Krik? Krak!

'Intelligence is not only in reading and writing.'

'Is she old regime or new regime?'

'She is like us. The only regime she believe in is God's regime. She says she wants to write things down for posterity.'

'What did you tell her when she said that?'

'That I already have posterity. I was once a baby and now I am an old woman. That is posterity.'

'If she asks me questions, I am going to answer them,' I said.

'One day you will stick your hand in a stew that will burn your fingers. I told her to watch her mouth as to how she talks to people. I told her to watch out for vagabonds like Toto and Raymond.'

'Never look them in the eye.'

'I told her that too,' my grandmother said as she dis-carded the mint leaves.

My whole body felt taut and taint-free. My grand-mother's face softened as she noticed the sheen of cleanliness.

'See, you can be a pretty girl,' she said, handing me her precious pouch of needles, thimbles, and thread. 'You can be a very pretty girl. Just like your mother used to be.'

A burst of evening air chilled my face as I walked across to the yellow house. I was wearing my only Sunday out-fit, a white lace dress that I had worn to my confirmation two years before.

The lady poked her head through the door after my first knock.

'Mademoiselle Gallant?'

'How do you know my name?'

'My grandmother sent me.'

She was wearing a pair of abakos, American blue jeans.

'It looks as though your grandmother has put you to some inconvenience,' she said. Then she led me into the front room, with its oversized mahogany chairs and a desk that my grandmother had bought especially for the journalists to use when they were working there.

'My name is really Emilie,' she said in Creole, with a very heavy American accent. 'What do people call you?'

'Lamort.'

'How did your name come to be 'death'?'

'My mother died while I was being born,' I explained. 'My grandmother was really mad at me for that.'

'They should have given you your mother's name,' she said, taking the pouch of needles, thread, and thimbles from me. 'That is the way it should have been done.'

She walked over to the table in the corner and picked up a pitcher of lemonade that my grandmother made for all her guests when they first arrived.

'Would you like some?' she said, already pouring the lemonade.

'Oui, Madame. Please.'

She held a small carton box of butter cookies in front of me. I took one, only one, just as my grandmother would have done.

'Are you a journalist?' I asked her.

'Why do you ask that?'

'The people who stay here in this house usually are, journalists.'

She lit a cigarette. The smoke breezed in and out of her mouth, just like her own breath.

'I am not a journalist,' she said. 'I have come here to pay a little visit.'

'Who are you visiting?'

'Just people.'

'Why don't you stay with the people you are visiting?'

'I didn't want to bother them.'

'Are they old regime or new regime?'

'Who?'

'Your people?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because things you say, thoughts you have, will decide how people treat you.'

'It seems to me, you are the journalist,' she said.

'What do you believe in? Old regime or new regime?'

'Your grandmother told me to say to anyone who is interested, 'The only regime I believe in is God's regime.' I would wager that you are a very good source for the journalists. Do you have any schooling?'

'A little.'

Once again, she held the box of cookies in front of me. I took another cookie, but she kept the box there, in the same place. I took yet another cookie, and another, until the whole box was empty.

'Can you read what it says there?' she asked, point-ing at a line of red letters.

'I cannot read American,' I said. Though many of the journalists who came to stay at the yellow house had tried to teach me, I had not learned.

'It is not American,' she said. 'They are French cookies. That says Le Petit Ecolier.'

I stuffed my mouth in shame.

'Intelligence is not only in reading and writing,' I said.

'I did not mean to make you feel ashamed,' she said, dropping her cigarette into the half glass of lemonade in her hand. 'I want to ask you a question.'

'I will answer if I can.'

'My mother was old regime,' she said. 'She was a journalist. For a newspaper called Libete in Port-au-Prince.'

'She came to Ville Rose?'

'Maybe. Or some other town. I don't know. The people who worked with her in Port-au-Prince think she might be in this region. Do you remember any shootings the night of the coup?'

'There were many shootings,' I said.

'Did you see any of the bodies?'

'My grandmother and me, we stayed inside.'

'Did a woman come to your door? Did anyone ever say that a woman in a purple dress came to their door?'

'No.'

'I hear there is a mass burial site,' she said. 'Do you know it?'

'Yes. I have taken journalists there.'

'I would like to go there. Can you take me?'

'Now?'

'Yes.'

She pulled some coins from her purse and placed them on the table.

'I have more,' she said.

From the back pocket of her jeans, she took out an envelope full of pictures. I ran my fingers over the glossy paper that froze her mother into all kinds of smiling poses: a skinny brown woman with shiny black hair in short spiral curls.

'I have never seen her,' I admitted.

'It is possible that she arrived in the evening, and then the coup took place in the middle of the night. Do you know if they found any dead women the day after the coup?'

'There were no bodies,' I said. 'That is to say no funerals.'

I heard my grandmother's footsteps even before she reached the door to the yellow house.

'If you tell her that I'm here, I can't go with you,' I said.

'Go into the next room and stay there until I come for you.'