Like the Destins, other residents with nothing to do often gathered, coffee cups in hands, under bright early suns to swap Maloulou stories, as if competing for the most exciting rendition. There were those who laughed in disbelief, others appeared pensive when reports were shared about the mysterious thing that had always lived in their midst but had never been seen. Young ones like me attending to morning chores before hastily preparing for a discounted ride to school with Josaphat, the camionette driver who lived in Lakou 22, used to listen furtively, ears tuned to what was being said, eyes wide with amazement. Where the name Maloulou came from, no one really knew. One version of the story was that Maloulou came from the sea to the island with the name Nkiruka, but it was changed to Maloulou because it rolled easier on the tongue.
Nevertheless, the nomadic and infamous visitor who was said to roam our compound in the ink-blue night enthralled all. One man in particular, it was said, Roland Désir, might have come nose-to-nose with Maloulou.
Roland Désir turned mad one morning, the story went, and folks repeated verbatim the words of the person who saw it happen, his wife Marguerite, who stood in the middle of the yard sobbing, saying that maybe if she hadn’t confronted Roland about the children’s school fees lost in a cockfight the previous night, he might not have lost his head. Years later, Roland was still roaming the streets and corridors, speaking to himself, living under trees, sleeping under the stars, begging for food, throwing rocks at the sea or at the gagè where he used to wage cheer on cockfights.
Lakou 22 people still sought Roland to give him scraps of food. After all, it was on account of this yard that his life changed. Folks remembered how he was a proud nèg nan nò, who had moved here from up north a long time ago with his young family. He provided for all his eight children, transforming abandoned oil drums into coal stoves to sell. Sadly, what he made was insufficient to sustain his avaricious cockfighting addiction; but all agreed that he was a fine member of Lakou 22.
What made matters worse for the Désir clan were the series of unfortunate events that hit the family right on the heels of Roland taking to the streets. Folks were in agreement that it was easy to imagine Kenesou, Roland’s youngest child, not living long. Less than a year had passed between him and Jean, the sibling before him, and Madame Roland’s body had not fully been restored to carry a healthy baby to term. And sure enough, Kenesou was very sickly: fever, bronchitis, diarrhea, you name the parasitic disease and he had it. Many thought the Désirs lucky to have had him alive for so long, but some still believed Maloulou might have been the culprit.
Now, the death of Hermione Désir, the eldest, came as a complete surprise. She was pretty like a rainbow, they say when telling her story. By all accounts, Hermione was angeliclooking. To have seen her walking down the road and not taken special notice would be cause for concern with any man: young or old. Men begged to nestle in her hips. Wives tried to shield their mates. Prostitutes wished she’d move away. Little boys could be heard praying for the gods to send them wives like her when they grow up. Young girls were said to imitate her walks and get their hair done like hers.
The whole neighborhood trembled, they say, the afternoon Hermione Désir started convulsing. Burning cotton under her nose, rubbing alkali on her face and chest, were not enough to bring her back. She did not even wait to have the tea that had been put on the fire for her. All of Lakou 22 mourned her, even crazy Roland Désir, the father she had supposedly lost to Maloulou. He was heard the night of her burial pacing about and lamenting, “This child was too young and pretty to die,” as if her death made him momentarily sane.
Mothers and wives who inherited these stories would evoke the fate of Roland to caution their men of the perils of walking dark corridors after midnight. In my head, though, I had preferred imagining Maloulou like the character Django, from the first spaghetti western film I ever saw. I envisioned Maloulou pulling a machetes-filled coffin in the dead of our nights, looking to rescue me, her own Maria, from renegades like Uncle Solon, who had mutated into a Tonton Macoute.
Mother never told me the familial relations we had with Solon. I suspected we had none. Personally, I had no recollection of his presence prior to the age of twelve or thirteen. We never went to his house; he came to us. My calling him Uncle Solon was just one of those impositions made on Haitian children, an effort at politeness by assigning a familial title to an adult stranger. Along with having to call people who curdled my blood aunties and uncles, I hated my mother for forcing me to kiss people I did not care for, but that was not the only reason I wished Uncle Solon dead. He was mother’s steadiest customer. And I could tell that he was one of the best payers since we seemed to eat a bit better after his passages. He was also short, bow-legged, had a receding hairline, and eyes set too far apart, and an unfriendly face that his small, stubby legs and arms did not help. But this had nothing to do with my disliking him. One night, during an early-evening visit as my mother prepared him some plantain porridge, he came over to the table where I was slumped on my school books, put one hand on my mouth and the other under my dress, and did not stop until he heard my mother returning to the room. That’s how and why my deep hatred for Uncle Solon started; and my passion for Maloulou began. Mother has had to snatch me from endless daydreams where Maloulou slays Uncle Solon and all the members of his nefarious, dungaree-clad gang.
My hatred for Uncle Solon grew deeper when he volunteered to bring me home from school to save mother the camionette fare, just so he could continue searching and playing with my bouboun under the nun’s school uniform during the car rides. That nourished my plan to catch Maloulou and make an offering of Uncle Solon. Yes, I pondered the fact that I too might not survive the encounter. But not surviving was the least of the deterrents, for I was already dying in small bits. All my desires and needs to unearth the Maloulou enigma and find an ally in stopping Uncle Solon took on realness when, for the first time, at the point when night and day mixed and lying wide awake in bed wishing to hear mother turn the key, and thinking of all the bad things Uncle Solon did, I instead heard with my own ears the clinking and clapping. I listened, still as a corpse, to steps moving through the passageway toward the sea, and waited silently until the same footsteps and dangling chains ambled back.
There were a few people who told of having heard Maloulou in the night. I told no one, though I felt a tremendous pleasure for finally belonging to a special cadre of people. After a while, I did grow tired of staying up nights waiting to hear Maloulou go by. But if I wanted to come upon the one who wandered in the hours of darkness, tell on Uncle Solon and have an ally in making him disappear from our lives, I needed to know the exact times when the stroll happened, study the pace, prepare some trappings and paraphernalia, and brace for what may come.
Had mother suspected my crazed plan, she would have made me gulp down daily concoctions of hellebore until I was completely purged of my foolish idea. Curing my folly would become her personal crusade. But I kept my idea and plan in my head, sharing them with not even the wind.
In conversations with myself, however, I pulled all sorts of reasons to give me the heart to go forward. The Bible tells how little David took on the giant Goliath, I recalled. I had two giants in my life and one was going to help me slay the other. Rather than continue to endure the visits and car rides with Uncle Solon or painfully imagine the size of mother’s sorrow when he kissed and hit her like what I saw him do one night behind the green paisley curtain, I was determined to risk everything. I was prepared to know Maloulou just as Roland Désir had, if only in the private confines of my head.