One More Broken Heart

A few weeks ago we came home with two unclaimed students after school. It was the second week so school finished at noon. By 1:00 all had been taken care of save for first grade Soline and four-year old Natasha. Our other neglected student was four-year old Natasha. This was not the first time Natasha had been left. In fact, several times her guardian had been tardy. Just last week we had brought her to the house after school.

Natasha is a highly intelligent, adorable, energetic child. She’s cuddly but not shy. She is beautiful and responsive, cocoa-butter skinned, chunky with well-rounded cheeks. After Soline's Papa claimed her at 2:00, explaining miscommunication with the taxi driver, Natasha descended from her chair and rounded about the room, distracting the house boys from their homework studying.

She came back to me, putting her face in my lap. When I walked into the kitchen she followed me, clinging to my finger. Habitually I go upstairs and rest after school. I quite wanted to do so. But I didn’t want to leave Natasha there as a bother in the salon. I didn’t want to neglect her as she was already neglected. She’s only a baby.

So after a time I brought her upstairs with me to explores some of the newly arrived barrel’s contents. My wonderful teacher mother had bought a lot of fun, stimulating toys and puzzles at Savers. I pulled some of these out.

Natasha let out a delighted giggle as we began building blocks, something every American child has used. I had wooden blocks, Lincoln Logs, Legos, K’nex…Natasha probably has no toys. I was admiring the tilt of her head, the way she tucks her chin down and the dusky charcoal colored curls fall down over her forehead, when I took a drink from my water and she looked at it.

“Eske ou swaf? Ou bezwen dlo? Are you thirsty? Do you need water?” I asked.

She nodded, tucking that chin down and up.

“Okay, m’ap vini,” I said as I rose, shaking out that long skirt.

I trotted down the stairs to get a little cup and heard calls for Natasha.

“Where’s Natasha?” Rose and Michama asked. “Her aunt is here.”

I glanced out to the porch and saw Matante, a thin woman with a round face and very large eyes. She was one of the guardians who came to help clean the school before opening a few weeks ago. She worked very hard. This day she wore a green skirt and orange button top—a shirt that looked like a uniform for our school, but was actually a uniform for the school where she works as a custodian.

She rested against the banister and her round brown eyes filled with tears.

“I’ll get Natasha,” I said and hurried quickly back upstairs. Natasha drank her water and we gathered the blocks. Then I toted her downstairs.

On the porch Natasha swayed in the sunshine, Rose stood in the doorway, Matante clutched the railing and cried, telling us what happened to make her three and half hours late to pick up Natasha.

I stood beside her, shading my eyes against the sun and listening, trying to follow her shaking words.

What it came down to is this: this woman is not Natasha’s mother. She took Natasha in when no one else would. She works every day cleaning a school a few streets down from ours. Today she had to wait until all of the students were picked up before cleaning the school and then departing. Usually someone else comes to get Natasha, but this person is continuously irresponsible and so Natasha is left unclaimed at school.

 “Li fè mwen wont,” she repeated, “it makes me so ashamed.”

Then she turned her face away from us and cried, hand over her mouth.

I put my arms around her, not knowing what to say, afraid to say the wrong thing, but wanting to assure her we were not angry. And we were not ashamed by her.

“E pa fòt ou. It’s not your fault,” I wanted to say. “it’s this country. It’s this broken world.”

After a few minutes Matante was ready to go.

Rose agreed that she should send Natasha with two other students after school from now on. Students who were picked up on time.

I walked her and Natasha out, asking if they would take a taxi. She shook her head.

So I called out to our best moto-driver friend, Jamesly, who had been teaching our housemate Nico to drive the school moto (a work-in-progress moto-taxi with attached trailer to drive students to and from school.) They had returned from driving lesson ten minutes before.

“Jamesly, I need you,” I said, drawing Matante by the hand to where he sat on his moto by the gate. “Will you bring them home please?”

“Mennen yo a lakay yo?” he asked.

“Wi.”

“Pa gen pwoblem. No problem.”

Before they mounted the moto, I drew Matante in by her slim shoulders and assured her.

“We are not angry. I remember you came to the school and cleaned. We saw how hard you worked. God sees.”

She nodded, eyes still full of tears.

“We want to do more for our students, for our families. We do what we can, and we pray.”

“God bless you. Bondye beni ou,” she said.

“Oh, he does,” I answered.

Then I waved them through the gate and they mounted up behind Jamesly.

I walked back from the gate with anger in my heart, combating the gratitude I felt to God for bringing Jamesly at the right time to take this woman home. For Jamesly and his love and care for the children at school and compassion for his neighbors. He drives five of our students to and from school every day at no cost, because he values them and their education. He agreed to Beverly’s request to teach Nico to drive because he values us and the school. I was grateful for this, for our ability to take care of Natasha after hours, our safe house and many hands. But the anger was still there. Anger that our parents have such difficult lives. That they work so hard, expend so much effort, and still struggle so much. Anger that this woman should feel such shame for circumstances beyond her control. Anger that at the end of the day a little girl is neglected. Anger at this broken world. I went upstairs to clean up the toys and rest, the anger still flickering like static.

A couple of days earlier a woman had asked me for food.

She was a plumpish woman, one Beverly and I had seen marching out of her gate a short while previously, toting a woven chair with the seat worn through.

“She’s probably going to throw that in the ditch,” I said to Beverly as we walked, two crazy blans walking up and down under the beating sun in our long skirts and hats.

Instead, the woman set the chair down in the ditch, those wide concrete drainage ditches indispensible during rainstorms, and plopped herself on top.

“Oh, guess not,” I shrugged.

“It must be cooler there than inside the house,” Beverly said. Out here on the street was a consistent breeze from the ocean directly down the way, and at this hour the trees were casting some blessed shade over the ditch. Surely it was cooler there.

We continued our up and down route on the strip of road leading from La Hatte to the resto-bar By the Sea and Louco Night Club where last December we’d celebrated the school’s annual Birthday Party for Jesus. This was the exercise street where clubs gathered in the early hours to fè spo “make sport,” teams met for soccer and basketball in the evening, and novice drivers practiced, lapping up and down.
This woman, in her early forties perhaps, well-rounded, hair loose over her bare shoulders, wearing spaghetti straps and shorts, looked up at me, a skinny white stranger, and asked me for food.

Beverly and I “made sport,” dripping and glistening, while Nico practiced driving the moto under Jamesly’s direction. We passed each other with waves.

I wasn’t tired but hot, and gratefully swung myself into the back of the moto’s trailer as the guys crested the road again. Beverly joined us as Nico stopped for her, and we drove up and down enjoying the breeze. Unable to sit still for long however, I soon swung myself back out and said I’d walk down to meet them at the bottom of the road.

As I reached the woman on her dilapidated chair, now joined by a skinny woman squatting on the sloped ditch side, she called to me, the plump chair woman.

“Vini. Mwen pal’ w. Come here, let me ask you something,” she said.

I looked at her, pretty sure I knew what was coming, but complied, stopping and attending her.

“Give me some food,” she said.

This didn’t quite meet my expectations.

“I don’t have any money. Mwen pa gen kòb, Madame,” I answered, lifting up empty hands.

“Not money, food,” she amended.

This was unusual. Often the request is just for money. Rarely do grown people request food.

It was also a bit odd for there was no food in sight, no venders, no shops, and certainly nothing on my person.

“I don’t have food, Madame.”

She gestured down to the moto where Beverly was with the guys.

“Get me food when she eats. Let me eat, too.”

I looked at Beverly and wondered if this woman thought we would eat at By the Sea, the Resto-Bar where we were indeed planning to go, but only for friendly Cokes and a respite by the sea.

“We are not eating, Madame,” I said, and moved in closer. She needed some clarity. “Do you know who we are, what we do in Ti Goave?”

Some people know us by sight or reputation.

This woman did not. She and her neighbor tuned in while I began, in flailing Creole, asking the Spirit for easy words, to explain our mission in town.

I took her hand, speaking of the school and the gifts given to us to forward to others.

“We have a school with 144 children.”

“Where is the school?” the neighbor woman asked.

I explained the location, the color of our uniforms. They nodded. They didn’t know of it.

“We are a school for Jesus,” I continued. “God gives us money, He gives us food, and we give it to the children. Nou gen ase. We don’t have extra, only enough.”

I held her hand, squatting down and attempting to run my sincerity through our touch.

“I can’t give you money because I don’t have any extra. I have to pay to live.”

Both women were listening. Perhaps they’d never heard a foreigner speak so long. I’d like to think they understood me.

Meanwhile, the moto chugged up and I was called away.

“Are you ready?” Beverly asked from the back.

“I’m talking about school and why I can’t give her money,” I said, not releasing the woman’s hand.

“Oh, yes,” Beverly nodded. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Jamesly, however, was less patient. He approached and called for me, telling the ladies it was time for me to go.

“We’re talking, mesye!” they said.

“You don’t want us to talk to your blan! Oh, this Haitian!”

“It’s not like that,” Jamesly answered, folding his hands before him and looking grave.

There was a bit more of this back and forth. Jamesly perhaps thought the ladies were badgering me. I was badgered, deranje, by their situation.

The ladies then offered me a chair.

“Here, pran ti chita. Sit for a little,” they said.

But I knew my time had come.

“I have to go now, they are calling me,” I said, patting the woman’s hand.

“But I don’t want you to be discouraged. Bondye ka fè tout bagay. God can do anything.”

I started to stand up but halted.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Madame Liline,” she answered.

“Okay, I want to pray for you Madame Liline. You and your family.”

She had told me she had two children. Mayhap she had wanted food for them as much as herself.

“Okay, dako,” she said. I patted her hand, kissed her and her neighbor on the cheek, and waved farewell.

“Oh, Jamesly,” I chided as I reached the idling moto, Jamesly again in place beside Nico in the driver’s position. “Were you being rude?” I knew he didn’t understand my English. It didn’t matter. The lack of understanding better concealed the crack in my voice.

“You guys go ahead,” I waved them on. “I’ll walk down and meet you.”

They drove off, Beverly still seated in the trailer, and I lagged behind, not turning around to see Liline and her friend, to see another person I could not help. Another tragedy.

I needed the walk to let out a few tears.

The walk was very short despite my dragging feet. The stretch of pavement where we’d been is perhaps a quarter mile long, and leads directly to the black iron gate of the entrance to By The Sea. The drive is pitted, gullied dirt, always jarring. I had to watch my reluctant steps. Really what I wanted was peace and quiet, a space away from eyes and voices where I could just cry to God.

Instead, Jamesly met me as I came down that tricky dirt drive.

“Eske ou fache ave m’? Are you mad at me?” he asked, approaching with arms spread out.

“No,” I shook my head.

“Oh, ou fache. You’re angry.”

“No,” I repeated, “I’m not angry. I am sad. Very sad.”

“Tris? Poukisa? Sad? Why?”

As we walked to Beverly and Nico I told him. Told him why I was sad for people I’d just met. People I didn’t know.

“I am sad because…I have Jesus here.” I pointed to my heart. “I have Jesus and what makes Jesus happy makes me happy. What makes Jesus sad makes me sad. That,” I gestured back towards the road and the ditch and the ladies, “that makes Jesus sad. When people are hungry. That breaks Jesus heart. That breaks mine.”

The four of sat at a table. From this vantage, under the tarp under the coconut palms you can see over the cement banisters out to the ocean. From the thatch-roofed bar behind, dilapidated like all of the buildings on the compound, remnants of what was once surely a beautiful, busy spot, got our Cokes, and started a long discussion with lots of slow explanation and rephrasing about what the mission is here in Ti Goave: why Beverly and I are here, and why sometimes we are sad. Why sometimes we cry.

“We want to help everyone,” Beverly said, echoing words I’d said earlier. “We want to help everyone and we can’t.”

The guys listened. They heard from us, and saw in us, the desire to reach people. The desire to help and the sadness at limitation. Jamesely told us then, that he takes the kids to school without pay. Instead of zipping about town earning 25 gourdes per fare, he picks up four children from the same back-alley area, takes them to school and returns to pick them up. Two are dismissed later and he returns again.

“I know they can’t pay,” he shrugged. “But they are kids. Good kids.”

Beverly nodded, smiling her close-lipped smile at Jamesly. “You see the value in them. In their education.”

Nico translated and Jamesly grinned with a half-shake of his head, white teeth flashing in his ebony face. “Wi. Of course.”

When we left By The Sea we got two more Cokes and stopped to give them to Liline and her friend. They were still in the ditch. I kissed them each as I handed them the Coke, wondering if it would have been better to give money, better to go and find food somewhere and bring it back. Better to stay and talk.

I did none of these, but gave the Cokes, kisses, and smiling care, and departed, climbing back into the moto trailer and we chugged away.

It was good, our time at By The Sea, our discussion and our honesty. It was good for Nico and Jamesly, two young men well-versed in the tragic senselessness of much of this country, to hear our foreign desires and our heartache for their people.

It was hard, once again, to be faced with another needy person, a person for whom food is not a guarantee. It was good, in that painful, raw way, to feel broken over what breaks our Father’s heart. But my heart is still broken.

Our hearts break daily for our children in need. For those who come to school so hungry their stomachs hurt. Those who come with colds, fevers, oozing sores, and cavities. Those who are so desperate for love. Those who don’t know how to ask for affection but linger in the doorway, drag their feet as they pass by the office. Those parents who ask again about their other child—couldn’t she come to school too? Isn’t there place for him, the other twin? Why was only one accepted?

Oh, our hearts break for those dirty little boys who come swarming round the car as we leave. Who ask for food, sometimes which we have, leftover from the day’s lunch.

Our hearts break for the Madame Lilines who sit in the drainage ditch and ask strangers for handouts.

God’s heart breaks far deeper and harder than ours. God feels the pain and suffering of all of his children so much more than we do. He feels the hurt of every person in this broken world.

I am so grateful He is God and I am not.

There will always be heart-breaking situations. There will always be another hungry person, another child starved for attention and another mother pleading for her children. (“You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” ~Matthew 26:11 NIV) Until the day of the New Earth we will encounter this suffering and shame.

Praise God that in the meantime He equips us. Praise God for the purpose He has given us in Ti Goave, and the many we are training up to go forth as lights in their dark communities. Praise God for the sweet moments of fellowship and Coke He tosses in along the way. We can thank God for the unclaimed children we can spend some extra time loving. For the parents and guardians we can comfort as they struggle through this life.

Sometimes words is all that we can give. But our earnest prayers for their well-being carry through. And when they in return ask for God’s blessing on us, tell us we are loved, well, that is balm to the most broken of hearts.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” ~Revelation 21:4 ESV

“As long as there’s one more broken heart / One more crying soul, I’ll go

And I will love them, Jesus. / As long as there’s one more needing you / One more I can show your love / As long as there’s one more broken heart…” “One More Broken Heart”, Point of Grace (1993)