Te Genjam

(As originally published in Salt & Pepper Magazine, September 2022)

The plane taxied on the runway for a while before pulling to a stop near the gate with a jerk. Even though the cabin was air conditioned he could feel a different kind of heat pressing against the outer walls of the aircraft, seeping its way in. Maximilien twisted around in his seat, trying to be inconspicuous, but failing as he looked at all the other passengers clapping and cheering and snapping off their seat belts. He was on the end of an aisle and was pressured to stand by an older woman next to him who had carried a full shopping bag in her lap the whole flight, even though it would be another thirty minutes before they all could start the slow shuffle off the plane. The journey had started at JFK, but hardly anyone on board spoke English. The cold sandwich from food service was tasteless and took up awkward space in his belly. Maximilien squeezed and jostled in place as the other passengers climbed into the aisle reaching for the items they had crammed into the overhead bins.

Inside the terminal, he inched through waves of people yelling into cell phones, adjusting wigs, dragging sullen children and shopping bags filled with random extras that wouldn’t fit in their suitcases. He had a picture of the man who was charged with picking him up. He looked at it every few seconds and scanned the crowed to find him. He was shepherded to a window where “foreigners” needed to pay a random fee before they could proceed outdoors. He thought it was probably bullshit, but he was in no mood to protest and didn’t have the language to do it anyway. When he retrieved his passport he shuffled through the exit and into the high sun that held him where he stood, sweating, heart pounding, lost. “Mathurin?” Max leaned back, staring hard, hoping that squinting would clear the fog of strangeness. The small hard face was attempting a smile, grey stubble hiding in the long folds of his cheeks. The oversized Guayabera he wore drooped over his shoulders. This man squinted, too, but it was a kind of side eye, searching Maximilien’s hair and face and shoulders and hands for... something. “Mathurin?” He asked again. Maximilien thought he had forgotten that name, but it sounded achingly familiar floating from the man’s mouth, and he was surprised by the sound of his own voice answering. “It’s me.” The elder gave a quick nod and turned for the younger man to follow him. The parking lot at Toussaint Louverture International was chaotic, full of people hollering at cars getting in their way, dragging oversized luggage filled with second hand clothing and random American dry goods. The truck was far enough away for Max to feel a tug in his bicep as he carried his bag instead of letting the wheels drag like everyone else. The sun was high, directly over them, but a chill settled over Max’s shoulders.

“Is Ok. Let’s go.”

The mortuary looked like a check cashing place with its signage and other advertisements painted by hand on the white walls outside. The dull facade needed a fresh coat, but then who was there to care? The bodies that came in and out were long past the formalities of appearance. Maximilien watched four men labor under his father’s coffin. In the years since they’d met, when he was a child, Max had never doubted that Papa belonged to him. He’d never wondered about his own slender frame compared to the muscular build his younger brothers shared. He didn’t think twice about his being the only one with lighter skin and hazel eyes because Gabriel had those eyes, too. They’d all disagreed about carrying out Cane’s final wish to be buried with his wife in a country he’d never even visited, but Max was the only one who was willing to accompany the body and into Haiti’s countryside.

As he stepped back to watch men load Cane into the back of a refrigerated truck and close the doors without ceremony, it was the first time in a long time that Max thought about who he belonged to. At the airport, people eyed him the way they do tourists and other profiteering visitors, but in town and the narrow roads of Jacmel, they watched his movements. They listened for the tone in his voice. The waited for him to answer the question they didn’t have the language to ask. Max climbed into the backseat of an old SUV like a somnambule and sat with his hands joined in front of him. During the whole ride he spoke very little, accepting bottled water here, declining a fish patty there. They pulled over on the side of the road at one point and approached a woman hovering over a smoky grill with a stack of styrofoam clamshell containers in a crate at her side. She shuffled over, thick arms resting on her wide haunches, and leaned suspiciously near the windshield. With the exchange of a nod, she shuffled back to scoop hot chunks of fried pork with and breadfruit into the styrofoam clamshells. She handed over a heavy paper bag of greasy goodness and palmed the wrinkled cash, tucking it into her bosom. The inside of the truck became heavy with the smell of meat. The men passed a bulging container back to Max, but he refused it as politely as he could. “You don’t eating?” The driver called out, as if shouting would make his English better. Max pointed to his stomach and made an apologetic grimace. “Konen li pa konen!” The men laughed and split his portion among them. They drove by barefoot children, goats tied to trees, and old women wearing t-shirts with sports teams and American TV shows he knew they had never heard of. He rolled the window down to let the air whip over him full of the noises and smells of a place he had once been, but had no memory of. He had been in Jacmel less than twenty four hours and Max didn’t realize how tired he was until he woke up in that backseat feeling like he was hung over. The soft curls of his hairline stuck to his face and he struggled to sit upright. He remembered being nervous about how violently the truck rumbled over parts of the road where the asphalt broke apart into large chunks and turned to dust altogether. At one point it was mostly mud and the wheels waded in water almost halfway up the wheels before getting to the other side where they could grip gravel again. None of the thoughts he had tried to gather in his mind would stay and all he could do was drift into unconsciousness again.

The sun was just starting to lean downward when they arrived at a wide cement house with a brick courtyard. As he stepped out of the truck a lizard crept onto Maximilien’s shoe and he jumped back with a shriek, amusing the other men. An old woman meandered out to greet them and stopped in front of Max. She stared into his face and reached up for it, but her small hand could only get to his shoulder. “Sa se pitit Mimiche.”

Max didn’t know what the woman said, but he recognised the sound of his mother’s name. He stumbled over a rock and hands took hold of him on both sides to lead him to the porch. He slumped over with goosebumps crawling over his arms. The old woman handed him a brandless bottle of water. He wrapped his fingers around it and realised that his hand was colder than the water in it. They sat together in silence and watched as the men pulled the casket out of the truck and set it in the middle of the courtyard. Out of the corner of his eye Max sensed movement and when he turned to look there were people, slowly making their way towards him from the main road and from the woods on either side of the porch. They came carrying small pots, trays, bowls, jars, and bottles. They filed into the house, nodding at the old woman as they passed her.

The smell of food floated from the open door of the house. Max recognised some things he had tasted at friends’ houses. Those moms were always so concerned that he didn’t know pen patat, griyo, or fritay kabrit. He only knew rice and beans and stewed chicken because Papa sometimes went to a Haitian spot on Nostrand for a plate of something that reminded him of his Micheline. Maxilmilien watched more and more people arrive and light small lamps that they set on the ground with blankets in the courtyard. They brought out servings of food and sat in a wide circlearound the casket. A teenaged boy who resembled Max with his long arms, curly hair and pointed chin brought out a bowl of something green and mushy and presented it to him. He waited while Max searched for words, gestured from his mouth to his belly, shook his head, and finally gave up. The boy set the bowl down next to Max and quietly stepped away. “Men li tounen...” (He came back) “Li vin lakay...” (He came home) “Yo rekonet li, se li mem mem...” (They recognise him, it’s really him)

One by one, the folks who had gathered got up to approach the casket. They went with their heads down, not sad but serious. Not familiar, but greeting Maximilien here and there with a hand on his shoulder as the passed or the jutting of a chin as they went back to their seat. Those hands were rough, but their touch was tender in a way that unnerved him and made his heart quiver. By the time everyone paid their respects to Cane, a few men lifted the casket and carried it several yards behind the house to the crypt entrance. They set it down and stepped back without emotion. They didn’t know the man they carried, but they kept singing, tearfully chanting words that Maximilien didn’t understand. The old woman nudged him along and a path cleared for him to walk to the opening to the space that had been prepared for Cane. He stepped up to the opening and ran his hand over his mother’s name. He remembered her funeral, but had no memory of ever coming here. A hot breeze rustled through the perimeter of the family plot. The simple stone blocks painted blue and gray and been whitewashed by the country sun and stood like sentinels. Max whispered into the empty space reserved for Cane and knocked three times on the wall. He turned to face the crowd of what looked like dozens of drawn, sweaty people who had come to send off his father, he scanned the faces of the men. There were middle- aged ones, younger ones, and rheumy-eyed elders, but there was nothing familiar in any of those eyes. They lifted the casket and slid it gently into place. “Le a rive, men li tounen...” (The time has come, he has returned...)

Four men squeezed the cement block into the opening and poured sealant over it. The gate stayed open since Papa’s name still had to be carved onto the top when it dried. Max stood over his parents, the mother who bore him and the man who raised him, and felt singularly alone. His shoulders slumped and he hugged his elbows to calm the shivers crawling across his back. The mourners gradually walked back up to the house and returned to their places on blankets spread out all the around the patio and the driveway. There was a bonfire now where the casket had been and someone was playing a drum. Max kept his eyes closed, not sure whether he was sinking deeper into a dream or about to wake up from it. The fire was full and roaring, and the faces singing around it were just short of sad. They clapped and swayed and picked at the small snacks in their bowls. Max climbed back up to the porch and leaned on the spot where he was before. He had hardly heard the sound of his own voice twenty four hours and he had only had airplane food and a cereal bar that was in his carry on. It was well past nightfall and the fire in the courtyard was the only light. The darkness of the surrounding woods was seasonably hot, the temperature hovered in the high eighties, yet he was cold. Max gathered his knees into his chest and waited for the tears that he’d managed to keep from flowing the week before at the ceremony in New York, but they would not come. He rubbed his face with icy hand, searching his mind for some Kreyol words to string together, but the only things that came to mind were the curse words and basic greetings that any non-Haitian learns from living in Flatbush. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again...

“Take it. Come on, Maxo. Take.” The old woman was standing above him holding out an aluminium cup. Her veiny little hand pulsed around the handle so he could tell that it was hot. He looked up at her amazed at how much bigger and stronger she looked, but even more at the English words coming matter-of- factly from her mouth. And she called him Maxo.

Maximilien still wasn’t able to form words, so she squatted next to him. She took his hand and wrapped it around the cup. It may have well be on fire for how icy his fingers were. She eased the cup closer to his face, her eyes locked with his. When the cup was right below his nose Max flinched at the smell coming from it. He looked at the dark herbs floating at the top of some liquid and went to protest, but the smell took away his voice. “Take it. It’s for you.” The old woman firmly cupped his chin and guided the cup to his mouth like she was feeding a fussy toddler. Her own lips parted as she watched him swallow gulp after gulp of a libation everyone else seemed to have a bit of already, but that Max was tasting for the first time. But the electric current that shot down his throat and right up to his brain was not unfamiliar. The liquid eased down into his stomach and spread into a burn that was almost painful, but still comforting. The zest on his tongue turned to fire as he breathed out, decongested, loosened, lit. He took the cup on his own and swallowed more until the fragrant twigs and leaves pushed their way up to his teeth, trying to get in like the rest of it. Maximilien’s eyes watered, not from tears, but from the sting of perspiration that slicked down his forehead and the back of his neck. His shoulders fell back and he felt his chest open, ready for a shout even without words. The drums that had seemed like a muffled pulse up til now were suddenly loud and insisting. Whose heart was this? Was it Cane’s? His spirit thanking him for honouring his final wish? His mother’s, maybe? None of her sons had ever visited her grave since the prospect of travel to Haiti was always full of anguish. He was compelled to stand, walk around a bit, breathe the flames that seemed live in his mouth suddenly. The people saw changed disposition and weren’t surprised at all. “Apa ou la, kompe. Apa ou tounen...” (You showed up, brother. You came back.)

Max was never a dancer. He held Camille close and swayed in a two step to almost any song, but after swallowing the spicy mix of fresh ginger, lemongrass, cinnamon and whatever else she put in there, he slipped off his shoes and went to shuffle to the beat. They added a cowbell and some long bamboo looking horn and that’s when the tears came. Max kept dancing, stomping, clapping without wiping his face. He looked back at the old woman, who looked small again, and found her waving him on. “All of this. It’s for you.”