The house that I grew up in was so Haitian that I'm sure that l’huile mascreti (castor oil) seeped through the walls and dripped from the potpourri bowls around the house. My mother, a dignified Haitian woman with strength beyond measure, orchestrated our childhood and household with such efficiency that even until this day I stand mesmerized. My mother did it all; surely like many single black mothers, she busted her butt and raised three incredible children. Every mother’s day and birthday we celebrate my mother and look back at all her hard work and sacrifice. It would be easy to speak about my mother, but today I wish to discuss my father, a man I know very little about, but have grown to understand through my mother and siblings.
It is through them that I have formulated the idea of the man who participated in my conception. It is through their values and voids that I piece together the image of “Papi."
Growing up, the youngest of three, I constantly felt the "holes" in my family. I saw my mother overwork herself to frequent narcoleptic episodes, I saw my big brother follow everyone and everything simply searching for direction and I even saw my big sister yearn for a certain type of love and attention, the type that my mother often couldn't provide.
In the midst of all this stood me, a child who wanted his family to be whole but struggled to conceptualize what would make that be. In times of frustration I'd hear my mother curse his name and my siblings speak on his selfishness. As an young child I followed suit, I resented him, spat his name at every opportunity, simply to match the anger in the room. Any negative trait we saw within each other was labeled, “that’s the Papi in you." But truly I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know his birthday, or what he had accomplished. I didn’t know his dreams and hopes for himself or even us. I just felt his absence, an absence that the four of us couldn’t escape. Without him it felt as if we were all trapped in a room full of our enemies. On the surface we held it together, but deep down, we brandished our insecurities and vulnerabilities just waiting for somebody to challenge us.
Through my adolescence, as I held this idea of Papi, it actually became easy to accept. It opened conversations with so many of my peers whose fathers were missing, it provided the potential for a "touching" college essay, and even brought forth compliments on how well my mother did under the circumstances. But in the back of my mind, I was prepared to trade all of that in for the presence of my father. I just wanted him to be there – he wouldn't of even had to do anything! I think just the sight of him every day would have helped us all tremendously. I just wanted to know and understand him, and recently I had the opportunity to do so when we had to go to Port-au-Prince, Haiti and bury him.
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It was days before his funeral that I learned that my father was a financial guru. His skill with numbers and budgeting provided him with the opportunity to come the United States at 28 and attend Boston University. His grind and tact gave us the home that we were raised in. His prudent thinking had us on waiting lists as infants for the best private schools in the city. From pictures and stories, I learned that my father was a very serious man, one of few jokes and fewer smiles. After separating from my mother, my father returned to Haiti where he was the president of the number one bank in the country. But to even further my shock, my father thought of his children every step of the way. He wished to be with us but was unable to because of his relationship with my mom. It was then I realized our wounds were self-afflicted, the absence and void that we felt could have been prevented and that is a painful reality.
The last four years of my father’s life he was trying to rehab from a stroke. With healthcare so poor in Haiti, he refused to come to the states. All his friends begged for him to return and potentially receive life-saving care, but he refused daily. It wasn’t until a few days before his funeral that we learned in a letter why he'd make such a choice. Papi refused to come to states because, “he didn’t want to deplete the assets that he had left for his children." It was so important for him to leave us with something that he put his own life against it. As father now myself, I understand this act by my Papi to be precisely what parenthood is. Of course this fact left us all heartbroken for him, but this final act of his was one of redemption. He felt it necessary to have something tangible after years of absence. But it was then in that back office of the funeral home that I realized Papi had never actually left. Papi was there all along.
Brought to you by Fences, in theaters nationwide Dec. 25.
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