King of Swords

Back then they'd all lived in a two-bedroom house overlooking the Carrefour slum in Port-au-Prince. They hadn't been rich but they hadn't been as badly off as their near neighbours who never had enough to eat and walked around in rags. Carmine's mother was a mambo, a voodoo priestess: she cast spells, read fortunes, talked to the spirits of the dead and practised abortion. She had quite a clientele, ranging from the poor-as-dirt country folk who walked ten days to see her, to senior government ministers and society women who'd come to the house in chauffeur-driven cars.

She was rumoured to have briefly cured one of Papa Doc's daughters of lesbianism and another of myopia. Carmine had been her hound — her assistant — as soon as he could walk. He'd helped her pick the herbs and prepare the animals she used for her potions, sat in the same room when she told people their fates with tarot cards, and, when he was old enough to know his way around town, he'd delivered messages from his mother's lips to the ears of her clients.

His mother didn't like talking about his dad. Depending on what kind of mood she was in, she would head off the subject when she sensed it coming up and turn the

6c; conversation in another direction, or she'd clam up altogether and shake her head threateningly, or else she'd get out and out aggressive. The closest she ever came to talking about his dad was when she'd tell him that he looked)ust like him, and that he was just like him, only even more of a loser. And she only ever said that when she got what he had dubbed the ShitFits — terrifyingly intense rages she flew into once in a while.

Carmine's memories of his dad were few but mostly very fond. He remembered him as tall and handsome, always in a black suit and fedora, despite the heat. He was around the house a lot more than his mom: he used to sit outside smoking cigarettes — Comme II Faut, the Haitian brand — and either reading the Bible or a tattered brochure about holidays to America. He talked about how one day they'd go there together, just the two of them, father and son; maybe they'd even stay for good, not come back ever. He made Carmine promise not to tell his mom, just like he made Carmine promise to keep another secret from her too.

His mom would often travel to see her most important clients. She'd be gone for days, even weeks. When that happened all kinds of women would come by the house to see his father, mostly at night, but once in a while in the day too. They always woke Carmine up with the noise they made in the bedroom. He never complained. In fact it made him laugh. He remembered there being many different women at first, then it became just the one, his favourite. She was called Lucita. She was light brown and green eyed like his daddy, with the same soft curly hair too, only hers was longer and fell past her shoulders when she let it down. Her and his daddy spoke in Spanish as opposed to the Kreyol he usually spoke to everyone else. She always brought Carmine candy, stroked his face and asked him how he was doing.

She smelled great too, like marshmallows and French soap.

She was his first love.

7° The only memory he had of his mother and dad together was when they fought over him. She'd been the disciplinarian in the house, the one who made the rules and beat him for disobeying. She had a thin stick with flayed ends and dried buds growing out of the side. If he disobeyed her or talked back she'd beat him with it across the knuckles, which hurt like a bitch, or across the ass and the backs of his legs. At least that was the idea, but whenever she got it in her mind to beat him, a ShitFit wasn't far behind and when it overwhelmed her she'd switch from the stick to her fists and feet. One day she'd started beating him because he'd forgotten to run an errand. For the first time ever his dad intervened. He came into the room, wrapped his arms around her, picked her up and carried her, kicking and screaming, into the bedroom. Carmine heard them shouting — well, more his mother — for what seemed like for ever.

She'd screamed at his dad that she hated him, that Carmine was just like him, that he could get out of her house and take his son with him. So his dad had done just that. The two of them had walked out of the house and gone into Port-au-Prince. There his dad took him to Lucita's house.

He didn't know how long he stayed there — it seemed a long time, maybe a month — but he was happier than he'd ever been at home with his mother. In fact, looking back, it was the happiest time of his life. His father and Lucita took him out to the beach, to the Dominican Republic, to carnival.

He started playing with other kids his own age which his mother had forbidden him from doing. He never got beaten.

And Lucita used to sing him to sleep some nights, in words he couldn't understand but loved anyway.