father-who I never met, never saw pictures of, never heard mention of, and accepted as a nonentity in my life.
I used to believe that I was born by immaculate conception, until one day I was ridiculed in school by my science teacher, who had asked me for my father's name. When I told him of my belief, he laughed and got the entire class to laugh along. Until then I had never questioned the fact that my last name was the same as that of my mother, who was not married. It was then that I smelled foul play and suspected that I was the result of sexual relations between my mother and grandfather. I didn't dare ask.
In the early 1960s, Papa Doc declared himself President-for-Life and things got worse and worse. I remember hearing of anti-Duvalier suspects being arrested. I remember hearing of families being rounded up and even babies being killed. I remember the mysterious disappearances at night, the mutilated corpses being found by roads and rivers the next day. I remember the public slayings, adults whispering and sending my cousins and me to another room so they could talk. Rumors of invasions by exiled Haitians abounded. Some of these invasions were quickly stopped by government forces. The
Poverty was all around me and, in my child-mind, I had accepted this. Some had, some had not. Fate. Cyclones, hurricanes, floods came and went. Carnival was always a happy time, though. Dressed in a costume, I, along with thousands, took to the streets each year with our favorite music bands. Grandmother died during Mardi Gras '65. I was miserable for weeks and kept a daily journal to her. Soon after, mother left for Switzerland and I moved in with my aunt Marcelle and her husband.
In 1968, my aunt had her first and only child. Was I jealous! I had been quite comfortable and so spoiled for three yean that when she gave birth to Alin, it was difficult for me to accept that I was not her real child, a fact I had, at times, forgotten. That year she gave me a beautiful birthday party. My schoolmates were making fun of me more than ever. I still wanted to be a priest. I said a Mass for Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy when each was assassinated. Duvalier declared himself the flag of the nation and became more ruthless. I took long walks on the beach by myself. It was a year of discovery.
One afternoon, I saw Pierre swimming alone. He called me to join him. I was surprised. Although we went to the same school and we had spoken to each other once or twice, we were not buddies. Three or four years older, tall and muscular, Pierre was a member of the volleyball team and must have had two or three girlfriends. I didn't have a swimsuit, so I swam naked. I remember the uneasiness each time our eyes met, the tension between us, my hard-on. We kept smelling each other out. He grabbed me by the waist. I felt his dick pressing against my belly. Taut smiles. I held it in my hand and it quivered. I had never touched another boy's dick before. I asked him if he had done this with other boys. He said only with girls. Waves.
He turned me around and pushed his dick in my ass. Shock. I remember the pain. Hours later, the elation I felt, knowing that another person who was like me existed. In Les Cayes, there had been rumors about three or four men who supposedly were homosexual, but they were all married. Some had no fewer than seven children. Knowing Pierre was a turning point for me. The loneliness of thinking that I was the only one with homosexual tendencies subsided.
In 1969, man walked on the moon. I was happy. Pierre and I met each other three or four times (once in my grandfather's study, and he almost caught us). I didn't say anything about this to anyone, not even at confession. I didn't pray as much. I passed my
I remember the day I decided to stay in the U.S. A week before I was to go back to Haiti, my mother and I were taking a trip to Coney Island. Two effeminate guys in outrageous short shorts and high heels walked onto the train and sat in front of us. Noticing that I kept looking at them, my mother said to me that this was the way it was here. People could say and do whatever they wanted; a few weeks earlier thousands of homosexuals had marched for their rights.
Thousands! I was stunned. I kept thinking what it would be like to meet some of them. I kept fantasizing that there was a homosexual world out there I knew nothing of. I remember looking up in amazement as we walked beneath the elevated train, then telling mother I didn't want to go back to Haiti. She warned me of snow, muggers, homesickness, racism, alien cards, and that I would have to learn to speak English. She warned me that our lives wouldn't be a vacation. She would have to go back to work as a night nurse in a week, and I'd have to assume many responsibilities. After all, she was a single mother.
That week, I asked her about my father and found out that they had been engaged for four years while she was in nursing school and he in medical school. She got pregnant and he wanted her to abort. A baby would have been a burden so early in their careers, especially since they planned to move to New York after they got married. Mother wouldn't abort. She couldn't. Though the two families tried to avoid a scandal and patch things up, accusations were made, and feelings hurt. Each one's decision final, they became enemies for life.
BLACK CROWS AND ZOMBIE GIRLS by Barbara Sanon
Gendarme Janeau, the officer at the Casernes de Jeremie-the local military jail house-had been summoned by the neighbors to come save our house from evil. All was quiet, for his two prisoners had been fed their daily dose of cornmeal and beans, so Janeau ran, baton and rifle in hand, to our gate. And there it was, a large black crow circling over our roof. I held on tightly to my mother's skirt to see if it would shield me until some miracle put an end to the bird's targeted prowling. Unable to find another solution, Gendarme Janeau fired into the air. The sound lingered for minutes while I hid myself behind my mother as she screamed.
The black crow bled to death in front of the large oak tree where I often played with my sisters. Gendarme Janeau, still wallowing in his triumph, convinced my mother that the crow was indeed a lustful evil spirit.
'Keep a watch out for it,' he told my mother. 'If it is restless, it might return. It does not get enough pleasure at night so it comes in the heat when the sun shines brightest to continue its seduction.'
My mother, alone in a house with five children and a husband in New York, trembled as she took my hand and led me inside the house. For years, the townspeople would recount the tale of the black bird and Gendarme Janeau's ability to shoot anything that looked him in the eye too directly.
Janeau became the town hero and secretly my terror. That night, I dreamt of the
The next day, I cringed as I rushed past the Casernes on my way to school, fearing that I would have to stand still, frozen in place, during the Casernes' 8:30 a.m. salute when Gendarme Janeau raised the black-and-red Duvalierist flag that he would kill for.
Every night after that, I saw the shadow of Janeau's hand moving above my head. Somewhere, through the window in the distance, a light would flicker on and off and I would think that it was him reminding me that even in my house, in my own bed, I could not escape him. He became the bogeyman and I was his prisoner. My sister would tell me to close my eyes under the covers in order to prevent him from seeing me.
'Let the bad spirits pass by on their way and not look at us,' she would say. 'For any contact with them will make us their victims forever.' My mother could not help us for she, too, was afraid. So we lay quietly in the dark, waiting for the evil to pass.
A few years later, in my mother's bedroom in New York, I would see the bogeyman again. Like the lustful crow, he, too, appeared in the daytime in the form of my mother's boyfriend-the man who was supposed to replace my father. This man, my mother's boyfriend, wrapped his familiar arms around my frail ten-year-old body, drawing me with his warm smile toward his lap. How paternal he seemed, pretending that he was offering me a warm place to sit-a warm place to be a child. In that moment, as he fondled my body, I decided that I was dead. My body was as ice cold as all the dead relatives' foreheads we children were made to kiss at family wakes.
