Free God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) by Dimitry Elias Leger Page A

improvement come alive in her mind’s eye. Then she’d reach for a sketch pad and start drawing images, a story that would come to her first as a low tickle in the bottom of her heart and then as a burst of rainbow-colored flavors in her creative id that she would need to tamp down over days to create a memorable and pleasant painting or sculpture. She was never too sure if these bursts of brain-frying inspiration happened because of the power of his words and ideas or the curves of his lips and the sparkle of his confident dark-brown eyes when he talked and touched her, or touched her while talking to her. He always touched her whenever she was near, lightly, sharply, sometimes pointedly, always possessively, intensively, and suggestively. His whole body spoke to hers whenever possible. Tickling bursts of excitement would fill her with each contact, almost literally lighting her up. When they went on walks during escapes to Wahoo Bay Beach. When they had dinner in his house on Place Boyer or in her room at the National Palace. (He often ate fritaille , a local mixture of spicy fried porkor goat chunks, plantains, and turkey, brought from the streets; she often ate a three-course meal prepared by the President’s ageless and spice-loving chef.) In a voice that seemed incapable of a yellow note of doubt, he often described in thrilling detail how the surrounding architecture, traffic, economy, foreign policy, art and music, constitution, infrastructure, agriculture, one arcane law after another, could be improved, tweaked, just so to make all Haitians’ lives better. Socialism mixed with a correct dose of capitalism ain’t that hard, he’d say. We just have to get over our commitment issues first. That boy had no sense of jobs and process and politics. But, man, could he talk up dreams.
    Lost in her thoughts, Natasha hadn’t realized she had been moving forward, gliding toward the plane against her will. The President’s entourage subtly pushed her from behind, as they were wont to do, toward her husband, who was still talking on the phone but waiting for her. The white heat and the noise of the revving jet engines licked her face. The black droning sound and the smell of the exhaust pummeled her. The combination made Natasha dizzy. The moment, this dream-concretizing climax, felt ephemeral. Like she was about to wake up where she was born, in a roofless orphanage, naked, afraid, hungry, but pugnacious.
    Really, why does the memory of the most painful moment of my life go together with my love for that guy? Really, God, what’s that all about? Is that more proof thatI need to get away from him and his country as quickly and as far away as possible? The beginning thump of a throbbing headache emerged. Natasha thought of the unsolvable paradox of love and regrets. Love did have its upsides, she conceded. The feeling triggered a swelling and crashing of warm waves of emotions inside her. The waves grew stronger, especially now that the old man who was now her old man, a husband she liked but did not love, was living up to his promise to sweep her off their godforsaken island, inspiring her to inch closer to loving him, or at least to the point where she began experiencing glimmers of love’s cousins—affection, tenderness, awe, faith—toward him, but not quite love, for she was naturally frugal with her love, nipping it in the bud early and often in her young life except once. It’s not like she had much choice. The young man’s presence in her life seemed to ignite her life, as if she didn’t exist without his attention. The connection felt normal and permanent and urgent. Permanently urgent. But it doesn’t have to be a relationship, the chorus of prostitutes who lived near the orphanage had told her. These girls told her to remember that she was unusually pretty and charming and quick. It was her duty to use those God-given gifts to marry up, for richer and older