Haiti Noir by Edwidge Danticat

Author:Edwidge Danticat
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Library
ISBN: 9781617750137
Publisher: akashic books
Published: 2010-10-20T05:00:00+00:00

MALOULOU

BY MARIE LILY CERAT

Martissant

Stay up long enough between midnight and three a.m. any day and you will hear Maloulou. But be careful to never run into her. Everyone in Lakou 22 knew this. Noises in the night defined that yard: husbands, young men, and prostitutes who caused old doors to creak while coming in some nights; lougawou, werewolves that turned skin inside out and jumped about loudly on tin ceilings, eyeing little children for future repasts; noise there always was. But the sounds of Maloulou were unique. With precision, many could reproduce the footsteps mixed with a light clinking of chains: clink, clap, clink, clap, clink-clap: sometimes coming and sometimes going. It even seemed a mark of honor to wake up and recount hearing Maloulou. Older stories about Maloulou that had been abandoned would resurface some nights when the folktales of Bouki and Malis could not be stretched any further. There was the broad cassava-colored hat over an invisible head, going clink, clap a hundred years or so ago after the first African slaves disembarked on the island.

“Don’t worry, Ghislaine, Lakou 22 came with Maloulou,” Destin and Madame Destin, the very first residents to build shacks at the entrance of the yard, told my mother one morning soon after we moved there. Darkness did not worry my mother, but Maloulou would. My mother had braved the dark streets for as long as I could remember before retreating to her own cinder block–mounted bed, hidden behind the paisleyprint curtain to protect me from the parade of visitors whose fees paid for our shack, my school, our food and clothing. In some ways, I was my mother’s daughter; I was never afraid of the dark.

Like the Destins, other residents with nothing to do often gathered, coffee cups in hands, under bright early suns to swap Maloulou stories, as if competing for the most exciting rendition. There were those who laughed in disbelief, others appeared pensive when reports were shared about the mysterious thing that had always lived in their midst but had never been seen. Young ones like me attending to morning chores before hastily preparing for a discounted ride to school with Josaphat, the camionette driver who lived in Lakou 22, used to listen furtively, ears tuned to what was being said, eyes wide with amazement. Where the name Maloulou came from, no one really knew. One version of the story was that Maloulou came from the sea to the island with the name Nkiruka, but it was changed to Maloulou because it rolled easier on the tongue.

Nevertheless, the nomadic and infamous visitor who was said to roam our compound in the ink-blue night enthralled all. One man in particular, it was said, Roland Désir, might have come nose-to-nose with Maloulou.

Roland Désir turned mad one morning, the story went, and folks repeated verbatim the words of the person who saw it happen, his wife Marguerite, who stood in the middle of the yard sobbing, saying that maybe if she hadn’t confronted

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