CHAPTER 1: The Clashing Couple

It was a humid day in Port au Prince, Haiti. However, a rather cold day. I couldn’t help but notice the strange feeling I felt when I stepped outside to walk our little two month old puppy, Tamara. I figured she felt it too, as she was shivering and even crying a little. I started to feel frightened, which was odd because I’m almost fearless. I ended up deciding to go home.

When I got home, I started out by making breakfast, toast. Down here in Haiti, our toaster is pretty crummy. But I try to make it work. My toast popped out of the toaster, but it was still pretty cold. So I popped it in the oven. I remember I had to go check on my parents. My mom had been fairly ill lately, at least we think. We can’t afford any doctors’ appointments, so I’ve been trying to research with my extremely slow and cheap computer, that has a bunch of outdated information on it.

On my way over to my parents’ bedroom, the wind blew hard and it shattered the window to pieces. I started getting even more scared, so I went to go see my mom, hoping she would be awake to comfort me. As I was walking, I started thinking about how the wind usually felt soothing to me, and how this time it didn’t. You might be thinking, *Nadia, a giant window just broke right before your eyes, you should be uncomfortable. *Although that wasn’t it. I felt pressure that I had something to do. The fear started to increase, and consequently, I had to brainstorm what I should do to feel better. After a while, I figured that if I cleaned up the glass I would feel less pressured, but I was disappointed to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work. “*At least I cleaned up,*” I thought.

I went upstairs seeking the comfort of my mom, and I was filled to the brim with joy to see that she was awake. I never liked it when I had to wake her up. Although, she honestly should not be awake. So I asked her why she wasn’t, and she replied sleepily,

“Nadia, I didn’t get a very good sleep. The wind was rather loud,”

“Try to go back sleep, it’s early in the morning,” I said, even though I wanted to talk to her, and have her give me her love and comfort.

I knew that I was supposed to wake my father up, but I thought that I should let him rest a little longer. And my mom definitely needed rest, because as I mentioned, my mom hasn’t been feeling very well lately, and she needed sleep. Lots of it. but I was thinking the same thing, the wind *was* rather loud.

I went back downstairs to eat breakfast, but somehow my toast still needed more time. Although I wasn’t too surprised because that’s how it usually is. I decided to just suck up and eat. I was glad to have food, considering there are people all over the world with much less food than me. The first bite of toast I ate tasted strange. Not like how it usually tastes, which is funny because it always tastes strange. It was a different kind of weird. It somehow tasted like how uncertainty *feels*. That’s the only way I can describe it to you... the taste of uncertainty.

*****

I love the culture of Port au Prince as well as the beauty. I look outside the window. I know the outside of that window by heart. The most beautiful place in all of Haiti. It has two palm trees and some ferns. Every morning, at eight o’ clock sharp the sun shines perfectly in the middle of the two palm trees.

Eight o’ clock had risen, and I rushed down to see the palm trees. The sound of my alarm had awaken me of my daydreaming, about all my fantasies, having powers, becoming a superhero... I couldn’t help but think about how cool that might be. One of the main subjects of my daydreaming since I was three years old!

I rushed down to the window, and the sun in between the palm trees burned my eyes, but in the most pleasant way possible. I opened the window just to feel the pleasing sensation of the soft, yet also rough ferns brush against my fingertips. All of a sudden I was interrupted by the voice of my father, who I’m assuming is now awake, saying,

“Nadia! What happened to this window?! How come it doesn’t have any glass!?” I replied, nervous to go confront my dad,

“Uh... what window....?” He responded in an annoyed manor,

“The one up here! Which I now have to assume you broke!”

“Oh... I *may* know what your talking about...” I replied. Even though I couldn’t see my dad, I could definitely tell he was rolling his eyes just then.

“Nadia, come up here,” he said in a bit of a “tired of this nonsense, just tell me the truth” tone. One he uses much too often. I went upstairs, completely aware of what I was getting into. I said to him, trying to be completely honest, but still managing for it to seem like I’m not at fault, because I’m not,

“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s not my fault, the wind blew very hard, shattering the window. I didn’t want to wake you or mom up, because you both need lots of rest. I did what I could, I cleaned up the glass, and then put screen over the door to make sure no birds or bugs snuck in. But... I can see the screen fell over, sorry.”

“Okay...” he started, “...that’s alright.” I was surprised. Usually Dad doesn’t let stuff, especially stuff this bad, slide. I figured I might have just gotten.. lucky, I guess.

*****

I started to get a bad headache. I was surprised because I don’t usually get headaches. Especially migraines. But after a while, it didn’t really feel like a headache... an indescribable pain I had never felt before. Almost like a burn, a gash, a migraine, and dangerously cold ice poured on my head all mixed together to make one super migraine.

I went upstairs to tell my mom about my headaches, but she wasn’t there. I looked around our house to find her, and she was outside practicing her voodoo. I told her that my head was hurting. She asked me if I wanted her to somehow heal it with voodoo. “Why not,” I said. It’s not like its going to work or anything, that’s at least what I thought. She started to do her dancing and a strange song, and almost like a miracle, it started feeling better. Although it wasn’t much of a surprise that it was still hurting like heck.

It must have been my imagination, because after a few hours of sitting around and drinking lots of water, it started hurting again. This time much, much worse.

*****

My migraines kept getting worse and worse until I felt like exploding. We couldn’t afford a doctor, so my mom kept trying her voodoo. It made it worse and worse. Every day, it got worse and worse and worse.

Eventually, I decided to speak up and tell my mom that her voodoo wasn’t working, and it was somehow making it worse. She told me, almost cackling,

“Haha, voodoo always works! It must be your imagination, because I am a master at voodoo! I’ve been practicing the art all my life and.... yeah, it’s probably you’re imagination.” I started to get annoyed. I needed someone to somehow help me, so I just decided to research. Do I seriously have to take care of myself!?

I don’t generally believe in voodoo. Many people do, and I still respect them (it’s not like I’m completely against them, I’m just not much of a believer), but I really think my mom was starting to obsess over it, and rely on it too heavily. Almost like she would depend on it in one of the worst scenarios.

I asked my mom, “Where’s dad?” She didn’t respond. Then she howled back at me; annoyed,

“I need to focus, I’m speaking with someone very important.”

I kept wondering who it was. There was a short man with a long beard that went down to his toes, and a tall man with a pale face and a rather short beard. The one with the long beard was very talkative, while the one with the short beard was very silent and mysterious. They were named Ron and Don, at least that’s what I heard. It was bothering me that their names rhymed. I have no idea why.

They came back in the morning, at my favorite time of the day. 8 o-clock sharp. They kept coming. Every single day. I started to get worried. It seemed like they were talking about me.

Six weeks passed. I was anxious. Worried. Like that feeling where you don’t know what will happen next and your stomach is churning. The most awful way I’ve ever felt. And, you know, it lasted for six weeks!

The day after December 5th, I heard about what they were talking about. Turns out, my thoughts were right. It *is* about me.