outdoor markets. He felt the gazes of people on his face as he raced past them, too quickly for them to say hello and for him to respond. He could barely breathe as he sped by the cane field toward the burial site.
At first he did not see her, lying on her side, coiled up like a baby on the dew-soaked red earth. Her head was resting on a large stone, half leaning against the farthest tip of her mother’s grave. She was still wearing her pink muslin birthday dress and a quarter of her face now seemed buried in the ground, showing that she had been there for some time, possibly all night long. Bending over, he placed his cheek next to her nose. He thought he felt a warm stream of breath against the cool earth, but it was his not hers. Reaching down, he pulled her into his arms and pressed her against his chest.
“Claire Limye Lanme?” he said, wanting to finish a thought, but not sure which.
Her eyes were wide open but she was not looking at him. She was looking somewhere off in a distance, past him. He swayed his hand back and forth in front of her face, but she did not blink. Her arms and legs were limp the way they were before she woke up from a very deep sleep.
“Claire Limye Lanme?” he said again. He felt her damp dress, and when he saw the blood that ran from the side of her face onto her shoulder, it did not startle him. She had pounded her head against the ground several times, it seemed, before one side of her forehead gave way in the form of a crack that had seeped with blood and further reddened the earth around her.
THE HAREM BY IBI AANU ZOBOI
The women called him Robby. A flash of his gorgeous smile, his fake Rolex watch, and a flick of his shoulder-length dreads would get him a phone number. Only after a few date nights, when he’d join them in bed, would they know his full name: Jean-Robert Dieujuste. But he insisted that they mustn’t ever call him that. To most of Petionville’s young and fabulous, he was Robby, the smoothtalking Haitian sensation whose cafe-au-lait complexion and designer-looking clothes made the women fight each other, as he would oftentimes relay to his childhood friend, coworker, and roommate Antonio, better known as Toni.
“Ah, you get too involved, Robby,” Toni said to his friend one morning when he came home from an all-night rendezvous. Toni was sprawled out on the bed smoking a joint. He picked up a few pieces of Robby’s dirty clothes from the floor and threw them at him. “These women are not looking for love. It should be easy. But no, you are the one going goo-goo-ga-ga for them.”
Robby sucked his teeth, took a pull from his friend’s joint, and dropped himself on his ever-rumpled and unmade bed. “Did you see Caroline last night? Did you see the way she looked in that dress, man?”
“Yes, and you got to take off that dress and take care of some business, right? I don’t understand why you’re always crying
“Well, what do you think is wrong with her?” Robby asked. “She doesn’t ask me to stay like Tanya or Minouche.”
“Maybe it’s because she knows you’re loving two, three other women at the same time.”
“You should talk!”
“Believe me, I know I am a vagabond,” said Toni. “That’s the difference between you and me. I admit it. But you don’t. You want to be in love, but this is about sex. If a woman meets you in a club and gives you her number and brings you home, then she just wants sex and everybody’s happy and you can go home. But you want to stay and have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then marriage and children-with all of them!”
Toni got up, buttoned his shirt, and pulled on a navy blazer. He was headed out to his job at the telephone company, in the same office where Robby worked. Toni clasped his watch, brushed his wavy, close-cropped hair, and splashed some cologne on his face. He took one last look in the mirror between their beds before turning back to Robby. “Going to work today or what?”
“I worked Saturday,” Robby said. “I’m taking two days off.”
“It’s Tuesday, you already took two days off.”
“Sunday we’re closed, so it doesn’t count.”
“What’s the matter, Caroline wore you out?” Toni walked out of their shared bedroom and into the adjacent small kitchen. In an instant he was out the door.
Robby lay down on the bed, exhausted. Caroline had indeed worn him out. He inhaled deeply at the thought of her cocoa skin and long dark hair. Robby would have never approached her if it weren’t for Toni’s encouragement. Caroline was ten years his senior, and she preferred her men young and hip. She had spent her early adult years traveling the world and dating men twice her age. Older suitors now bored her. She’d been promised her own villa in Italy, an apartment in Midtown Manhattan, a beach house in Tobago. But home had summoned her to repair the failing family business and maintain the magnificent chateau that towered over Port-au-Prince. After hours of intense lovemaking, Robby would stand on the second-floor balcony and search for the little two-room house he and Toni shared.
Caroline made love as if she had never made love before, as if she were searching for something buried deep inside her. Robby liked the hair-pulling, the delicate biting, and the throaty calling of his name. But he resented being shooed away afterward as if he were a pest. Once, after an evening together, she even left some money on the table, which made him yell at her.
Tanya showed him a lot more respect, but she was not as passionate as Caroline. She was still young, with a tender body and pliable mind-but courageous nonetheless. It was she who had approached him on the dance floor at a nightclub, turning her back and grinding against his body. After they made love, she would always get him a glass of water, wash herself and comb her hair, and head to her aunt’s makeshift neighborhood restaurant to bring him back a plate of food. She was quiet afterward and let him sleep. She did not badger him with questions. Robby always slept with her warm body pressed against his. With her, he felt comforted and soothed. Not like the hot- headed Minouche.
Minouche would open the door wearing only a tank top and miniskirt and begin cursing him out for not answering his cell phone for three days. He’d promised each of them that he’d never let more than three days go by without seeing them. But he couldn’t promise long conversations on the phone in between those visits.
Whispers of the possibility of marriage were enough to ease Minouche’s suspicions. While he was submissive with Caroline and gentle with Tanya, he was his wildest with Minouche. She would yell and cuss and threaten to leave him and return to her ex-husband, whom she claimed was wooing her again. She’d grab his cell phone and search for other women’s numbers. That’s when Robby would pull her from behind and cup her large breasts in his hand and suck the damp, salty skin of her neck. She’d soften in his arms and cry, and demand that he tell her he loved her. He imagined marriage to Minouche being full of drawn-out arguments, but it would all be worth it for the makeup sex.
Robby turned his face to the warm morning sun beaming from the small window beside his bed. The sounds of the cars and trucks on the busy road outside the house quickly lulled him to sleep. He envisioned the beautiful faces of all three women: Caroline with her long eyelashes, ruby-red lips, perfect white teeth, and dark, distant eyes; Tanya’s smooth brown complexion, close-set eyes, and long, braided hair extensions; Minouche’s dimpled plump cheeks, too-thin eyebrows, and cute button nose.
Robby sighed, rubbing his hands over his crotch while thinking of his night with Caroline. But it was Minouche’s often tense and angry body he longed for. He hadn’t seen her since Friday night and soon she would be calling. For now, he would sleep, resting as if he were in each or all of their arms, with their lips pressed against his ears telling him how much they loved him. But Toni was right, he was the one who most often declared his love. In the end, he could see himself married to all three of them. He loved them all.
Robby awoke from his sleep with a jolt, as if something had yanked him up from the bed. He was sweating; the room was unusually hot. There were sounds of children’s laughter outside the window, letting him know that it was late afternoon and the neighbors’ kids were home from school. He was starving. Unlike Caroline, Tanya would have certainly made sure that he got something to eat the night before. Tanya often told him that she wanted no other woman to feed him. She said this with what seemed like genuine concern and not in the jealous way that Minouche would. She wanted him to eat good meals from either her own kitchen or from her aunt’s restaurant where the
