Friday, August 14, 1998

The barrel is almost full. If you are not Haitian maybe you don't know about the barrel. It is a big blue plastic drum, and you fill it all year, little by little, and then you pay a man with a truck and it goes on a ship to Port-au-Prince, and some weeks later your family opens it like Christmas.

In ours so far: two sacks of rice, a big bottle of oil, twelve bars of soap, toothpaste, spaghetti, vitamins, three pairs of shoes for my niece Widline, who is six and grows like a weed, a school uniform, a radio with batteries, and on top, the dress Naïka grew out of, which she folded herself with a note inside: "For Widline from your cousin in Miami, I hope you like purple."

It is so hot. The air conditioner in Jean-Robert's taxi is broken, and he comes home in the evening wet like he went swimming. I give him cold water and the chair in front of the fan and I don't talk to him for twenty minutes. That is love too.

Frantz called Sunday. The school where he teaches opens again soon and they still have no roof on the new classroom. He laughed about it. My brother laughs at everything. He says, "Fabi, in Haiti if you don't laugh you can't eat."

Tuesday, June 23, 1998

Mango season! The tree in our yard is so heavy the branches touch the fence, and the neighbor's boys climb up at night to steal them. I pretend I don't see. There is enough for everybody. I cut mangoes for the twins after school and they eat them over the sink with the juice running to the elbows, and I think this is the one thing exactly the same as my own childhood.

But these are not the mangoes of Haiti. Our tree is some American kind, big and red and pretty, and the taste is fine. In Haiti we had mango fransik, yellow and flat, sweet like honey, and you could eat it with no knife, just squeeze and suck. Jean-Robert says I complain about American mangoes the way old men complain about the government. Maybe. But I am right.

School is finished. Naïka and Manno finished second grade, both good report cards. On Naïka's is written "talks too much." I don't know where she gets it.

And I finished too! English Level 4. The final test, I passed with 88. The teacher wrote "Excellent progress!" I put it on the refrigerator next to the twins' report cards. Manno said, "Manman, you're in school like us." Yes, cheri. We all are.

Wednesday, May 13, 1998

A good day at work. I will write it down because not every day is.

I work at a nursing home in North Miami, seven to three, and I have been a nurse's aide seven years. It is heavy work. People think it is only feeding and bathing, but it is also listening, and lifting, and being yelled at, and being called by the wrong name, and holding hands.

Today Mrs. G., who is ninety-six, told me about the hurricane of 1926. She came to Miami as a young wife, and the storm took the roof off her house, and she and her husband sat in the bathtub under a mattress. "And then the eye came, and everybody went outside to look, and then the back of it came, and so many people who went outside..." and she stopped. She said, "You don't go outside in the eye, Fabiola. Promise me." I promised.

Mother's Day was Sunday. The twins made me breakfast in bed: toast and a banana and orange juice with the pulp, which I don't like, and which I drank all of. Naïka made a card: "To the best manman in Miami and Haiti." Manno made a card that is a drawing of me as a giant, with a very small Papa. Jean-Robert says it is realistic.

Sunday, April 19, 1998

The twins are eight! Yesterday was the party in the yard. Twelve children from the street and the church, a cake from the Haitian bakery on 54th Street with white frosting and pink roses, and Jean-Robert in charge of the music, which means konpa on the big radio and all the uncles dancing with little girls standing on their feet.

Naïka wanted a Beanie Baby and got three, one from us and two from her godmother, and she has lined them up on her bed and named them all and reads them a Bible verse every night. Manno wanted a basketball and a watch. He got both, and now he tells everybody the time whether they want it or not.

Eight years ago I was in the big hospital downtown, and the nurse put one baby on my left and one baby on my right, and I thought: Bondye, God, I have only two arms. It turns out two arms is enough. It's only the sleep that is not enough.

Frantz called in the evening to sing. The line was bad and he sang anyway, "Bòn fèt," happy birthday, with Widline and Papa in the background. The twins held the phone between them, one ear each. Then Papa got on and said, "Pale Kreyòl ak yo, Fabiola." Speak Kreyòl with them. He says this every time, like I don't.

Sunday, March 22, 1998

Church all morning. I sing alto in the choir, twenty-two of us in white and blue. The church is small, a store that became a church almost twenty years ago, with fans on the ceiling going around and around and the windows open to the street, so everybody walking on the sidewalk gets the sermon free.

Today the youth choir sang a Kirk Franklin song with clapping and the drums, and the old ladies in the front row sat with their arms crossed, very serious, in their church hats. By the second verse Sè Odile was clapping. By the end Madame Pierre was standing up. Pastor Désir laughed and said, "The Holy Spirit is not old or young."

After, we eat in the hall: rice and beans, chicken in sauce, fried plantains, and the pikliz, the pickled cabbage and peppers, so hot it makes the men cry. The children run around the tables. Naïka helps the ladies serve. Manno helps himself.

This is the best part of my week. Some people will say work, or family. But Sunday at church I am not an aide, not a wife, not a mother, not a student, not an immigrant. I am only a voice in the alto section. It is a rest.

Tuesday, February 17, 1998

Night class tonight. Tuesday and Thursday is English Level 4, six-thirty to nine, at the adult center. Monday is the computer class, which is why this page exists. Jean-Robert makes dinner on those nights, which means spaghetti Haitian style with hot dogs cut up in it, every time. The children love it. I love that I don't have to cook it.

In class we are twenty-six: Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, one lady from Russia, and one man from China who is seventy and comes every night in a tie. Tonight we learned the present perfect. "I have lived in Miami for thirteen years." The teacher asked each of us to say a sentence. The Chinese man said, "I have wanted to learn English for fifty years." Everybody clapped.

It rains and rains this winter. The TV says El Niño. The street floods at the corner, and the children go to school with plastic bags on their feet. After class I sit at the kitchen table with my homework, and the children sit with theirs, and we all do our present perfect together. Manno: "I have eaten all the hot dogs." Yes, you have.

Saturday, January 24, 1998

In our house there is a rule: Kreyòl only. Outside, English, Spanish, whatever you want. But inside the door, lakay, at home, we speak Kreyòl.

The twins were born here. They are American. At school everything is English, the TV is English, their friends are Cuban and Black American and Haitian and everything. So when they come home they forget and talk English, and I say "Kisa?" What? like I don't understand, and they sigh very big and say it again in Kreyòl. Naïka says, "Manman, you understand English, you're in English class!" I say, "Not in this kitchen."

Why do I care so much? Because if they lose it, they lose Papa, who has no English. They lose Frantz. They lose half of me. My cousin Rose's kids in Brooklyn cannot talk to their grandmother on the telephone. They say "Hi, Grann," and then they give the phone back. I don't want that.

Tonight at dinner Manno asked in Kreyòl for more rice, very polite, with souple, please. I gave him so much rice. That is how you teach a language. With rice.

Thursday, January 1, 1998

Bòn Ane! Happy New Year!

This is my first web page. I made it in the computer class at the adult center, on Monday nights, with Mr. Rolle, who is patient like a saint and says every student has to make one before February. So here I am. I am typing with two fingers.

My name is Fabiola Joseph. I am thirty-five years old. I was born in Haiti and grew up in Port-au-Prince, and I came to Miami in 1985. I live in Little Haiti with my husband Jean-Robert, who drives a taxi, and our twins, Naïka and Emmanuel (we call him Manno), who are seven and will be eight in April. I am a nurse's aide in a nursing home. My brother Frantz is still in Port-au-Prince with our papa. Frantz is a teacher.

Today is also Haitian Independence Day. On January 1, 1804, Haiti became the first free Black republic in the world, and every Haitian family eats soup joumou, pumpkin soup, because in the time of slavery only the French masters were allowed to have it. So on the first day of freedom, everybody ate it. This morning I made a big pot with beef and pumpkin and potatoes and cabbage and the little noodles, and the neighbors came by with their bowls.

Why "Bridge Kids"? Last month Manno's teacher told the class that children who speak two languages are like bridges between two countries. Manno came home and said, "Manman, me and Naïka are bridge kids." And I thought, yes. And I am the one who walks across them every day. So that is the name of my page.