MY LIFE IS STRANGE TO ME NOW. IT IS NOT my life. Manman is gone. Nadou is gone. Everyone and everything I was used to is gone. All the ordinary things I do are different now. I go through the routines of the day feeling like an actress in a TV drama. Now she walks down the street alone to buy Maggi and parsley, fifteen gourdes in her hand … The water bucket never felt so heavy when I walked with Nadine to fill it. We'd wait in line together for water and help each other hoist the buckets onto our heads so we wouldn't spill, and we'd gossip or sing all the way home. I had expected that life without Nadine would hurt, but I wasn't prepared for how boring it would be.
I can't wait until she sends for me.
Now I am the only one left to carry the water, to cook our food, to wash the clothes, to mop and sweep. Sometimes it's just me and Tonton élie, but most of the time there are other people staying with us or eating with us—cousins or neighbors from the country who come to town with a sack of yams or breadfruit to sell, or other people we know from Port-au-Prince who just come by to talk or listen to politics on the radio with my tonton.
People come and go easily, lightly. I can't get used to any of them. Some of them are good for jokes or rumors. Here's one that Ti Blan, who used to do cash-for-work with élie before the aid organizations ended cash-for-work, told us last weekend. He'd stopped by and scrubbed his sneakers, and I had given him boiled yam sliced up with herring sauce and a chunk of avocado while he waited for his shoes to dry.
"There's this woman who sends her daughter to school one morning. Then the goudougoudou happens, and the school collapses! The mother runs into the street, crying, 'Anmwèy!' and trying to find her daughter. Then her daughter appears and says, 'Manman, Manman, stop crying! I'm alive! I wasn't at school. I was at my boyfriend's house instead!' And her mother goes, 'Oh, thank God in heaven you're a whore!'"
It's not a very good joke, but we laugh, anyway.
Nadou hardly ever calls, but I know phone cards must be expensive. I can't be angry or impatient. She'll send for me soon. Sometimes I think about all the things Nadine and I will do once she brings me to Miami. I'm making a list, based on the one Nadou and I started as a joke, before.
1. Go to a movie in a theater
2. Go bowling
3. Learn English together
4. Shop at a mall
5. Go to New York City (Brooklyn and Statue of Liberty, too)
6. Ride a roller coaster
7. See snow
8. Meet Rihanna
9. Buy matching purple Converse and high heels
10. Sit in parks (clean parks, no tents) eating ice cream cotton candy
11. Learn to drive a car
12. Go to school!
13. ???
I also keep track of the ways that Port-au-Prince is changing—everything I will tell Nadou when we can talk forever, on and on, face-to-face. The worst is the cholera.
Everyone's terrified of it and telling jokes about it because they're terrified. There is cholera in the provinces, cholera in Cité Soleil, cholera in the camps. Soon we will all have cholera, shitting and shitting and dying, dried-up, in the streets. Where did this cholera come from? Haiti never had cholera before. Why do these things keep happening? Tonton élie says it's obvious that the foreigners are putting something in our water to make us sick and kill us.
When I'm not cleaning or sleeping, I read whatever I can find—old schoolbooks or pamphlets left by Jehovah's Witnesses. On the cover they've got smiling people of all different races and colors in a garden with tigers and elephants. Sometimes I nap all afternoon, to make the time pass. There's no point in trying to find the money to go back to school, because Nadine will send for me soon, and I'll have to drop out and move to Miami. I'm waiting until I get to America before I go back to school. Sometimes I wonder if Manman would approve, but she never could have imagined a world in which Nadou and I would be parted.
I simply have to be patient. Whenever my phone vibrates, I hold my breath, hoping that it's Nadou, but it is always Digicel with some offer, or the Ministry of Public Health with an announcement, or a robot message from some presidential candidate. It's always stupid. It's never a person, because there is no one left who remembers me.
Today when I went to hang the laundry out to dry, I passed by Ti Zwit, the old, old man who sits under the eucalyptus tree all day. His eyes are so old they're a cloudy almost-blue. He is so old he's even outlived his own children; he has no family left, so everyone else takes care of him however they can. His knees are as dusty and knotted as the old wooden walking stick that leans against them. "Bonswa, Ti Zwit!" I have to shout, because he can hardly hear. "How are you doing!"
"Oh, not too bad, my child!" he smiles, toothlessly.
"It's Magdalie!"
"Yes, yes!"
I'm pretty sure he has no idea who I am.
"Are you eating, Ti Zwit?"
"Oh, yes, oh yes, my child. I eat."
I reach for his hand and press two fifty-centime pieces into his dry, hard palm. It's barely anything, but it's all I've got.
"God bless you, pitit!" says Ti Zwit. "May God protect you always!"
When I get home, I call Nadine. I have been saving up money, a few gourdes here and there. If I go out to buy Kotex, Tonton élie doesn't have any idea how much it costs, so I can keep ten gourdes that way. Finally, today, I have enough to put minutes on my phone to call Nadine.
"Sista!" I cry when she finally picks up.
"Chouchou," she says. Her voice sounds like it does when she has a secret.
"Sister, how are you? I've been longing to hear from you."
"I'm good, wi." She doesn't sound excited to hear from me. "How is everybody there?"
"We're the same. Everyone's the same," I tell her, because how can I explain how it really feels? "Have you become totally American yet, boubou?"
Nadine giggles. "I don't even speak English yet."
"Are you taking classes?"
"Of course," Nadine replies. "At what they call community college. They always have the air conditioner on inside, so I have to wear a sweater, and I still feel like I'm getting a cold. But there're so many people in the class who speak Spanish. Hondurans, Dominicans, Cubans … I think I should learn Spanish before I learn English. All I've learned so far is co?o."
"What's that?"
"I think it's a bad word."
"That's funny, Nadou."
"And they look at me funny because I'm Haitian. Like they think I'm dirty."
"Oh, that can't be true, Nadou. You're imagining it."
"Oh? We had to have a conversation in English to introduce ourselves, and when I said, 'I call myself Nadine, and I come from the country of Haiti,' this guy from Colombia said, 'That's a very bad place.'"
"You just didn't know enough English to understand him."
"Mmm …" I can hear Nadine shaking her head, all the way in Miami. "They think we're savages with AIDS who don't eat anything but dirt."
I laugh. "Listen, are you getting my visa soon? So I can come join you in your freezing classroom and learn Spanish, too?"
"Soon, soon!" Nadine promises. "I just need to figure things out first. I don't know how to take the bus downtown yet. There's a lot I have to learn before I can do it right—you understand?"
"Yeah, I understand."
"Okay, cheri? Just be patient. Be a little patient."
"Wi, Nadou." Yes, I will be patient.
THE OTHER DAY TONTON éLIE SAID, "I think maybe I'll send for Michlove so she can help you here."
I said, "Ah. Hmm."
Michlove is his girlfriend from the country, from near Jérémie, where he and Manman grew up. She is about eighteen, but she looks like a big attractive woman, huge tits and a real bounda, a bottom you could balance a basket on. She's not very smart. I know I'm a lot smarter. It's not only that she can't read and write; there are a lot of people who are intelligent who never had a chance to learn to read. Manman was one of them. No, Michlove is just kind of … boring. You look into her eyes, and there's no spirit there. So I know I'm supposed to be nice and patient with her. But I know if she comes to Port-au-Prince, I'm going to fight with her all the live-long day about stupid little things, and she's a lot bigger than me and fights with her nails.
So I told élie, "Ah. Hmm," in a way that showed him that I was resigned to whatever he decided to do. And then, to be fair, I added, "Michlove is very good at braiding hair."
I don't want new friends. I don't want anyone. Not now, anyway. I used to be friendly, but now I am not. Everyone is annoying. Everyone else in the camp is always in and out of one anothers' tents, borrowing things, gossiping, telling jokes, watching soccer games or Kirikou reruns on TV, bringing one another food. There are people who, if you don't stop by and say hi for two days, admonish you with, "Oh, I never see you!" or, "You've let me go, have you?" I just want to be by myself, hiding, until Nadou sends me word that I can come join her in America. So that's what I do: I stay inside, sleeping, and waiting for the days to go by.
