1937 and fire fishing

Nineteen Thirty-Seven

Sits with Madonna. Her mom died.  Bone ache does not matter of going to Port-au-Prince.
Saw a old woman carrying a jar full of leeches, asked to see the doll.
Author was from Ville Rose. The city of painters and poets, the coffee city with beaches where the sand is either black or white, but never mixed together, where the fields are endless and sometimes the cows are yellow like cornmeal.
Went to a small alley where a girl was selling fried pork and plantains wrapped in brown paper. Bought some meat for my mother after asking the cook to fry.
Yellow prison building was like a fort, large and strong as in the days when used by the American Marines. The prison was quiet as a cave.
Mom appeared, grown thinner since the last time I had seen her. Her face looked like gray of a late evening sky. Her skin clung to her bones, falling in layers, flaps, on her face and neck.
I said nothing, Sometimes I wanted to speak, yet I was not able to open my mouth or raise my tongue, I wondered if she saw my struggle in my eyes.
Mom wanted to hold the Madonna. I handed her the statue, she smiled, her teeth were dark red. Happier. She rubbed the space under the Madonna’s eyes, then tasted her finger tips,. Asked for cried. Mom sobbed.
Guard came and nudged her, poking the barrel of his rifle into her side. Brave smile. Treated not badly. Had cold water to wash.
Eat in silence. Normal ration of food in prison was bread and water. That is why she lose weight so rapidly.
All the women were here for the same reason, they were said to have been seen at night rising from the ground like birds on fire. A loved one, a friend, or a neighbor had accused them of causing the death of a child. A few other people agreeing with these stories was all that was needed to have them arrested. And sometimes even killed.
When mom was arrested, we were new to the city and had been sleeping on a cot at friend’s house. Mom was taken by a group of people away, her face was bleeding from the pounding blows of rocks and sticks and the fists of strangers. Two policemen.
Memory, five years old, Massacre River, Mom took my hand and pushed it into the river, no farther than my wrist, when we dipped our hands, I thought that the dead would reach out and haul us in, but only our own faces stared back at us. “ Here is my child, Josephine, we were saved from the tomb of this river when she was still my womb.” We went to the river many times as I was growing up. Every year my mother invited a few more women who had also lost their mom there. “ At least I gave my birth to my daughter on the night that my mom was taken from me.
Present. I get ready to leave the prison, mom said in the future she will tell her the secret of Madonna cried.  I know how to do it, she would put a thin layer of wax and oil in the hollow space of the Madonna’s eyes and when the wax melted, the oil would roll down the little face shedding a more perfect tear than either she or I could cry. Farewell.
Mom had a cough, she sat in a corner of the yard, and as she trembled in the sun, she clung to the Madonna. The sun can no longer warm god’s creatures. I wanted to wrap my body around hers but I knew she wouldn’t let me.
Second visit, I decided to talk, I would try to say something to her, but mom cried first, I handed her the Madonna, but she refused, Keep the Madonna when I am gone, when I am completely gone, maybe you will have someone to take my place. All the women who came with us to the river, they could go to the moon and back if that is what they wanted.
A women came, wearing the same white dress that women usually wore on their trips to dip their hands in the river.  Jacqueline, she had been to the river with you.  She was a child of that place, She was waling into the dawn, she was the first daughter of the first star, she drunk the tears from Madonna’s eyes, many questions to verify her identity.
I let Jacqueline into the house, I offered her a seat in the rocking chair, gave her a piece of hard bread and a cup of cold coffee. Mom died, your mom blood calls to me from the ground.
My blood frozen inside me, I lowered my head as the news sank in.
Six women in the cell, each woman was either wearing or holding something that had belonged to my mom,  Mom was beaten down in the middle of the yard. Prison did not cure her. The pillow, filled with mom’s hair.
Life is never lost, another one always comes up to replaces the last. Burn the body
In the year nineteen hundred and thirty- seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the after and out again on the Haitain side of the river. In the prison yard, I held the Madonna tightly against my chest, so close that I can smell my mom’s scent on the statue. I raised my head toward the sun thinking, one day I may just see my mom there. “ Let her flight be joyful. And mine and yours too. “

A wall of fire fishing.
Guy, Lili and little guy in a one room home, spreading cornmeal mush on banana leaves for their supper. Guy came for news telling, Little guy was assigned one role in his school place. Lili wanted to know what role and lines, and the play is about the Haitian revolutionary Dutty Boukman, full of passionate, fiery language.  Lili cheered, pressing her son into the folds of her apron.
Boy kept his eyes on book and ate supper. The boy was still mumbling the same words as the three of them used the last of the rainwater trapped in old gasoline containers and sugarcane pulp from the nearby sugarcane mill to scrub the calabashes that they had eaten from. The boy was sitting in front of the shack on an old plastic bucket turned upside down, straining his eyes to find the words on the page.
They were playing a wet wind instrument as they slipped in and out of the puddles between the shacks in the shantytown, near the sugar mill was a large television screen in an iron grill cage that the government had installed so that the shantytown dwellers could watch the state sponsored news at eight o’clock every night.
Arabs, the family who owned the sugar mill were eccentric arabs, The Assad, the wealthy Haitian Lebanese family had a hot air balloon from America that they fly in the skies above the shantytown. While Lilik and Little guy continued looking at the balloon, Guy is obsessed with it, Lili is concerned about the fascination of the balloon from her husband.
Guy stayed outside in front of the shack as Lili undressed for bed, she loosened the ribbon that held the old light blue cotton skirt around her waist and let it drop past her knees. Guy came in just at that moment and saw her bare chest by the light of the smaller castor oil lamp that they used for the later hours of the night. Guy said that he had seen the man who owns it, he had seen him get in it and put it in the sky and went up there like it was some kind of kite and he was the kite master.  He was one of those men who were running anD actually guessed correctly.  Lili tried to string together what she could remember of her son’s lines, the words slowly came back to the boy, by the time he fell back to sleep, it was almost dawn.
Guy told a news to Lili, he was able to secure a few hours of work at sugar mill. But just scrubbing the latrines of the mil.  78 waiting lists.  If god wanted people to fly, he would have given us wings on our backs.
The light was slowly coming up behind the trees, Lili could hear the whispers of the market women. She tuned her back to her husband as she slipped out of her nightgown, quickly putting on her day clothes. Lili shut the door behind her, making her way out to the yard, the empty gasoline containers rested easily on her head as she walked a few miles to the public water fountains.
Guy and the boy were standing in the yard waiting for he when she got back. Lili watched Guy and Little guy walk down the footpath, her eyes following them until they disappeared, as soon as they were out of sight, she poured the water she had fetched into a a large calabash, letting it stand beside the house.
Little Guy got more lines, Guy is depressed, but still listen to son’s performance. freedom and liberation.
Little guy walked to the middle of the room and prepared to recite, he clared his throat,, raising his eyes toward the ceiling.
After supper, Lili took her son to the field where she knew her husband would be. She sat down on the grass next to little guy, for once feeling the sharp edges of the grass baldes against her ankles. Told a secret, sometimes I just wanted to take that big balloon and ride it up in the air, I would like to sail off somewhere and keep floating until I got to a really nice place with a nice plot of land were I could be something new. His father was struggling poor man his entire life, he remembered his dad as a man he would never want to be.
Lili got up with the break dawn next day, the light came up quickly above the trees. She found the boy standing alone in the yard with a terrified expression on his face. What happened,Baba is in the sky.  Guy was in the air hurtling down towards the crowd, Lili held her breath as she watched him fall, jump he crashed not far from where Lili and the boy standing, his blood immediately soaking the landing spot. The balloon kept floating free, drifting on its way to brighter shores. Lili tried to keep her son head pressed against her skirt as she move closer to the body. Little guy was breathing quickly as he looked at his father body on the ground. Let me look at him one last time.
Eye did not close, The boy continued reciting his lines, his voice rising to a man grieving roar, he kept his eyes closed, his fists balled at his side as he continued with his newest lines. No no closing, he likes to look at the sky.