Edwidge Danticat - The Butterfly's Way - Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

For years now, Haiti has not been a home but a cause to me. Many of my passions are still there. Although I did my best to distance myself from the homophobic Haitian community in New York, to bury painful emotions in my accumulated memories of childhood, I was politically concerned and committed to the fight for change in my native land. It's not surprising that the three hardest yet most exhilarating decisions I have faced had to do with balancing my Haitian roots and gay lifestyle. The first was leaving Haiti to live in the United States. The second was going back to meet my father for the first time. The third, tearing up my application to become a U.S. citizen. Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.

I was born on October 2, 1957, one week after Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier was elected president. He had been a brilliant doctor and a writer of great verve from the Griots (negritude) movement. Until that time, the accepted images of beauty in Haiti, the images of "civilization," tended to be European. Fair skin and straight hair were better than dark and kinky. Duvalier was black pride. Unlike previous dictators who had ruled the country continuously since its independence from the French in 1804, Duvalier was not mulatto, and he did not surround himself with mulattoes, a mixed-race group that controlled the economy. Duvalier brought Vodou to the forefront of our culture and, later in his reign, used it to tyrannize the people.

I grew up in Les Cayes, a sleepy port city of twenty thousand in southwest Haiti, where nothing much happened. Straight A's, ran like a girl, cute powdered face, silky eyebrows-I was the kind of child folks saw and thought quick something didn't click. I knew very early on that I was "different," and I was often reminded of that fact by my schoolmates. "Masisi" (faggot), they'd tease me. That word to this day sends shivers down my spine but, being the town's best-behaved child, a smile, a kind word were my winning numbers.

We-my mother (a registered nurse anesthetist), grandfather (a lawyer who held, at one time or another, each of the town's top official posts, from mayor on down), grandmother, and I-lived in a big beautiful house facing the cathedral. The Catholic Mass, especially High Mass on Sundays and holy days, with its colorful pageantry, trance-inducing liturgy, and theatrical ceremony, spellbound me. And that incense-that incense took me heaven-high each time. I was addicted and I attended Mass every day. Besides, I had other reasons. I had developed a mad crush on the parish priest, a handsome Belgian who sang like a bird.

I must have been seven when I realized my attraction to men. Right before first communion, confused and not making sense, I confessed to this priest. Whether he understood me or not, he gave me absolution and told me to say a dozen Hail Marys. Oh Lord, did I pray. Still girls did nothing for me. Most of my classmates had girlfriends to whom they sent passionate love poems and sugar candies, and whom they took to movies on Sunday afternoons. All I wanted to do with girls was skip rope, put makeup on their faces, and comb their hair. I was peculiar.

Knowing that I probably would never marry, I decided that I wanted to be a priest when I grew up. For one, priests are celibate, and I had noticed that they were effeminate. Some even lisped, like me. I built a little altar in my bedroom with some saints' icons, plastic lilies, and colored candles and dressed in my mother's nursing uniform and petticoat. I said Mass every night. The archbishop of Haiti, Francois W. Ligonde, a childhood friend of my mother and uncles, even blessed my little church when he once visited my family. I was so proud. Everybody felt that I'd be the perfect priest, except my mother, who I later found out wanted me to become a doctor like my father-who I never met, never saw pictures of, never heard mention of, and accepted as a nonentity in my life.

I used to believe that I was born by immaculate conception, until one day I was ridiculed in school by my science teacher, who had asked me for my father's name. When I told him of my belief, he laughed and got the entire class to laugh along. Until then I had never questioned the fact that my last name was the same as that of my mother, who was not married. It was then that I smelled foul play and suspected that I was the result of sexual relations between my mother and grandfather. I didn't dare ask.

In the early 1960s, Papa Doc declared himself President-for-Life and things got worse and worse. I remember hearing of anti-Duvalier suspects being arrested. I remember hearing of families being rounded up and even babies being killed. I remember the mysterious disappearances at night, the mutilated corpses being found by roads and rivers the next day. I remember the public slayings, adults whispering and sending my cousins and me to another room so they could talk. Rumors of invasions by exiled Haitians abounded. Some of these invasions were quickly stopped by government forces. The tonton macoutes (bogeymen) were everywhere, with their rifles slung over their shoulders and their eyes of madness and cruelty.

Poverty was all around me and, in my child-mind, I had accepted this. Some had, some had not. Fate. Cyclones, hurricanes, floods came and went. Carnival was always a happy time, though. Dressed in a costume, I, along with thousands, took to the streets each year with our favorite music bands. Grandmother died during Mardi Gras '65. I was miserable for weeks and kept a daily journal to her. Soon after, mother left for Switzerland and I moved in with my aunt Marcelle and her husband.

In 1968, my aunt had her first and only child. Was I jealous! I had been quite comfortable and so spoiled for three yean that when she gave birth to Alin, it was difficult for me to accept that I was not her real child, a fact I had, at times, forgotten. That year she gave me a beautiful birthday party. My schoolmates were making fun of me more than ever. I still wanted to be a priest. I said a Mass for Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy when each was assassinated. Duvalier declared himself the flag of the nation and became more ruthless. I took long walks on the beach by myself. It was a year of discovery.

One afternoon, I saw Pierre swimming alone. He called me to join him. I was surprised. Although we went to the same school and we had spoken to each other once or twice, we were not buddies. Three or four years older, tall and muscular, Pierre was a member of the volleyball team and must have had two or three girlfriends. I didn't have a swimsuit, so I swam naked. I remember the uneasiness each time our eyes met, the tension between us, my hard-on. We kept smelling each other out. He grabbed me by the waist. I felt his dick pressing against my belly. Taut smiles. I held it in my hand and it quivered. I had never touched another boy's dick before. I asked him if he had done this with other boys. He said only with girls. Waves.

He turned me around and pushed his dick in my ass. Shock. I remember the pain. Hours later, the elation I felt, knowing that another person who was like me existed. In Les Cayes, there had been rumors about three or four men who supposedly were homosexual, but they were all married. Some had no fewer than seven children. Knowing Pierre was a turning point for me. The loneliness of thinking that I was the only one with homosexual tendencies subsided.

In 1969, man walked on the moon. I was happy. Pierre and I met each other three or four times (once in my grandfather's study, and he almost caught us). I didn't say anything about this to anyone, not even at confession. I didn't pray as much. I passed my certificat , which is like graduation from junior high school in the U.S. Mother moved from Geneva to New York City, where I visited her in the summer of 1970. To me, New York was the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, hot dogs and hamburgers, white people everywhere, museums, rock music, twenty-four-hour television, stores, stores, and subways.