CHAMBER POT ROAD

by Félix Morisseau-Leroy
Translated from the Haitian Creole by Peter Constantine (see Introduction)

Why does everyone laugh when I say Chamber Pot Road? What they're thinking never even crossed my mind. Since I was born, I've constantly been going to Chamber Pot Road.
Chamber Pot is a rural area near Grangozye. So when you leave Chamber Pot, you reach Grangozye by way of Chamber Pot Road.
However, I wasn't born on Chamber Pot Road. I was born in the heart of Grangozye town. But Chamber Pot Road is my grandmother's street. When my mother says: Put on your good clothes and I'll send you over to Chamber Pot, what she means is: you'll be going to your grandmother's place, to our house.
That's where her belly-button is buried, at her house, where my aunts, uncles, and the whole family gather to invoice the Loua spirits, to communicate with them, so that our Ancestors from Grinean Africa can speak to us.
When my mother says put on your clothes and I'll send you over to Chamber Pot, that could mean she wants me to fetch something, to borrow a calabash from grandmother, to borrow fifty kob, twenty kob. I must hurry and come back. It's dark in that house. But my mother always sends me to spend the day on Chamber Pot Road. She leaves me with my grandmother, with my aunts, for a whole month, sometimes two. It came to the point that I actually preferred being in Chamber Pot Road to being at my mother's house.
There were many reasons for this. The whole length of Chamber Pot Road is covered with hard flat pavement. When horses gallop over it the road rings like a bell. The pavement reaches all the way into my grandmother's yard. When I lie down on it and lay my ear on the surface, I can hear noises coming from far away through the earth.
The road runs between three mountains. One to the right, one to the left, and the third seems to close it off from behind. In front, the road leads to the nearby sea, which seems closer or further away depending on the position of the sun. When the sun or the moon is rising, the mountains lean their heads together like old village women trading evil gossip.
My mother wouldn't let me play with the street kids near our house. But when I went to Chamber Pot, I would play with everyone. My cousins and friends taught me how to set traps for turtles and bright-feathered ortolans, and taught me to chop wood. The trees in the woods behind my grandmother's house are the most beautiful I have ever seen. I can't tell you how much I loved those trees. I would wrap my arms round their trunks, and rest my cheek on them and stay there like a boy kissing a girl. My friends taught me how to make spinning-tops out of gayak wood. We would have spinning-top contests in my grandmother's yard.
My best friend was my cousin Lolo. We were the same age, but she went to school and I didn't. She would tell me everything that went on in class, and I would give her a run-down of what happened on the streets while she was wasting time at school. How I used to laugh when she mimicked the headmistress. I wondered whether she had the lanpa sickness and couldn't open her mouth to talk like a normal person. Lolo told me that they paid the headmistress to talk that way.
Just after Lolo passed her exams she became blind. They took her to Port-au-Prince. They took her to all kinds of doctors, to no avail. They took her to all the Houngan priests. There was no point. Lolo's bright eyes would open wide, but she couldn't see a thing. I was thunderstruck. I promised Lolo I would see for her. When we were together no one could guess she was blind. She went on making turning-tops. I would bring her gayak wood. I would bring her nails to put into the tops, and bits of glass to polish them. When they were ready I would try them out. Lolo's turning-tops were better than everyone else's. She had also learnt to weave all kinds of rope. The best thing one could bring her from the countryside were clumps of sisal hemp or palm sheaves. Passers-by would stop to look at the beautiful blind girl polishing the turning-tops, and weaving rope that she would sell.
But when Lolo started visiting the ounfo voodoo-temples of Lanskochon near my grandmother's property and the ounfo of Mapou and Ketèlonj, she totally forgot that she was blind. She quickly moved up the voodoo hierarchy: oundyannikon, ounsi, ounsi-kanzo, until she reached the rank of Mambo-voodoo priestess. I went to all the initiation ceremonies with Lolo, except for the time she woke up in the middle of the night with a Loua spirit in her head and left Chamber Pot Road for Konnen Pa Mal beyond Lansapit, to receive the 'eyes' that would give her clairvoyance.
It had caused quite a sensation back then and even today people still talk about it.
Konnen Pa Mal—"The Place Only Few Know"—is an immense grotto under Lansapit. To enter the grotto one has to slide through a hole barely big enough for one person at a time. Long, long ago, during the treacherous years of the Bayonets, there had been a ceremony held at Konnen Pa Mal, and general Rebeka had wanted to put a stop to it. The drums were beating beneath the earth all night, but his soldiers could not find the entrance to the grotto.
By horse it takes a day to get from Grangozye to Lansapit. Lolo left Chamber Pot Road in the middle of the night and arrived at Lansapit before day break.
A great Houngan priest possessed by a great Loua spirit stopped dancing and spoke:
"My friends, a stranger is about to arrive. She has come from afar. Prepare a cup of coffee for her and bring her a robe. She has walked much. Sweat runs off her like water."
He broke into song, moving his hands as if he were pulling at the string of a kite. The others did the same, looking up at the narrow entrance of the grotto. Lolo appeared and walked right at them. She was greeted with beating drums, then the ouonsi took her away and dressed her. They brought her back with her head covered with a white cloth. The ceremony of the
giving of the eyes was to last nine days and nine nights. They sang magic
songs. They sang:

0 Eyes, eyes.
The eyes, the eyes.
Mambo Lolo has come to take her eyes
From Konnen Pa Mal

They sang verses in French. Then they sang in Latin: Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi. They look her to sleep on a mat in a room of her own. They only gave her sweet dishes to eat. Every time she was brought out they covered her head. After nine days the Houngan priest gave her the 'eyes'. Lolo herself told me everything. Then they brought her back to Grangozye.
After that, people came from all over to Chamber Pot to the blind young priestess. People believed that she could 'see' more clearly than the other Mambos. People came to see Lolo from Labedoranj beyond Saltwou, and from Kwandèmisyon beyond the pine forest. She never took money. She continued making turning-tops and weaving ropes to buy what she needed. She didn't need much. She would sit where my grandfather's house that had burnt down used to be. On a white rock that shone like a porcelain plate.
Lolo was a beautiful, light skinned woman. She could easily have found a young man to marry, despite her blindness. But she never wanted to marry, or to live with a man. When she decided to have a child, she went ahead and had one without telling anyone who the father was. Evil fingers pointed at me. But neither Lolo nor I paid any attention to the gossip. Others believed the child was begotten by a Loua spirit, that it was not like other children. They child went to school and learned to read in no time at all. She sent him to school in Port-au-Prince. The boy became a little philosopher. He got a scholarship to go abroad. Today Lolo's son is a big shot in the white world. We hear news of him in the papers.
Since we were children, I knew that Lolo would become a Mambo priestess. She always saw things that others did not see. She always knew what others did not know. Since she had gone blind, she spoke to me a lot. What she told me was not what she told other people. She never 'saw' for me. She asked me to see for her. She never asked anyone else to see or to 'see' for her. If being a Mambo was any consolation to her, there were still two to three things she missed seeing. I was the only one she would ask if the gayak trees deep down in the canyon has sprouted seeds. When I answered, yes, it was as if she could actually see them. Her face would become red like a hot pepper, red like a gayak seed. If I had just handed her ten thousand gold coins, she wouldn't have been happier.
There was a time when I had left the country for a while. I'd gone into hiding. Far away. In Haiti, if one wants to live like a human being, one has to go underground at times. One night I dreamt that I had returned to Grangozye and that I was spending the night at my grandmother's. In my dream, I saw myself waking up there and saying: "I'm going to see my town." I open the door all the way and what do I see? The ocean, the ocean right in front of me. It had crossed the shore, gone over the hills, and had come right up the crossroads of Kalvé. Tears fell from my eyes. To this day I always feel moved when I speak of this dream. In a trembling voice, Lolo asked me if the sea had actually come up that far. I told her that it had only been a dream.
"And yet," she said, "one day it will come up that far."
I sat there and looked out at the sea, wondering how long it would take before it crossed the hills as it had done in my dreams. No doubt it would be in the time of my children's children's children.
Well, one would think that Lolo, having become the chief of all the Houngan priests and the Mambo priestesses all the way from Marigo to Pèdènal, from Grangozye to Lapin Kildesak, could not attain an even higher status in this world. But my cousin's lucky stars shone brightly in the coastal sky.
Every twenty-five years, the Loua spirits choose a chief drummer for all the voodoo temples of the coast. It was always a man. No one knows what happened this time. The Loua rose and singled out Lolo. They entered her fists and put her in front of the drums. She took the sticks and broke into a kata rhythm on the small drums. Then she picked up an ogon voodoo staff and began beating both the mother drum and the father drum—beating all three drums as if she were three drummers. The people shouted. The Loua spirits showered down onto the crowd like hail.
From that day on, whenever word went round that Lolo would beat the drums at a ritual, all hell broke loose. Messengers were sent by horse and mule to ask Lolo to come and play, from Mapou, from Banannm and even from across the border, where a big Houngan priest was holding services in Spanish country. At times all she did was touch the drum. But then people still spread the word that sparks had flown, that the Mambo priestess had drummed from sunset to sunrise.
Pots of coffee and crates of food came through the gates of Bodari, passed through the woods behind the priest's house, and ended up at Lolo's place. There was a constant bustle on Chamber Pot Road. Lolo didn't even have time to comb her hair. She tied it back into a large bundle with a scarf. People from all sections of Grangozye society, both bosses and servants, eager to know what the future had in store for them came to pray at Lolo's feet. The poor people of Chamber Pot Road prospered. The Mambo priestess could not possibly drink all the coffee or eat all the food. She had to ask her neighbors to help her wash the coffee pots and clean the crates before they were returned to their owners.
There was only one woman who stayed away from all the bustle. She was a Dominican who lived across the street from Lolo—a Madame Riri, who had married a Haitian. He died leaving her a fortune. They had one daughter. She was insane. She laughed day and night. People said that in Port-au-Prince, at Lali school, she had fought with classmate, and that the classmate's mother had sent an evil laughing-sprit into her head. Madame Riri closed her doors and spoke to no one. The daughter, Paolina, would sometimes sit on a stone in the middle of Chamber Pot Road. There she would laugh. Passers-by would call out:
"What's up, Paolina?"
She wouldn't answer. Jokes would tumble through her head and she would laugh. Then she would get up and go back in her house.
Paolina would sometimes wander into the forest behind her mother's house. Then between five and ten men would have to go looking for her with dogs to bring her back home.
One day she left for good. All searching was in vain. Madame Riri became desperate. She could no longer hold back, and secretly crossed the road to speak to Lolo, who told her:
"Madame Riri, do not fear. Your daughter is fine. She is no longer insane. But you will never see her again."
Madame Riri took courage, but returned after six months to ask Lolo if there wasn't some spell she could cast that would make Paolina come back. She was prepared to pay any amount of money.
"Madame Riri," Lolo answered. "Were I to take your money to make Paolina return, I would be robbing you. And your daughter is happy where she is. She is pregnant. In three months she will give birth to a little girl even prettier than she is."
Madame Riri returned home, lay down in bed, closed her eyes, and died. Her coffin was ready and they laid her in it and carried her to a plot of land in Katèlonj where she was buried all alone.
I thought: "Oh, how sad that this woman lived all alone, died all alone, and now lies buried all alone? In this cemetery there are no neighboring graves for her to call on and ask how things are going."

* * *

Whenever the people of Grangozye saw the corporal go to the justice of the peace, they knew that Port-au-Prince had sent an important edict to the two senior officials of the town. This time it was an order to arrest Lolo. "Arrest her, prosecute her, and sentence her." That meant as much as "Send her to Jakmèl or Port-au-Prince to be executed."
This time the local authorities hesitated to take on such a task, and waited till the following day.
That night the justice of the peace, knocked on Lolo's door.
He called out: "Anybody home?"
"Come in, Judge," Lolo answered.
"How did you know it was me?"
"I 'saw' you. You've been walking in my shadow since sundown."
"So you know what news I bring you."
"Bad news. They've put out an order for my arrest."
"They say that you tell everyone who comes to you for advice that the government will fall."
"Well, that's pretty obvious. In this country no government has ever lasted. It will definitely fall."
"You know I can't arrest you."
"What will you do?"
"Tomorrow morning I will come here with the corporal. We won't find you here and we'll both act like we're furious. We'll saddle horses and go to Lanskochon looking for you. Then we'll file a report, and that'll be that."
"Someone else is also walking in my shadow. You should leave so you won't be found here."
On the first floor the judge came face to face with the corporal. He said to him:
"You're out late, corporal."
"You're out pretty late too, judge."
"When one bathes together there is no point trying to hide one's navel. I just came from the place you're going to."
"Well, we're quits. I'm on my way to warn Lolo that we're coming to arrest her tomorrow."
"She knows. I told her."
"So I needn't go."
"No, go to her. She knows you're on your way. She's waiting for you."
"Really?"
"We will come here tomorrow. We won't find her. She'll have enough time to disappear. We''ll go to Lanskochon to find her. We'll write a report for those nasty macaques of Port-au-Prince."
"Let's shake hands."
One went up, the other went down.
The next morning when the judge and the corporal went to my grandmother's house they found it empty, with all the doors wide open. They questioned the neighbors, who knew nothing of her whereabouts, and left without saying a word.
Since that day my grandmother's house became a ruin. Soon nothing but the door posts were left.
But I still went there sometimes to dream of days long gone by when Chamber Pot Road was Chamber Pot Road. People would stop to speak with me. Some felt that Lolo had died, others thought that she was alive in Guinea. I remained silent and never spoke of what I thought or didn't think.
People called out to Lolo at all the ounfo temples but she did not answer. If she had died she would have answered. When the justice of the peace comes to warn you that he has been ordered to arrest you, that you must disappear so that he will not get into trouble, you do not have time to inform your friends. That is why Lolo had left without telling me anything. I looked for her everywhere. I went all the way to Konnen Pa Mal to see if she hadn't hidden herself there. She wasn't here. I even lay down with my ear to the cement of Chamber Pot Road to see if the noises under the earth had any messages for me.
One day whites and blacks came to Chamber Pot Road with a plan to dig it up so they could see what lay under it. But as they started digging, rocks rained upon them. They barely escaped with their lives. They returned with a helicopter to investigate, but the pilot told them that if they didn't leave soon they would all die. It had been supernatural powers that had hurled the rocks at them.
They left saying that they would return, but they never did.
Seven years passed. The government fell, another government came to power. The corporal left and another one came. Seven years. Late one night, I was fast asleep, there was a knock at the front door. My wife and three children woke up trembling with fear. I called out:
"Who is it?"
A low, soft voice answered.
"It is Lolo."
I still didn't open the door.
"Which Lolo."
"Oh, Bibit, there's only one Lolo! It's me, Lolo."
Lolo had been the only one who ever called me Bibit. I opened the door. Lolo, it was my Lolo who stood in front of me. I reached out to her and she took my hand. She realized I wanted to help her into the house. She told me:
"I'm no longer blind. I can see with both eyes."
I remained speechless. Then I asked her:
"Where did you come from?"
"I came from under the water."
"You were under water for seven years?"
"It would take me seven years to tell you what happened and how it happened."
"Oh, Lolo, let me just ask you one question then. How long is it since you can see?"
"Seven years. One month after I left Chamber Pot Road with nothing but what I was wearing."
My wife and children came into the room. Two of the children had been born after Lolo had left.
"I don't know these two kids. I have two who are the same age and two that are older. Four all in all—two girls and two boys."
"Under the water—you had four children? You come back looking younger than when you left. You left blind and you come back seeing as clearly as when you were twelve, thirteen years old. Lolo, I can't wait any more, you must tell me what happened!"
My wife went to brew some coffee and my four children went back to bed.
"As far as everyone is concerned, I was under water. But to you, Bibit, I shall tell the whole story. Tell your wife to go back to bed after we have drunk our coffee. I want us to take a walk through town so I can take a good look at it. During the day I shall sleep with the blinds drawn. It will take me a few days before my eyes can get used to the sunlight."
We went out into the street and walked. I asked Lolo how she felt, being able to see our town for the first time in twenty-five years.
"How do I feel, Bibit, seeing Chamber Pot Road, seeing the sea under the full moon? It makes me so happy I could go mad!"
"Did you come by way of Chamber Pot Road?"
"Where else could I have come from? I was right there all the time—under the pavement of Chamber Pot Road, that's where I was!"
"What are you saying, Lolo? Under the road? We always thought that people lived down there. Tell me all about it!"
"There are none left. They all moved away with their wives and children. They took my children too. Only me they let return."
"I have so many questions. I don't know where to begin! How did you come back?"
"I came back through the Ying hole. That's where I entered and that's how I left. Do you remember Paolina? She's down there too. She's fine like you and me. She has seven children. Oh, if you could only see them! They're beautiful children. It was Paolina who welcomed me when I went there. She already knew how to speak their language. They don't speak Creole, and I didn't know their language."
"Who are these people you're talking about?"
"The Vyenvyen. That's what the Haitians call them. I myself call them Haitians. Paolina took me by the hand, she introduced me to them. She explained what they were saying. Don't forget, I was blind. I couldn't tell whether they were big or small, black or red. Paolina told me they were good people, and I believed her."
I was speechless. Lolo did not wait for me to ask her any more questions. She talked and talked till daybreak. We went all the way past the priest's house. Lolo really wanted to see the Devil's Rapids. Tears ran from her eyes. We made our way back home before the sun rose.
Lolo told me how they cured her eyes. Every morning they had her dip her face into a wooden basin of water in which they had soaked leaves all night, and had her open her eyes. After ten days they dripped milk into them and then scraped them with a razor-sharp rock. She felt no pain. They kept her eyes bandaged for five days.
"I could see! Oh, if it hadn't been for Paolina, if Paolina hadn't held me back, I would have run away when I saw those people. But they were great, they left me with Paolina. She told me what had happened when she arrived there, how they treated her. After she was cured of her illness they let her choose a husband. She chose one of the top chiefs, and by the time I arrived she already had two children by him. I made a very good match too! Bibit, was like a queen down there. With four servants to dress me, undress me, bathe me, rub me, comb my hair, fix my tresses, perfume me, and cut my nails for me."
"How come they let you leave?"
"It's their law. I had the right to leave whenever I wanted. They no longer live there—they moved elsewhere. They asked me whether I wanted to go with them or come back here. They left and went far away, with their families and belongings. For five hundred years now they've been persecuted, their lands stolen from them. They also took my four children with them. After two full moons they will send over the two oldest. Paolina is giving them lessons in Creole every day."
"And Paolina, will she be coming back too?"
"She's never been as happy as where she is now. What should she come up here for? Her mother is long dead. She has no relatives here. But I have my oldest son that I want to look for. I have you, my whole family, all my friends that I want to bring out of poverty."
She pulled out a thick bamboo sheath from her clothes. The bamboo was heavier than iron. I was surprised. I asked her:
"What is that?"
"What do you think it is?"
"I have no idea!"
"I'm rich, rich, Bibit! Our whole family is rich, and all our friends. This bamboo is filled with gold. If you take the smallest chip of it to Port-au-Prince and have it changed into money, we can buy whatever we need. You must get a safe-deposit box at the bank to keep the bamboo in. It is full of gold chips, the smallest of which is worth twenty thousand dollars. I'm going to build a beautiful house on Chamber Pot Road on the site of our grandfather's house. I'll have running water come to Chamber Pot. They showed me how to bring running water even to the mountain tops."
I hadn't managed to say a single word. Lolo talked and talked and talked. I could see Chamber Pot Road stretching out in front of me like one of the great streets in the capital. She talked on as we walked through the alleys to get back to my house. As we entered the house I asked her:
"So tell me Lolo, can you still 'see'?"
"Yes, I can still 'see': but not like I used to. I don't 'see' small things anymore. Now I only 'see' important things, things so significant that one doesn't need 'eyes' to see them."
"Like what, for instance?"
"Like the government that will fall the way the one before did. The government of the people will come and Chamber Pot will rise, sweet water will flow from fountains, beautiful houses will line the streets. Ololoy!"
"Lolo, aren't you frightened speaking the same words that got you into trouble?"
"Being in trouble wasn't that bad, though. And after all, it's my job to say what I 'see.' I will speak out till the day I die. In the seven years I was down there I learnt a lot, Bibit. I can't hold back what I 'see' for Chamber Pot Road! These governments must fall one after the other so that the people can take over. One thing I don't know is what day it is today, the date, and what month."
"Today is the fifteenth of November, nineteen. . ."
"No, I know the year. Make a note of the date, Bibit. Ten years from now Chamber Pot will prosper."
"And what if the men from Port-au-Prince come again digging for gold?"
"I'll show them! I'll pay ten men to throw them into the hole and keep them there for five days without food so that they see that there's no point, so they can report back to the whites and the blacks of Port-au-Prince who set out to pillage what belongs to the people."
She talked. She talked. She laughed.
"Ooh, yeah! I can 'see.' I can 'see' further. I can also 'see' the past. You have to look to the past to understand the future. I can 'see' what happened a long time ago. Five hundred years ago Christopher Columbus set foot on the shores of Grangozyle. He killed all the Vyenvyen. In some places they still call them Indians. It's the same everywhere. Those who weren't killed were forced to live in holes under the earth, just like where I've been for the last seven years. These last seven years I've had lots of time to think things out. When I was stuck in school, and Madame cursed until her tongue bled, what good did that do us? I can 'see' far, far back, to a time when there were no humans at all on earth. There were volcanoes everywhere around here. They spewed hot rivers of fire and threw rocks left and right. That was when nature planted the mountains, raised the mountains, and split the mountains so the waters of the Boujoli rapids could pass, and nature passed the mountains together to hold the water so it would tumble into the rapids behind our grandmother's house. We shall dig up the pavement of Chamber Pot we will pierce the mountain and make it give us the water it has in its belly. They will see! We will bring order to nature's disorder and to the disorder of the big shots in the palaces of Port-au-Prince who force the people of Grangozye to drink the salt water of one small well by the sea, while in the mountains' entrails there is sweet water in abundance. There shall be good schools, good hospitals, and gardens on every hill. The water will flow from Chamber Pot Road and pass through pipes to all the houses in the town. Look at the stream of stones on the road in front of us! Do we need a school to tell us that long, long ago a river ran down Bodari Road, spilling into Mapou Road?. . .I don't regret being blind for twenty-five years. Today, Bibit, I can express my gratitude to you, a man who never went to school, who showed me my country without the help of bad books that would have blurred my vision. You ask me if I can 'see'. I can 'see' all this as clearly as I can see you looking at me. But I don't need the Loua spirits and the Lesenlemo spirits of the saintly dead to help me see all this."
"Won't you hold a big ceremonial feast for all the people who will be so glad to see you back with us and who will want to greet you?"
"I'd love to hold a big ceremony like you say. But, Bibit, you understand my point, don't you? A Mambo priestess of my stature who spent seven years under water can no longer be dominated by the Loua. It is I who dominate them."
Her eyes sparkled with excitement. Maybe the light of the sun which rose behind the mountain was too bright for her. I opened the door and asked her to go in to see my wife.
I stayed outside and punched my head with my fist to see if this was a dream I had dreamed, or just a tale I had conjured up in the morning sun.



Copyright © by Félix Morisseau-Leroy