GRADUATION

Edwidge Danticat


The applause grew to a thunderous cry. Lights were almost blinding as I stepped into the crowded auditorium. I moved closer to the neat little row of seats on the stage.
"Mamam," I whispered to my mother's soul and spirit that I carried in my chest, "I am so very proud of you and Papa."
The clip-clap-clap rose to its loudest possible, encompassing volume, reminding me of the strong Haitian rain as it beat rhythmically against the metal roof of my house and those of other houses nearby. I used to fall asleep bopping my head to the vibration of the rain as it forced itself on my roof. I never felt that serene doing anything else.
I took my seat next to two other well-dressed teenagers. Their satin caps and gowns glistened like well-polished silver coins officially decorated with the large head of the President for Life or the President Forever. I was happy to know that mine looked exactly the same.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen," our principal said, turning quickly to face me, "It is with great pleasure on this day that I present to you the most successful members of this year's graduating class. First, this year's valedictorian whose inspiring address you will soon have the pleasure of hearing—Miss Laperle Des Antilles."
My heart beat so loudly that I could hear it and, if I wished, dance to it. I wished I were dancing, dancing elsewhere on top of a red and blue float of celebration, swaying my hands and smiling carelessly at a group of people who felt as much a glow of exhilaration as I. Instead, I was in a hot and jammed auditorium, filled with my bitterness. It was a bitterness like that nursed by the green and unwanted sugar cane, like that which overwhelmed the heart of an unripe and unobserved mango accidentally picked by a dry mountain rock.
The lights became unbearably blinding. As I tried to lift my feet to carry me to the podium so that I could recite my overly rehearsed valedictory address, I could not move.
"Mamam," I pled. "Give me strength."
I felt more glued down than ever, as though a huge basket made by baked, starving, little brown hands had fallen on top of me and swallowed me.
"Papa, please help me," I begged.
As soon as the words left my mouth, I saw blood in front of me. It was as red as that which came out of the necks of roosters when Papa sliced them. Pictures flashed about me in all types of vivid colors. Soon images floated in the air before me.

A young woman who worked with a small newspaper and wrote symbolic short stories about freedom and justice was naked in a dim, stenchfilled, tiny room where roaches, mice, and rats walked freely in and out. She hung by her wrists, and blood flowed from her neck.
Her hair—dark, coarse, and beautiful—was shaved and covered pieces of rotten bread and cheese on the foul floor. Every few minutes, she was stabbed by a cigarette and pierced with laughter.
''Say something now!''
"Criticize your leader now!"
"Tell me how badly we rule!"
Her tongue fell out, and she pled for mercy and water—mercy, but first, water. Every supplication was appeased by an excruciating, slow slash with a razored whip. Blood flowed until pieces of bread on the floor were soaked red. "Your child is here! Here . . . watching! We'll have you all. We'll eat your whole generation. One. . . one. . . one by one."
In my chest I prayed, God, please let Mamam die. She did not recognize me or else she would have read the request on my face. Mamam, Mamam, please die.
The basket was lifted momentarily, but I saw nothing except her face as it hung cowardly dripping of blood. She blew the blood away from her lips with hopeless, silent breaths.
Mamam, Mamam, please die.
I saw nothing until my face felt wet, as wet and cold as the poor Haitian farmers' feet that never had anything but dry air between them and the brown soil. Water covered my face. I felt as though I was breathing my last breaths of air. I had no reason to go on, no reason to walk those last few feet to the beach. Mamam died last week.
We fled. Papa fell overboard from the little homemade boat we took from Haiti. We lost him to the vastness of the ocean.
A man on the boat yelled, "No way will we give all the lives on this boat for just one life that's already lost anyhow!"
He did not even know my father.
"One death for one trip is a great success," another said. "Let us thank the gods."
They thanked the gods joyfully.
My face was still wet when they put me in a filthy cell with two metal beds and six neighbors. We would go to Justice in a month.

No one nudged me or told me to get up. Perhaps they could no longer see me buried with my pain, paralyzed on their stage, at my own high school graduation. Tears forced their way out of my eyes. My heart beat louder than ever before in my entire life. I wanted my parents there with me.

I went before Justice smelling of avocado-colored food they served the night before. I was so thin that my black skin fell in envelopes over my bones. After a month in the cells, men—who also came to Justice—had breasts bigger than mine.
Someone dressed in a navy blue suit, carrying a black suitcase, said in a professional voice, "These Haitians can't go back."
"Why can't or don't you want to go back?" the judge asked me. "Don't you love your native country? How can anyone claim any kind of attachment to the human race if he or she has no pride in the land that bore his or her ancestors?"
"I love no country—better or worse—more than I love my own country. It is a poor and oppressed country, but it is my country. I am here in your country because people in my own country will pluck the hairs out of my skin and stab me with fire simply because my family has criticized the corruption, thefts, and murders."
No one could put my words in the judge's language. I knew he neither heard nor understood them. He did not want to hear or understand me.
People were around us—yellow, red, and almost beige. They acted as though they were not burdened with a burning wish to retell events that involved legal executions and human sacrifices. Yet they walked away with little square, green plastic cards.
I fell on my knees, devastated and destroyed. I pled in my Creole, "Please let me stay. Please preserve me, harbor me, shield me, guard me, secure me, surround me, enclose me, house me." I sighed to Justice. "Justice. Please show me a little decency, I beg you. Come to my rescue. Save my life. They are bound to murder me. As soon as I set foot back on my soil, they will butcher me.
"They will slice me in fringed, little pieces, and their dogs will savage me. They will decapitate me and stare into my silent eyes where finally they will find weakness and shame. They will make me suck my own blood through the straws of my guts. Everyone who has ever spoken up will drink from me.
"No one will say anything. No one will know. The few who know will live only if they live in silence. I beg of you, give me that paper. Let me stay. Save me."
I received no paper. I went as I came—to prison.
Sweet voices floated outside the basket trapping me. "What so proudly. . . twilight. . . bright stars through some night." Then some banners were waved over a land of the free and a home of the brave. Was I not brave enough?
A pastor came into the hell and prayed for me. I figured it was either the day before I would die or before I would be deported. I cried and vomited all the time, but no one came to help me. Finally the man with his Bible came. Was he the first of final rites? He asked me to confess all to God.
"Here, God, I confess all," I said. "I hate this earth and everyone on it. I even hate this man of religion you've sent to me, because I know that if you find him a throne to rule he will become evil. I hate everything and everyone and even you because you're evil for allowing people to become evil."
I confessed that I wanted to go wherever Mamam and Papa were. Whether above or below me, they could not possibly see as much evil as I would be forced to see.
Someone spoke. I barely heard the familiar voice, but I recognized the words. They urged self-love, pride, contentment, satisfaction. My valedictory address was full of the exact same words.

The pastor took me to his home; he had plenty of room. He took in three men and two women besides myself. My knees did not crack, and I did not vomit. Soon I could walk again.
I went to school and liked it, especially learning English. The sentences sounded like songs full of notes created with sounds of small rocks falling on large rocks in glass-clear streams.
I liked the school and really enjoyed the chicken lunches. Other children said, "It stinks." Sometimes I starved and did not eat the lunch so that they would not guess that in my country it could be a New Year's feast.
The children beat me and cursed me; they cursed my dress, my speech, my body, my hair, my Haitianness. I got special beatings for being Haitian. Sometimes, like Mamam, I bled. Like Papa, my dignity and claim to humanity drowned in salty waters.

Applause screamed with everything but bitterness. Happiness, pride, and love were all that drifted outside my tomb. Graduation, graduation—someone whispered how meaningful a step it was.
I was proud. I spoke good English; children beat me no more. I wore good clothes, uncoarsed my hair, and worked, too. I had more money than I needed. How Americanized I must have become.
A laugh echoed around me. Americanized? I? The AIDS carrier, the zombie, the voodoo beast, the caged, the homeless, the pitied, the despised, the feared, the ridiculed? And Americanized, too? That was only the dream.
"This day," the principal announced, "is a milestone in all of your lives. As you sit here, you should be thinking about how hard you've worked to get where you are now. In small and, of course, limited ways, you should have relived parts of your yet-short lives which were for you the hardest of all.
"Cherish this moment in the perspective of how great and almost astronomical it is in the scheme of your lives. You have just begun. The sweeter parts of life remain ahead of you.
"Achieve it as you have achieved today, this great and wonderful day. A day which will prove more enlightening and marvelous if you all—graduates—go out with all intentions of changing the worst thing you have experienced in your lives so that all others yet to come will live to experience the difference you have made. Remember, those who know where they are going and remember where they come from can neither be lost nor stopped."
Applause rose and rose until I visualized it lifting the roof a bit higher. The bodies rose as well. In a great wave of unison, a sweet, little song tingled in my ears.
I proudly carried myself out along with the other members of my class.






Copyright © by Edwidge Danticat