civilizations. And they will continue to be.
EXILED by Sandy Alexandre
I was twelve years old when I was tricked into exile. One weekday morning, as I was preparing to catch the school bus, my mother confronted me with her latest finding in what was then my burgeoning delinquency problem. Because I had neglected to cover the pot of rice from last night's dinner, the cockroaches had easily invaded and spoiled our leftovers. We quarreled: She blamed; I denied. And suddenly, forgetting to whom I was speaking, I made the horrible mistake of responding to one of her comments with the expletive 'So?' In retrospect, I must have said the word with too strong a hint of exasperation, with too much of the sense that I had grown quickly inconvenienced by her diatribe. Not only had I said 'So?' I had dramatized it by rolling my big insolent eyes. She had never liked that word
She had had enough of my attitude. She deemed me too Americanized- too saucy-to handle. Her Haitian upbringing (the ruler by which she measured good and evil) could no longer tolerate such unfilial behavior, so she threatened to punish me by sending me back to New York to live with my father. She warned that as soon as I returned home from school, I would find my bags packed and ready for me to be sent away. The sauciness lingered: 'Good!' I retorted. 'I don't like Florida anyway!' Not taking her threat seriously, I sauntered off to school with an air of cool defiance. But because of the argument, I knew I had missed my bus and so looked more the fool than the victor I wanted to be; to save some face, I walked out of the house singing, 'I love New York, I love New York' to the tune of a commercial jingle that she and I both knew. Clearly, my eyes were not the only things on a roll!
When I returned home, sure enough, my mother handed me my luggage and then, along with my uncle, drove me to the airport. Walking through the airport, I summoned the same cool saunter of nonchalance that allowed me to keep my dignity only a few hours before. But underneath that so cool exterior lay a completely incredulous and regretful prodigal daughter. How could I be so foolish? How can she be so serious? She's blown this thing out of proportion. Does she really mean to send me away? Am I really all that bad? Why must I always be so rebellious? Why does the sign over my flight gate read: DEPARTURE TO PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI?
In the fifteen minutes before I was to board the plane, my mother, with a smug smile of victory, explained that I was actually going to be living with her sister in Haiti. Her announcement was the 'Ta da!' of a magician whose craft was more entertaining to himself than to his audience. So, while she was being thrilled by her own perspicacity, I couldn't see the humor nor appreciate the genius behind the trick of changing flight destinations. Although her decision was obviously final, I was too shocked to accept the reality that she had proudly unveiled before me. I was in a state of denial. I found her reasons neither sufficient nor strong enough to justify my punishment: 'It's for your own good; You're too much, too incorrigible.' And the inevitable, 'Children in Haiti don't disrespect their elders. You'll learn from them,' she predicted, 'to comport yourself as a child.' Those oft-referred- to 'children in Haiti' had some nerve, to keep reminding my mother of how horrible a child I was. How tired I was of hearing my mother sing the praises of these Haitian angels! But soon, whether I liked it or not, I was also going to be-if even just superficially-a child of Haiti.
When it dawned on me that I had been so cleverly deceived, that I was indeed going to Haiti, a place I imagined had no bathrooms, no refrigerators, and no English, I started to cry and then to scream out of sheer terror. Through my tear-glazed eyes, I spied a flight attendant who had a look of grave concern and pity; so, choosing fight over flight (pun intended), I grabbed the opportunity to try to save myself from banishment.
'Don't cry,' she said. 'What's wrong?'
Pointing to my uncle as if he were the guilty one in a criminal line-up, I sobbed: 'He's not my father! He's (gasp for air and then a phlegmful sniff-sniff) not my father!' I wanted to convey the impression that I was being abducted by a complete stranger. My pointing, trembling, finger and my crying eyes combined to form a plea for help, to make me a paragon of victimization. Save me! I exuded.
You can imagine the commotion that my outburst caused. The flight attendant was as horrified as I had predicted. I knew that I could appeal to the sensibilities of an America that, at the time, wanted the children on its milk cartons found and their kidnappers prosecuted. Certainly, she was not going to stand idly by while, right before her very eyes, I became an 'unsolved mystery.'
To this day, I am still surprised at the desperate measures to which I lowered myself to save myself from Haiti. But this tactic only helped to stall the expulsion process. The exile must go on! My mother quickly explained the situation and after everyone was mollified, the attendant escorted me to my seat. I had been defeated.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have understood both the comedy and the import behind the situation in which I found myself, for on the plane I was surrounded by symbols that marked my situation as a potentially profound, enlightening, and extraordinary one. To my right, on the seat beside me, sat a middle-aged Haitian woman who was deeply embittered about the ruckus that I had caused. She was 'familiar with my kind,' and with a sort of 'fire and brimstone' speech that she seemed to have saved for this moment, she accused me of being an ingrate, a child too ripe for my age, a Haitian American gone too American. Indeed, she knew me too well! As if she had been planted on the plane by my mother, she continued to torment me about the many ways in which my punishment was justified. That my plane instead of heading north was flying south seemed ironically appropriate-Haiti was to be my Hades. I knew her 'kind' too, and her finding pleasure in my plight made me decide that I didn't like her too much.
To my left sat a Haitian man in his early thirties, who confessed- with a hint of pride-that he himself had been in my present predicament when he was just a young boy going through his adolescent,
When I arrived in Port-Au-Prince, I was immediately met by my uncle Yvero. 'Sandee!' he called out as he rushed over to help me with my bags. 'Your mother told me all about your coming.' He smiled as he said this, and even though I felt miserable, I couldn't help but smile back at his genuine happiness to see me. Did he know why I had been sent? Would I be able to continue relying on his reassuring smile or would he turn against me-the ingrate, juvenile delinquent-when he discovered my reason for being here? His smile comforted me but it also renewed my sense of shame. I knew that I didn't deserve to be smiled at. I sought no comfort because I was too tired and defeated. 1 sought no comfort because I refused to believe that there was any to be found in Haiti. If I were never going to see America again, at least I could wallow in the familiar territory of self-pity. But, this was only temporary, because I had resigned myself to exile; that is, I had surrendered. I had no other choice. It was clear to me that if I wanted to survive in Haiti, I could choose to be neither arrogant nor disobedient. That I needed to acculturate myself for survival purposes necessitated that I substitute humility for impudence, respect for disrespect and acceptance for denial. I was now in a situation and a place where I could not allow my Americanness to override whatever Haitianness I possessed. I needed to tap into all the Haitian resources that I owned because I was going to be here for an undefined amount of time. My title of 'American' meant nothing good in this country. My uncle knew why I was here: I was here because there was a correlation between there being something wrong with America and there being something wrong with me.
Uncle Yvero rushed me out of the airport and quickly hailed a tap-tap. He had a commanding and respectable presence. He was younger than my mother and looked it, with his thick head of black hair and well-kempt mustache that complemented it. He carried himself, and my bags, with masculine ease. I felt safe in his company. If I wasn't careful, his strength would ruin me. After all, I wasn't here to depend on someone else's Haitianness; I was here to
