under my eyes. The leaves of the cane felt like a thousand crazy red ants attacking my exposed arms, legs, and face, drawing me into a strange state of alertness.
Believing that I could be in a cane plantation wasn’t hard. Leogane, one of the remaining towns of the Haitian sugarcane empire created by France, was no more than seven or eight kilometers from Lakou 22. I could have sleepwalked to Leogane. But what followed disturbed the expected order of things. Before I was discovered that morning at the edge of the sea by Madame Andre, hearing her piercing yell of “Anmwe, vin pote l sekou,” Please help her, I thought myself dead and on the journey to Ginen, through this long underwater passage that Aunt Francine said all Haitians go to when they die. And the idea of dying soothed me. I would never have to speak overtly and with fear of these remembrances, never have to tell another soul of my encounters with Maloulou or be called the girl in Lakou 22 who went mad and spoke nonsense. And Uncle Solon would never touch me again.
When Madame Andre and Djo picked up my shivering, wet, and seaweed-entangled body from the shore, sensation in my limbs returned before my voice. But it took more than four months, plus the violent death of Uncle Solon after leaving our shack and the side of my convalescent bed one night, to confirm for Mother that I was not crazy. That got her to begin untying my arms and legs from the bed, no longer fearing that I would take off running. I was even allowed to read my old school books after I recited the daily Bible verses with her. Recording my experiences in some unused pages of some old notebook came to me only after Mother had me repeating this verse with the Bible open on my head.
These words started a memory flood and I could clearly see the cane field and the old woman who had appeared from nowhere in front of me; the steps and clinking of the chain made her unmistakable. There stood Maloulou, tall as a coconut tree, eyes bright like the stars above, with a metal collar connected to a chain that ran all the way to one of her feet. Without giving me time to catch my breath, take in the realization that I was nose- to-nose with her, or dig into the blindness-inducing mixture to execute the plan that I had rehearsed hundreds of times in my head, she grabbed my left arm and asked, looking down at me, in a voice as big as she was, “Why did you follow me?”
I remember stammering the words, “I need… help…” while remaining mesmerized by finally being in the presence of the one who has inhabited Lakou 22 before it was Lakou 22; the one whom the people have named, accepted as just another neighbor, feared, and blamed for undoing their lives and taking away their children.
“Children should not be out at this time of night. And those who don’t listen pay for their stubbornness,” she said in a hoarse, ancient voice that sounded like the scolding of a hundred worried grandmothers.
Since I had gotten a bit light-headed from the heavy and pungent smell of asafetida that enveloped the air around her, I mumbled some inaudible words.
“You can follow me, but you can’t speak,” she said, peering down at me, her head wrapped in a tiyon, then beginning to move away.
“Uncle Solon,” I remember stuttering, determined to tell Maloulou why I had followed her. “You have to liberate Mother and me from Uncle Solon.” Stunned and still immobilized by fear, I managed to add in a feeble voice, “Telling Mother how he touches my bouboun when her eyes are turned away would have caused so much… more pain…”
Maloulou stopped and turned again to look at me, her face softly lit by the half-moon overhead, revealing tender and clear eyes that seemed to see right into the profoundest corner of my soul, and let out a big sigh.
From one of the many pockets in her long dress, she drew something out and sprinkled it atop my head and on my face, saying, “He will never touch you again.”
I continued crying as Maloulou patted my head with her heavy tree branch-like hands to calm me down. Her powdery potions on my face and her words must have had an impact. I could hear, but was no longer able to respond to her as she lunged into a story about a horse and life.
“Just remember, my child, you die a slave if you let this horse guide you. You must command the horse, through the mountains of life and the valleys of death. Just be sure to always do things that will put you on the good side of life,” she said. “Sa n fe se li n we, we always reap what we sow, my child. I cannot leave you here now, can I?” She seemed to be concerned by my presence. Tightening her calloused left hand on my arm, she ploughed through the cane; the machete in her right hand pushing the blistery leaves away. At the end of the field, there was a small assembly waiting; even the mastiffs and bloodhounds were there, tranquil. Standing a short distance from the crowd, she asked twice, “Sa ki la?” What’s there? And an echo of voices responded, “Bwa n ap kloure.” We are nailing wood.
“Good. I am the woman of the mountain with no name who Makandal sent,” Maloulou said, still holding on to me. The name Makandal reverberated in a dizzying swirl in my head.
“Francois Makandal: man, myth, but surely rebellious slave, who was burned at the stake, just like Jeanne D’Arc,” he had said in quick French to show the ease with which he spoke the language. “Makandal’s followers helped in killing some six thousand slave-owners in his six years of rebellion,” he added in his showy style. “Makandal freed himself and rose to the heavens, perhaps still roaming the Haitian skies and forests,” he laughed, “having baffled them and even us. However, myth is sacred, impermeable even. But remember, a myth is just a myth, a figment of our imagination. See you all tomorrow,” he ended, dismissing the class.
In my mind that night, while repeating the short description of Makandal over and over in the same way that I repeated the Bible verse, trying to make it all stick in my head, I had imagined the tall, dark, and muscular Makandal in his ascension, the same way I effortlessly believed that Christ, Elijah, and the Virgin Mary went up to the skies, in flesh and blood.
That’s when I finally understood Maloulou’s question, and the answer that came back was some sort of password. It became clear that she had journeyed with me into a world and time long forgotten, misunderstood, and lost within the flimsy confines of yellowed history books.
“We have been expecting you,” they cried almost in unison, bringing me back to the actual moment, as they proceeded to tell Maloulou who they were.
In the order the island of Quisqueya had received them, they approached one after the other. The Taino priestess, her black hair adorned with feathers of all colors, her nagua dancing along with her copper hips in the glittering moonlight, led the procession. “I will sell them good kenep wine that will bring on the longest sleep,” she said. Then there was the Creole mulatto with eyes that pulled like a magnet, promising to place the poison in her umbilical crevasse and swearing to make the rounds of all the beds of all planters along La Ravine. And they continued to come forth: the Hausas with their bags of deadly herbs and the three Katangas who embraced Maloulou, saying, “Sister, se an mwen, we too saw him ascending, growing those wings that took him up atop the cloud of smoke.” A whole parade that perhaps I was seeing so clearly because like Roland Desir I was now considered mad, a whole parade of my history and theirs. I saw and heard them all, my tongue weighing a ton and my lips glued so that even if I had wanted to talk, I would not have been able to. What would I say? It was all clearly laid out under my eyes, the told and untold history lessons given by all the Mr. Labordes. In that very instant, if I could have spoken, perhaps I would have only told of this strange feeling of peace while holding on to Maloulou’s skirt. Or I would have confessed that my fears of never seeing Lakou 22 and its memories of pain had vanished.
They had all quieted down when Maloulou finally let go of my wrist and started distributing potions and powders from deep in the many hidden pockets of her large dress: this to tie tongues; that for rendering you invisible under the eyes of the enemy; here to sweeten the last cup of water and make them sleep forever; and this to scramble memories. And a final one to remove any power that anyone has to ever hurt you again.
“My children, take no chances and be prepared to risk it all,” Maloulou warned. “I must now go back to the mountain and Makandal. But I will return each night for news and supplies until victory rolls from mountain to mountain.” Her words, much like her eternal journey, kept replaying in my head, blocking everything else, and momentarily making Lakou 22 and the grunting Uncle Solon and his eager hands between my legs feel like a distant drum: faint and far.
