A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Álvarez Page B

of checkpoints, as we slow down for the speed bump, the guardias approach and peer inside.
    “¿Cómo están?” I ask them, friendliness being the best policy, especially with armed guardias.
    “As you can see, we are grinding the yuca.”
    Sitting under a mango tree, waiting for the next bribe bus—I don’t think so! But I can see, from casting a glance around them, that they haven’t apprehended any Haitians. Of course, this is not the route that Piti’s bus is taking, but I’m grabbing at good-luck straws wherever I can find them.
    It is getting late, and a huge rainstorm is coming in. Halfway back to Santiago, the rain starts pouring down. The kind of drenching downpour where you can’t make out the road ahead of you. We stop and hurriedly cover the back of the pickup with a tarp, then drive on at a creeping pace, wondering how the storm might delay the bus as well. The cell phone is getting no reception now. Luckily, I was able to get through earlier to Vicenta at my parents’ house in Santiago. Please set some extra places for dinner and prepare some beds for Eli and Piti and his family. It will be too late for Eli to drive them all up to the mountain tonight, two and half hours away. They can set out fresh in the morning.
    The rain stops, and as if the two things were synchronized: the cell phone rings. It’s Piti! They are already in Santiago waiting at the gas station.
    “Oh my god! We’re at least a half hour away,” I tell him. “We could hardly move in that bad rainstorm.”
    “What rainstorm?” Piti asks. They didn’t see any rain at all on the main highway.
    “You’re kidding! No rain?” I ask about the checkpoints.
    “No problem with the checkpoints.” Furthermore, Eseline didn’t get carsick. The Dramamine worked.
    When we finally pull into the gas station, we spot them right away, two kids with a baby, sitting on the curb. The minute they see us, they spring to their feet, their faces radiant with relief. Even Eseline, who has been stony-faced and removed for most of the trip, comes running toward us as if we were family.
    “Mèsi, Jezi, mèsi,” Piti keeps saying. Another weird moment for an agnostic, when a prayer she has uttered on the strength of others’ faith is answered.
When we have seen a thing
    When we have seen a thing, we have to tell the story.
    And yet, initially, we are dumbfounded. The return is jarring. We honk at the entrance to my parents’ house. The watchman, Don Ramón, opens the tall wooden gates. He touches his Yankees baseball cap, bowing his head deferentially. It’s hard to believe that this gentle, soft-spoken man, now in his sixties, used to be in the military. Did he ever accept bribes? I wonder. Or worse.
    At the top of the driveway sits the big house. In the waning evening light, its shabby features aren’t apparent. The rusted ironwork at the windows, the cracked walls, the weeds coming up between the stepping stones on the way to the pool drained because of the mosquitoes—all fade into the bigger picture: this is a huge place with a large staff for just two people.
    Don Ramón closes the gates and hurries up to see if we need help unloading the pickup. “And how was Haiti?” he asks politely, turning off the little radio he keeps on by his chair under the carport. The staff at my parents’ house were all shocked that we would want to go to a country even poorer than ours. A rung or two below them on the ladder they are desperately climbing.
    “Haiti was . . .” I look around at my fellow travelers. No one volunteers a comment. We need time to collect ourselves. In The Odyssey , there is a ritual way to welcome a traveler. The host settles him in his quarters, gives him time to wash up, feeds him, and only afterward comes the payback: tell me your story. For now, I settle on the generic “ Muy, muy interesante, Don Ramón.”
    “Sí, sí.” He nods. Whatever I say, Don Ramón is usually in agreement.
    Homero takes off, back to his family