Libertie Kaitlyn Greenidge (ebook reader browser txt) 📖

It was clear he considered himself as not quite one, which was strange, because he most definitely did not consider himself Haitian. He was a citizen of the imaginary country where his household was based, one of hardworking and disciplined colored people—though he was convinced that these were very rare. Haitians were lazy and kept too many scores. American Negroes were too shortsighted and did not understand history.

“If he hates both, who does he expect to join him in the new world?” I’d asked Emmanuel once, and he had looked at me, wounded.

“No one loves the colored race as much as my father,” he’d said.

Well, he has a funny way of showing it, I wished to say. But I did not. I still thought it was love to say nothing.

At dinner that first night, I sat beside Emmanuel, my plate with two fewer potatoes than everyone else’s. Bishop Chase leaned over his own plate, heavy with potatoes and topped with the leg of a chicken, and explained himself to his son.

“I have backed the wrong horse,” he said.

Since they had arrived in the country, Bishop Chase and his fellow émigrés had rallied around the politician Geffrard, who had managed to become president for a time. Geffrard had given over lands at his own palace to the American émigrés when they’d first arrived, and when their initial crops had failed after the first growing season, he had given them food from his own provisions. He had also taken land from Haitians to give to the Americans. And the Americans were there because the poorer Haitians had refused to return to the sugar plantations that made Haiti such a jewel and a prize. Geffrard had looked for the Americans to take the land and force the smaller Haitian farmers into the type of destitution that would lead them to agree to the awful work of making sugar for no pay. But Bishop Chase did not mention this part of the deal they had entered into with Geffrard and his government. He only spoke of past and future glories.

Bishop Chase sighed. “No truer friend to the American Negro than Geffrard.”

“He has not been in power for nearly ten years,” Emmanuel said.

“Do not insult Father.” This was Ella.

“How is the truth an insult?”

“It is disrespectful,” she said.

“A listing of history is disrespectful?”

“You would know. You understand disobedience better than I do,” she said.

And then she turned to me. “Do you enjoy the food?”

I had never been looked at with such open hostility, but her mouth was fixed into a very sweet smile.

“I like it very much,” I said.

“You do not have to lie for politeness’ sake. Haitian food is not like what we have in America.”

“This meal is very good.”

“In America, you know, our meals are so much better for digestion,” she said. “Here, it is always the plantain, the potato, and sometimes the goat. What I would not give for a gooseberry.”

“Ah, but they are so sour,” I said. “You were lucky to have a good one. There have not been good crops the last few seasons. When were you last in America?”

I had thought this would flatter her, but she narrowed her eyes and turned back to her plate, and the table was quiet for a moment.

“Ella has not lived in America since she was nine years old,” Emmanuel said, laughing. I had pleased him with my unintended insult, I realized with dismay.

“If this is supposed to be proof of filial piety,” Ella said, “it is not a very good one.”

“Again, you are angered by facts.”

“Ella has missed your arguments,” Bishop Chase said, “though she won’t ever admit it.”

Perhaps, I thought, this was how siblings behaved. It was strange to see Emmanuel reduced to participating in someone else’s game.

“You worry about Boisrond-Canal?” Emmanuel asked his father.

“He is a good man, I think. And he is friendly to the Americans. But he does not understand what we could build here, for the black man. For all black men. He is thinking of his nation, to be sure, but he does not understand cultivating allies with American Negroes. And then the Negroes I introduce to him, their heads are turned by white Americans, by the crumbs they are finding here and there …”

“Not crumbs,” I said quietly, to my lap. Bishop Chase, at the pulpit in his mind now, did not hear me.

“They do not understand the future,” he said. ”And Boisrond-Canal … he does not understand our mission like Geffrard did.”

“Father, Geffrard is not even in the country anymore.”

“Good times will come again,” the bishop said. “It is just hard to know when.”

I ate in silence until I remembered. At least I may have discovered something to charm them, I thought.

“Emmanuel,” I said, “have you shown your father your gift?”

“Not yet.”

“I will go and get it now. I think he would enjoy it.”

I stood up from the table before he could stop me, went to the foyer where Ti Me had left the second trunk by the stairs. In the dim light, I fumbled with the latches. The gift had been packed under Emmanuel’s instruments and the dried cuttings wrapped in paper.

“Be careful, Libertie,” he called.

But I would not be deterred. I called back, “I know how to unpack a trunk.”

I gingerly laid each piece, each glass vial and book, on the ground until I found it, folded at the bottom of the trunk. I pulled it out, set it beside me, and repacked the pieces. When I came back to the dining room, the three of them were eating in silence. Ella did not even look up but kept her head bowed over her plate.

It was strange to have a bit of power over the two of them. To know something they did not. It had been so long since I felt this feeling that I relished it for a minute, holding the package behind my back.

“Well,” Emmanuel said, smiling, “show it to him.”

I shook the paper until it unfolded. It was