Krik? Krak!

Josephine’s story reflects the violence that has defined her early life. She was born in 1937 on the day of a massacre. Her changing relationship to this traumatic event in her past and her mother’s experience fighting for their survival makes Josephine a dynamic character and underscores the Resilience of Women in the Haitian Diaspora. At the beginning of the story, Josephine is intimidated by the prison and her mother’s circumstances, and doesn’t speak during her visits. She explains that “it [is] as though I [become] mute the moment I [step] into the prison yard” (36). After meeting with Jacqueline, another massacre survivor, and witnessing her mother’s death, Josephine’s perspective shifts: “[F]or a brief second, I saw nothing but black. And then I saw the crystal glow of the river as we had seen it every year when my mother dipped my hand in it” (48). In this transformative, magical moment, Josephine accepts her mother’s worldview, and acknowledges that her mother really could fly, and that that power saved their lives the night of the massacre. Josephine’s acceptance of her mother’s magic helps her to accept her death.

Guy’s narrative voice reflects the tension between his desire to be a good husband to Lili and father to Little Guy, and his desire to live a life other than his own. When the story begins, Guy is excited to share the news that he has secured a few hours of work at the sugar mill. However, he waits to share the news until after his son, Little Guy, has shared his own exciting news, demonstrating his desire to support his son and be a good father. Guy is intentionally romantic with his wife despite their poverty: In one instance, he picks a wild mushroom and puts it in her hair as if it were a flower. This commitment to being a good father and husband is contrasted with Guy’s fatal flaw—his desire to live a life other than his own, manifested in the hot air balloon behind the sugar mill. Guy admits to Lili that “sometimes I just want to take that big balloon and ride it up in the air. I’d like to sail off somewhere and keep floating until I got to a really nice place” (73). Ultimately, Guy gives in to this desire, stealing the hot air balloon and falling to his death.

The anonymous narrator of “Night Women” is a 25-year-old sex worker living in Ville Rose, Haiti. Her defining characteristic is her inability to fully separate her work from her responsibilities as a mother, despite her desperation to do so. She hangs a thin fabric across the one-room house in order to split it “into two spaces, two mats, two worlds” (83), but also spends time each night touching his face and body to make sure he’s sleeping, suggesting that she knows this boundary is insufficient. The narrator’s fear comes from her knowledge that she will one day have to be honest about how she supports their family. However, the narrator’s admission that “one day a woman like his mother may judge him by the whiteness of his teeth” (87) indicates that she also fears the inevitability of her son growing up to be a man who patronizes sex workers, perhaps as a result of her choices.

Marie is a domestic worker living in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, characterized by her desperation to be a mother after surviving multiple traumatic miscarriages. She is the daughter of Josephine, the narrator of “Nineteen Thirty-Seven,” and it is suggested that she also has magical abilities. When Marie first sees Rose’s body, she struggles to decide whether it is “a gift from Heaven” (91) or “some kind of wanga, a charm sent to trap me” (92). The story suggests that Marie’s paranoia is a result of the fact that her ex-husband was unfaithful throughout their marriage, including during her miscarriages. It is clear that she feels personally responsible for the miscarriages, describing how her babies “somehow got suffocated inside me and made my husband wonder if I was killing them on purpose” (92). This guilt and trauma lead Marie to keep Rose’s body close to her even as it decomposes.

Lamort, later known as Marie Magdalène, is a young girl living with her grandmother in Ville Rose, characterized by her naivete: Although she has developed necessary survival skills, Lamort lacks the maturity to fully understand the violence of the world around her. Although she knows never to look soldiers in the eye, she also believes an older solider named Raymond when he tells her that a secret password, “peace,” will protect her from violence. The story indicates that, although she lets Raymond touch her breasts, she does not fully understand the fundamentals of sexual reproduction. Lamort’s naivete is contrasted by the character of Emilie, whose brief relationship with Lamort catalyzes a kind of coming-of-age arc. Lamort’s choice to help Emilie is her first act of autonomy against her grandmother’s wishes, and their experiences together inspire Lamort to insist that her grandmother start calling her by her dead mother’s name, Marie Magdalène, instead of Lamort, the name given to her by her grandmother after her mother’s death.

Princesse is a 16-year-old girl who, “because she was very short and thin, could easily pass for twelve” (127). Her defining characteristic is her curiosity: As the story progresses, her curiosity about painting and her neighbors leads her to develop a unique artistic identity. Initially, Princesse has little interest in art. As she spends more time with Catherine, however, Princesse listens and learns about painting and artistic theory. At the story’s midpoint, Princesse observes a familiar neighbor and notes that “a good painting would not only capture the old man’s features, but also his moods and personality” (133). This observation indicates that Princesse has the empathy to see past her neighbor’s violence and depict his humanity. Princesse’s progression from subject to painter is the emotional core of the story, signaling the Importance of Art in the Face of Violence.

Suzette is a Haitian American woman living in New York, defined by her relationship with her mother, whom she treats like a child throughout the story before realizing how indebted she is to her mother’s hard work and resilience. Watching her mother navigate the streets of New York, Suzette feels that she wants “to dash forward and rescue her” (149) from the crowds even as her mother is “walking as though she owns the sidewalk under her feet” (149). Later, as she watches her mother shopping, she thinks “Please Ma, don’t buy it. It would just be another thing that I would bury in the garage” (149). These passages indicate that Suzette doesn’t see her mother as a fully independent person. By the end of the story, Suzette begins to recognize the sacrifices her mother made (and continues to make) for her.