Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti (52 page)

— And there’s good reason for Dumas to fear
us!
she shot back.

— What are you saying then? What should we do? the old man asked.

The woman thought for a moment before a smile lit up her face. She placed her reassuring hand on the back of Libète’s neck, a welcome touch. Let’s not be meek, my friends. Let’s not be mild. Let’s not shrink back from this devil, my friends.
Bat tenèb
. Let’s beat back the darkness, together!

Bat tenèb.

Libète remembered the words as if they were just spoken by that tall, soulful woman on the ferry. She leapt over Davidson on the floor and picked up the flashlight from the corner, testing it by flicking it on and off. She stepped back over Davidson and rushed back out the door into the alley.

— Libète! Stop! Where are you going? he called after her. She looked at him with an intensity that frightened him, saying nothing before running into the dark with the flashlight off and returning to her vantage point at the mouth of the network of alleyways.

The tires still gave off plumes of black, sooty smoke. When she detected a momentary lull in the shooting, she was off. She sprinted across the street and flattened herself against the wall opposite her, sidling along until she reached her dead truck to crouch at its front end, still set diagonally against the wall with which it had collided. The gunfire between both sides had slowed to a trickle, the guns continuing to fire out of reluctant obligation.

Neither side knew what to do. No one was willing to commit suicide by trying to advance against the other. But both knew this had to end.

She pulled herself up and over the hood of the truck, making her visible and vulnerable. She straightened against the wall once more, her body shaking with greater tremors with each shuffle forward. A corpse, one that had made her swerve the truck and nearly collide with the wall, was not far, only about ten feet. She wondered if her fate would soon match his own.

She continued toward the end of the line of homes, a mere twenty feet from where the armored vehicles were trapped and forty feet from the barricade.

With her attention fixed on the massive white vehicles, she missed a gap in the ground and nearly fell, rolling her ankle. She cursed aloud and then clasped her hand over her mouth, wondering if her outburst would mean her end.

— Help me, came a voice. Girl, help me, please.

She leaped in surprise. The corpse, it turned out, was not dead. She looked more closely at him, her heart going out to the poor man. His face was obscured by blood, maybe from a wound to the head.

She shushed him. You’ll get me killed!

— Please, he pleaded again, reaching for her with a lifted arm. A gold ring on his hand caught the light. Her eyes stretched wide in horror.

Dear God!
That’s not just anyone! That’s Touss!

The ferry pulls in close to the pier and the sky is near black. Men—intimidating men, tall men—can be seen looming, ready to receive them.

The passengers have divided into two groups.

On the bottom deck are those who want nothing to do with the little girl.

On the top, outnumbering those on the bottom, are those preparing to make a stand.

The large ship bumps into the pier, and nervous workers secure the ship’s lines. Dumas’ men—four of them, conspicuous because they wear the same aviator sunglasses despite the dark—close in on the gangplank as those on the lower deck begin filing off. The normal chatter and activity of disembarking is absent, the air laced with dread.

Libète stands in the middle of a large circle of protectors, unable to see what is happening. Suddenly, ululations cut through the air, a clarion call. The group lurches, moving as a united whole before turning into a single file line to make its way down the stairs and off the ship.

Percussion starts. Someone is clanging metal against the railing and sides of the ship, laying down a beat by which all in the group begin to shuffle. Others clap their hands as they have no pots and pans to join in. A voice breaks out, the middle-aged woman standing at the front of the line, with words to a song that all of them know well.

The familiar verses to
La Dessalinienne,
the national anthem, begin springing up.

For our country,

For our forefathers,

United let us march.

Let there be no traitors in our ranks!

Let us be masters of our soil.

United let us march,

For our country,

For our forefathers.

Women stood at the forefront of the group, the first to reach the lower deck and move toward the gangplank. The men with sunglasses were tense, and Libète could see at least one man reaching for what was probably a gun. She breathed deeply, joining in the song faintly, anything to quell the fear grasping at her throat as it tried to silence her voice:

For our forebears,

For our country

Oh God of the valiant!

Take our rights and our life

Under your infinite protection,

Oh God of the valiant!

For our forebears

For our country.

The long line halted near the end of the gangplank, the signal to stop passing down its members like falling dominoes. The singing and dancing ceased. Libète stood in the middle of the line. The ringleader, her friend, was mere feet away from Dumas’ lieutenant, a sneer on his face. Libète shifted, trying to peer around the man in front of her to see them staring the other down, him through his menacing black glasses.

— Give us the girl, he muttered, just loud enough for Libète to hear.

Rather than speak, she sang again, a single voice lashing out against the darkness. The others in line soon joined her, the words pulsing with strength:

For the flag

For our country

To die is a fine thing!

Our past cries out to us:

Have a strong soul!

To die is a fine thing,

For the flag,

For our country.

The man in front of Libète and one other behind hoisted her up so that grabbing her would not be so easy. Libète noticed a crowd of those already disembarked had amassed at the far end of the pier to watch what would unfold. Four of the women at the front remained standing face-to-face with their foes, unflinching. They continued singing, shaming the men with each new line and verse.

What happened next was unthinkable.

The singing continued, but the fear that had permeated every single moment up till now had dissipated. New songs started and the long line, now entirely off the vessel, broke into celebration on the pier. Dancing and jubilation took over, the two men bobbing up and down with Libète on their shoulders like the little girl was a reigning champion. Others at the end of the pier began to stream down to meet the crowd as they danced together upon injustice.

All knew the situation could change in an instant. A gun could be drawn, a punch thrown and the joy would leave just as it had come. There were no illusions of this. But the people were reminded of a powerful truth: though the darkness could crash in again any second, they should shine their lights as brightly as they could, while they could.

The two men holding Libète up did not revel in the dancing for long. As the singing shifted to other songs and new instruments materialized out of nowhere, they took Libète quickly to the road where mototaxis and a large yellow bus waited for the late passengers.

— Take this girl to Cabaret as quickly as you can, one of her protectors said to a confused moto driver. Where are you going after that? the man asked Libète.

— Home. To Cité Soleil. The man nodded, reaching into his pockets to remove some money.

— No, Libète said. She popped open her metal jar and removed several notes. All three men and the nearby drivers looked with astonishment at the stash of money. She placed the notes in the driver’s hand, wary of the jealous stares of others.

— Back off everyone! said her principal protector. Nobody touch her or her things or you’ll have a fight on your hands!

The driver mounted his bike and tapped the seat behind him. Libète hopped on, mouthed a quiet thank you through glad and hopeful tears before speeding off into the night, back toward Twa Bebe, back to all she thought she had left behind. She listened to the sounds of light beating back dark, locking them tight within her memory to draw on for all the hard things she knew lay ahead.

Libète did not know what to do.

Touss, dying before her, moaned again, and she jumped. Quiet! she hissed.

She wanted to shout at him, to curse him for all the misery he had brought her, for the ways he had betrayed and terrorized and manipulated. The pity she had felt moments before for a man whose life was fading had evaporated.

— I’m dying, he sobbed. I’m dying.

Gunfire on both sides began to pick up at the sound of his cries, and she flung herself flat against the wall again. If she didn’t act soon, others—those guilty and innocent—would also die.

She thought of San Figi, the life seeping out of her before Libète’s horrified eyes all those years before. She had been paralyzed then, unsure how to comfort the old woman in her distress. She knew now what to do.

Libète dropped her flashlight and began to stretch out her hand toward him, but pulled back. Her heart lurched at the thought of even touching him, as if his baseness would spread to her like a disease. She sighed and breathed three times, bit her lip, and reached out to take his hand.

— Toussaint Laguerre, it is me, Libète Limyè, she whispered, using her chosen father’s name. Do you recognize me?

He was shocked and coughed, sputtering blood as he tried to nod.
You have harmed me and others
, she wished she could explain aloud.
And I cannot forgive you for these things. But you do not deserve to die like this, alone and terrified. I pray for your soul, Toussaint, I really do.

She took his wrist with her other hand, feeling his pulse as she had learned to do at the hospital.
Slower and slower
. Everything within her told her to run back to the wall, to escape, to flee this danger, but she was beyond that now. She felt Touss’ pulse slip, the life disappearing from his body, his soul drifting away.

She slunk back to her flashlight, trying to summon the courage of others: her anonymous friend, that woman who led the march off the ferry; the Nurse whose name she had never learned; the vendor on the dock who had stood up and shamed the powerful when no one else would. Though she had no words for it, she knew the logic of violence had to be subverted, the cycle had to be interrupted. There was only one way to do that.

My life has been short, Lord.

You’ve hurt me very much and I am afraid to die.

But guide me now, whatever may happen, and use this for good.

To save my cousin, my friends, my home
.