The Year After the End
It was amazing how quickly a person could get used to things.
Getting water from the pump down the block, stumbling to the outhouse late at night, rummaging through old clothes at the street market – all these were things Amélie thought she’d left behind forever when she moved north. But now that she was back, she had to do them. She’d missed her Cap-Ha
ïtien comforts – who was she kidding, she still did miss them – but her body had done what it had to do, and where the body went, the mind soon followed. Now, after a year, Port-au-Prince seemed almost… normal.
Normal? When half the city is still in ruins? Cousin Mirlande would laugh if she could hear the thought, but she’d also understand. Half her own house was collapsed, but she kept on living in the other half, and made do like everyone else did. A year of that, and making do was just something you did.
A shout of “watch where you’re going!” brought Amélie’s mind back to earth, and she stepped aside just in time to avoid being run over by a big two-wheeled cart. The cart was full of kerosene jugs bearing the mark of the International Relief Commission; Amélie wondered if the aid workers realized yet that they were missing.
She heard a string of curses, and saw that one of the wheels was stuck in a pothole. The kerosene-seller was small and slight, someone who shouldn’t be pushing that kind of load, and he gave her a hard look as he tried to get the cart moving again. It wasn’t Amélie’s fault, but she felt far too much like it was, and anyway, she was stronger than he was, so she put her hands to the poles and heaved.
A moment later the cart was back on the track. The kerosene-seller didn’t say a word of thanks, but he muttered something as he walked on; Amélie caught the word “northern,” and figured it was good that she didn’t hear the rest.
She checked the time: Mirlande would be at the clinic by now, but she’d asked Amélie to go to the market first. It was a shorter trip now than it had been when she’d first come: picking her way through rubble was another thing that had become second nature, but at least the streets were passable now.
They should be more than passable, she couldn’t help thinking. Over in P
étionville or Bois Verna, the city looked almost as it had before. But this part of town was one that nobody cared much about. Here, a half-ruined building that street children had colonized. There, a village of corrugated-metal huts thrown up on a lot where a house had once stood. A street or two further, an office block covered with wooden scaffolding that no one had worked on for months.
The market was also in an empty lot, but it was one that had always been empty. Even at this hour, Amélie had to fight her way through the crowds: everyone wanted to buy when the best wares of the day were available. She’d promised to get some milk for Nadia, groceries for dinner, gasoline for the generator at the clinic, alcohol to clean the medical instruments; she hoped she’d be able to find them all.
The milk was easy enough, and the woman at the stall told her where she could find the gasoline. But there was a knot of people between the stalls, and they didn’t move aside the way most people did. It took a minute for Amélie to realize that they were listening to someone speak – a religious meeting, or a political one.
“… When was the last time a politician came here, even one of the
noiristes?” the speaker was saying.
A political meeting, then. “The
pétionistes think we’re beneath them, and the
noiristes take our votes for granted. But we are Fanmi Goudou-Goudou, the Earthquake Family. If we stand as a family, if we stand together, we can make them listen…”
Amélie vaguely recognized the speaker: an insurgent member of the
Parti noiriste, part of the leftist faction that was challenging the party leadership. He was just warming up, and if she stayed to listen, she’d be late to the clinic: she made her way carefully around the meeting, and went to find the gasoline.
It was the groceries that were the problem. Shopping for food was what always made Amélie realize she hadn’t
quite got used to life back in the south. Nothing in the market would have made it onto a store shelf up north, even in a poor neighborhood: it would have been fed to animals, or else thrown away. She was buying for a child, as well as herself and Mirlande: how could she ask a child to eat this? It was an effort, both physical and mental, to select vegetables for her cousin’s table.
And as she did, she heard a shout from the direction of the meeting. “Fanmi Goudou-Goudou!” the people called. “Fanmi Prince-Nwa!” It was the latter that turned into a chant: “Prince Nwa! Prince Nwa!”
That was when Amélie discovered that, even after a year, she wasn’t beyond shock. The name they were calling was…
“Yes!” the speaker shouted above the chanting crowd. “Yes! We are the Earthquake Family, the Black Prince’s Family! The Prince fights for us! With the Prince, we will rebuild!” And when the people lifted him up on their shoulders, Amélie could see that he was wearing an ebon cape.
*******
Two hours in the clinic, and Mirlande was already tired. Worry on top of work did that – it was one thing to change bedpans and clean the intravenous lines, and another to make sure every drop of cleaning fluid was accounted for because she didn’t know when she might get more. Amélie was at the market getting gasoline and alcohol, but they couldn’t always be found, especially if someone set up a roadblock or there was a problem with the relief trucks.
She finished turning old Alexandre – he’d get bedsores if nobody did, and the night nurse was sometimes careless – and put the line back in his arm. Mireille, in the next bed, needed to be washed: Mirlande lifted her carefully into a wheelchair, and wondered where she might find clean water. There was supposed to be running water in the clinic, but it hadn’t worked since the earthquake, and the pump at the end of the block was unreliable at the best of times…
There. That can in the corner hadn’t been used yet, and if she heated it, there would be enough to do the job. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the deed followed.
She took Mireille back to bed, and realized that she was too drained to do anything else. It was ten minutes until her official break, but she was
damned if she let anyone tell her not to sit down now. There was a chair by Alexandre’s bed, and if someone asked, she could always say she was monitoring his vital signs.
Maybe I should have gone north with Amélie, she thought. That was why her cousin had come down to Port-au-Prince, even though she’d never said so. Amélie always insisted that she’d only come to help, but Mirlande knew she really wanted to bring the two of them back to Le Cap.
But it was never on the cards. Mirlande had been north a few times to visit, and she didn’t care for it: you had to think twice before speaking your mind, and the people acted like they were more Haitian than the southerners. And besides, Mirlande was a nurse. For a southerner to go north after the earthquake was giving up; for a
nurse to do so was something close to treason. The Republic needed all the nurses it had, and more besides.
So a year later, Mirlande was still in Port-au-Prince, and Amélie, who’d come to bring her and Nadia north, was living in the spare room down the road and helping out at the clinic…
There was a noise from Alexandre’s bed as he stirred, and Mirlande realized she’d closed her eyes. She shook herself awake and checked the time: she was officially on break now, and could safely make her way to the lounge. A few others were already there – one of the doctors, another nurse, and a few of the patients who were well enough to help and paid their fees with labor – and they nodded to her as she found an empty space on the couch.
She let the conversation wash over her – it was politics, as it always was this close to an election. “The
pétionistes are dangerous,” Doctor Lamothe was saying. “Foreign aid is what, thirty percent of the budget this year? And they’re letting the Americans tell them how to spend it… the Americans and the northerners.” Few things rankled the Republic more than the fact that the Kingdom had not only been spared the earthquake but was now playing Lady Bountiful to its poorer southern sister.
“Nonsense, Daniel,” Mirlande roused herself to say. “When something like the
goudou-goudou happens, what are we supposed to do – tell the world it shouldn’t help us? We’ve got patients in this clinic who are grateful for that help.”
“No, not at first,” the doctor conceded, “but it’s been a year. The rescue teams were welcome, the emergency repairs were welcome, but now the
pétionistes are becoming addicted. Whatever doesn’t go directly into their pockets goes to their part of town, and our children will have to pay the bills for it.”
“But some of it does come down to us. And without it, we’d have nothing at all.”
“Not if we stood up and took it!” The doctor was standing now himself. “There’s enough to go around if we spent it equally. If we throw the
pétionistes out, we could make sure our money is spent fixing the things that need to be fixed, rather than on luxuries that none of us will ever see. In a family, the children eat before the mother gets new clothes – if we acted like a family, we wouldn’t need the aid workers lording it over us.”
Something about what the doctor said rang a bell in Mirlande’s mind. “Is this about that Earthquake Family? I’ve seen them in the neighborhood lately.”
“That’s exactly it,” answered Doctor Lamothe. “Family. Self-reliance. It’s something we
noiristes have forgotten for too long. The Family will take the party, and if they take the party, they’ll take the election.”
“With the
prince nwa on their side? Calling on him is a dangerous thing.”
“After great loss, we need a great builder.”
“Yes, but he’s a beast, and he isn’t tame.”
*******
“They were shouting the Black Prince’s name,” Amélie whispered as she helped Mirlande fix the generator. She’d always had a talent for fixing things, and after fifteen years of office jobs in Cap-Haïtien, working with her hands felt good.
“Yes. They’re asking him for power.”
“We would never call his name like that in the north. Don’t they know that they’re calling on evil?”
“The Prince was evil when he lived, yes,” Mirlande said. “We haven’t forgotten that. He brought horror on us too. But now that he’s a loa, he’s beyond good and evil. He’s a force. Maybe we need that.”
“He’s a destroyer.”
“What he is, is power without limit. Even nature doesn’t limit him – and after what nature has done to us, some people think that’s a limit we need to overcome. Power can create as well as destroy.”
“Compassion doesn’t limit him either. The law of God doesn’t limit him. The Prince’s power is the kind that gets inside a person’s soul and makes him a monster. I saw it in that politician – he’s as hungry for the power as he is to do good.” She turned the last screw and took the housing off the motor. “Souls are his price.”
“Maybe we can build one of those too,” Mirlande said, but Amélie could see she wasn’t sure.
*******
Later, after the end of their shift, the two women walked home. Amélie was carrying the groceries; she could see her older cousin was exhausted, and she’d promised to do the cooking.
Around the corner, a group of people was working – some of them carrying rubble away, others mixing mortar for the pile of bricks that lay on the lot. There had been a house here before the earthquake, and it seemed there soon would be again.
“That’s him!” said Amélie suddenly, realizing who was directing the group. “It’s the Earthquake Family man, the one from the market.” And it
was him, now in street clothes, overseeing an army of volunteers.
“They’re doing it with party money, is what I hear,” Mirlande said. People like Doctor Lamothe were evidently making sure that not all the
Parti noiriste’s funds were spent greasing the district bosses’ palms. “They have a road crew too. I hope they come soon.”
Amélie nodded, but a noise had caught her attention: the politician and one of the volunteers were arguing over the best way to build a wall. Others joined in, shouting and gesticulating, and finally, the politician yielded.
The funny thing was that he didn’t look like someone who’d just lost an argument. “Beautiful,” he was saying. “We are all Prince-Nwa’s family. We all have his power, and none of us have limits, so if any of you have something to say to me, make sure you say it.” Around him, the work continued.
The women rounded the last corner to their home, and Mirlande, who’d been silent throughout the journey, turned suddenly to her cousin. “Maybe this is the year we’ll tame him,” she said.
“He can’t be tamed,” answered Amélie, but for the first time, she wondered if she might be wrong.
- 2011
