A few weeks later, a letter arrived at the house in Bel Air announcing that we had an appointment at the American consulate in a few days.
At the center of so many families’ lives, the focus of so many thoughts and prayers, le consul, in the flesh, was just a very tanned, nearly bronzed white man with what seemed like bottle green eyes. Was he the consul himself or just one of the many employees that formed the pastiche of that identity? I didn’t know then and don’t know now. However, the man we appeared before that day was wearing a thin white shirt with no undershirt. His fingernails were brownish red, with what looked like terra-cotta underneath.
As I sat with my brother and uncle, separated from the green-eyed man by a polished wooden desk, he looked through our papers, a thick file accumulated over the last five years, the blood tests to prove my father’s paternity, the TB diagnosis and treatments, even the X-rays of our lungs, both before and after treatment, and later I would learn, character references from my parents’ friends, employers and pastor, my parents’ pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, a summary version of who they had to be in order to be allowed to live in the same country as all their children.
“Ta maman, ton papa te manquent?” Do you miss your mother and father? The man leaned across the desk to ask me, then my brother.
Hanging on the wall behind him was a large American flag, the stars literally bursting from the corner square, their spiky edges merging into the wall. Sensing that it was the right thing to do, we both nodded, as if bowing to the flag that our grandfather had once fought against, that our mother and father had now embraced for nearly ten years, that we were about to make our own. As my head bobbed up and down, I felt my old life quickly slipping away. I was surrendering myself, not just to a country and a flag, but to a family I’d never really been part of.
“I’m going to make you very happy.” The man picked up a stamp and dangled it in the air in front of us before lowering it on the top sheet in each of our files.
“You’re both approved,” he said in what must have been official singsong. “You’re now free to be with your parents. For better or for worse.”
Pour le meilleur et pour le pire, he’d said. Why? I wondered if he knew something we didn’t. Besides, what could be worse than waiting most of our lives to spend five minutes with a person who would say something like that?
That evening, we returned to the call center to share the news with my parents.
My uncle furiously scribbled things down, detailing tasks that needed to be performed before we could leave.
“We have to buy the plane tickets,” I said, deciphering his words.
“Tell your uncle to buy them. I’ll send him the money.” My father spoke louder than he needed to, his voice energetic, animated.
“Are you happy?” my father asked me toward the end of the conversation.
I pretended not to hear.
“Here’s Bob,” I said.
My brother too came to life on the phone with my parents. The three of them were already chatting like old friends, plotting all the things they were going to do.
“Edwidge has promised a bunch of gifts, something for everyone,” he tattled.
I reached over and pinched him on the back of the hand that was holding the phone. My uncle slapped my hand away, all the while shooting me a reprimanding glare. Even though we had been expecting it, how could I tell him that I didn’t want to leave him? What difference could it make? For better or for worse, I had to go. These were my parents, my real parents, and they wanted me to come and live with them.
Later that week, Tante Denise took me to a pricey shop on Grand Rue to buy me a new dress. I picked one I thought rather fancy. It was bright yellow with a satin camisole and a flounced skirt. Bob’s light blue suit was made by my uncle’s tailor, whom he’d engaged since he’d stopped taking work to Monsieur Pradel.
On our departure day, we were overfed before being taken to the airport. Tante Denise cooked a large pot of cornmeal and herring and blended beet juice with condensed milk for us to wash it down.
When Nick, sobbing in his cornmeal, asked, “Why do I have to go back to school after my lunch? Why can’t I go with them?” Tante Denise wrapped her arms around Bob’s and my necks, kissed our cheeks from behind our chairs and ran into her room. Liline’s father, Tante Denise’s brother Linoir, who’d spent three years working as a cane cutter in the Dominican Republic, had recently come home to die. That grief compounded by our leaving was too much for her to bear.
Liline, however, was taking things a lot better. She barely knew her father and was terrified of the sunken eyes, dried-up skin, and convulsions through which his cholera was manifesting itself. Just as Tante Denise locked her bedroom door, Liline had blocked the door to her heart. She went to see her father only once and swore she would never see him again. And as Bob and I left the house, even though I’d left my treasured copy of
At the airport, Bob and I tried to keep up with my uncle as he hurried to one of the long lines winding their way to the counters. My uncle was holding our single small suitcase in one hand and a mustard-colored envelope filled with our papers in the other.
Waiting on the line, my uncle began sweating and kept wiping his face until his blue monogrammed handkerchief was soaked. Was he sad? Angry? Nervous? For himself? For us?
Over the years, in my travels, I have spoken to three middle-aged Haitian flight attendants who claimed they were the ones who met my brother and me at the airline counter, took our hands and led us away from my uncle, guiding us to our seats on the airplane.
“You didn’t cry at all,” one of them said. “You both simply gave your uncle a kiss on the cheek and walked away.”
“You didn’t make any noise about it,” another one said, “but the front of your dress was wet from your tears.”
“You both refused to move. Your uncle had to order you to come with me and he got really mad and yelled,” the last one said, not knowing that by then my uncle could not yell.
Their faulty recollections have wiped out whatever certainty I’ve had, if ever, about that day. At different stages my brother and I were probably all of those children-the ones who didn’t cry, the ones who quietly sobbed and the ones who refused to leave.
Over the years, I have also met other passengers who believed they saw my brother and me, him in his pale blue suit, me in my lemon-colored dress, tightly gripping each other’s hands and pushing our heads back into the seats as the plane took off.
I only remember wishing as we soared into the clouds that my uncle had cried a torrent of tears, had thrown himself on the ground and made a scene, all the while forbidding us to go. He should have blurted out, in his old voice, the sudden revelation that I was really his daughter and that he couldn’t live without me.
Sitting in a middle seat next to my brother, who had insisted on the window I had really wanted, I had looked out at the white clouds only once when suddenly it occurred to me that since my uncle couldn’t speak on the phone and probably wouldn’t write letters to us children, we would likely never be in touch again.
This realization was distressing enough to make me want to close my
