A Wedding in Haiti (12 page)

But the lieutenant didn’t earn his gold teeth by being a blind chauvinist. “Them,” he nods. “What about
their
documents?”

It is not often that I can’t come up with a single word, but this is one of those times. I can’t even seem to be able to tell the lieutenant the truth, which should not be that difficult, as I wouldn’t have to invent it.

Once again, Homero comes to the rescue. “Lieutenant, we have a little problem. Our worker here has his papers but his wife and baby don’t. Is there a way to resolve this situation?”

Surprisingly, the lieutenant does not shake his head. This, I should realize, is a bad sign. He doesn’t have to pretend to hidden cameras. There is nothing he can do to help an undocumented Haitian enter the Dominican Republic. Although he checks documents, his only authority is over vehicles—that’s why he could help us with the pickup permit on our way to Haiti. We will have to inquire at Dominican immigration. But before he can let us proceed, the pickup needs to be fumigated. No telling what it picked up next door—in addition to undocumented Haitians.

A young man with a canister strapped to his back sprays each tire, then slaps the side of the pickup. We’re good to go. The lieutenant is waving us through. Bill drives past the enclosed yard, under the archway that welcomes us into the Dominican Republic, and halfway down the street into Dajabón, carried along by the market crowd. No one stops us. No one comes after us. “Keep going, keep going!” I’m yelling at Bill, my one Bonnie-and-Clyde moment.

“No, no, no!” Now it’s Homero shaking his head. That is a very bad idea. We might get away with not going back and paying our entry fees. But between Dajabón and Santiago, there are at least ten military checkpoints. The minute the
guardias
spot a Haitian in the vehicle, they will ask to check passports, visas. The penalties can be dire: Eseline and the baby deported, the rest of us arrested, the pickup impounded.

“But I thought you said market day we could just whiz through the border?” I remind Homero.

“We could, you saw. But now we have to figure out what to do about the checkpoints.”

What does he suggest? “
El que tiene boca llega a Roma
,” he quotes a popular Dominican saying. If you have a mouth you can get to Rome. But if you are Haitian, getting into the DR is another story.

Homero, Piti, and I walk back under the arches to Immigration to get all our passports stamped, our fees paid, and—we hope—our little problem resolved. Bill and Eli stay behind with Eseline and Ludy to guard the luggage. Immigration seems to consist of two windows looking out on an inner courtyard, packed with people pressing in on all sides. I say this as a Dominican, so I don’t mean to insult anyone, but we did not get the gene for waiting on line.

Homero and Piti and I join the pushing crowd, and all too soon, we’re facing a middle-aged woman, who doesn’t even bother to glance up. We pay our fees, get our passports stamped, and then, lightly, I broach the question. “What can we do about a Haitian mother and her child who don’t have any documents?” The woman, who has been mindlessly doing her job—collecting fees, stamping passports without bothering to corroborate faces with photos—looks up. This is one fool worth checking out. “She needs to apply for her documents in Haiti.”

“But what if she’s here and needs to enter now?”

The woman is shaking her head, little movements of incredulity rather than negation. She cannot believe anyone could be this ignorant. “Without documents, she cannot enter this country.”

Oh yeah? Haitian mother and child are already halfway down the main street in Dajabón. But I know better than to bite the hand that might be willing to take something under the table. “What about clemency? She’s a young girl; this is her first child.” It’s as if I’m on a talk show, trying to drum up audience support.

The woman sighs. She has to get back to work. But the fact that she doesn’t bother to give me a lecture about rules being rules suggests that she knows that the rules are bendable. “Talk to one of the officials inside, maybe they can help you.”

We only need to send one Daniel into the lion’s den, and Homero has a good track record. In he goes to try and locate the official we dealt with two days ago. I head back to the pickup to give my fellow travelers an update, leaving Piti pacing in front of the door of the building, awaiting the fate of his wife and child.

When I return to the inner yard, Piti and Homero are sitting under an enormous shade tree whose roots probably extend into Haiti. By the looks of it, they are having a serious discussion. At first I think Homero is letting the young man down easy, delivering bad news that Eseline and Ludy will have to return home. But in fact, Homero has found out that there is a solution.

No one has stopped Eseline here at the entry, in large part because of the chaos of market day. The problem will come—as he predicted—at the checkpoints. An individual vehicle with a Haitian inside will be stopped. But there are buses that travel between Dajabón and other parts of the island, and, for a special fee, they will take a few undocumented Haitians along with other passengers. At each checkpoint, the driver then passes on part of that fee to the guards who waive checking everyone’s documents.

It’s actually a win-win situation because the Dominicans on the bus—whom, you’ll recall, do not have the waiting gene—would not want to endure the long delays of having everyone’s documents checked. As for what that certain extra fee is, Homero will have to check at the bus station down the street. First, Piti has to decide to take the risk, as in a few cases, not every crew at every checkpoint on a particular day is on board with this arrangement. But there aren’t a whole lot of other options.

Piti listens carefully, and then something happens to his boyish face. A manly gravity descends on his features. It’s as if he has suddenly realized what he has done. I don’t mean the irresponsibility of placing his young wife and child in this predicament. I mean this is the moment when he grasps what it means to become one with his wife and child.

A friend recently told me how she asked a new colleague from Kenya if he had any family. “Yes, indeed,” the man replied, “I have a large family, cousins, and aunts, and uncles, and grandparents.” My friend explained that she meant family the way we use the term in this country, meaning a wife, children, the nuclear family. The man looked surprised. “But that is me.”

Eseline and Ludy
are
Piti now. He nods, agreeing to take the risk for all of them. He is a boy-sized man, taking on a man-sized burden. I wish I could help him out, beam him my mantra,
Tranquilo, tranquilo,
but so far I can’t say it has done much to still my own anxious heart.

Lunch with Castro at the Gran Hotel Raydan

We stop at the Gran Hotel Raydan. It’s on the main drag in Dajabón, diagonally across the street from the bus station—and according to Homero, who has eaten there before, it has a decent restaurant. Out front on the patio, the few cast-iron tables and chairs are deserted. It’s the hot time of day, when sensible folk are indoors in the dark, air-conditioned interior. But we’re already a long ways from being a sensible bunch. We wait outside, baking in the sun, while Homero and Piti cross over to the station to make arrangements.

They come back excited, nervous, full of news. A bus is leaving in a few minutes. Initially, the dispatcher quoted twenty-five hundred pesos for taking the undocumented Eseline to Santiago. Somehow—he’s getting alarmingly good at this—Homero talked the guy into accepting two thousand for Eseline. Piti, being documented, will pay the usual fare, two hundred pesos.

We hurry to get them ready. Their luggage will stay with us, but we put together a plastic bag with necessities: Ludy’s bottle, a couple of Pampers from the packet we just bought, some crackers and cheese, and a bottle of water. Eseline takes the last Dramamine. Eli lends Piti his cell phone, just in case . . . We leave that sentence unfinished and skip over to a happy ending. We will meet them in Santiago. Call us the minute they get there. Eli punches my number into his cell phone and hands it to Piti.

Meanwhile, Homero, Eli, Bill and I will follow in the pickup, taking an alternate route on back roads. The fear is that if we tail the bus, the guards at the checkpoints might get nervous and decide to put on a law-abiding show for the Americanos in the pickup. Best to give the bus wide berth. Since it will be making stops along the way to load and unload passengers, we’ll grab a bite at the restaurant first. We should arrive in Santiago around the same time for our rendezvous.

Homero and I accompany Piti, Eseline, and Ludy, but just as we’re crossing the street, a bus is pulling out. We hurry over to the dispatcher, whose face drops the minute he sees us. Our bus just left. Furthermore, now there’s an added problem. “You didn’t say anything about a baby. I’d rather take ten men and as many women as take a baby.”

“But why?” I’m puzzled. If the point is keeping out Haitians who will take jobs away from Dominicans, Ludy has a long ways to go before she’ll be any kind of competition.

I never do get an answer as to why a baby is such a big issue. Later, Homero will surmise that the dispatcher had been willing to take twenty-two hundred because a bus was about to leave—a kind of fire-sale price. But now, with more time, the dispatcher has some elbow room to dicker. We end up paying an additional thousand pesos for the baby. The family will be on the very next bus, the dispatcher confirms, pocketing the bills.

When will that be?

“When it fills,” he tells us. Meanwhile, so as not raise suspicions, Piti and Eseline should go stand out of sight at the back of the station. He gestures with his chin. He will come get them when it’s time. He turns to Homero and me with a look that says, Scram.

While Homero waits, I walk back with Piti and Eseline, both big-eyed and nervous. We embrace, and something about our arms around each other, the baby in the middle, feels like a moment requiring spiritual punctuation. But what to say and to whom? It is an interesting moment when an agnostic feels compelled to lead a prayer. “Please, God, keep this family in your loving gaze. Bring us safely together in Santiago.” When I open my eyes, Piti and Eseline have bowed their heads, their eyes closed, their foreheads fervently creased. Only Ludy is looking at me, a little smile playing on her lips. I suppose if there is a God, this is how he would make a visitation, on the sweet face of a child.

Back at the dark, wood-paneled restaurant in the Gran Hotel Raydan, Bill and Eli have already been seated at a table, noses buried in their menus, as if reading two engrossing novels. Our waiter, a portly, middle-aged fellow whom Homero remembers from previous visits, is named Castro.
“¿Cómo está la revolución?”
I joke with him.

Castro sighs. He must hear this a lot. He has a tired, humorless face, a man who expects the worst and is not often disappointed. He, too, has had a long day, and it’s only two in the afternoon. And we are a complicated foursome: two vegetarians (Eli is a flexible vegetarian—so as not to cause a problem, he’ll eat meat if that’s all there is); a man who wants
chivo
as good as the one he ate in Moustique (Bill); and another who wants the delicious plate he ate the last time he was here, but he can’t remember what it was (Homero). In the silence after our order is finally settled, we clink glasses.

“To Piti and Eseline and Ludy!”

A half hour later, as we ourselves are driving away from the hotel, we see another bus pulling out of the station across the street. I try to make out faces, but the windows are tinted so I can’t see who’s riding inside. But since this might be the bus that carries Piti and Eseline and Ludy, I give it a lucky name as it roars away, God Bless
,
Merci Jésus, like the tap-taps we saw earlier today.

Mèsi, Jezi, mèsi

The trip back to Santiago seems endless, and later, I figure out why: I am living two parallel lives.

In one life, I am riding in a silver four-wheel-drive 2009 Toyota pickup, stopping at some of Homero’s favorite haunts, all having to do with food. In keeping with his name, Homero is the kind of companion you want to take with you on a journey. At first glance, he might not look the part—a family man with three young children, a wife, a government office job—but once he hits the road, he turns into a free spirit and bon vivant. He’ll show you a hell of a good time. And when need be, he can morph into Daniel in the lion’s den or undercover haggler finding you the best bargain on bribes going.

Vianela and her son, Nelson, on the road to Loma de Cabrera, sell us
dulce en yagua,
a kind of thick fudge made with milk, sugar, and any number of other ingredients (orange, cashew fruit, coconut), then wrapped in
yagua,
the husk shed by a palm tree. We buy one and a half pounds, and when she weighs the wedge on her old-fashioned hanging scale, she says,
“Le falta conciencia para ser una y media.”
It lacks a conscience to be one and a half pounds. I’m taken with this roadside moralist of what amounts to ounces. And maybe because we are so close to the border, I find myself wondering how such a fine moral sensibility would have responded to the 1937 massacre.