Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States (2 page)

A few weeks before Jean's death, Patrick Dorismond, a Haitian-American man, was gunned down by a New York City police officer in a Manhattan street across the bridge from where another Haitian man, Abner Louima, was beaten, then sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn precinct by a police officer. I ask myself now what Jean— as he inevitably would have had to report these events on his radio program—must have said about these incidents, which so closely resemble the atrocities that Haitians over the years have fled Haiti to escape. It has not been lost on us that of three black men tortured and killed by police in New York in the past two years, two were Haitian. Reading the essays in this book again after these events impels me to think of the many more pages that could be—and will be written—about our experiences as people belonging to the Haitian
dyaspora
in the United States. But anyone who has ever witnessed a gathering of the likes described by Jean-Pierre Benoit in "Bonne Annee" or Barbara Sanon in "Black Crows and Zombie Girls" knows our voices will not be silenced, our stories will be told.

In her essay, poet and painter Marilene Phipps writes, "Painting and Poetry are my battlefields. . . Living in another country, I use my pen or my brush to voice incantations to a particular world that has created me and, to a certain extent, now uses me to re-create itself." In this collection, the writers define themselves as well as the worlds that define them, through tragedies, like the deaths of Jean Dominique and Patrick Dorismond, but also through celebrations like the New York, Boston, and Miami street parades that followed the end of the Duvalier regime in 1986. Or through voices like that of Joanne Hyppolite turning a sometimes dreaded word in her favor, celebrating her
"dyaspora"
status, reminding us that we are not alone.

"When you are in Haiti, they call you
Dyaspora,"
writes Hyppolite. "... you are used to it. You get so you can jump between worlds with the same ease that you slide on your nightgown every evening."

Guapa!

CHILDHOOD

PRESENT PAST FUTURE

Marc Christophe

What will I tell you, my son?

What will I say to you, my daughter?

You for whom the tropics

Are a marvelous paradise

A blooming garden of islands floating

In the blue box

Of the Caribbean sea

What will I tell you

When you ask me

Father, speak to us of Haiti?

Then my eyes sparkling with pride

I would love to tell you

Of the blue mornings of my country

When the mountains stretch out

Lazily

In the predawn light

The waterfalls flowing

With freshness

The fragrance of molasses-filled coffee

In the courtyards

The fields of sugar cane

Racing

In cloudy waves

Towards the horizon

The heated voices of peasant men

Who caress the earth

With their fertile hands

The supple steps of peasant women

On top of the dew

The morning clamor

In the plains the small valleys

And the lost hamlets

Which cloak the true heart

Of Haiti.

I would also tell you

Of the tin huts

Slumbering beneath the moon

In the milky warmth

Of spirit-filled

Summer nights

And the countryside cemeteries

Where the ancestors rest

In graves ornate

With purple seashells

And the sweet and heady perfumes

Of basilique lemongrass

I would love to tell you

Of the colonial elegance of the villas

Hidden in the bougainvilleas

And the beds of azaleas

And the vast paved trails

Behind dense walls

The verandahs with princely mosaics

Embellished

With large vases of clay

Covered

With sheets of ferns

Pink cretonnes

Verandahs where one catches

A breath of fresh air

During nights

Of staggering heat

By listening to

The sounds of the city

Rising up to the foothills

I would love to recite for you

The great history

Of the peoples of my country

Their daily struggles

For food and drink

Tireless people

Hardworking people

Whose lives are a struggle

With no end

Against misery

Fatigue

Dust

In the open markets

Under the sun's blazing breath

I would want to make you see

The clean unbroken streets

Straight as arrows

Bordered by the green

Of royal palms and date palms in bloom

I would love to make you admire

The shadowed dwellings

The oasis of green

Of my Eden

I would carry you

On my shivering wings

To the top of Croix D'Haiti

And from there

Your gaze would travel over

These mountains

These plains

These valleys

These towns

These schools

These orphanages

These studios

These churches

These factories

These
hounforts

These prayer houses

These universities

These art houses

Conceived by our genius

Where hope never dies.

DYASPORA

Joanne Hyppolite

When you are in Haiti they call you
Dyaspora.
This word, which connotes both connection and disconnection, accurately describes your condition as a Haitian American. Disconnected from the physical landscape of the homeland, you don't grow up with a mango tree in your yard, you don't suck
keneps
in the summer, or sit in the dark listening to stories of
Konpe
Bouki and Malis. The bleat of
vaksins
or the beating of a
Yanvalou
on
Rada
drums are neither in the background or the foreground of your life. Your French is nonexistent. Haiti is not where you live.

Your house in Boston is your island. As the only Haitian family on the hillside street you grow up on, it represents Haiti to you. It was where your
granmk
refused to learn English, where goods like ripe mangoes, plantains,
djondjon,
and hard white blobs of mints come to you in boxes through the mail. At your communion and birthday parties, all of Boston Haiti seems to gather in your house to eat
griyo
and sip
kremas.
It takes forever for you to kiss every cheek, some of them heavy with face powder, some of them damp with perspiration, some of them with scratchy face hair, and some of them giving you a perfume head-rush as you swoop in. You are grateful for every smooth, dry cheek you encounter. In your house, the dreaded
matinet
which your parents imported from Haiti just to keep you, your brother, and your sister in line sits threateningly on top of the wardrobe. It is where your mother's
andeyb Kreyol
accent and your father's
lavil
French accent make sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible music together. On Sundays in your house, "Dominika-anik-anik" floats from the speakers of the record player early in the morning and you are made to put on one of your frilly dresses, your matching lace-edged socks, and black shoes. Your mother ties long ribbons into a bow at the root of each braid. She warns you, your brother and your sister to "respect your heads" as you drive to St. Angela's, never missing a Sunday service in fourteen years. In your island house, everyone has two names. The name they were given and the nickname they have been granted so that your mother is Gisou, your father is Popo, your brother is Claudy, your sister is Tinou, you are Jojo, and your grandmother is Manchoun. Every day your mother serves rice and beans and you methodically pick out all the beans because you don't like
pwa.
You think they are ugly and why does all the rice have to have beans anyway? Even with the white rice or the
mayi moulen,
your mother makes
sbspwa
— bean sauce. You develop the idea that Haitians are obsessed with beans. In your house there is a mortar and a pestle as well as five pictures of Jesus, your parents drink Cafe Bustelo every morning, your father wears
gwayabel
shirts and smokes cigarettes, and you are beaten when you don't get good grades at school. You learn about the infidelities of husbands from conversations your aunts have. You are dragged to Haitian plays, Haitian
bah,
and Haitian concerts where in spite of yourself
konpa
rhythms make you sway. You know the names of Haitian presidents and military leaders because political discussions inevitably erupt whenever there are more than three Haitian men together in the same place. Every time you are sick, your mother rubs you down with a foul-smelling liquid that she keeps in an old Barbancourt rum bottle under her bed. You splash yourself with Bien-etre after every bath. Your parents speak to you in
Kreyol,
you respond in English, and somehow this works and feels natural. But when your mother speaks English, things seem to go wrong. She makes no distinction between he and she, and you become the pronoun police. Every day you get a visit from some
matant
or
monnonk
or
kouzen
who is also a
tnarenn
or
parenn
of someone in the house. In your house, your grandmother has a porcelain
kivet
she keeps under her bed to relieve herself at night. You pore over photograph albums where there are pictures of you going to school in Haiti, in the yard in Haiti, under the white Christmas tree in Haiti, and you marvel because you do not remember anything that you see. You do not remember Haiti because you left there too young but it does not matter because it is as if Haiti has lassoed your house with an invisible rope.

Outside of your house, you are forced to sink or swim in American waters. For you this means an Irish-Catholic school and a Black-American neighborhood. The school is a choice made by your parents who strongly believe in a private Catholic education anyway, not paying any mind to the busing crisis that is raging in the city. The choice of neighborhood is a condition of the reality of living here in this city with its racially segregated neighborhoods. Before you lived here, white people owned this hillside street. After you and others who looked like you came, they gradually disappeared to other places, leaving you this place and calling it bad because you and others like you live there now. As any
dyaspora
child knows, Haitian parents are not familiar with these waters. They say things to you like, "In Haiti we never treated white people badly." They don't know about racism. They don't know about the latest styles and fashions and give your brother hell every time he sneaks out to a friend's house and gets his hair cut into a shag, a high-top, a fade. They don't know that the ribbons in your hair, the gold loops in your ears, and the lace that edges your socks alert other children to your difference. So you wait until you get to school before taking them all off and out and you put them back on at the end of your street where the bus drops you off. Outside your house, things are black and white. You are black and white. Especially in your school where neither you nor any of the few other Haitian girls in your class are invited to the birthday parties of the white kids in your class. You cleave to these other Haitian girls out of something that begins as solidarity but becomes a lifetime of friendship. You make green hats in art class every St. Patrick's day and watch Irish step-dancing shows year after year after year. You discover books and reading and this is what you do when you take the bus home, just you and your white schoolmates. You lose your accent. You study about the Indians in social studies but you do not study about Black Americans except in music class where you are forced to sing Negro spirituals as a concession to your presence. They don't know anything about Toussaint Louverture or Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

In your neighborhood when you tell people you are from Haiti, they ask politely, "Where's that?" You explain and because you seem okay to them, Haiti is okay to them. They shout "Hi, Grunny!" whenever they see your grandmother on the stoop and sometimes you translate a sentence or two between them. In their houses, you eat sweet potato pie and nod because you have that too, it's made a little different and you call it
pen patat
but it's the same taste after all. From the girls on the street you learn to jump double-dutch, you learn to dance the puppet and the white boy. You see a woman preacher for the first time in your life at their church. You wonder where down South is because that is where most of the boys and girls on your block go for vacations. You learn about boys and sex through these girls because these two subjects are not allowed in your island/house. You keep your street friends separate from your school friends and this is how it works and you are used to it. You get so you can jump between worlds with the same ease that you slide on your nightgown every evening.

Then when you get to high school, things change. People in your high school and your neighborhood look at you and say, "You are Haitian?" and from the surprise in their voice you realize that they know where Haiti is now. They think they know what Haiti is now. Haiti is the boat people on the news every night. Haiti is where people have tuberculosis. Haiti is where people eat cats. You do not represent Haiti at all to them anymore. You are an aberration because you look like them and you talk like them. They do not see you. They do not see the worlds that have made you. You want to say to them that you are Haiti, too. Your house is Haiti, too, and what does that do to their perceptions? You have the choice of passing but you don't. You claim your
dyaspora
status hoping it will force them to expand their image of what Haiti is but it doesn't. Your sister who is younger and very sensitive begins to deny that she is Haitian. She is American, she says. American.

You turn to books to lose yourself. You read stories about people from other places. You read stories about people from here. You read stories about people from other places who now live here. You decide you will become a writer. Through your writing they will see you,
dyaspora
child, the connections and disconnections that have made you the mosaic that you are. They will see where you are from and the worlds that have made you. They will see you.