Excellency, the President for Life Papa Doc Duvalier. When the president of France reached the gates of Heaven, God got up from his throne to greet him. When the president of the United States reached the gates of Heaven, God got up to greet him as well. So, too, with the presidents of Russia, Italy, Germany, and China.
When it was our president's turn, His Excellency, the President for Life Papa Doc Duvalier, God did not get up from his throne to greet him. All the angels were stunned and puzzled. They did not understand God's very rude behavior. So they elected a representative to go up to God and question Him.
'God,' said the representative, 'you have been so cordial to all the other presidents. You have gotten up from your throne to greet them at the gates of Heaven as soon as they have entered. Why do you not get up for Papa Doc Duvalier? Is it because he is a black president? You have always told us to overlook the color of men. Why have you chosen to treat the black president, Papa Doc Duvalier, in this fashion?'
God looked at the representative angel as though He was about to admit something that He did not want to.
'Look,' he said. 'I am not getting up for Papa Doc Duvalier because I am afraid that if I get up, he will take my throne and will never give it back.'
These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.
Caroline's wedding was only a month away. She was very matter-of-fact about it, but slowly we all began to prepare. She had bought a short white dress at a Good-will thrift shop and paid twelve dollars to dry-clean it. Ma, too, had a special dress: a pink lace, ankle-sweeping evening gown that she was going to wear at high noon to a civil ceremony. I decided to wear a green suit, for hope, like the handkerchief that wrapped Ma's marriage proposal letter from Papa's family.
Ma would have liked to have sewn Caroline's wed-ding dress from ten different patterns in a bridal magazine, taking the sleeves from one dress, the collar from another, and the skirt from another. Though in her heart she did not want to attend, in spite of everything, she was planning to act like this was a real wedding.
'The daughter resents a mother forever who keeps her from her love,' Ma said as we dressed to go to Eric's house for dinner. 'She is my child. You don't cut off your own finger because it smells bad.'
Still, she was not going to cook a wedding-night dinner. She was not even going to buy Caroline a special sleeping gown for her 'first' sexual act with her husband.
'I want to give you a wedding shower,' I said to Caroline in the cab on the way to Eric's house.
There was no sense in trying to keep it a secret from her.
'I don't really like showers,' Caroline said, 'but I'll let you give me one because there are certain things that I need.'
She handed me her address book, filled mostly with the names of people at Jackie Robinson Intermediate School where we both taught English as a Second Language to Haitian students.
Eric and Caroline had met at the school, where he was a janitor. They had been friends for at least a year before he asked her out. Caroline couldn't believe that he wanted to go out with her. They dated for eighteen months before he asked her to marry him.
'A shower is like begging,' Ma said, staring out of the car window at the storefronts along Flatbush Avenue. 'It is even more like begging if your sister gives one for you.'
'The maid of honor is the one to do it,' I said. 'I am the maid of honor, Ma. Remember?'
'Of course I remember,' she said. 'I am the mother, but that gives me claim to nothing.'
'It will be fun,' I tried to assure her. 'We'll have it at the house.'
'Is there something that's like a shower in Haiti?' Caroline asked Ma.
'In Haiti we are poor,' Ma said, 'but we do not beg.'
'It's nice to see you, Mrs. Azile,' Eric said when he came to the door.
Eric had eyes like Haitian lizards, bright copper with a tint of jade. He was just a little taller than Caroline, his rich mahogany skin slightly darker than hers.
Under my mother's glare, he gave Caroline a timid peck on the cheek, then wrapped his arms around me and gave me a bear hug.
'How have you been?' Ma asked him with her best, extreme English pronunciation.
'I can't complain,' he said.
Ma moved over to the living room couch and sat down in front of the television screen. There was a nature program playing without sound. Mute images of animals swallowing each other whole flickered across the screen.
'So, you are a citizen of America now?' Eric said to me. 'Now you can just get on a plane anytime you feel like it and go anywhere in the world. Nations go to war over women like you. You're an American.'
His speech was extremely slow on account of a learning disability. He was not quite retarded, but not like everybody else either.
Ma looked around the room at some carnival posters on Eric's living room wall. She pushed her head forward to get a better look at a woman in a glittering bikini with a crown of feathers on her head. Her eyes narrowed as they rested on a small picture of Caroline, propped in a silver frame on top of the television set.
Eric and Caroline disappeared in the kitchen, leaving me alone with Ma.
'I won't eat if it's bad,' she said.
'You know Eric's a great cook,' I said.
'Men cooking?' she said. 'There is always something wrong with what he makes, here or at our house.'
'Well, pretend to enjoy it, will you?'
She walked around the living room, picking up the small wooden sculptures that Eric had in many corners of the room, mostly brown Madonnas with caramel babies wrapped in their arms.
Eric served us chicken in a thick dark sauce. I thrust my fork through layers of gravy. Ma pushed the food around her plate but ate very little.
After dinner, Eric and Caroline did the dishes in the kitchen while Ma and I sat in front of the television.
'Did you have a nice time?' I asked her.
'Nice or not nice, I came,' she said.
'That's right, Ma. It counts a lot that you came, but it would have helped if you had eaten more.'
'I was not very hungry,' she said.
'That means you can't fix anything to eat when you get home,' I said. 'Nothing. You can't fix anything. Not even bone soup.'
Eric had failed miserably at the game of Wooing Haitian Mother-in-Law. Had he known-or rather had Caroline advised him well-he would have hired a Haitian cook to make Ma some Haitian food that would taste (God forbid!) even better than her own.
'We know people by their stories,' Ma said to Caroline in the cab on the way home that night. 'Gossip goes very far. Grace heard women gossip in the Mass behind us the other day, and you hear what they say about Haitian women who forget themselves when they come here. Value yourself.'
'Yes, Ma,' Caroline said, for once not putting up a fight.
I knew she wanted to stay and spend the night with Eric but she was sparing Ma.
'I can t accuse you of anything,' Ma said. 'You never call someone a thief unless you catch them stealing.'
'I hear you, Ma,' Caroline said, as though her mind were a thousand miles away.
When we got home, she waited for Ma to fall asleep, then called a car service and went back to Eric's. When I got up the next morning, Ma was standing over my bed.
'Did your sister leave for school early again?' she asked.
'Yes, Ma,' I said. 'Caroline is just like you. She sleeps a hair thread away from waking, and she rises with the roosters.'
I mailed out the invitations for Caroline's wedding shower. We kept the list down to a bare minimum, just a few
