Drifting by Katia D. Ulysse

Author:Katia D. Ulysse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2014-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

DRIFTING

That’s Miss Fatou. I see her every morning on my way to work. She’s always sweeping the patch of sidewalk in front of her hair braiding shop. She pauses when she sees me coming. Her blue and gold boubou billows in the breeze. Ma Tante Anna had the same regal disposition, the same plump arms, and the same raw sugar complexion.

Ma Tante Anna would have looked pretty in Miss Fatou’s boubou. In all the years since I left Puits Blain, I still cannot picture her in anything other than that stiff karabela housedress she wore every day.

We used to sit on the porch on Sundays, listening to the radio. Ma Tante Anna would turn the volume up when her favorite song began to play. “Bonswa na di yo,” she’d harmonize with the singer. “Greetings to you all.”

“Bonswa, Kongo,” I’d sing with her. “Greetings to the Congo Queen.”

Then Ma Tante Anna would take the hem of her housedress between her fingertips, holding the stiff karabela as if it were a flowing Martinique skirt bordered with miles of ruffles and lace. She would raise the housedress just so, revealing once shapely legs. As the music played, Ma Tante Anna would twirl on the tips of her toes, swaying her hips gracefully from side to side. “La Reine Kongo nan baryè a,” she’d pipe in her unwavering alto. “The Congo Queen is at the gate. Take off your hats and bow down.”

When the music ended, Ma Tante Anna would collapse in her rocker. She would catch her breath and fan her face with her hands. “I’m too old to dance the Kongo,” she would heave, but if the deejay played the song again, she would take the hem of her housedress between her fingers and twirl on her toes once again.

The night before I left Haiti, Ma Tante Anna looked across the room at me and asked, “Who will sit on the porch with me and sing ‘La Reine Kongo’?”

“I will,” I said. “Every summer when I visit.”

“You’ll never come back to this country again.” We both fell asleep with those words lingering like shadows in the room.

When I kissed Ma Tante Anna goodbye at the airport the following morning, she shook her head in the disbelieving way mothers do just before they bury a dead child.

Manman was standing next to me, waiting to snatch me out of Ma Tante Anna’s grip. Ma Tante Anna paid no attention to her and held me in her plump arms long enough for ten generations to live and die before she let go.

* * *

“Good morning,” I say to Miss Fatou. She holds the broom still, straightening her spine. She’s a tall woman with impeccable posture and charcoal eyes that appraise the hotel uniform on me the way Ma Tante Anna would have.

“Morning,” Miss Fatou replies with an appreciative nod. In her hands, the broom handle is a royal scepter. Her intricate braids look so much like a crown that I resist the urge to curtsy.

When

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