Dimitry Leger - God Loves Haiti

Man, I can’t wait to see that girl again, the President thought. It’s been too long.

Outside, above his car, the brilliant sun howled. Lycée Pétion, his alma mater, stood near. His parents getting him into that school was one of the first great miracles of his life. He was glad the school was still standing after goudou-goudou and could soon become functional again. Its fortunes were better than that of its old rival, College Bird, down on nearby rue du Centre. That esteemed school’s walls had been cracked throughout its skeleton by goudou-goudou. Its thick white columns seemed one good breeze away from tumbling onto themselves. Who knew how long it would take for that place to become safe enough for innocent students in their checkered yellow-and-white-and-blue uniforms to prowl its halls again? Bobo had told the President to come to meet them at the National Cathedral because his problems with Natasha were solved. The President saw their coming reunion this afternoon as an opportunity to renew their relationship with each other in front of God, a sort of renewal of their vows.

Cedric, I’m going to walk, the President said.

The heat was mean. The crowd around the cathedral was stiff, probably too hurly-burly for UN security protocols regarding the President’s safety. He didn’t care. Nobody noticed him. He looked up to the towers of the cathedral and used them as a beacon while threading along the potholed pavement with the masses. From their chatter, the President learned a wedding was about to take place in the cathedral. A popular young man from a refugee camp was about to take his first bride, the first marriage anyone could remember happening in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. What an amazing thing indeed, the President thought.

Around the same time, on the other side of the cathedral, Alain Destiné walked behind the soon-to-be married couple in a procession from Camp Pigeon. All the procession had to do was cross rue St. Laurent. The street was clogged with people. Alain thought he even saw a TV news truck. Curiosity seekers joined the proper wedding guests from Place Pigeon. They wanted to know who was getting married and why now. There was a sense that Philippe and Fabby were a bit oser to dare something as romantic as a marriage at a time when death and grief and embittering shock dominated conversation about Haiti in Haiti and off the island. Alain’s head was spinning. A spell of dizziness made the back of the heads of the lovers in front of him look like brown trees swaying between a molten sun in a hurricane. Just ahead the cathedral reared up as a final destination for the lovers, and the way things seemed to be going, the National Cathedral of Haiti could become Alain’s final resting place too. Two goons kept the barrels of their guns pointed into Alain’s lower back. This had the effect of making Alain walk on his tiptoes and feel like a man on a skewer. On his right, Hollywood Steve looked solemn, a look more appropriate for a funeral than a wedding. Maybe he didn’t want a stray television camera or cell phone to capture how happy he felt. He loved weddings. I can’t wait to get married again, he’d said more than once over dinner with Philippe and Fabby the previous evening. They were an inspiring pair. The couple was so in love, they looked invincible. On Alain’s right, little Xavier walked with his typically preternatural calm, gazing into the distance. Alain kept a hand on the kid’s shoulder, ostensibly so as not to lose the little guy in the surging crowds. In reality, he held on to Xavier for dear life, having long been seduced by the child’s talismanic presence. He regretted having lied to the boy earlier. He did not have a plan for getting himself out of the jam he was obviously in with these goons. He planned a Hail Mary. He was going to bet that no one could be mad enough to kill someone in a cathedral, not even a justifiably jealous husband and his yes-men. Alain smiled at the irony of an atheist like him hoping the depth of others’ faith in God would save his life. Such was the way of all atheists, he thought. No one’s an atheist in a foxhole, his NYU buddy Alex used to say.

Hey, where’s my best man? Philippe said, looking behind him for Alain.

Right here!

Swiftly, Alain bounded to his friend’s side, forcing the gunmen to hide their weapons.

At your service, he said.

In his red top hat and suit lined with sweat from the long walk in the late afternoon, Philippe glistened. He wore a pensive frown and told Alain that his fiancée felt nervous about the crowds at the church’s entrance. She worried whether the ceremony would start on time. The priest was a patient one, but he was old and sick. Say no more, Alain said. He took Fabby and Philippe by the hand and paused. Are you ready? he said.

Yes, they said.

Let’s go then.

Alain raised an elbow to knife through the crowd, a trick learned a dozen Carnivals ago. Excuse me! he said. Coming through! Coming through! The crowd parted. Pardon! The friends charged the barricades of rubble blocking their way into the cathedral.

They ran, they giggled. The bride climbed a pile of rubble, then threw her flimsy bouquet at Alain and herself at Philippe standing on the other side of the pile, inside the church. They were dreamers, like everyone else, everyone around them, on the streets, on the radio, on TV, like everyone who has ever looked to a church for respite or a skyscraper for work and a living. They all sought the same thing. Alain had thought he knew what miracle he was looking for all this time. When he saw her, he realized he’d had no idea. Natasha was standing in the room next to the altar in the bowels of the National Cathedral. She wore a nun’s robe and stood next to Monsignor Dorélien, who was going to perform the ceremony while holding on to a cane for what seemed like dear life. Natasha saw him first and stared with awe. The smile he saw on her face mirrored the one, a ballooning flash of joy, he felt explode on his own. Natasha’s alive! She’s alive! ALIVE!

And healthy and beautiful and wearing the one robe Alain suspected Natasha had dreamed of wearing all her life, a secret dream he knew she held without her ever articulating it. He smiled broadly at her with his entire face and body, his eye crinkling him blind. She did the same thing too, smile like a loon. Few people had ever seen Natasha Robert flash her full-blown toothy smile, and very few people had ever seen a young nun, in her nun robe, in a packed cathedral, abruptly stop nunning around to gasp and squeal, yes, squeal, at the sight of a young man. Alain swung Philippe and Fabiola toward Monsignor Dorélien — actually it was more like he flung them to the priest. They were practically airborne when they reached the front of the altar, and then, and then, and then, Natasha ran toward Alain, and Alain ran toward Natasha. Monsignor Dorélien looked up and said, Oh? Sister Hopstaken said, What? The crowd saw the young nun and the limping young man in the black suit hug each other with all their strength. They smashed into each other like atoms and they held each other tightly, tears running down their round cheeks. There was a tenderness to their embrace, a familial affection, onlookers were puzzled at first but they got it. They must be brother and sister. They must have thought each had died during goudou-goudou. Those types of reunions had been happening a lot all over Haiti since goudou-goudou. They didn’t make headlines, but they happened, and they were wonderful to behold. Some onlookers sensed that the electricity between the striking nun and the skinny man had carnal roots. Those particularly sharp onlookers included the president of the republic, the nun’s husband, and Monsignor Dorélien, the man who had led the nun through the Eucharistic gauntlet. The priest fixed the politician in the eyes and told him to be cool. Wait, he suggested, until he saw what happened next. What happened next was the squealing nun peeled herself off the handsome young man and touched his face and told him, I’m so happy you’re alive.