Several months ago, I turned off the internet in my studio and started writing until I couldn’t write anymore. I was tasked, alongside four other writers, to give a reading about love at Galerie Molitor in Berlin. I felt privileged to be invited and in awe of the other writers, who included: Jesse Darling, Erin Honeycutt, George Lynch, and Maxi Wallenhorst. Like many Berlin creative gatherings, when I entered the gallery, there was a stimulating whir of artists and writers—mostly queer—chattering on a fantastic February night. The art, primarily minimalist paintings and sculptures, was carefully placed throughout the space. That evening, I decided to diverge from the prompt and read a story on grief. So, here it is:
Mwen La
Mwen, I am here. These were the last words you told me at the hospital.
It made me smile to know that your words carried beyond the deep whisper of the respiratory ventilator. I heard it, and I couldn’t believe it. I heard it, and I was absorbed by it. I heard it and gripped it until I could no longer hold on to it and hold. You were here but weren’t, which was apparent that afternoon inside the ICU. Beyond the harsh fluorescent lights, I couldn’t turn away from the transparent tubes prodding through your veins.
I leaned in closer, and you smelled like you were approaching death. But you weren’t dead. As I held your hand, you blinked and moved your eyes upward. You were dressed in a light green checkered gown and a blue hairnet. A small tear trickled down your left cheek. I began an ugly cry, the deep kind that doesn’t feel like it will ever end. A great block of fear came towards me as I wondered how long you would be here.
You recognized my eyes behind the mask, so I leaned even closer, trembling, remembering what it felt like, as a child, in Miami when I took it for granted that you were there.
I left out a sign. And thought of the first time you told us about Ton Ton Macoute. It was the summer of 1992, and Hurricane Andrew was approaching the southeastern coast of Florida. The city had paused—holding its breath, awaiting the big storm. My father had taped the windows and boarded each with two pieces of recycled plywood in our two-bedroom duplex. My mother hunted and gathered canned goods in case the grocery stores were closed. You distracted us and entertained us.
Julienne was the oldest of the children, but like you, she was an addition to our nuclear household, not a sister, but close enough. We were family, and we would ride this out.
As the afternoon sun hit against the neighbor’s bungalow, we moved from the humid head that felt like we were drowning in our sweat into something lighter, a fresh breeze that appeared with the darkness.
The wind howled.
As the evening turned into the night, the rainfall began pounding on our roof, and I thought our ceiling might soften at any moment and the water would cave in. The winds pricked my ears like a sinister laugh—it had power over us. Within an hour after the rain commenced, water slowly seeped through the kitchen ceiling, so my mother found a red bucket to collect the drops. She placed a towel underneath, dressing up the area to ensure the splash wouldn’t cause the floor to get wet. The adults—mom, dada, and you—were on watch to make sure the bucket wouldn’t spill over. Every hour, one of you would grab your flashlight, shine a light on the kitchen, and see if it was complete.
By nine, the electricity was cut off. This was when my face hardened, and part of me wanted to scream. I was scared of melting into the darkness, being swept by the wind, and gutted by some unknown spirit. I was still a child, alarmed by what I did not know and imagining the worst when I could not see.
Dad groaned.
Mom was worried.
But you improvised.
Dad moved to the couch and began playing his guitar to a song we did not know for an audience, not in that room. He was pricking the guitar with his groove.
You stood up, grabbed your flashlight, and gathered the four children—Julienne, Moliette, Edson, and me.
I grabbed my latest Nancy Drew book and my tattered troll doll. The neon pink hair glowed at night and served as a de facto flashlight. I kept my prized possessions close, sensing that our doom was inevitable. As repulsive as it was, the troll would cast horror on anyone approaching me.
The four of us shuffled to the center of the living room, sitting crossed-legged in the mildly damp room.
“Timon,” you said, “Children, listen. I have a story to tell you.”
At three, Edison bopped his head left and right, trying to grab my troll. The only thing I gave him was shade. Being his older sister, I could decide if and when I wanted to share. And that was not my moment.
Moliette was more attentive. She was always obedient to you. As her godmother, you spoiled her rotten. Julienne watched intently, constantly aware that her place was provisional; she did not want to cause a stir. She was the older sister I never had, and unlike me, she loved to share.
It took a few minutes of jostling, but we stopped and listened.
“Have you heard about Ton Ton Macoute,” you asked.
We sat, confused, and shook our heads no.
The wind howled.
You inched closer, and we could see the candlelight dancing in your pupil. You grinned, not how you usually do when you show your teeth; it was slight and cunning.
As the wind picked up its speed, the hairs on my arm began to stand. And with that, you told us the story:
“Many years ago, before Haiti became Haiti, it was Saint-Domingue. There lived a man named Macoute, but given that you’re children, let’s call him Ton Ton Macoute. He was a tall and dark man with yellow eyes. Everywhere he traveled, he had a sack and a machete. Some say he was from Dahomey; others say he was from Congo. He didn’t speak French or Kreyol. Instead, he spoke with his eyes. Ton Ton Macoute lived off the land, a renegade whose duty it was to terrorize the plantations of Saint Domingue. Sometimes, he would get Africans like himself to leave the plantation and live in freedom. He burned sugar cane fields and tobacco barns. Whether it was the gens de couleur or the blan, every plantation owner hated him. But it wasn’t just because he was ruining his crops; he tried to convince their slaves that they could be liberated.”
“But it didn’t matter what the masters thought; Ton Ton Macoute wasn’t the only one creeping through the farms and starting an insurrection. From Gonaive to Jacmal, the enslaved people crawled outside their captivity. They whispered to each other, organized with each other, and escaped. Some died. But to everyone’s surprise, all Africans—like Ton Ton Macoute—became free. This is why we have Haiti. Suddenly, the county was a republic—but not just any republic—a Black one.
But Ton Ton Macoute lost his purpose. Now that the plantation owners were gone, who would he petrify? Who among us would need to discipline?”
You paused and licked your lips. The momentum in the wind deepened the tension, and I shivered with dread. Edson had no clue what was happening, but he absorbed our fright.
You answered:
“That’s when Ton Macoute decided to punish unruly children. If children disobey their parents or walk alone at night, they will snatch the in his snack and eat them in the morning.”
I gasped and dropped my troll. Julienne wailed, and my sister blinked wildly.
Your eyes coaxed in the candlelight, and you continued:
“So long as you behave, you will never be snatched. Ton Ton Macoute only punishes evil children. Each of you should be fine,” you affirmed.
After you told that story, I doubted I would survive another night. I was not a generous child; I barely listened to my parents and loved to wander. I would get lost in the neighborhood, climbing the mango trees, walking to the bay, or falling into my private mind.
I queried you.
“Fifi, I asked, “will he take me?”
The wind howled.
You leaned back and spoke with a gentle stillness.
“That’s a good question. When I was your age, I misbehaved and always got into trouble. I got into fights and talked back. And for little girls like me, this was sometimes causing a lash. But Ton Ton Macoute never caught me because I had something he didn’t expect. I had my aunt Marie protect me. And guess what, you have me.”
At first, I struggled to believe it, but then I realized you had always been there.
For the two years, you lived with us; you had been there when I came from school. You were there when I first visited Haiti at the age of five. When my parents asked you to babysit, you were there to take me to my first protest. You had been a fixture, listening, dreaming, and making me laugh. And even that summer, in 1992, during a hurricane shaking our roof and flooding our streets, you shared a story—albeit horrifying—to break against the darkness of the night.
The morning after you told us about Ton Ton Macoute, we realized that no one on our street had electricity—and that would be the case for two weeks. The trees had knocked down the poles. Our roads were littered with garbage cans, leaflets, shoes, branches, and everything people had not bothered to hold down.
You and my parents fed and took care of us during the chaos after the storm. Later, when I was older, I learned that Hurricane Andrew was the most destructive storm to hit Florida in the 20th century. At its peak, the winds gusted 280 kilometers per hour, destroying 60,000 homes and damaging another 125,000 homes. By the end of the storm, nearly 70 people were confirmed dead.
We survived. And you were there.
Not just to nurture us but to entertain us.
I thought my elders would always be here. I should have considered how important it was to have aunts like you there.
Standing next to you at the hospital, I held your hand, and these memories flooded back to me. Your eyes carried your pain and exhaustion. You no longer wanted to be alive, yet mildly serene.
Death was hovering above you, and that’s when I knew that my grief would start that day—two days before you took your last breath.
When it comes to funerals, I’m a coward. I haven’t attended one for a family member in twenty-five years, even though in that time, at least one relative has died annually. I didn’t go to your funeral, so I had to find other ways of mourning. Today, I frequently navigate bereavement in a quieter, private state and use literature to help me get there.
When Joan Didion lost her husband and daughter, she wrote a book and said, “grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” She depicts her regret, sadness, and loneliness not solely as emotions but as embodied distress—a “tightness in the throat” or “choking.”
Sometimes I feel a tightness, but sadly, it hasn’t gone away. Toni Morrison once said, “love is or it ain’t.” Love becomes the basis for finding oneself; in a way, we can say the same about grief. If we love someone, suffering is, but if we don’t, it just isn’t. Bereavement challenges us to not only think about our mortality, but it also transports us to our memories, to the times we tried to care, love, and feel—mourning challenges us to reckon that a person will no longer be there.
Death is uncanny, but your life was not.
The life you lived was about being here, generally, for all of us: Atty, Chrisnida, Moliette, Julienne, Edson, Joanna, Daniella, and me.
There is much joy in knowing that you're filling our world with air, unhurried, to tell us gruesome tales, and full of grace.
You were here.
A Word
I spoke with scholar Laleh Khalili for Public Books. As I write in the intro:
The first time I read Professor Laleh Khalili’s work, I was awed by her political acuity and ingenuity in laying bare contemporary colonial hierarchies. As I digested her work, I absorbed the magnitude precisely because her research methods were fresh in laying out how the Global South has become a laboratory for trade. Not only was Khalili an academic interviewing the formerly incarcerated, but she was also a reflective emissary on cargo ships, dissecting the logistics of trade. Khalili is not just a scholar; she forges community by showing reverence for feminist scholars and writers at all stages of life.
Also, I spoke with artist and curator Ingrid LaFleur about Afrofurturism, science fiction, and utopias. If you want to stay updated about my work, visit my website or my Linktree.
A Read
Here’s a list of stuff I’ve read so far this month. The funniest by far was Guadalupe Nettel’s Stillborn, which precipitates into a tale about a graduate student who despises breeders and their children but comes to discover other forms of kinship.
These texts have been both a distraction and a testament of how great writing can provide a great escape.
With Radical Joy,