A Wedding in Haiti Read online

  Also by JULIA ALVAREZ

  Novels

  How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

  In the Time of the Butterflies

  ¡YO!

  In the Name of Salomé

  A Cafecito Story

  Saving the World

  Nonfiction

  Something to Declare

  Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA

  Poetry

  Homecoming: New and Collected Poems

  The Other Side/El Otro Lado

  The Woman I Kept to Myself

  Books for Young Readers

  The Secret Footprints

  How Tía Lola Came to Stay

  Before We Were Free

  finding miracles

  A Gift of Gracias: The Legend of Altagracia

  The Best Gift of All: The Legend of La Vieja Belén

  Return to Sender

  How Tía Lola Learned to Teach

  How Tía Lola Saved the Summer

  How Tía Lola Ended Up Starting Over

  A Wedding in Haiti

  The Story of a Friendship

  JULIA ALVAREZ

  A Shannon Ravenel Book

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2012

  for los pitouses & all the Ludys

  Author’s Note

  In telling this story, I am not claiming to be an authority on Haitian matters. This is a book about a friendship with a young Haitian, Piti, who happened into a farm and literacy project my husband and I set up in my native country, the Dominican Republic. Through that friendship has come an opportunity to discover my neighbor country, who was and still is “the sister I hardly knew.” But these two journeys to Haiti are only the beginning of an evolving relationship, which has deepened with the writing of this book. My friendship with Piti and Eseline and little Ludy and their extended families and friends back in Haiti also continues to evolve and teach me how much is possible when we step outside the boundaries that separate us one from the other.

  Julia Alvarez

  September 2009–October 2011

  con la Altagracia a mi lado

  ONE

  Going to Piti’s Wedding in Haiti

  Circa 2001, the mountains of the Dominican Republic

  My husband and I have an ongoing debate about how old Piti was when we first met him. I say Piti was seventeen at the most. My husband claims he was older, maybe nineteen, even possibly twenty. Piti himself isn’t sure what year we met him. But he has been working in the mountains of the Dominican Republic since he first crossed the border from Haiti in 2001 when he was seven­teen years old.

  Bill and I might have forgotten the year, but we distinctly remember the first time we met Piti. It was late afternoon, and we were driving past the barracks-type housing where he lived with half a dozen other Haitian workers on a neighboring farm. On the concrete apron in front, the group was horsing around, like young people having fun all over the world. Piti, whose name in Kreyòl means “little one,” was the smallest of the group, short and slender with the round face of a boy. He was putting the finishing touches on a small kite he was making.

  I asked Bill to stop the pickup, as I hadn’t seen one of these homemade chichiguas since I was a child. I tried to explain this to Piti, who at that point didn’t understand much Spanish. His response was to grin and offer me his kite. I declined and asked if I could take his picture instead.

  On the next trip, I made a point of finding Piti so I could give him the photo in the small album I’d brought as a gift. You’d have thought I was giving him the keys to a new motorcycle. He kept glancing at the photo, grinning and repeating, “Piti, Piti!” as if to convince himself that he was the boy in the photo. Or maybe he was saying thank you. “Mèsi, mèsi” can sound like “Piti, Piti,” to an ear unused to Kreyòl.

  A friendship began. Every trip I sought him out, brought him a shirt, a pair of jeans, a bag in which to cart his belongings back and forth on his periodic and dangerous crossings of the border.

  What I felt toward the boy was unaccountably maternal. Somewhere in Haiti, a mother had sent her young son to the wealthier neighbor country to help the impoverished family. Maybe this very moment she was praying that her boy be safe, earn good money, encounter kind people. Every time I spotted the grinning boy with worried eyes, I felt the pressure of that mother’s prayer in my own eyes. Tears would spring up and a big feeling fill my heart. Who knows why we fall in love with people who are nothing to us?

  A coffee farm or a mistress?

  Over the years, Bill and I got to see a lot of Piti. Whenever we could get away from our lives and jobs in Vermont—short trips of a week, longer trips of a few weeks—we headed for the Dominican mountains. We had become coffee farmers.

  Every time I get started on this story, the curtain rises on that vaudeville act that long-term couples fall into: who did what first and how did we get in this fix.

  It began in 1997 with a writing assignment for the Nature Conservancy. I was asked to visit the Cordillera Central, the central mountain range that runs diagonally across the island, and write a story about anything that caught my interest. While there, Bill and I met a group of impoverished coffee farmers who were struggling to survive on their small plots. They asked if we would help them.

  We both said of course we’d help. I meant help as in: I’d write a terrific article that would bring advocates to their cause. Bill meant help, as in roll-up-your-sleeves and really help. I should have seen it coming. Having grown up in rural Nebraska with firsthand experience of the dis­appearance of family farms, Bill has a soft spot in his heart for small farmers.

  We ended up buying up deforested land and joining their efforts to grow coffee the traditional way, under shade trees, organically by default. (Who could afford pesticides?) We also agreed to help find a decent market for our pooled coffee under the name Alta Gracia, as we called our sixty, then a hundred, and then, at final count, two hundred and sixty acres of now reforested land. I keep saying “we,” but, of course, I mean the marital “we,” as in my stubborn beloved announces we are going to be coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic, and I say, “But, honey, how can we? We live in Vermont!”

  Of course, I fell in with Don Honey, as the locals started calling Bill, when they kept hearing me calling him “honey, this,” “honey, that.” The jokey way I explained our decision to my baffled family and friends was that it was either a coffee farm or a mistress. Over the years, I admit, I’ve had moments when I wondered if a mistress might not have been easier.

  We were naïve—yes, now the “we” includes both of us: We hired a series of bad farm managers. We left money in the wrong hands for payrolls never paid. One manager was a drunk who had a local mistress and used the payroll to pay everyone in her family, whether they worked on the farm or not. Another, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who we thought would be safe because he wouldn’t drink or steal or have a mistress, proved to be bossy and lazy. He was el capataz, he boasted to his underlings, the jefe, the foreman. He didn’t have to work. Every day turned out to be a sabbath for him. His hands should have been a tip-off, pink-palmed with buffed nails. Another manager left for New York on a visa I helped him get. (Like I said, it takes two fools to try to run a coffee farm from another country.)

  Still, if given the choice, I would probably do it again. As I’ve told Bill many a time—and this gets me in trouble—even if in the end we’re going to be royally taken, I’d still rather put my check mark on the side of light. Otherwise, all the way to being proved right, I’d have turned into the kind of cynic who has opted for a smaller version of her life.

  And things have slowly improved on the mountain. Over the years, the quality of the coffee being grown in the area has gotten better.
Local farmers are being paid the Fair Trade price or higher, and the land is being farmed organically. We also started a school on our own farm after we discovered that none of our neighbors, adults or children, could read or write. It helps that I’m associated with a college, with ready access to a pool of young people eager to help. Every year, for a small stipend, a graduating senior signs on to be the volunteer teacher. Recently, we added a second volunteer to focus on community projects and help out with the literacy effort.

  During the tenure of one of the better managers, Piti was hired to work on the farm. It happened while we were stateside, and when we arrived, what a wonderful surprise to find him at our door. “Soy de ustedes.” I am yours. “No, no, no,” we protested. We are the ones in your debt for coming to work at Alta Gracia.

  Piti later told me how it had happened. His Haitian friend Pablo had found work on a farm belonging to some Americanos. (Because I’m white, married to a gringo, and living in Vermont, I’m considered American.) It was a good place: decent accommodations, reasonable hours, Fair Trade wages “even for Haitians.” Piti put two and two together. The chichigua lady and Don Honey. We were not in country at the time, so Piti applied to the foreman, who took one look at this runt of a guy and shook his head. Piti offered to work the day, and, if at the end, he hadn’t done as much clearing as the other fellows on the crew, he didn’t have to be paid.

  Piti turned out to be such a good worker that he became a regular. His reputation spread. After several years at Alta Gracia, he was offered a job as a foreman at a farm down the road. Piti had become a capataz! One with calloused hands and cracked fingernails who could outwork any man, Haitian or Dominican.

  He was also a lot of fun. Nights when we were on the farm, it was open house at our little casita. Whoever was around sat down to eat supper with us. Afterward came the entertainment. At some point, a visiting student taught Piti and Pablo to play the guitar, then gave it to them. A youth group left a second guitar. Bill and I bought a third. Then, like young people all over the world, Piti and Pablo and two other Haitian friends formed a band. Mostly they sang hymns for their evangelical church. Beautiful, plaintive gospel songs à la “Amazing Grace,” in which the down-and-out meet Jesus, and the rest is grace. We’d all sing along, and invariably, Bill and I would look at each other, teary-eyed, and smile.

  And so, the curtain falls on the coffee-farm vaudeville act.

  It was on one of those evenings that I promised Piti I’d be there on his wedding day. A far-off event, it seemed, since the boy was then only twenty, at most, and looked fifteen. One of those big-hearted promises you make that you never think you’ll be called on to deliver someday.

  Early August 2009, Weybridge, Vermont

  The new volunteer on the farm, Eli, calls us. Piti needs to talk to us. Can we please call him? These messages are always about money: someone’s mother is sick; someone needs a loan to buy tools, food, medicines, a motorcycle; to get back to Haiti for a birth, a funeral, or in this case, a wedding.

  I had heard rumors. On one of his trips back home, Piti had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. (Piti had a girlfriend!) I had assumed the marriage had already taken place and that Piti had either forgotten to mention it or had thoughtfully decided not to inconvenience us by reminding me of my offer. There has to be an expiration date on grand promises.

  When I call the number, Piti is giggly with good news. The baby was born back in April. Piti is leaving for Haiti within days to meet his infant daughter and to marry the mother, Eseline, on August 20. Will my husband and I be coming?

  This is short notice indeed. And very inconvenient. In fact, the very week of the wedding, I’m scheduled to be at a five-day gathering of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. A Latina friend told me about the group and urged me to attend the conference. She and a contingent of her Latina friends are going. (This is during the height of the Sotomayor hearings, when the term wise Latina has gone to some of our heads.) I’m ripe for such a gathering. I need to connect with wise elders. As both my parents continue their decline into Alzheimer’s, I’ve become the parent of my parents. I need an infusion of grandmotherly wisdom as I transition into being an elder myself. In addition, my registration has been paid, and there is a penalty for canceling.

  “Ay, Piti, I’m so sorry. I can’t,” I try explaining.

  But now there’s a pebble in my shoe, even at night when I’m barefoot in bed. I go back and forth in a tizzy of indecisiveness. I pile up the reasons against changing my plans, a long list that includes the grandmothers, the conference cancellation penalty, the penalty to change my plane ticket, and more importantly, the lost opportunity for psychic help on the caretaking road ahead. On the pro side is Piti’s round, boyish face, grinning at my long-ago promise that I’d be at his wedding. Sometimes a conscience is an inconvenient thing to have, and costly. But not to follow it exacts an even greater cost, having to live with the hobbled person you become when you ignore it.

  Getting there from here

  In a subsequent phone call, I ask Piti where in Haiti his wedding will take place. “You go almost to Port-de-Paix,” he explains.

  On the map, Port-de-Paix is clear across northern Haiti as the crow flies, but unfortunately, there are no direct roads there. Piti can’t take us there, because he himself will have left for home before our arrival in order to make preparations for the wedding.

  I e-mail my friend Madison Smartt Bell, who has written extensively about Haiti and whom I consider an authority on all things Haitian. Does he have any suggestions on how to get there from here? Madison says our best bet is to hire a guide. He recommends one based in Cap-Haïtien with the reassuring name of Handy. But Handy’s English e-mails are not only not handy, they’re incomprehensible. A large Bonsor especial for you and your husband, one of them reads. Now I just write you for a great Remerciment especial . . . Please I am still the only for you an answer of your compreansion your answer please thank you please?

  My husband, whose Spanish is only a little better than Handy’s English, suggests I call Piti back and just ask for his address in Haiti. “We’ll find him,” Bill says confidently.

  Piti laughs outright when I put the question to him. “An address? It is not possible that way.” A comment that shakes my confidence, always in much shorter supply than my husband’s.

  But Piti comes up with his own solution. A Haitian friend who has been working with him in the Dominican Republic is from the same area in rural Haiti. Leonardo hasn’t been back home in two years, but for a fee and his return passage (he’s undocumented so he will have to pay a buscón to smuggle him back across the border), he’ll take us right to Piti’s doorstep.

  Leonardo turns out to be a young man of about twenty who looks like a rap star, with a big silver crucifix blazoned on his black T-shirt, mirror sunglasses, a cocky smirk, and a thick chain with a Che Guevara medallion. (Leonardo isn’t sure whose image it is but guesses a famous rapper.) This tough guy appearance makes me a little wary at first, until I find out that along with his small suitcase, Leonardo is bringing a box full of spaghetti for his mother.

  Midway on the trip, we’re to pick up Piti’s old friend, Pablo, who is already in Haiti visiting his own family. (“He’ll be waiting for you at the gas station,” Piti has told Leonardo.) Also along for the adventure is a Dominican friend who works as a coffee researcher for an agroforestry institute run by the government. Homero, another promising name, is curious about everything. What he doesn’t know, he’ll go out of his way to find out. Which is why he wants to go with us. “Haiti is like a brother I’ve never gotten to know.”

  I agree with Homero. Except for a brief trip to Port-au-Prince with my aunt and uncle twenty-five years ago, I’ve never set foot next door. Haiti is like a sister I’ve never gotten to know.

  Our volunteer from Middlebury, Eli, asks if he can join us. He only just arrived in the DR three weeks ago, and I, anyhow, am a little worried about how he will fare in
the year ahead. To begin with, Eli is a redhead with fair skin, a challenging complexion type in the tropics; and we are that much closer to the sun’s burning rays on our mountaintop. Eli also comes with an incredible résumé: head of the student government at Middlebury, a year’s teaching position at a prestigious private school, a just-completed masters in Spanish in Madrid. But those same spiffy achievement skills might prove a handicap in a remote farming village where male ambition is pretty much confined to cockfights and mistresses.

  “So you really want to spend a year on a coffee farm with no electricity, no hot water, sometimes no water at all, no Internet, no museums, cafés, restaurants, movie theaters?” Bill had asked during a phone interview while Eli was still in Spain. The guy had said “Yes”! We had to pinch ourselves in Vermont. Mid-September, Eli will be returning stateside to take his Law School Admission Test (LSAT) for law school. At one point during the trip, I pick up his heavy backpack and joke, “What have you got in here?” Sheepishly, Eli admits he brought along his thick book of LSAT exams. Our first evening in the Haitian countryside, in the waning light, I’ll catch Eli sitting under a mango tree taking a practice exam. By the trip’s end, I’ll have no doubts at all: Eli will do just fine this year at Alta Gracia.

  August 18, Santiago, Dominican Republic; los pitouses

  We arrive in Santiago the night before we’re to set out. All flights are on time, no cancellations or delays. A good thing because in order to be at the wedding two days from now, we have to get up at dawn tomorrow to make the journey to Piti’s in one day.

  Eli and Leonardo are already waiting for us when we get in from the airport. We’re all spending the night at my parents’ house; then at dawn, Homero will join us, and we’ll be off, picking up Pablo at his gas station, and on to Piti’s.