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Authors: Edwidge Danticat
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In some ways it is a miracle, like being loved, or watching a parrot—such a small animal—repeat words that have just crossed human lips.
“I’d like to fly a kite,” Sebastien answers in his sleep when I ask what he would like to do.
“What manner of kite?”
“A piece of clear paper over a bamboo spine, a girl’s red satin ribbon for the tail.”
“If I offer you my red satin ribbon?”
He turns over and buries his head in the pillow.
If I offer him my red satin ribbon?
No retort.
14
Between the stream and Don Carlos’ mill were the houses of those Sebastien called the non-vwayajè Haitians, the ones who were better off than the cane cutters but not as wealthy as Don Gilbert and Doña Sabine and their friends, the rich Haitians.
The stable non-vwayajè Haitians lived in houses made of wood or cement. They had colorful galleries, zinc roofs, spacious gardens, cactus fences with green vines crawling between the cactus stems. Their yards were full of fruit trees—mangos and avocados especially—for shade, nourishment, and decoration. They were people whose families had been in Alegría for generations: landowners, farmers, metalworkers, stonemasons, dressmakers, shoemakers, a married schoolteaching couple and one Haitian priest, Father Romain. Some of them had Dominican spouses. Many had been born in Alegría. We regarded them all as people who had their destinies in hand.
That morning I thought of Sebastien’s decision to leave the cane fields after the harvest as I greeted those of them who were already outside, some sitting in cane back chairs while they had their morning meal of bread and coffee, corn mush, and mangú, others marching around their property like sentinels before rushing out to their day’s work. I saw Unèl, a dwarfish stonemason, and called out to him. He waved back with a wide toothy smile. Unèl had once rebuilt the workers’ latrines in Señora Valencia’s yard along with a group of friends he called his brigade.
Parents were walking their children to the one-room school started by Father Romain and a Dominican priest, Father Vargas. The flat cinder-block building was already too crowded, and the parents who were taking their young ones there complained as they did every morning about the limitations on their children’s education.
“I pushed my son out of my body here, in this country,” one woman said in a mix of Alegrían Kreyol and Spanish, the tangled language of those who always stuttered as they spoke, caught as they were on the narrow ridge between two nearly native tongues. “My mother too pushed me out of her body here. Not me, not my son, not one of us has ever seen the other side of the border. Still they won’t put our birth papers in our palms so my son can have knowledge placed into his head by a proper educator in a proper school.”
“To them we are always foreigners, even if our granmèmès’ granmèmès were born in this country,” a man responded in Kreyol, which we most often spoke—instead of Spanish—among ourselves. “This makes it easier for them to push us out when they want to.”
“You heard the rumors?” another woman asked, her perfect Kreyol embellished by elaborate gestures of her long fingers. “They say anyone not in one of those Yanki cane mills will be sent back to Haiti.”
“How can the Yanki cane mills save anyone?” the Dominican-born woman with the Dominican-born son replied. “Me, I have no paper in my palms to say where I belong. My son, this one who was born here in this land, has no papers in his palms to say where he belongs. Those who work in the cane mills, the mill owners keep their papers, so they have this as a rope around their necks. Papers are everything. You have no papers in your hands, they do with you what they want.”
I thought of my own situation. I had no papers to show that I belonged either here or in Haiti where I was born. The children who were being taken to school looked troubled as
“I’d like to fly a kite,” Sebastien answers in his sleep when I ask what he would like to do.
“What manner of kite?”
“A piece of clear paper over a bamboo spine, a girl’s red satin ribbon for the tail.”
“If I offer you my red satin ribbon?”
He turns over and buries his head in the pillow.
If I offer him my red satin ribbon?
No retort.
14
Between the stream and Don Carlos’ mill were the houses of those Sebastien called the non-vwayajè Haitians, the ones who were better off than the cane cutters but not as wealthy as Don Gilbert and Doña Sabine and their friends, the rich Haitians.
The stable non-vwayajè Haitians lived in houses made of wood or cement. They had colorful galleries, zinc roofs, spacious gardens, cactus fences with green vines crawling between the cactus stems. Their yards were full of fruit trees—mangos and avocados especially—for shade, nourishment, and decoration. They were people whose families had been in Alegría for generations: landowners, farmers, metalworkers, stonemasons, dressmakers, shoemakers, a married schoolteaching couple and one Haitian priest, Father Romain. Some of them had Dominican spouses. Many had been born in Alegría. We regarded them all as people who had their destinies in hand.
That morning I thought of Sebastien’s decision to leave the cane fields after the harvest as I greeted those of them who were already outside, some sitting in cane back chairs while they had their morning meal of bread and coffee, corn mush, and mangú, others marching around their property like sentinels before rushing out to their day’s work. I saw Unèl, a dwarfish stonemason, and called out to him. He waved back with a wide toothy smile. Unèl had once rebuilt the workers’ latrines in Señora Valencia’s yard along with a group of friends he called his brigade.
Parents were walking their children to the one-room school started by Father Romain and a Dominican priest, Father Vargas. The flat cinder-block building was already too crowded, and the parents who were taking their young ones there complained as they did every morning about the limitations on their children’s education.
“I pushed my son out of my body here, in this country,” one woman said in a mix of Alegrían Kreyol and Spanish, the tangled language of those who always stuttered as they spoke, caught as they were on the narrow ridge between two nearly native tongues. “My mother too pushed me out of her body here. Not me, not my son, not one of us has ever seen the other side of the border. Still they won’t put our birth papers in our palms so my son can have knowledge placed into his head by a proper educator in a proper school.”
“To them we are always foreigners, even if our granmèmès’ granmèmès were born in this country,” a man responded in Kreyol, which we most often spoke—instead of Spanish—among ourselves. “This makes it easier for them to push us out when they want to.”
“You heard the rumors?” another woman asked, her perfect Kreyol embellished by elaborate gestures of her long fingers. “They say anyone not in one of those Yanki cane mills will be sent back to Haiti.”
“How can the Yanki cane mills save anyone?” the Dominican-born woman with the Dominican-born son replied. “Me, I have no paper in my palms to say where I belong. My son, this one who was born here in this land, has no papers in his palms to say where he belongs. Those who work in the cane mills, the mill owners keep their papers, so they have this as a rope around their necks. Papers are everything. You have no papers in your hands, they do with you what they want.”
I thought of my own situation. I had no papers to show that I belonged either here or in Haiti where I was born. The children who were being taken to school looked troubled as
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