us back what it took away. No matter how strong
we had been in the face of adversity, the memories are there to watch
us and to remind us not to take too much pleasure in our little joys.
The wait was interminable. No news. Complete silence. fatal silence.
What has become of them? Would I be lucky? What was it my God
had spared me? Had I really been spared? And I kept coming back
to you, Télumée. I always came back to you. I carried you in my
shopping bag and we took the bus together. Coming and going. No
sooner did I climb the steps of the bus that you swept me away, my
eyes constantly dropping toward you. And the passengers next to me
would never guess the paths down which we were riding even while
the bus crept down University Avenue.
A pungent, pure smell of spices rose from the apartment. I set up
the pot. I set it up again and again. The spices always came before
the jerking. My sighs, too, blended in. I stirred. I moved and mixed,
on and on. That was when I felt close to the three-legged stove and
the coal burner. Then my pain disappeared in the tangy smell of the
corn-and-beans I was cooking. That was, Télumée, when I saw you
move joyfully forward. facing fiercely the wind and the rain. free
of your two breasts. I realized at that moment that from the darkest
shadows light can flow. Even if my light was yet to come.
Pierre / Port-au-Prince Will Rise
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