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

The night before class, I transfer hair relaxers and pomades from their forbidden glass containers (glass shards as a way out?) into plastic ones.

As the Latina guard carefully examines the containers and their messy contents, she finally blurts out: They have so many donations! People have given them so much, so many boxes, we have to put them in special storage! Looks at me like I'm stupid, like I've been had, taken by people already getting so much for free. They have so much, she says. Doesn't she know about divide and conquer? Setting the have-little against the have-not? Doesn't she know they-we- are the descendants of Toussaint and Dessalines, who led the only successful slave uprising in the history of the world and defeated Napoleon's troops and founded the first black republic? She probably doesn't even think I'm Haitian.

I want to narrow the gap. I am lucky. They are unlucky. Accidents of birth. I give out my home phone number in case of emergencies. I hesitate slightly before I do, fearing a deluge of phone calls, but days pass and no one calls, until Philocia. She is one of the youngest, distracted and hesitant whenever I ask her a question, not one of my best students.

Please, she says, can you do something for me?

Of course, I say, worried by her sudden assertiveness.

Well, Valentine's Day is coming and next Friday there is going to be a party and they are going to let us see the men. I am going to see my boyfriend-so I need a dress.

A dress? I ask. Maybe I haven't heard right.

Yes, she says. A red dress. Size eight.

I look through my closet as if a red dress might miraculously appear. This is not what I had in mind when I gave out my number. Didn't I say in case of an emergency?

I call a friend. A red dress? she asks.

Yes.

Red for hearts and roses?

I guess.

Have any of the other women asked for dresses?

No.

Her reaction convinces me not to ask anyone else. This one frivolous request I am sure will make the other refugees look bad, make people think that Giuliani is right after all, that they have just come here for economic advantages, that they have come here to shop.

I go to the clothing stores in my East Village neighborhood. No red dress in sight, and certainly no dress that I could imagine her ever wanting to wear. Too funky and outrageous, nothing her style. Besides, what if I do find one? I don't even have a real job. She must think I'm rich. Maybe the guard was right, maybe I'm being had.

Two days before the party, I take Philocia aside. I'm sorry, I say, but I couldn't find a red dress. I tried, but it's not easy. She smiles sweetly. I look down at her carefully manicured nails and think someone must have donated red nail polish to go with the dress she won't be wearing. Thank you, she says, mesi , like someone used to not getting what she wants. Why couldn't she have asked for something serious, something vital and important? Then I would have done anything!

Valentine's Day has come and gone. We are in the middle of class when Jeanne, an attentive, serious student, a woman in her forties, a madansara who used to sell pots and pans in the market of Jacmel, starts to cry.

What's wrong? someone asks.

What's wrong, Jeanne? I ask.

More tears. Silence. She rocks herself gently, back and forth.

I can't stand it anymore, she says, I want to go back home.

But they will kill you if you go back, someone says.

I don't care. I want to die in my country like a moun , like a person, not here like a dog.

More silence. I hand her a tissue. Are they all thinking the same thing?

Now, I say, surprised at the authority of my voice, this is what they want. They want to wear you down, so that you will go back and tell the others and they will be afraid to come.

More silence. What is Jeanne thinking? What are they all thinking?

Then, from the back of the room, a small still voice.

Not me.

It is Philocia of the red dress. Mwen mem. I will never go back. I don't care what they do to me. I spent two days in the water holding on to a piece of wood from the boat. There were dead people all around me. I'm not going back.

I look at her and she has not moved. I realize that she has never left the water and that I have understood nothing.

Now I want to find her a dress in every possible shade of red… for roses… for hearts… red for the blood of Toussaint and Des-salines flowing in her veins.

The windowed door of my hospital room framed scurrying white uniforms. Inside, the silence of isolation left plenty of time for interior monologues. The medication and its lingering scent made my head fuzzy and paralyzed my tongue. My spirit seemed to be having difficulty catching up with my body, like the distorted windshield view of a rainstormed road. I anxiously waited to see whether or not this physician would corroborate my overseas diagnosis of bronchial asthma, which was beginning to seem mild now that I was up against possible heavy hitters like tuberculosis, PCP pneumonia, and HIV.

Lying there, I could almost see my dad's concerned face, his eyes widening as his deep, stern voice prepared me with Haitian proverbs, tales about our clan, warnings and cautions for my work at Guantanamo Bay. Most important, however, was his promise of ancestral protection. So off I went, surrounded by my invisible army.

The IV stand was beginning to feel like an awkward extension of my anatomy, contributing to my claustrophobia. As I lay there, I struggled to pinpoint exactly when and why my body broke down. Was it the night-and-day contrast in temperature? Days with temperatures that sometimes sent boa constrictors, iguanas, and banana rats looking for shelter under my cot, then onto the clothes that dangled from my partially open dufflebag. At times the leftover wind from the Windward Passage would stir up the baked sand, lashing my face or filling my nose and mouth with grit. Or perhaps it was the cobalt-blue, diamond-lit evening sky that would seduce me into rolling up the sides of the tent, allowing the night's chilling vapors to invade my lungs.

Time was strangely distorted on that mound of land-days long, nights short, and mornings difficult to embrace. I could always set my watch, though, by the chants of exercising soldiers that began with the 5 a.m. dosage of pesticide the military used to wage the war against bugs. When it was kind, the fumes tickled inside your nostrils. Otherwise, you went into a choking cough that could rage for twenty minutes.

Before three days could come and go, my life had undergone a complete metamorphosis. Kreyol , the language whose purpose in my life up until now had been to pain and confuse me, would prove an asset. It became my passport to the American-occupied naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Justice Department would use me as a medium-or, as my contract stipulated, an interpreter-to execute its mission. Haitians fleeing political persecution-unleashed by a coup d'etat that had overthrown Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide-were being detained while they awaited interviews for political asylum.

I was one of sixteen language specialists. We worked in a defunct airplane hangar, freshly painted white, which held about fourteen thousand people when full. The scent of sweaty bodies thickened the already damp air. Their united sound of confused chatter echoed from the hollow interior, creating a dense hum of marketplace conversation. Bodies lay in rows on olive-green cots, all their worldly possessions on the concrete floor beside them-clothes, shoes, personal documents, in black plastic garbage bags or homemade straw sacks.