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

I was born in Haiti and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a smokestack-filled industrial city about sixteen miles southwest of Manhattan. In the spring of 1987, after graduating from college, I went to Africa to complete the last leg of my own reverse triangular trade. Blacks had left Africa, were taken to South and Central America and the Caribbean, then to the colonies, to keep afloat the peculiar institution that was slavery. I was seeking to connect all the intellectual and spiritual dots. I left FAMU a disciple of Malcolm X (long before X T-shirts were fashionable), and though I never believed in the innate superiority of any race, I was still known to take issue with interracial couples.

So Africa was the last place I expected to be seeing a white woman-the first one I'd ever dated-let alone one I would marry. One of my closest friends, once asked me jokingly, "Garry, did you have to go to Africa to find a white woman? There were plenty in Tallahassee!" I laughed at the irony and thought that ours was in the classic tale of boy meets girl, except boy is caramel-colored and girl is lily-white, and they fall in love in Africa.

When we started dating, I would often ride my motorcycle to Donna's village in the central part of Togo, a sliver of a country nestled between Ghana and Benin. Over the course of a year, we became closer. I was moved by Donna's spirit and the care and concern she showed when working and playing with the local children. Some nights we would walk into the center of town with a flashlight and the stars as our guide to a watering hole. Between sips of hot beer and bites of fried yams, we wondered aloud about how our lives together would be once we returned to America. Were we getting into something we couldn't handle? I was unsure if I could return to Tallahassee for FAMU's homecoming. I was anxious about the hostility that might come from the all-black environment I remembered. I didn't want people faking it either. But mostly, I didn't want to have all those stunned black faces staring at us, thinking I had let the race down.

After a year, Donna and I started to consider marriage. The thought frightened me. It wasn't because I didn't love her or because she didn't share my journalist's urge to travel and explore. It was because she was white. Being together in African villages was one thing-to them we were simply foreigners-but I would be with a white woman in America. At one point, I thought about calling it off. But then I tried to put myself in Donna's place and wondered how I would feel if she came and told me that she loves me dearly and I would make her a perfect husband, but here was a small problem: I'm black.

We had to deal with our families: We'd told them of our intention to marry, and they knew of our racial difference. Under our intense scrutiny, their welcome was genuine.

Donna grew up in Crawfordsville, Indiana, a tableau of Norman Rockwell's America. She studied psychology at Denison University and had been drawn to Africa since reading a book called Cherry Ames: Jungle Nurse, of all things, while in elementary school. Donna's father, Donald Wilkinson, is of Anglo-Saxon stock from rural Illinois. Her mother, Clarissa, is half Irish and half German and grew up in Indianapolis. Neither had ever had much contact with blacks. Still, Donna's mother actually took offense when she learned that her daughter, fearing the worst, had sent her brother a letter before announcing the engagement, trying to gauge their parents' response. The Wilkinsons' welcome was in sharp contrast to the way I was once treated by the mother of a woman I dated in college. Her mother saw me as a cat-eating, Vodou -worshipping Haitian American, although I've never tasted the feline and I know as much about Vodou as I know about Buddhism. She went so far as to take her daughter, an only child, out of her will in case she lost her mind and married me.

My mother, Yvette, never had any time to harbor ill will toward white people; she was too busy trying to make ends meet and raise me. She, too, embraced the newest member of my family. Getting our parents' blessing turned out to be the easy part.

Some of my friends, like Rosemonde, tried to discourage me from marrying Donna, asking the old question "What about the children?" The race dilemma our kids would face was the least of my concerns: Our world is growing more multicultural by the day, and biracial children are often identified as black. Besides, being Haitian, I've never subscribed to the tragic-mulatto theory. What made the American mulatto's life sad, if it ever was, was not racial identity but rejection by a part of the family. Other relations embraced us as if our union were the most natural thing in the world-as if we were a perfect fit. Donna and I began to see who our friends really were.

As we settled back in the States and headed toward marriage, we confronted more serious problems than racial difference. Several months before our wedding, doctors found a blood clot the size of a golf ball in Donna's head. She underwent surgery to remove it, unsure whether she would ever again be able to speak, walk, or lead a normal life. Then began her recovery: Donna would spend five years on a daily medication and a year in physical therapy, struggling with the simplest sentences. (Today she is healthy but still working to gain full control of her fine motor skills.) Later, as we tried to start a family, she had two miscarriages, one almost took her life.

Other couples may have far less to overcome than we did, but if they're like us, once they decide they're serious, they quickly close ranks against those who would rather see them keep with "their own kind." Nobody's discomfort or anger or annoyance matters more to a couple in love than their being together. We determined that we wouldn't be worn down. Donna and I did this instinctively, without having ever had a conversation about it.

In fact, the first time we talked about how much racism has affected us as a couple was when I started to write this piece. Donna shared her sense of intimidation around some black women, the subtle messages she gets that she's not dressed right or not up to par. "You know when a woman is looking and not approving," she said to me recently, adding that it's something I wouldn't pick up on. "You don't have to have a word said." It angers me that anyone would dare to judge her; she doesn't need to conform to some standard of what a black man's wife ought to be. We also laughed at how some white women take my being with Donna as license to come on to me. A good sense of humor has always kept the ignorant at bay.

It has been more than twelve years since I first met Donna, and after ten years of marriage and two children, we don't have time to worry about what others think of us. With six-year-old Cameron, and two-year-old Mina filling our lives, the stares and whispers of strangers don't matter at all. We have learned to stay away from places where either one of us would be uncomfortable, to choose our friends carefully (we have more black friends than white) and to live in places where we feel safe and secure. That's what any man, of any color, wants for his family.

Since Cameron was born, I've made a herculean effort to make sure that my children are keenly aware of their African heritage. Our walls are festooned with African and Haitian paintings. My music library includes an eclectic collection of jazz, blues, and Haitian and African CDs. This doesn't necessarily mean that my kids won't confront that age-old existential question: Who am I? It is a question that bedevils all of us, regardless of race, religion, culture. I simply want Cameron and Mina to be surrounded by tokens of their African heritage while living in predominantly white America. And we have not shied away from discussing race with Cameron. To him, Daddy is black, Mom is pink, and he is brown. At a recent gathering, when someone pretended not to know this Garry person that Cameron kept talking about, my son simply sighed and answered: