Sketches

My remembrance of tastes varies. There is the dreaded daily tablespoonful of the pasty white liquid in that brown bottle with the words Emulsion de Scott (rich in cod liver oil) and a fisherman holding a life-size fish hooked over his shoulder. We were particularly sickly as children, so mother and the elders were constantly trying to figure out how to make our bodies stronger. This morning ritual included a chaser of homemade vegetable cocktail. Beets, carrots, celery, watercress, and a kind of spinach mixed into one of my least favorite bitter drinks. That juice was always too thick and full of stringy fibers. Then there are the fizzies of cold cola in that light green Coke bottles, hard candy wrapped in cellophane squares made in other countries could not compete with dous makòs (fudge made in Ti Guave) or tablèt kokoye (coconut brittle).

Then there was akasan (cornmeal porridge) with milk, star anise, and cinnamon that grandma made. Peanut butter on casava to the plantain porridge that often got me into serious trouble. Too heavy. Besides, I preferred savory to sweet things.

Father had a nasty habit of bribing us with a bottle of cola after doling out his punishments. He was the strict disciplinarian when we misbehaved. Wait till your father gets home was one of mother’s biggest threats and he did not disappoint. I remember having to spend an entire night in the living room kneeling on two books facing a corner wall. I had been bad. At some point during the night Mother asked Father if I could go back to sleep in my bed. He said no. I spent an entire night kneeling on two books. I wrote about it once when the memory came back to me. After all, something like that needed to be documented.

My obsession with remembering turned these morsels of the past into precious collectibles. My fondest pieces from the earliest memorable years were related to food. These became my homing devices that took me back to a past that growing up under a dictatorship, childhood trauma, and migration distorted as quickly as a madeleine cake. Can I, following Toni Morrison, refer to them as rememories?

A whiff of Gouda suddenly produces a vision of batonets, best described as cheese sticks, laid in rows on a baking tin. They were made from scratch with butter, flour, smoked Gouda and finely diced red peppers with even finer chopped parsley. The dough was evenly rolled hundreds and hundreds of times on a flat surface so that each layer of the batonet is light and flaky. A little longer than one inch, and a dark yellow, they earn their richer coloring from the egg yolk that had been brushed onto each stick before their placement into a hot oven. They melt in your mouth one after another.

Back then, mother baked all sorts of pastries, cookies, and cakes on a regular basis. They were sold by three different street peddlers on busy streets and in front of the lycée. Students and passersby were frequent customers. During those baking days, I think, I was happiest. I would sit around trying not to get in the way. At the preparation stage, we would watch the incessant beating or creaming of the butter with huge cups of sugar folded in until the cracked eggs were added. We were there to stake claims to doughy utensils used to whip up the batter. Then mother would send us off to go play outside or something because there were too many of us around. When the dough was done and pans had been floured, she would call us back again to get our rewards. As I got older, I could and was able to make dibs for the mixing bowl. But that took years and I could never eat the whole thing – it was to be shared. Until then, when I was lucky, I ended up with a mixing spoon. Before age seven (give or take a year or two) all I got was a tablespoon dipped in the batter especially given to us little ones with the following imperative: Men! Al chita on kote pou demare pye’m. Here… now go sit somewhere and stop crowding around my feet. Once Mother began to get sick, she stopped baking.

Despite the delicate French finger foods and the Haitian cakes made from secret recipes that family protected even from each other, the flavors that bring the most serene smile to my face, even now as I write this, are from a meal that we think of manje peyizan (peasant food) or rural folk’s food. That association can be traced back to our colonial past. Enslavers gave the enslaved saltfish because it was cheapest. The latter added roots and vegetables grown on plots of land they cultivated near their living quarters. Those little plots of land play important roles in the creation of local internal-market systems throughout the Caribbean.

When it comes to food, our meals were simple. They started with breakfast, the trek to school, a substantial dinner at midday around noonish. At night, there was a light supper. Those years, if the day did not start with porridge or oatmeal, then it was eggs or fwadi (liver) with onions or some salted fish like arenso (smoked herring), arensel (salt herring), or moru (codfish) with a root starch. My favorites were either the boneless smoked herring in a tomato sauce or saltfish in a white sauce served with either ripe plantains or banan fig (fig banana). I was happier if the plate had several slices of bright green avocado stacked like an accordion on one side of it.

Arenso ak banan fig was the breakfast of champions. I didn’t like fwadi. That may be because I actually saw what liver looked like before it was cooked. Funny, I don’t recall crying over not wanting breakfast, but I have tons of tales to tell about those late suppers. Breakfast was meant to get us going in the morning after that daily dose of cod liver oil. It was sturdy and would fortify us until midday when we had box lunches. I used to hang around the kitchen a whole lot.

I have rather vivid and specific recollections of sounds. On numerous occasions, during the afternoon or on weekends, flashing sirens would grow loud and louder and eventually stop. Hours later, they would restart again. From the conversations between adults present, I learned that this was the motorcade that accompanied the young Jean-Claude Duvalier on his visits to a girlfriend that lived down the street. Then there was the occasional non-ending siren to alert everyone that it was time to get home and remain indoors to observe the kouvrefe (curfew). During the first Duvalier’s rule (the father’s, not the son’s) between 1957-1971, curfews had been regular occurrences. They were often imposed as one of many authoritarian tactics Papa Doc used to repress dissent and keep order. Not surprising that on his deathbed, this father named his son “Baby Doc” president for life at the tender age of nineteen.

There was always music in our house especially when father was around. He visited from Illinois periodically. He was a self-taught mechanic addicted to taking things apart and fixing them. A talented craftsman, he fashioned wrought iron into chairs and other small furniture for friends. And, he was always carving things. If he found a piece of wood anywhere, guaranteed it would become a self-portrait or the image of something. He also liked to build antennas. We had several on the roof. He was always playing around with our short-wave radios trying to pick up signals from Cuba and Mexico. I grew up listening to all sorts of music: Boleros, Rumba, Salsa, including Celia Cruz and ranchera singers crooning ballads.

Saturday was cleanup day. Everyone in the house had a chore. On Sundays, we went to church in the morning. We wore uniforms, a navy-blue skirt and white cotton blouse that became more decorative as we grew older. Once we returned home, these were replaced with presentable play clothes. Then, we had a big lunch as music blasted out of the record player or the radio depending on which house, we lived in. Friends would come to visit, or we went to play with neighbors’ kids.

Then there would be whispers among adults that they didn’t want us children to hear. When I was found listening too closely, I would be sent into the courtyard. Gina, kite gran moun pale non. Gina, let the adults talk. Other times, the directives were tougher as I was reminded to stop meddling in the affairs of elders. And then there were screams and yells. Some of these came from me on Saturday mornings when my hair was being washed. I refused to let mother come anywhere near my hair. She let too much soap get into my eyes. The only person that I let wash my hair was a distant cousin who walked miles to our house and stopped by as a favor to mother.

There was a time without question that I could scream even louder than any adult. This happened once a year, around Mardi Gras season, when we lived at Rue Chavannes no 14 in the gingerbread house close to the hotel Cabane Choucoune. I was terrified of a small crew of carnival performers who dressed as lansèt kòd  (rope throwers) and chaloska (Charles Oscar – a military general and chief of Haitian police who massacred over 150 people in 1915). They marched by our house on their way to a couple popular tourist hotels in Petion-Ville. The disguise of a specific one was scariest to me. Like the others, his body was covered in a shiny black greasy mixture that later would be found out as charcoal powder and sugar cane. This one wore extra wide dark glasses and had overemphasized red lips made with stuffed cotton cloth that was decorated with humongous, gapped teeth. He had gigantic bat-like wings made from sturdy cardboard. They were also painted black. A string of soda bottle caps formed an anklet around each foot. They rang as he took exaggerated steps. All I had to hear was the faintest ring of these bells and I would run upstairs and hide, and according to mother, begin to scream from the top of my lungs He is going to kill me… he is going to eat me. Mother said that I was so terrified that she had to send someone to pick us up from church on Sundays during Mardi Gras season. As soon as the service ended, I would run into the street trying to get home before the chaloska and his buddies came out. Once I got home, I would go under the bed until late afternoon when the disguised men went back to their base. Uncles and aunts would try to lure me to come out of hiding. Nothing worked. The others (siblings and cousins) would be outside on their own eating cookies or drinking sodas. Not me. No amount of anything would get me to come out. That is how they would get me to eat food I didn’t like during the week.

As is common in Haiti, parents used the threat of masked men to scare their kids into obedience, eat your food Gina or I am going to make the chaloska take you when he comes next Sunday!

I recall when I finally got over the fear of the chaloskas. One Sunday after church, a family decision had been made to make me face the absolute terror they represented because at my age they thought it was simply ridiculous. Everyone insisted I had nothing to be afraid of, as he was just a person – someone we knew apparently wearing a costume. Okay… there may have been ice cream involved, or something else I really liked. Anyway, at the end of their run that Sunday, a masked man stopped by. He stood at the gate, talking. Then I was brought outside from my hiding place. We were standing by the balustrade and the green wooden gate. My face was covered in tears. I clutched tightly to someone’s arm. People were cooing, why are you so afraid? It’s just so and so. He knows you. I would not stop crying. Eventually, I think he even took off the mask (which they are not supposed to do). We made peace somehow because I remember letting him hold my hand. I must have been around six or seven.

All those stimuli surrounding us made us great students. Youngest uncle played the role of tutor, taskmaster and surrogate father. There was absolutely no play until all homework was done. Not surprisingly, until we migrated, the three of us were always ranked in the top three of our respective classes. I proudly brought home my report cards. It was in Haiti that I perfected my beautiful cursive penmanship. I learned how to write using a dip pen – not a fountain pen with an internal reservoir – the kind with a broad nip and wooden handle that you must dip into an inkbowl.

We attended Anne Marie-Javoueh, a Catholic school run by the Sisters of St Joseph de Cluny. The order came to Haiti and established schools in 1864 when France finally decided to officially recognize its former colony’s sovereignty, sixty years after the revolution. The Vatican followed and reestablished relations with the first Black republic. It was at Anne Marie Javoueh, motivated by the nuns’ creative punishments, that I practiced my script (and learned how to needlepoint). If your letters did not fit within the Seyès lines without any stains, the sisters would attach all messy and blotted notebooks on the backs of our collars (like wings) and parade all offenders in queue back and forth in front of the youngest students who would point and laugh at your inability to follow the rules. This happened to me at least once or it may have been twice. I am uncertain, but I remember rubbing many tears with the back of my hand, and I remember the sound and the smack of the sister’s ruler on my palm as she ensured, until we were properly humiliated, that we’d stay in line.

I had a favorite place at the school. It was just behind the grotto where the school’s virgin statue was enclosed. There was a drain that ran right behind the grotto. During lunch, a couple of us would sit there on a little wall watching the water run as we enjoyed our picnics and told each other stories.

Not all the nuns were bad. My favorite teacher was Mere Elie, the only black nun at the school. Her birthday was on October 6^th. She was the one who taught us cross-stitching. She had a pretty smile; and she did not call us burnt potatoes! Those stinging words were Soeur Cecil’s specialty. Most of us had lean flexible bodies in our buttoned-down short-sleeved shirtdresses and pleated skirts. The funny thing is that, unlike us, Soeur Cecil was bigger than the widest kite you can imagine. Her protruding belly covered in that ultra-white habit came up all the way to her chest almost hiding the dark blue cord with its swinging crucifix. But whenever we made her angry, she pressed her lips together. Her cheeks threatened to explode as she turned a dark pinkish red and she called us that: patat boukane.

Post-Script:

Decades later some of these rememories came flooding back. July 2022, I received an email from a research team based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland working on the photos of the Ukrainian-born filmmaker and choreographer Maya Deren (1917-1961) and the German photographer Leonore Mau (1916-2013). The latter had traveled to Haiti several times in the 1970s to research and document Vodou rituals together with her partner, the writer Hubert Fichte. Months later, we all met virtually to discuss this project and view images from Mau’s archive. I immediately recognized the fourth photo as that of the XX in front of Cabane Choucoune – a hotel blocks away from where we lived. My heart quickened once the screen moved to the fifth photo. I asked them to zoom in for certainty. There it was a small white square metal plate with no 14 embossed in black on an open green wooden gate.

NOTES: Sketches is an excerpt from an unpublished memoir, Loving Haiti: Rememories, Rants and Recipes.