Foreigners

Abstract

Foreigners Fabienne Josaphat (bio) Lucien stared at the Thanksgiving display before him. A whole turkey, roasted and stuffed with a crumbly paste, rested belly-up on a bed of parsley. Its legs were twined together in a barbaric manner, as if Virginie, his ex-wife, had mercilessly arrested and restrained the animal before plucking it and shoving it into the oven. Ida, his daughter, tipped over a can onto a plate, releasing a crimson jelly she then sliced into uneven parts. "C'est quoi, ça?" Lucien's mouth twitched and he asked again, in English, testing his limited vocabulary. "What is this?" Ida moved her red lips. "Cranberry. Une sauce. For the turkey." "A sauce?" Lucien eyed his daughter, who had moved on to other things, roasted green beans and a gratin of macaroni. "Paul! Michael! Let's eat!" she called to her brother and husband. As they came into the dining room, Lucien tried to catch phrases, pieces of English he could understand, something about American football, a game he didn't grasp. In Haiti at this time, he would have been lying on his patio with a Plagatox mosquito coil and a fan, reading a book to thwart the loneliness of his single life. But he was in America visiting his children and his ex-wife, his missing body parts, he called them, driftwood swimming away from their native land. He found Thanksgiving both absurd and bizarre. Absurd because he could not fathom a celebration of food and gratitude for a land taken from Natives, and bizarre because he couldn't wrap his brain around Haitians joining in this ritual. The way Virginie had slaved over this meal, perched over the stove, stirring and sweating all morning, was an outrage. The way they now ogled the roasted bird was unsettling. "How are you doing, Papi?" Michael, his son-in-law, hadn't learned much French, even though he'd been married to Ida for three years. The only Haitian words he smuggled into conversations were "Papi" and "Merci." Lucien had visited them just the other day, in their community where the "townhomes" held hands like monochromatic pencils in their box. He had noticed Post-it Notes stuck to household items, phonetically spelling objects' names in Creole. The one on the water pitcher read "dlo," and the door read "pòt." He'd quizzed Ida about the language she'd chosen to help Michael learn. "Why not French?" "Why not Creole?" Her eyes went fiery at his suggestion. "It's our maternal tongue, not the language of colonization, and it's easier for him to learn." Lucien offered no reply. Ida would never change. Sometimes he was convinced she was some other woman's daughter. Ida's own mother was never this rebellious. Virginie's only act of rebellion had been to buy a plane ticket ten years ago and escape Haiti with the children, leaving him no letter to explain her departure. There had been warning signs, of course, but he was convinced her threats to divorce him and her combative arguments were womanly caprice. Looking at his family now, gathered around [End Page 124] this table like specters, he knew he'd underestimated her. It took ten years of arguing and pleading for a reconciliation. Five years ago, Virginie called Lucien on the phone and told him she wanted an official, documented severance of their love story. He was swatting mosquitoes away on his patio that hot night in Port-au-Prince, his body failing to adjust to the news. Why hadn't he prepared for this? He didn't know. "We don't need to be enemies," Virginie had said to him. "But we weren't meant to be married. You don't know how." She sounded disturbingly calm, her tone dipped in so much goodness he found it repulsive. "You are always welcome to visit us in Miami. You can stay over in the guest room if you need to." Lucien spat on the ground and said nothing. He despised being abandoned and vulnerable. Visit her in Miami? Never. But now here he was, seated at their table, the last ten years of solitude gnawing...