victory red. She would be with Papa again for the first time in much too long. As the day of our departure approached, a broader smile than usual skipped on her lips. The faraway look that had been in her eyes since the day Papa left gained greater distance, like a speedboat disappearing beyond the horizon. Manman’s dreamy eyes followed the speedboat that held her future, hoping that it would not fall from the flat edge where the sun rises out of the sea.
STRANGE FRUIT
Manman wrapped ripe sweetsop in the prettiest nightgown she owned. She tucked the bundle in a corner of her carry-on bag under the most delicate panties I’d ever seen. She would surprise Frisner with those: the fruit, the nightgown, and the panties. He would be grateful. He would wonder how in God’s name he survived without her for so long. How had he lived without her always thinking of him, always bringing him things like the only fruit in the world that had the power to melt his heart! Their happily-ever-after would resume with the first bite.
Manman had heard of people’s fruit being tossed out by customs inspectors on the other side, but was certain that no one would bother hers. The nightgown and delicate panties were parts of a brilliant strategy: no stranger with an ounce of decency would touch a woman’s underwear. Manman swore that her sweetsop would be as safe as a ja of gold buried under an unmarked tree in an orchard. No one would discover them. In a few hours, Frisner would taste all things past, present, and future in the succulent pulp.
My little sisters, Karine and Marjorie, daydreamed about the joys New York would bring: pretty dresses, new shoes, new ribbons for their hair, a doll like the one that disappeared from the upstairs bedroom. There would be candy by the ton. Life would be fun, fun, fun!
I daydreamed about what I would do once I reached New York too. I would find Yseult Joseph, my best friend, who was living there now. We would mend our friendship like the hem of a good dress that got caught in a thorn bush. We would patch the holes time created between us. We would be as close as we had been before she went away. We would be inseparable; this time forever.
I wrapped the six oslè I owned in a handkerchief and put them in the small purse that contained all the possessions Manman said I could take with me to the new country. Yseult and I would play oslè again.
Going to New York was like dying. We could not take most of our belongings with us.
On the night before we left, Manman gave away our dining table, the tablecloth, our dishes (even the good ones), our spoons, and every last grain of rice, sugar, and salt in the pantry. She gave away our pillows, the sheets on the bed, and the bed itself. Manman said we wouldn’t need those old things. She said we would have new lives and new possessions to go with them.
Manman could not wait to reach New York. She could not wait to see Frisner again. She’d petitioned the consul in Port-au-Prince for years, begging him to approve her application. “My children need their father,” she told him as tears leaked out of her eyes. She was overjoyed when the plane finally landed at JFK.
The worry lines that had been permanent fixtures on her face vanished. But when the cruel inspector at customs went through her carry-on bag and did the unthinkable, the lines instantly returned.
The inspector’s trained nose had gone straight to the corner of Manman’s bag where she’d hidden the sweetsop. He reached into the bag and removed her delicate panties—with a gloved pincer grip, as if they were soiled. He pulled Manman’s pretty nightgown out of the bag, shaking the silk away from his body as if it were an animal that needed to be quarantined. The sweetsop Manman attempted to smuggle rolled out onto the table and stared back at her. Her secret had been revealed. The inspector’s eyes accused her of an unspeakable crime. He did not ask questions. He did not have time to prosecute and punish her properly.
Dump the funny-looking crap and keep moving. There were thousands of bags to look through before his shift would end. Hundreds of strange fruit to throw into trash bins. “Next.” The inspector’s voice matched the fierce look in his eyes.
“Please, please,” Manman said, but what the man heard was “Tanpri souple. Pa jete sa yo.” Those words, like the fruit he’d gotten rid of, were foreign to him. They meant nothing.
Manman eyed the man and the garbage bin with equal disdain. Her joy had curdled. Something inside her had shifted. Something within her was now running and screaming like a child lost in dense woods. She’d made a mistake. Now that she was at the finish line, she realized that the race was fixed; she was bound to lose. Regret flooded her eyes when Frisner ran toward her with arms wide open.
Manman continued to cry when Frisner drove us to the colossal building that would become our new home. She cried when we walked out of the car and took an elevator for the first time in our lives. She cried when the elevator’s door slid open noisily and a corridor stretched out before us like a highway with carpet on it. The air smelled of thyme and rice pudding and cinnamon tea and burnt black beans and ginger cookies and strong coffee and beef stew with curry in it. Loud voices behind the black metal doors spoke languages I did not recognize. Manman continued to cry.
She cried as Frisner charged ahead and we followed him like ducklings. She cried as we walked past door after door after door on either side of the wide, carpeted highway. “Each door has a private home behind it,” Frisner offered. “Some have two, three, even four bedrooms.”
“Each one has a kitchen?” Karine’s voice bounced off the walls.
“Each one,” Frisner said without turning around. He would match our voices to our faces later.
“What about a latrine?” Marjorie had a pinched look on her face. She must have forgotten to relieve herself for days.
The excitement of going to New York had nearly consumed all of us. Karine could not bring herself to eat a bite of food; my own eyes refused to stay shut at night for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Where is the latrine?” Marjorie asked with even more urgency.
“Inside our apartment. Each apartment has its own toilet.” Frisner enunciated the word toilet carefully, letting us know that latrines—and all of their filthy, deep-in-the-woods connotations—belonged in the other world, not here. Frisner was careful not to call any of us by name. Perhaps he had forgotten them. Perhaps he could not recall Manman’s name either. Everything was chérie this and sweetheart that. Karine and Marjorie looked at each other and shrugged.
Frisner produced a large ring with a collection of keys on it. He jingled the keys theatrically in midair, telling us—without words—that only men of great importance could be trusted with so many keys.
“Welcome home, my love, my children!” Frisner’s face was arranged in a proud grin. But Manman missed both the “Welcome home” and the “my love” parts. The heartless man at the airport had thrown out a piece of her with the sweetsop. Both were now in a dump somewhere, rotting. Manman could not explain her loss to anyone, not to Frisner and certainly not to me.
* * *
When, after several months, the disappearance of Manman’s beloved tropical fruit still brought tears to her eyes, she opened her mouth and spat out the words that had simmered inside her all along: “I want to go back.”
“Kisa?” Frisner was incredulous. “You must be sick.”
“This country is for giants,” Manman explained with a desperate edge in her voice. “The buildings are too big. The streets are too wide. The stores are too bright. The lights are never off. The people never sleep. I feel like a grasshopper here. Vulnerable. An ant is what I feel like. I don’t belong in this place.”
The city intimidated Manman. The lights that were never turned off illuminated things she wished she did not have to see: ladies in neon shorts beckoning strangers and servicing them behind the bushes three stories below our living room window. But I needed those lights to shine eternally so I could find my friend Yseult Joseph.
Manman thought the artificially lit nights were terrifying. Back on the island,