'You see,' Tante Atie shrugged, 'it was never for me.' She slipped the card in the pocket of my dress. 'When you get there, you give that to her.'
'She will not be able to see the words,' I said.
'She will see them fine and if she cannot see them, you read them to her like you just did for me and from now on, her name is Manman.
Chabin, the lottery agent, peeked his head through the open door, waving his record book at us.
'We do not want to play today,' Tante Atie said.
'I am here to pay you,' Chabin said. 'Don't you follow the results? Your number, it came out. You are a winner.'
Tante Atie looked very happy.
'How much did I win?' she asked.
'Ten gourdes,' he said.
He counted out the money and handed it to her.
'You see,' Tante Atie said, clutching her money. 'Your mother, she brings me luck.'
The Peugeot taxi came for us while we were still at the table. I left Tante Atie's kitchen, my breakfast uneaten and the dishes undone.
The drizzle had stopped. The neighbors were watching as the driver carried my one suitcase to the car.
The Augustins came over to say good-bye. Madame Augustin slipped a crisp pink handkerchief in my hand as she kissed me four times-twice on each cheek.
'If you study hard, you will have no trouble with your English,' Monsieur Augustin said as he firmly shook my hand.
I held Tante Atie's hand as we climbed into the back seat. Our faces were dry, our heads up. We were like sunflowers, staring directly at the sun.
Before pulling away, the driver turned his head and complimented us on our very clean yard.
'My child, she cleans it,' Tante Atie said.
The car scattered the neighbors and the factory workers, as they waved a group farewell. Maybe if I had a really good friend my eyes would have clung to hers as we were driven away. A red dust rose between me and the only life that I had ever known. There were no children playing, no leaves flying about. No daffodils.
Chapter 5
The sun crawled across our faces as the car sped into Port-au-Prince. I had never been to the city before. Colorful boutiques with neon signs lined the street. Vans covered with pictures of flowers and horses with wings scurried up and down and made sudden stops in the middle of the boulevards.
Tante Atie gasped each time we went by a large department store or a towering hotel. She shouted the names of places that she had visited in years past.
When they were teenagers, she and my mother would save their pennies all year long so they could come to the city on Christmas Eve. They would tell my grandmother that they were traveling with one of the old peddlers, but that was never their plan. They would take a tap tap van in the afternoon so as to arrive in Port-au-Prince just as the sun was setting, and the Christmas lights were beginning to glow. They stood outside the stores in their Sunday dresses to listen to the sounds of the toy police cars and talking dolls chattering over the festive music. They went to Mass at the Gothic cathedral, then spent the rest of the night sitting by the fountains and gazing at the Nativity scenes on the Champs-de-Mars. They bought ice cream cones and fireworks, while young tourists offered them cigarettes for the privilege of taking their pictures. They pretended to be students at one of the gentry's universities and even went so far as describing the plush homes they said they lived in. The white tourists flirted with them and held their hands. They laughed at silly jokes, letting their voices rise and fall like city girls. Later, they made rendezvous for the next night, which of course they never kept. Then before dawn, they took a van back home and slipped into bed before my grandmother woke up.
I looked outside and saw the bare hills that bordered the national highway.
'We are almost there,' the driver said as he slowed down, almost to a stop.
We waited for a while for the car to move.
'Is there some trouble?' asked Tante Atie.
'There is always some trouble here,' the driver said. 'They are changing the name of the airport from Francois Duvalier to Mais Gate, like it was before Francois Duvalier was president.'
Tante Atie's body tensed up.
'Did they have to do it today?' Tante Atie asked. 'She will be delayed. We cannot miss our appointment.'
'I will do what I can,' the driver said, 'but some things are beyond our control.'
I moved closer to the window to get a better look. Clouds of sooty smoke were rising to the sky from a place not too far ahead.
'I think there is a fire,' the driver said…
Tante Atie pushed her head forward and tried to see.
'Maybe the world, it is ending,' she said.
We began to move slowly in a long line of cars. Dark green army vans passed through narrow spaces between cars. The driver followed the slow-paced line. Soon we were at the airport gate.
We stopped in front of the main entrance. The smoke had been coming from across the street. Army trucks surrounded a car in flames. A group of students were standing on top of a hill, throwing rocks at the burning car. They scurried to avoid the tear gas and the round of bullets that the soldiers shot back at them.
Some of the students fell and rolled down the hill. They screamed at the soldiers that they were once again betraying the people. One girl rushed down the hill and grabbed one of the soldiers by the arm. He raised his pistol and pounded it on top of her head. She fell to the ground, her face covered with her own blood.
Tante Atie grabbed my shoulder and shoved me quickly inside the airport gate.
'Do you see what you are leaving?' she said.
'I know I am leaving you.'
The airport lobby was very crowded. We tried to keep up with the driver as he ran past the vendors and travelers, dragging my suitcase behind him.
As we waited on the New York boarding line, Tante Atie and I looked up at the paintings looming over us from the ceiling. There were pictures of men and women pulling carts and selling rice and beans to make some money.
A woman shouted 'Madame,' drawing us out of the visions above us. She looked breathless, as though she had been searching for us for a long time.
'You are Sophie Caco?' she asked, speaking directly to me.
I nodded.
Tante Atie looked at her lean body and her neat navy uniform and hesitated before shaking her hand.
'I will take good care of her,' she said to Tante Atie in Creole. She immediately took my hand. 'Her mother is going to meet her in New York. I spoke to her this morning. Everything is arranged. We cannot waste time.'
Tante Atie's lips quivered.
'We have to go now,' the lady said. 'You were very tardy.'
'We were not at fault,' Tante Atie tried to explain.
'It does not matter now,' the lady said. 'We must go.'
Tante Atie bent down and pressed her cheek against mine.
'Say hello to your manman for me,' she said. 'You must not concern yourself about me.'
The driver tapped Tante Atie's shoulder.
'There could be some more chaos,' he said. 'I want to go before things become very bad.'
'Don't you worry yourself about me,' Tante Atie said. 'I am not going to be lonely. I will be with your grandmother. Just you always remember how much your Tante Atie loves and cherishes you.'
