Saturday Comes. Carine J.D. Fabius

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СКАЧАТЬ like a pirate on a plank to leave her family and friends, home and hopes. How was it that she, who would have chosen Haiti’s desperation over Miami, was the only one still alive? One by one, day after wretched day, night after terrifying night, they’d gone. Three nights into the voyage, two aged women, an overweight girl, and a middle-aged man had been swept away by choppy waves. Blue-cold wails haunted the air around them as the moonless sky aided the sea in its conquest. And the others: that blur of black faces and bodies so wrenchingly skinny and scared. What did it matter? They were gone, and Maya dared not reflect on the gruesome, sometimes scandalous remembrances—of tightly packed bodies made slippery by vomit, of soggy bodily wastes crushed between toes, of the increasing fights among them for the food their own excrement had become, and then much worse as their hunger turned vicious. And the stench, the unbearable, never-ending stench…

      As the sun started to rise in the sky, she looked over at the once-cocky captain of their boat. He didn’t seem to be breathing. It would be so simple, so beautiful just to die here now, floating like this; at least there’s more room now, so much better than before…But she would not allow that. She would continue to breathe, and a miracle would get her to this cursed land they called Florida. She mustered up what strength she could to hum a song to Agwe, Ruler of the Sea. Please, please. She had work to do. She dropped her burnt and blistered arm over the side into saltwater below. Knowing it wouldn’t help, she lifted a few drops to her mouth, dripping acid down her throat. Why not? Desperation had inspired worse things.

      A strong wind picked up.

      Thankful for a respite from the heat, Maya turned over and prayed for sleep—a dreamless sleep, please God. But she would not be spared.

      “Ou konen Jedi se jou pa ou.”

      “You know Thursday’s your day,” she heard him say. Maya peered around a half-opened door to a concrete room, dank and windowless, and froze before a familiar spectacle: M’sié Chenet, the man of the house where she and her mother worked, stood as close as he could behind her manman, his right hand squeezing her breast in a painful pinch. His left hand clutched a coiled red rope. His dark green shorts pooled around his ankles as he pushed rhythmically into Manman Jizzeline’s dark brown behind. As Maya watched, her mother turned, noticing her. Two ragged-edged black holes burned in place of her eyes. She smiled but her teeth were gone, replaced by sharp, pointed fangs that dripped dirty, brown blood. Maya opened her mouth to scream in terror, but something stopped her.

      “It’s okay,” her mother said without words. “There’s nothing we can do to change it. I die, he lives on. That’s the way it’s always been. Don’t try to change it, you’ll only get hurt. Now go!”

      “No!” she shouted, running toward them, fists flailing, a hollow scream bouncing against clammy gray walls; and she saw the red rope come to life, becoming a thick purple-edged snake that flung itself around her scrawny body. As she watched herself disappear down the serpent’s orifice, she wondered at her vanishing resolve. “I am like a stone. I can’t move or fight. And this heat, this smelly, horrid heat. I’m going to hell…But I didn’t kill him yet! So hot…so hot…so hot…”

      When Maya opened her eyes, it was hot indeed, and the horrid smell a vapor from her own body. A strange, gritty sensation filled her mouth and surrounded her tongue. She sat up groggily and gazed upon turquoise water, sensing a change. The boat was missing! She looked down, imagined she saw sand, and thought, Shore!

      And then a voice said something she could not comprehend. Dazed, her eyes clouded, Maya slowly raised her head. The boy looked a couple of years her junior, and she stared up at him: at his black hair, steel-gray eyes, and mouth that did not smile. He uttered more sounds, insisting…

      A surge of nausea defeated the exhausted child. A void filled her chest, and like a lifeless ragdoll, she crumpled onto the coveted solidity of Miami Beach.

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