Haiti Noir

She backed away from the fish, splitting the school in half as she paddled toward the boat. And for a moment she reminded him of Lasirèn, the long-haired, long-bodied brown goddess of the sea. With an angelic face like a bronzed Lady of Charity, Lasirèn’s vision was, it was believed, the last thing most fishermen saw before they died at sea, her arms the first thing they slipped into, even before their bodies hit the water. In his dinghy, like many others, he had a mirror and comb, a bugle and conch shell, which comprised a small shrine to attract Lasirèn’s protection.

When his wife reached the boat, he reached over and offered her his hand and she took it and climbed back in, even as the silver fish vanished, returning the sea surface to a charcoal gray.

Wiping the saltwater from her dripping face with her fingers, she whispered, “Limyè Lanmè. Limyè Lanmè.” Sea light. Then she cleared her throat and in a louder voice added, “Claire like me. Limyè Lanmè. Limyè Lanmè.” Claire of the sea light.

“You will not change her name,” Gaspard heard himself tell the fabric vendor.

The fabric vendor shook her head no.

“You will not let her ride moto taxis.”

“Non.” Both the woman’s hands immediately rose to her chest, as though she had been stabbed there. “I would never do that again.”

Even after all these years of wooing the fabric vendor for his daughter, he never expected it to actually happen so fast. But there was no turning back. From now on his Claire would be the fabric vendor’s daughter.

“Before you leave the country, there are papers,” the woman was saying.

Gaspard would later try to figure out where Claire got the courage to raise her skinny arms at that moment. He had underestimated her attachment to her few belongings and had assumed that she wouldn’t want them, but she did, and once her raised hand was acknowledged with a nod from both him and the fabric vendor, she pointed to their home and whispered, “Bagay yo,” the things. Not her things, but the things, as though nothing in the world was truly hers.

Gaspard understood immediately, but it took the fabric vendor some time to decipher the gesture.

I hope this woman comes to know my daughter’s ways quickly, Gaspard thought, as he watched the girl slowly walk, more like an upward crawl, toward the house. Claire weaved in and out of the groups of other children on the beach, ignoring their calls to play as she moved by, her long arms frozen at her side. Gaspard saw her reach the wobbly door of the shack before she walked inside.

She did not have that many things, Gaspard thought, only two bright green jumpers and two white blouses for school, the birthday dress she was wearing, her night dress which was really an adult T-shirt, her notebook and reading primer, and the foam mattress and patchwork blanket on which she slept. Maybe he should go and help her with them. She wouldn’t be able to carry everything by herself. Certainly not all the way to the fabric vendor’s house. He would have to accompany them. It would be the right thing to do. Maybe the woman wouldn’t even want those things in her house. Maryse. The fabric vendor’s name was Maryse. Now he could think it again. Now he could even say it. He could at least call her Madame Maryse. His daughter was now Madame Maryse’s daughter.

Madame Maryse was fidgeting a bit, shifting the weight of her round frame from one fuzzy red-covered foot to another. She looked at some of the townspeople clustered on the beach, then turned her gaze back to the door where the girl had entered the shack, then glanced back toward the water where many of her neighbors were sitting by the dimming bonfire with the fisherman’s widow who was still sobbing and rocking her face in her hands.

Gaspard followed Madame Maryse’s gaze and remembered how during the first three years of his daughter’s life, he used to dream of his girl, a little baby lying in his arms at night. Then in the morning, while he was on the water, he would imagine seeing her baby face bobbing in and out of the gentle wake of his fishing boat. He would instantly fear that she had joined her mother in death and would anxiously wait for the news of it to make its way to him, but it never did. She remained as alive as he was, and he was even more afraid of the possibility of seeing her in the flesh, as fearful as he was that she might have the face she had inherited, her mother’s. He never dreamed of his wife, though. That part of it, something in him kept locked away out of sadness and guilt. He had been absent when his wife had died and his child was born. He had been hoping to get one last series of catches before his daughter came. He had been at sea.