Love, Anger, Madness

recovery was a miracle and she dedicated me to the Holy Virgin Mary whose colors I then wore exclusively. When did I stop wearing these colors?

Memories come and go in my exploding head. My dear black mama!

“No more red beans and potatoes for him,” cried Dr. Chanel, pinching her ear. “He’s growing. He needs meat and vegetables.”

“Look at me, Doctor,” she laughed. “Look at what beans and potatoes did for me.”

“That’s right,” Dr. Chanel said, “and you should lose some weight! You look just like a fat potato covered in black beans.”

“Lose weight!” my mother cried out. “You want people to pity me and laugh! Leave my fat alone. No such thing as a skinny black woman that’s beautiful.”

Her fat killed her. “It’s her heart!” Dr. Chanel diagnosed when he rushed to her bedside. I was twenty and was ashamed of my tears.

Oh dear black Mama! The weight of your head dead in my hands! Your stiff heavy body that Simon, Andre, and Jacques, who was only fifteen, helped me lift into the coffin. They all loved you, my good black mother! We were never hungry as long as you lived. When Andre and Jacques’ mother coughed up blood and died, you said to me:

“Have them come over from time to time and I’ll put a full pot of cornmeal and beans on the stove.”

Your death made four orphans in place of one.

I sold your trinket tray for peanuts to cousin Justina who now looks down her nose at me under the pretext that I am nothing but a “tafiateur” an alcoholic and a disgrace to your name…

I lean over Jacques and then Andre. Their eyes are wide open. They aren’t going back to sleep. I put the bottles in a safe place in a corner of the room and cover them with a rag.

Jacques suddenly sits up. He gathers up his poems, looks for a blank sheet of paper, and starts writing again.

“It’s dark,” I say to him, “you won’t be able to write.”

“I write with my hand and my heart, not with my eyes,” he replies. “I’ve written twenty poems since I’ve been here.”

“You should sleep a bit.”

“I’m hungry! Give me a little clairin”

“There’s a full bottle in the trunk. Take it.”

“Where is the other one?” Andre asks me.

“Is it empty?”

“You drank the rest?”

“Yes.”

“Well!…”

“What’s in that trunk?” Jacques asks.

“His mother’s shrine,” Andre answers.

“There’s syrup in the dishes!” Jacques cries out.

“It’s an offering to the loas. Don’t touch it.”

“I’m so hungry!”

“Don’t touch it,” Andre says again.

Jacques takes a bottle of clairin, opens it and gives it to me.

“Help yourself, Rene.”

I drink and they help themselves in turn.

“It’s not that good, clairin, when you have nothing else in your stomach,” Jacques notes.

He sits down and writes. In the dark, his young bony face appears a shade of ash gray. We’re looking good, the three of us. Filthy, sweaty, stinking. What could the time be? Is Jacques going to spend the night writing? He’s collapsing from fatigue now, pencil clenched in his hand. Andre looks more and more dazed. Clairin always turned him into an idiot. He’s sitting there, arms dangling, looking at me. Why he is staring so hard at me?

“Rene,” he says with a pasty mouth, “we used to be happy before.”

“Before what?”

“Before they came here. We were happy but we didn’t know it.”

“It’s always like that.”

“What’s always like that?”

“You don’t realize you’re happy until you aren’t happy anymore.”

“Yes. And the unhappiness of the present makes you miss the past no matter how miserable it was. What I really miss is childhood. A child always lives in complete ignorance of misfortune. He feels protected by God, by nature, by all those who surround him. He trusts…”

“Yes. Trust! Faith! You lose them when you grow up.”

“I still have them.”

“No. Deep down, you don’t. And that’s why you’re afraid. These dishes full of syrup that could save our lives, and you don’t dare touch them because you’re afraid. Jacques is getting weak. Let’s give him a little syrup.”

“I can’t, I would never dare.”

“You’d rather see us croak of hunger. How many days have we eaten nothing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Light the stove. I’m going to make some coffee and we’ll use some of the syrup to sweeten it.”

“No. I won’t touch it.”

Our discussion has woken up Jacques. He complains quietly and calls out to me in a weak voice.

“Rene!”

“What do you want?”

“You’ve seen them?”

“Who?”

“The devils?”

“Let’s not talk about them anymore. Sleep.”

“I’m afraid!”

“Close your eyes. You’ll fall asleep again.”

“I hear steps!”

He gets up in a single bound and runs to the wall where he flattens his arms in a cross like a great butterfly pinned by the wings.

“They’re coming!” he tells us.

He lets out a hideous scream and turns to us:

“Their faces! Their faces! Rene! Ah! My God…”

“Calm him down,” I say to Andre. “He doesn’t see anything. He’s delirious from hunger. Calm him, for God’s sake! I have to do everything around here. Oh bugger me, try a little harder! Keep him next to you. Come on! A little courage. Help me a little, just a little bit. Here, take this spoon and give him a little syrup.”

He refuses to obey and vehemently shakes his head. I dip the spoon into the dishes and make Jacques drink some syrup. Then I run to the wall.

They are here indeed. Myriads. They have invaded Grand-rue. All the houses are lit up. Movement behind Cecile’s curtains. Their helmets glowing. Red boots kicking up dust on the road. They’ve set ladders against the balconies and are climbing up. The hour of battle tolls. I can’t back out anymore.

“What’s going on?” Andre asks me.

“They’re here!”

“Ah!”

He’s trembling, his teeth knocking together.

“I want to get out of here,” Jacques yells.

He frees himself from Andre’s grip and twists and twitches as if he were possessed.

“It’s the syrup,” Andre says, frightened.