I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

Just so I can stay true to the purpose of this blog, I have not had any rejections. I don’t really care if I get any rejections. Everything about my life feels so trivial right now. I feel selfish and lucky and guilty that I get to live what is a really amazing life and so many others don’t. I am starting to think Haiti is like a prison and only a lucky few escape and I am the child of two such lucky escapees only one of those escapees is insane and has chosen to return to the asylum (she says to her father).  I need to find a way past this because there’s so much that is amazing about Haiti, really there is but right now, it is hard to hold onto those good things and it is pretty hard to imagine a future for that place. I selected the story for this week’s Smokelong Quarterly, The Strain of Collusion by xTx. It is a story I love and that moved me a great deal. I hope you love it as much as I do.  I use the word “that” too much. I use too many commas. I use the words “I think” too much. I do think too much. I have opinions I am not afraid to share.

My brother J is visiting my parents this week and holding a corporate retreat at their golf club. He is the real bon vivant of the family, the middle child, the loud boisterous one who makes his presence known, and pretty much everyone who ever meets him either loves him or hates him.  He’s awesome and exactly what the doctor ordered. When he got there on Saturday, he instantly cheered my parents up. They called me via conference call and I heard my dad laugh for the first time in a week. My dad had been sulky because there were no commercial flights into PAP and he was getting antsy. He has since, of course, found a way to run into the fire. This is why my brother makes my parents laugh:

Yes, my brother wore that outfit. He appeared in public in said outfit, and he wasn’t being like, ironic. We are very different. Sorry ladies, he is married.

My mom called me today and told me to call Edna who had gotten out of bed and was at the office with Hans and Clifford because they plan to go everywhere together now. I didn’t want to call, not because it was an inconvenience but because I didn’t know what to say to a woman who had just lost two children, and was homeless and surrounded by chaos. It’s one thing to talk about Edna’s family and to try in some small way to tell her story but it is another thing entirely to talk to her. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of my French not being clear enough to convey the depths of my sadness over her loss, and also, I was afraid of intruding on her grief which is such a personal thing. I have no real way of understanding what it means to lose a child and moreover what it means to have lived through a catastrophe of such massive proportions and then be forced to continue to live so close to the geography of one’s grief. I know nothing at all. I am a silly girl.  My mother being my mother, said, “You will know what to say.” and that was that. When she makes these kinds of requests, it is not a question of if but when.

I called the office (we have VoIP there and by the grace of someone other than God it WORKS). When Edna came to the phone I could barely hear her. Her voice… the tone of it is something I have never in my life heard. It was so horrible. There was a hollowness to it, a profound emptiness, like there was no life left in her. I told her how sorry I was for her loss, that my thoughts are with her, that I would do anything I could to help. She began talking, slowly at first, and then the words were rushing furiously. She told me that she was the one who made it to her home first, around 9 pm. She told me that the children were still alive when she got there, that she talked to them, that Alex and Immacula called for her, and she told them she loved them and she screamed and she tried to lift enormous blocks of concrete but she could not get to them. When others finally came, they pulled Clifford free and then he directed them to where his brother was and later they found Immacula. Edna said she will never forget the horror of standing there speaking to her trapped children, that she still hears their voices and sees their bodies. She said she didn’t know how something like this could happen to her and that her children were so young, that they knew nothing of life. And then she started saying, “It’s hard,” over and over again.  As she spoke, I finally understood that there are some things from which someone cannot recover. The horror of this is very fresh for Edna but I honestly do not know how she has the strength to make it from one breath to the next. I felt so small and helpless because to say things will get better would have been ridiculous. It would have been an insult for me to say those words to Edna so for an hour, I listened. My mother was right. I did know what to say. Unfortunately, it was not nearly enough.