Bob Shacochis - The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

The story was dead, the Haitian people were becoming invisible again, imaginary creatures, right before the magnifying eyes of the international press and there was nothing the pep could do about it — their success would not bring the journalists back, their failure would no longer earn the dubious privilege of the media’s attention. The woman from the Post mentioned she had gone to Cité Soleil yesterday morning, to document the inauguration from the perspective of the gangrenous slums, but had left after twenty minutes, unnerved by the hostility and threats. Journos had always been welcomed in the slums as protectors, their presence evidence that somebody in the world had taken notice of the people at the bottom but an unscalable fence of acrimony had been erected, kids with guns were taking over the infested grid, forming gangs, against all blans because everybody was leaving and nothing had changed and in fact nobody cared. In the past she would have persisted but now even persistence felt like part of the larger betrayal of these youth who had paid in blood for the fraud of democracy.

Freedom has made them feral, said the red-haired lunatic.

None of the whites at the table wanted to talk about these things.

It was at this moment, sitting on the veranda of the Oloffson with the photographers, that Tom Harrington saw Jacqueline Scott for a second time. She took one step out of the shadow of the lobby onto the veranda and paused to glance around and she seemed dulled in some way and uncertain, common traits of someone freshly arrived in the muddle, but still her beauty rifled through him and he wanted very much just to be able to look at her quietly and dream, as he might at the movies. A mere glimpse of her energized Tom in the doldrums of the morning.

Do you know this girl behind you? he asked the Post photographer, who turned to look as Jacqueline Scott stepped back into the hush of the lobby, all dark wood and rattan furniture and ceiling fans.

I think that was Jackie, she said. Right. I took her along yesterday to Cité Soleil.

You know her then? She’s a photographer?

She’s new. She asked to go. She needs someone to help her out. We all did, didn’t we?

She looks like that actress, said Daniel.

She looks like Joan of Arc, said their future emissary to Chechnya.

I can’t quite picture her in Cité Soleil, Tom said.

Don’t you guys sell her short, said the woman from the Post . She doesn’t back off. She handled herself well.

Who’s she work for?

No one just yet. She has some names, contacts. So that’s it, the Post photographer sighed and stood up. Good luck, everyone. I have a plane to catch.

Without a word, the red-haired photographer from Colorado stood up as well, lifted his bag over his shoulder and descended the steps to the parking lot and into oblivion. The large group at the pushed-together tables began to break up; accounts were settled, embraces exchanged, drivers summoned. The gear, piles of it, humped away. The Japanese photographer finished cleaning his lenses and replaced them in a foam-lined case with the care and delicacy of explosive charges.

Daniel said that he and his wife were hosting a dinner that evening for stay-arounds, but Tom told him sorry, he had made other arrangements and couldn’t make it. Then Jackie was there at the table, asking to buy black-and-white film, if anyone had extra. She looked ready for the streets — a tan cotton vest over her T-shirt, olive-green slacks, hiking boots, camera bag, a huge Nikon strapped around her elegant neck, her expression unnecessarily grave, a slight urgency in her voice. It struck Tom, as it had that night at the Kinam, that she was without charm, and perhaps that was her intention, a way of muting or dampening the blaze of her physical appeal.

He offered her a seat but she didn’t acknowledge the invitation. The Japanese photographer rummaged through his bag and found six rolls of Tri-X and she made no objection when he gave her the film and wouldn’t take anything for it but karmic goodwill.

So what’s happening today? she asked with her eyes darting along a line somewhere above their heads.

Zed, zero, zip. Everybody’s pulling out, said Daniel, but no sooner had he spoken than the walkie-talkie began to fizz, and they listened to the crackled report of his colleague checking in. A roadblock, a protest, tires burning on the highway in front of Cité Soleil, a commonplace excitement but Daniel was the last man chained to the story and his presence was required. Anybody want to come along? he asked and Tom expected Jackie to jump at the chance but she said no.

What do you want to happen today? he asked her. She was beautiful and he didn’t know her and it would be a game, he thought, to get to know her.

Can I sit and have a cup of coffee with you guys? she asked as she pulled out a chair and sat. Impossible that anyone had ever told her no.

The conversation did not flow. She talked haltingly for a few minutes with the Japanese photographer about editors and magazines and syndicates and then he, too, joined the exodus to the airport. Her coffee arrived and she sat stirring sugar into it, clearly uncomfortable, and so he stopped watching her and asked the simplest question — about her home, where she came from. She jerked her posture straight from her intense, nervous hunch and met his eyes and Tom didn’t think she had even heard what he said but instead asked a question of her own.

Are you busy today?

Impossibly, he joked, hoping she would suggest a common adventure, an enterprise through which he might invent some small usefulness to Jackie, a mutual purpose that would legitimize his interest in her. Something in him — not his heart — reached toward her; he was neither a fool nor a lecher but certainly a man intrigued by the myriad possibilities that, at least on the surface, her youth and beauty and intrepidness implied. In fact, he explained, since she didn’t seem to pick up on his sarcasm, I have a thousand things to do but nobody in the government seems to want to work today.

I don’t want to get in your way, she said, and the hint of adolescent whine in her tone annoyed him, as if now, after cracking a window to the possibility of their companionship, she felt compelled by fickleness to close it without delay, the come-here-get-away dance of teenage girls, woefully familiar to teenage boys and a glum memory for their older selves.

You in my way actually sounds pretty good, he flirted, without an effect on her expression, and he began to wonder if she ever retreated far enough from the constant tension of her self-control to smile. Then Tom himself became more serious and wanted her to tell him why she was here, just arriving when everyone else couldn’t jump ship fast enough.

The UN isn’t leaving, she said. The Haitians aren’t leaving.

Point taken, Tom said, for what it’s worth. Then he couldn’t help himself and he lapsed into a grand soliloquy, like every other horse’s ass who had ever sat too long on the veranda of the Oloffson. And for what it’s worth, he continued, the pictures of ordinary people, the ones mired in pathos, bearing the weight of it all, right? Rather than the sensational images or the images that disseminate information, it’s those pictures that explain the most, or have the deepest impact, but first somebody must care, and you know exactly what I mean, care deeply and honestly, and right now people are very, very weary of caring about Haiti, so best of luck because I think you’re going to need it. He pontificated, his lawyer’s mouth running away from him. Personally, Tom said, I can no longer believe in that which demands we see things anew. I think that perspective is fundamentally dishonest, I think it’s a fucking lie. How about, instead, images and words that make us finally see what we’ve been staring at blind and dumb for most of our daydreaming lives. To see things anew makes it sound like insight awaits those who can’t make sense out of seeing things as they are, as if our innocence and inexperience were actually virtues. What do you think? You think in pictures, don’t you?