She’s 22, I’m 70 — she says it’s my baby… now what?
Episode 3: Dani and me, a like story (part 1)
What’s gone on before: Episode 1, Episode 2. As he’s leaving for home in Seattle after three months on Ile a Vache, a rural island off Haiti, Michael has been presented with a positive pregnancy test by his young ex-girlfriend, Danise. An old guy, 70, he’s shell-shocked at the prospect of being a baby-daddy. Dani is but 22. In a contentious meeting with her family in Episode 2, Michael agrees to cover birth expenses and support the child growing up. But not before a DNA test has been performed. In Episode 3, he writes how the two got together, and what first existed between them.
I’d been on the island a month, and was walking the path that lines the Caribbean inlet fronting the village of Kay Kuk where I’d rented a house. A moto came from behind; we stepped aside to let it pass — me and the following herd of young men and boys who wanted simply to walk where I walked.
I stuck out in this crowd. With whites or foreigners (blans) of any color highly scarce on the island, I caused sensation wherever I went: toddlers ran screaming; older kids followed me pleading for ‘dollahs’; adults gathered to stare.
Whether entering an office or bellying up to a market stand, crowds would part, allowing me the head of the line, as due my place of undeniable wealth, privilege, and extreme good fortune.
As a Seattle liberal all high-minded about egalitarianism, and also a reporter who prefers sneaking in the back of a room to watch and take notes, I was horrified.
I tried, dear readers — I really did — to demur in these situations, as an equal Citizen of the World. I gave up after awhile and reluctantly accepted my lofty place in this world: an astronaut from Planet Money.
It was evening, and dark early as it is in the Torrid Zones; the motorbike passed, then stopped. A young man, Ornande, jumped off and said, “I hear you’re looking for a woman.”
I’d been seeking a woman, but at at that moment — I wanted to be home after walking a long afternoon that had turned into night. “Come to my house tomorrow; we’ll talk,” I said.
I’d been craving company and feminine electricity to light up the long evenings — a girlfriend. And since it was Haiti, and I was a blan, I knew there had to be money involved.
For me, paying for sex and companionship in such circumstances is more honest than pretending a real relationship, only to walk out on a sincere woman whose dreams of a future with me I’d falsely encouraged.
But that’s me. I’ll be castigated for that and I get it. Having lived long and traveled wide, I’ve witnessed the desperation that brings prostitution and the exploitation that comes with it.
But I can’t argue with the majority of the world’s countries that have legalized and tried to regulate the adult sex industry.
A few Haitians knew I was looking for a woman, but the word in Kai Kuk was I was looking for a wife! Yikes! With my lamentable kreyole, I’d not been able to squelch that, and was flooded for few days and nights with charming petitioners of all ages knocking at my door bringing me coconuts, and demonstrating domestic skills. It befuddled me. I chose none of the above and the parade petered out (so to speak).
Glad of that, I was still in the market for some company of the biblical kind.
Ornande gestured to the woman who’d dismounted his bike. I hadn’t noticed her — she stood alone in the path off to the side. “You talk and see if you like each other,” Ornande said.
Danise was smiling in the dark, young and new, ègzotik, a woman in full bloom. I sidled up and said hello. She was not shy; she laughed at my pathetic jokes, made by aping emotions, making faces in the light of my iphone, and speaking kreyole like a 3-year-old.
I gave Ornande a few hundred gourdes for his trouble. I never saw him again. Dani and I walked arm and arm up the hill to my house.
It was nothing like prostitution. No money up front. No specific, negotiated acts to run up the bill. Never a specific amount of money demanded.
Dani is lanky, long-legged, and tall. Not like the Nilotic runners of East Africa, but fuller, larger breasted, darker-skinned. Her people were stolen from the Kingdom of Dahomey, on the slave coast on the Bight of Benin wherefrom the slaves of the Caribbean and Brazil were commonly brought.
Her waist is tiny, hips flared, skin string-tight. She’s strong — she can carry 50 kilos for 100 klicks, she says. Her eyes are kept veiled but noncommittal. Watchful. They can be ignited by humor, indignation, sex, or Christian righteousness.
(My waist, however, varies with the seasons; my hips disappeared two years ago in Myanmar; my skin flops when I wave my arms. I can karate-chop a loaf of Wonder Bread. One of my eyes is lazy, one blue, one green. They’re usually unveiled, and easily ignited by humor, political indignation, other people’s punctuation, sex, or Christians’ self-righteousness).
We got along fine. Dani spent the night.
I won’t go into the blow-by-blow, (you’ll be grateful) but let’s just say Dani was mature in love-making, energetic, and not shy about asking for what she wanted. We didn’t need language, we communicated in the non-verbal languages that sexual partners do.
Having a sample of exactly one, it’s difficult to generalize about the sexuality of Haitian women, so I won’t.
Next morning, I promised her breakfast at Port Morgan, the island’s oldest hotel. We got up, dressed, and walked the path though Kai Kuk, alongside family after family strolling to church, dressed-up for Sunday.
Women in bright, starchy, dresses, hats. Little girls in the same dresses in miniature with masses of braids in precisely parted rows on heads full of bright, matching ribbons. Men and boys out of short pants wore dark suits, white shirts, ties, and gangsta shades. Everyone looked fabulous, and could walk with pride any Sunday morning in any street in America.
Religion on the island is mostly stern Christianity: Pentecostal and Catholic. Despite the fiery pastors’ and priests’ best efforts, most parishioners’ spiritual walks also detour into the West African voudou.
I looked like Hobo Whammy in jeans and t-shirt; I’d forgotten to look in the mirror again this week. Yet, to be seen walking with me, a rich blan, might usually be a point of pride for a Haitian.
But for Dani and me, this day, ours was a walk of shame. She kept her nose up and chin high. She’d deny it, but I knew she was embarrassed. The sharp, small-town tongues must carved her to ribbons as we passed the church where she’d usually be pew-bound. We might have walked a different route, avoided the congregating, but Dani followed my lead without question, the good, submissive fanm ayisiyen she is.
I vowed never again. We’d go out for breakfast may be on Thursdays…
Monday morning, Wilma, her manman ambushed me on the path, “She can come, but she sleeps at my house,” she said. “Pas de problem,” I said, “but it’s not up to me, it’s up to Dani.”
Maintaining my Seattle egalitarian stance — that Dani should self-determine was naive illusion of mine, and lost totally on Wilma.
Darkness is a black pot de creme on Ile A Vache. Danise’s family lands and houses are far inland — half-way over the paths to Madame Bernard. Once in a while, Dani might spend the night in my bed, but most times, after spending an afternoon or evening with me, she’d walked the six miles home in the starshine.
Dani was afraid of nothing… but her mama.
Next in Episode 4: Dani and me (part 2) a visit to the family compound; how the subject of engagement rings rocked Michael’s hapless existence; a disturbing game of kick the dog; love in the lamplight; oxytocin dearth, and piklies. All of this, plus kreyol cookin’ and more ‘splainin!
