Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (best short novels .txt) 📗

hum of a hundred women talking and laughing and trading and gossiping, to make the day run. Every woman, it seemed, was calling out to the others, “Maren, maren!” It was the one word I knew, the one I had learned from weeks on the boat. Sailor, sailor, the women were shouting. But when I asked Ti Me and Ella about it, Ti Me opened her mouth to answer and Ella cut her off.

“You’ll notice, the Haitian women are not very chaste,” she said. “And it all stems from that. All of this does. All of this chaos around us.”

Ti Me closed her mouth and drew ahead of us, the basket balanced on her head. She had left this conversation.

Ella followed my gaze. “Oh, Ti Me would agree with me,” she said. “It is part of Papa’s work, to bring a civilizing force to this great country. Look.” Ella pointed one pale finger. Behind us, the mountains rose, impressive and lush and green. “This country could be rich. But a country is only as wealthy as its wives and mothers. You will see.”

I was not sure how the same home could produce an Ella, so full of spite her fingers shook at the mountains around us, and an Emmanuel, for whom the very same mountains brought tears to his eyes. I could not make sense of it, and I knew asking Ella directly would not get any response I could understand. It was a question for the night, for the space of time held between two bodies in bed—the one place in this country, I was learning, where I could speak the truth. Emmanuel, too.

I smiled at Ella in response.

To see her out in the market was strange. She walked like a very proud duck—both ankles turned nearly out, toes pointed slantwise. Every few feet, she swept the hem of her skirt up. I think it was to protect it, but it seemed to swirl up more dust and muck from the road. Ahead of us, Ti Me walked steadily, her own skirts tucked up into her apron to keep them from dragging in the mud. This practicality, perhaps, was what Ella thought of as so unchaste. It was what a man would think, not a woman, who knew how heavy skirts could get with dirt.

Watching Ella, I tried to see where Emmanuel was reflected in her movements. It relieved me that I could not. How could I love a man so much and detest the person closest to him? I thought again of what he had said. That they had not shared a life in a long time. I looked around me at the streets, the women bent over, Ti Me now stopping at a market stall, talking with another woman, a fruit I did not recognize in the palm of each of her hands. She was weighing them. Then she leaned over, spat on the ground. The two women began to argue furiously.

Ella stood watching, her arms crossed over her chest. The little boy at the stall watched, too, occasionally looking up at Ella, trying to read her expression. I caught his eye, and he grinned at me—a genuine smile. I smiled back.

Suddenly the argument stopped. Ti Me shouted, “Madame Sara!” and the other woman began to laugh. She held up her hands, as if in surrender.

Ti Me looked back at me slyly over her shoulder. “Madame Sara,” she said, and then she looked pointedly at Ella to translate. She did not want me to miss the joke.

“It is a type of bird,” Ella said. “It’s very small and yellowish and black and green, and it’s always chirping. You see it around Marchand Dessalines. She called the market woman that because she, too, is small and always chirping, and she goes from one town to another to sell, always talking, talking. The Madame Sara can build its nest anywhere, and this woman can sell anywhere, too.”

“It is a kind of compliment, then?”

“Ti Me is too soft,” Ella said.

“She seems to do well.”

“Yes, but you must understand. No one here respects you if you’re soft. You must be hard and righteous to gain respect. Look, there.” She pointed to the other end of the market, where a drawing of the Virgin Mary, sketched on a piece of spare wood in charcoal and mud, hung on a pole over a communal pump. “Popish nonsense like this, everywhere. A whole country that glorifies suffering and not sacrifice. It is a big job, to be here. I hope Emmanuel has made that clear to you.”

“He loves Haiti. He says it is where the future of the Negro race lies.”

“He is not wrong. If we can ensure the right kind of Negro is here, he is not wrong.”

“No one born here is the right kind?”

“Not without education and hard work. We must make them, too. That’s what you’re here for, I suppose. Why he brought you. Though why he thinks you are good for that, I do not know.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. But Ella was not so brave as to meet my eye.

Ti Me stopped her bargaining to toss her head over her shoulder and call to us, “Bon manman, bon pitit.” She turned back, picking up the rhythm skillfully, as if there was no interruption.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It is an old Haitian saying. ‘If the mother is good, the child will be good.’”

I looked away from Ella, back to Ti Me, who was grinning at me now. She winked.

“Mèsi,” I said to her.

“The people here are very fond of proverbs,” Ella said, staring straight ahead. “None of them make sense to me, though. The best proverbs, of course, are in the Bible.”

“But these ones sound very agreeable,” I said.

Ella said nothing, only kept watching the haggle.

When the deal was finally struck, Ti Me looked from Ella to me expectantly. I smiled back, uncertain.

“What is it?” I said.

Ella wouldn’t meet either of our eyes. She looked down at her