Many Rivers To Cross

Many Rivers To Cross

Stories of Birth, Loss and Resurrection

Haiti’s Central Plateau

These stories are based on the stories shared with me by mothers, midwives and students in Haiti.  I write them so these stories and the women are not forgotten.  This is the first of four.

________________________________________________________________________________

Rosa

After the fifth baby, the midwives said I must be careful.  My pressure was high and there could be problems.  I walked every three months to see them, lying to my husband.   Telling him I was pregnant.  Not telling him I was going for the shot that would keep me from another pregnancy.

“This is up to God,” he would say when I said I wanted family planning.  “It is not our choice.”

I rose in the dark, with the other women who walked all night to see the midwives.   Perhaps he knew of my lie and perhaps he did not.   I never knew.  I left my baby with my sister and walked.  My husband lived in another woman’s house most of the time and so he never knew.  Coming home to pay the children’s school fees and to eat my food.   The market women say he has a new wife.   He can take a new wife, but he cannot take my house or my gardens.  They are mine forever.   He tries to tell me he does not love her.  She is the bosses sister and he cannot afford to loose this job.

As we walk, other women join us and we share the gossip of our villages, laughing and sometimes singing as we go.  Sometimes we lay down in an abandoned house or field and rest until the first light.  Then we set, out and walk again.  The sky turns soft and pink and we hear the sounds of the rooster and the pig on the way to market.   I do not tell anyone I am not pregnant.  I shrug and say, “Who knows? Only God.”

This time, when we get there, the midwives in their pink truck, have not come.  

“The river is too high.  They can not cross.” A man tells us.

We rest and wait for several hours before heading back home, without my precious injection. 

I think of this now, as I lie beside the same river and think of how they could not cross and how I could not get my family planning and how I tried to avoid my husband but could not.   The sting of his fist when I denied him and he took me, the children crying outdoors. 

.  

I walked then, with the other women, to see the pink truck and the midwives but it was too late for the injection.  They said there was a pill in the city but even that was too much expense.

The midwives and the blan cared for me.  They took my pressure and looked alarmed and worried and gave me pills and said I should go to the hospital.  

But I went to the local healer instead, who put bread in water and said the baby was strong and beautiful and would be a girl.  He looked at how the bread swelled in the water and saw these things.  He tied a string around my growing belly and gave me tea.  I could not go to the hospital. 

My children only ate the cassava and sweet potatoes I dug for them.  I made tea to keep them from crying with hunger.

My bleeding started yesterday, when I was working in the garden.   Bright red blotches against the dirt.    I watched it drip from me, like the rain from the roof during a storm.  Like our roof, I too am leaking.   The rains had been warm and welcomed but it also meant we could not cross the river.

I knew I had to get to the hospital.  Make my way to a road and pray for a moto or even a truck, heavy with our mangoes; the ones we sell to pay the priest the school fees.  

I tell my sister. She says she will come with me but I beg her to care for my children; only to care for them.  She finds the matron who tells me to hurry before the river gets too high. To get across and find a moto.   They will send someone to the hospital soon. 

I walk the path, I walled every day as a girl to gather water for my family.   The path where my husband first noticed me when I was   young and strong.   He even carried my water so he could talk and flirt with me and beg to meet me in a place he knew, where the flowers grew sweet and we would be alone.  

But my parents watched me and in time, he built me a house and took me there and for many years, we were happy.  He held me with each birth and prayed when each one made their first cry.   Unlike the other fathers, he carried the babies and sang to them and promised them the moon. 

One day, they built a road and he got a job for a company that gathered a rock from the mountains and took it far away.   “They are taking our mother,” he would cry.   “It was not enough to take our trees and our food, now they take our land.”   And he was ashamed.   I held him then and cried too.   They said they built the road for us but who of us has a moto, let alone a car or truck.   “No, he said.  “They built the rods for themselves; so they could carry our land away.” 

He built us a metal roof and a cook house made of cement.   He paid the school fees early and bought me a new dress.   We had four plastic chairs and he had a cell phone with a solar charger.   I missed him but see he would say.  “All the fine things we have now.”  I cried but he said, “One day I will save enough for a small business and we will be free again.”

When one day, in the market, the women whispered and said he had started sleeping at another women’s house.  I swayed and cried out but then my face became a rock and I did not cry again.   When he returned, he knew I knew because I put the babies in bed with us and did not make his favorite meal.  When he reached for m, I turned away.  My sister said, “Who cares as long as he pays for school and buys you nice things.”

“I care.”  I whisper.  “I care.”

He tries to explain.   He says, “You are my only true wife” but I won’t listen. 

I walk the path and feel his body warm beside me as he takes the water and puts it on his own head.  Laughing.   The best man in all of Haiti.

I am dizzy with the memory of that warmth; that laughter.   The stars from the first night we lay together return.  It is a long walk to the river and there are no boats, no men helping with the crossing.  I lie then in the grass to wait.   The river will go down and the rocks will appear.  It will be shallow enough to cross and get to the road and a moto to the hospital.  I lie in the tall grasses and wait. I lie beneath a tree and look up at the sky between her branches.  It seems they reach for me. 

And then I sleep and I feel my baby sing to me.  The baby I had ignored reaches for me; my water and blood pouring down into the river. Her voice sweeter than any I had ever known.   The midwives, in the pink jeep, sing a song to us.  They tell us when we must get to the hospital, but they do not sing of the rivers, of the long roads and a husband working so far away.

It is light when they come. I hear them calling me but they are far away.  A baby cries.  The midwife holds her up and I look in her deep, dark eyes and hear the river.   They try to carry me but the river  it is still too high.   They start to pray and scream, as they do for the dead.  Have I died?

My sister says, “You must try.”  She begs the men who try to navigate the river but by the time they reach for me again, I have floated to the sky and am like a leaf being blown by the last breeze of evening.   I try to hear what they are saying. I try to kiss my baby’s head but I am gone.   The river is easy to cross now but my body lies limp and empty on the other side.    I wait for my body on the other side until everyone carries my body and my baby back to the village.   At first I follow.  I want to see my baby one time but then I go back to the river and rest.

When the river could be crossed again, the women walked to see the midwives and when they called my name they yelled, “She died by the river, giving birth.  The river was too high to cross. “   My file is put back in the box.

“You were born by the river.”  My sister whispers to her.  “It was the rainy season and the river ran high.  When we came to the river, you were lying there, looking up at the sky.   The rain had stopped and the river gave you to me to be your mama forever.  “  My sister holds her close. Her curls smelling of nutmeg and peppers and soap.  

It’s New Year’s Day. They had picked the greatest pumpkin of all and soon many guests would arrive for the traditional Soup d’ Jour.    

A tall, handsome man brings her money for school and ribbons for her hair.  Her older brothers and sisters live with him now in the city, where they go to school. She wipes his tears from her face.   

“Beautiful, like her mother.”  He cries.

“But my mother was a river.” She protests and wiggles out of his arms.

He puts her down and laughs.  “Your mother was the most beautiful river of all.”