Free Making the Hook-Up by Cole Riley Page A

when absolutely necessary. It is not that she is ashamed of her mother, or the circumstances of her birth, but to imagine her mother and a stranger fleeing the Dominican Republic, hiding in the waters of the river while soldiers slaughtered people on both banks, only to seek solace in each other reminds her of a history she only wants to forget. Perhaps it is a history we all want to forget. But every morning when she stares in the mirror, or when she catches her reflection in a storefront, she is forced to remember.
    I am fascinated by this story—this moment of desperation
and conception. I asked my grandmother about it once, when my husband Todd and I were in Haiti for a few weeks. I remember how she stared at me with milky eyes, her small hands, scarred from working in sugarcane fields in Dajabon, the first town across the Dominican border, and how she held her glass of rum and water so tightly I thought the glass would splinter in her hand. I took the glass from her, told her that she had almost hurt herself. She looked away and whispered, “Scars cannot bleed.”
    Todd and I have been married for three years, together for over six. My mother refers to him as “Mr. America,” because in her mind, he represents the wholesome American image she has come to resent. We met at the University of Nebraska, but after our twins were born, I insisted we move to Washington, D.C. because if we stayed in that cold, remote place, our little brown babies would always be more mine than his. I try to explain to Todd what it means to be Haitian but it’s hard for him to understand that there are places in the world where power outages are commonplace, and the majority of the population wallows in poverty—where no matter how rich or poor you are, you want the same thing: an end to the chaos, a breath of fresh air, a moment of peace. It is hard for him to understand why I would want to be in that place. But it is hard for me to understand why I would want to be anywhere else.
    My husband and I have been to Haiti together twice. The first time, he brought a case of bottled water, and found it inexplicable that I wouldn’t speak to him for a week, afterward. The second time, he brought ten bottles of mosquito spray. Every night, we would swelter beneath the mosquito netting of our bed, and when we tried to make love, he made me nauseous with the aerosol stench of insect repellant.
    Then, upon our return, in the airport in Miami, he kissed the ground, and was subject to two weeks of the silent treatment.
For the sake of our relationship, we keep international travel to a minimum. But now, I have this need to go to Haiti, because it is the only place in the world that truly feels like home. My grandmother is getting older, the country is getting worse, and if I don’t go now, the places I remember, the people that make it home, will no longer be there. My grandmother lives in Ouanaminthe, the first town on the Haitian side of the Massacre River. I don’t understand why she chooses to live so close to a place of horror but sometimes I think that she can’t bear to part with the memories, as if the farther away she gets from that place, the more she will forget. Her house is a small, cement affair. There are palm trees in the front yard and a small iron gate to ward off unwanted visitors. She often sits on her porch, staring toward the river, a distant look in her eyes. When she’s like this, I can only watch her. A silence surrounds her that demands respect.
    She and my grandfather worked on a plantation in Dajabon, cutting sugarcane. They didn’t know each other, but they didn’t need to. They shared the same condition. I have heard the stories of cane workers—days beneath a tormenting sun, cruel overseers, little pay, a life much like the slaves in America. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for my grandmother, a small woman in a big world that she could not hope to