I thought exposing a few details of my life would inspire them to do the same and slowly we’d parcel out our sorrows, each walking out with fewer than we’d carried in.
WEEK 5
Before my father was arrested, the president of the republic would drive through my town on New Year’s Eve and throw money from the window of his big shiny black car. Sun rays would wrap themselves around the brand- new coins, making them glow like glass. When we heard that the president was coming, we would clean our entire house, dust our cedar table, and my father would stay home from the sea in case the president chose to get out of the car and walk into our house, to offer us something extra, a bag of rice, a pound of beans, a gallon of corn oil, a promise of future entrance to the medical school or the agricultural school in Damien, something that would have bought our loyalty forever, so that twenty, thirty, forty years after he was long dead, we might still be saying, “Things were hard, but we once had a president who gave me a sack of rice, some beans, and a gallon of cooking oil. It was the first and last time anyone in power gave me anything.” As if this sack of rice, this pound of beans, this gallon of cooking oil were the gold, silver, and bronze medals in the poverty Olympics.
WEEK 6
The teacher writes this on the board, turning around to look at our baffled faces. We’ve all grown accustomed to the suffocating heat in the classroom. All of us except her. She wears as few pieces of clothing as possible, yet still sweats so much that she must cover her hands in chalk dust to reduce her prints on the board.
It sounds like a riddle that could take a lifetime to solve. We have too much on our minds to unravel these types of mysteries. M’bwe pwa.
“We’re not God,” Rezia says, lowering her head onto the restaurant table. The bottoms of our glasses have begun to stain the exposed wood, circles touching and overlapping. “Who are we to know how tall a tree should be?”
WEEK 7
Tonight we cook an entire meal together. Mariselle fries the plantains and ends up with a hot-oil burn on the knuckle of her middle finger. Rezia makes the meat, stewed goat. I cook the rice with pigeon peas.
We talk about what brought us here.
Mariselle left because her husband, a painter, had painted an unflattering portrait of the president, which was displayed in a gallery show. He was shot leaving the show.
I was asked to leave the country by my mother because I wouldn’t accept an invitation to sing at the national palace. But I also left because long ago my father had disappeared. He’d had a fish stall at the market. One day, one macoute came to take it over and another one took my father away. When my father returned, he didn’t have a tooth left in his mouth. In one night, they’d turned him into an old, ugly man. The next night he took his boat out to sea and, with a mouth full of blood, vanished forever.
I remember the exact moment I learned about my father’s disappearance. I was lying in bed when I felt the thin cotton sheet covering my body rise. My mother hadn’t brought any light into the room, but I could see her clearly, a splinter of moonlight reflected in the tears falling down her face.
“Your papa’s across the waters, lot bo dlo,” she had whispered. And in my head had sprouted images of my father lost at sea, rowing farther and farther away until he became as small as a leaf bobbing on the crest of the most distant wave. This is when I began to sing. So he could hear me singing his songs from the crest of that wave.
This is Rezia’s story: When she was a girl, her parents couldn’t afford to keep her, so they sent her to live with an aunt who ran a brothel. They lived in three rooms behind the brothel and that’s where Rezia spent most of her time. One night when she was sleeping, a uniformed man walked in. She dug herself into the bed, but it did no good, so she passed out.
“I can always make myself faint when I’m afraid,” Rezia says, fanning the smoke from the pots away from her face. “When I woke up in the morning, my panties were gone. My aunt and I never spoke about it. But on her deathbed she asked for my forgiveness. She said this man had threatened to put her in prison if she didn’t let him have me that night.”
WEEK 8
Mariselle brings in newspapers that we scour for news from home. She reads one report about a group of armed exiles, a New York-based militia, planning an invasion. Another about a radio reporter in Port-au-Prince being arrested and taken to the Casernes Dessalines barracks for “questioning.” Mariselle reads all this to us in a deep, well-paced voice that sounds like it should be on the radio. When she comes across a name she recognizes, she puts the paper down, closes her eyes, and wipes her lipstick off with the back of her hand.
“I went to school with his brother,” she says. “His father and mine were friends.”
WEEK 9
We fail our practice tests, except Rezia, who gets seventy percent, enough to pass.
“It’s not normal,” I complain. “We studied as much as you.”
“Listen to the baby funeral singer,” Mariselle says, wrapping her manicured hands around the neck of her dark green wine bottle. “You have so much time ahead to redo these things, retake these tests, reshape your whole life.”
WEEK 10
We drink too much and stay too long at the restaurant. Mariselle and I have grown used to the idea that we may never get diplomas out of the class.
Mariselle uncorks her second Pinot Noir of the evening. Rezia and I stick to the rum. We like the fiery, bitter taste and the way it makes us foggy right away. I know I’m ruining my voice, but who cares?
The people inside the little paintings are beginning to sway back and forth for the first time. Or is it my head that’s dancing? They walk past the borders and merge with our shadows on the wall.
“Let’s talk about something cheerful,” Rezia says. Her voice is slurred and she sounds sleepy. She’s the most drunk of the three of us, consuming more spirits in celebration for passing yet another practice test that Mariselle and I have failed.
“How does a person become a funeral singer, anyway?” Mariselle asks. She throws her hands across my
