My Story: Mid 20s to Mid 30s

Early in the morning on the day Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash in the D.R., I was riding in my dad’s car across early morning New Year’s Day Manhattan to JFK. No one was up and awake. Not even the dogs needed a walk. There were no moving cars but ours. I was on my way to Haiti. It was “billed” as a short vacation between jobs. I had just left a pretty good one that afforded me almost no spare time but paid really well. We both knew, though, that if I liked it there I was not coming back. There were a lot of reasons.

Primary among these was my anti-war activism which had been fine until we heard tapes clicking on my parents’ phone. I had put them under some kind of surveillance. Dad and I did not talk about it that morning, but it did cease months after I left. Another reason was that I just didn’t fit in — anywhere. How bad could it be in a country where I was a racial minority? Another reason: I had a lot of Haitian friends, they were all down there again. There was a new president ( for life) but he was only 18. The old man was dead. And the rest of my little family, my dog, two cats, and my partner, all were there. Had been for a month. I had stayed on here to finish the end-of-the-year closing at work — for which I was richly rewarded — as women’s salaries went in those days — and to celebrate the holidays with my parents.

So I went and pretty much did not look back except one tearful time at my dad before I boarded. He told me that I didn’t have to go. I knew I had to. But I hugged him hard.

I expected Haiti to be like Florida in some ways. I knew Florida — its views and smells. That was not Haiti. But before long, I loved it. Life was hard, but the people were cheerful and relaxed — mostly. I found a job teaching at the bi-national center and enrolled at the university. There was only one university then — the national one.

I picked up Haitian Creole pretty easily to the point that Haitians thought I was Haitian and called me by names they use for light-colored girls: grimelle, mulatresse. Guys would call to me on the street. I would not respond. They would say. “She’s Haitian. A mulatresse.” At one point I thought myself an extremely popular teacher at the Haitian-American Institute until I encountered a Haitian woman of a wealthy family — well — upper middle class is probably more accurate — who looked enough like me and I her that when I danced on partial scholarship at her artists commune and manned the front desk, folks thought I was she. We became friends and then I knew those guys hailing me in the streets thought I was she. So, yes, I guess I looked like a mulatresse.

I knew I was moving to a dictatorship. It was a “benevolent” dictatorship, but a dictatorship nevertheless. There were strong rules. These were not laws. They were rules, and you did not violate them. I never did. As long as you did not, you were fine. First among these was that you did not speak out — ever. Very dangerous! Do not talk about Jean-Claude (the president for life). Do not talk about his mother, nor about his sister Marie Denise. JC was only 18. Word had it that his mom and sister acted as regents. This, in fact was easier than living in my own country where I thought I had freedom of speech but exercising it got me in worlds of trouble. In Haiti, I learned to keep my mouth shut.

I owe my survival to my partner, Lee, who was born in Brooklyn and was raised in Haiti. She knew all the rules and kept me focused. “Do this.” “Don’t do that.” “Say this.” “Don’t say that.” I learned to follow orders — not orders, exactly, advisories.

I earned a masters in ethno-psychology and completed doctoral studies in that field in Haiti without presenting my dissertation because that would have necessitated trips to France which I could not afford. I was earning a Haitian salary. I then lived there for three more years sort of illegally since my student visa had expired, but the ladies at customs and immigration had come to think of me as Haitian. They rubber-stamped my papers every time. Because, you know, I spoke Creole really well, made them laugh, looked like a mulatresse, and … hadn’t I been there forever?

When the time came that the greenbacks began to disappear among the marchands on the street (I would give them an orange Haitian bill and ask for change in greenbacks for months every time I was coming back to the US to visit), something was changing. Muscle-flexing of the uniforms came in September, that was when all papers had to be renewed.

Normally they relaxed after Independence Day, January 1, on the run-up to Carnaval. But for two years straight, the relaxation did not occur and greenbacks became ever more scarce. Something was coming.

The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince has proven earthquake proof. It also was identical to the embassy in Saigon — the one they evacuated by helicopters. The department hired architects to erect identical embassies. Given the way I had been treated on my most recent visits to the consulate, I figured that if anything bad happened, I would not be one of the people on the roof boarding a copter with my cats. It was time to get out.

So I left. I came home. To start all over again. I had nothing. A few hundred dollars cash that I had saved in greenbacks. Only my clothes, some books, a few folding chairs, my two cats. Lee came back with me and left her life in the only country she really knew very well behind. She had lived there from age 4 and had spent her high school years here.

Four years after we left, the coup I felt coming came. By then we had our own place. I had a good job, a car, an apartment, a health plan, and a pension plan. My five-year plan had actually been completed in three.

Things got even better from there with a lot of hard work, long hours, and grit.