Fred Lafortune
It had just stopped raining when I heard her squealing in the pigsty. Since she had become pregnant three months ago, she squealed at the same time every night as though she were hungry. The stillness of the night air would make her sharp, dreadful cries even more deafening. I would reluctantly pull myself out of bed to check on her, using the small kerosene lamp. Its flame flickered and shone brighter on those warm summer nights. I often found her standing on her hind legs behind the wooden fence, grunting joyfully when she spotted me.
She was a black Creole pig with a bright yellow tag adorning her left ear. She was the only pig I had, my only hope, on which I relied to provide for me and my ten-year-old son. In our village, she stood out as the only black pig, as black pigs had been slaughtered two decades prior, replaced by white ones that required costly wheat bran to thrive. White ones must also drink clean water and live in cement sheds. The black pigs, however, would eat anything, including boiled breadfruit, kitchen waste, and corn bran. How could the villagers even build sheds for white pigs when most couldn’t afford to build cement houses for themselves?
The day after I bought her, I made a pigsty with long mangowood planks. It was a small open-air structure under a giant almond tree. Of course, the ground wasn’t cemented, and it was plain dirt so that it could turn muddy during the rainy seasons. This made her more comfortable, allowing her to dig and do what pigs naturally do. That night, my pig was screaming louder than usual. She is probably ready to farrow, I thought. I’d squeezed the teats the day before, which were swollen with milk. Her squeals were getting more desperate, so checking on her was a good idea.
Even though the rain had stopped, my heart raced with fear as the thunder rumbled and the wind violently howled, threatening to tear apart the corrugated roof panels.
My thoughts drifted back to the day I bought my pig from a friend who was a member of the Mouvman Peyizan Papay, the Peasant Movement of Papay. It was the largest peasant organization in the country, and it worked with other international organizations to bring back the black pigs.
I learned everything I knew about pig farming from my father—a tall, quiet, hard-working man who married my mother in 1969. Shortly after their marriage, they began raising a family. Not too long after, my father departed to Saint Martin to earn a proper living to provide for us, and he was there for a year before he returned to the village.
Every Saturday morning, the villagers would gather at our house, forming a community united by the need to have their radios repaired. My father, the sole expert in the village, would sit on the porch at a long green table with his tools. His innovative spirit was born out of necessity, as he didn’t have access to an electric soldering iron. Instead, he used a traditional soldering iron crafted from copper rebar. He flattened the tip of the rebar with a hammer, honing it to a precise point that was ideal for soldering the most intricate radio circuits.
My father would set up the fire on a charcoal stove. With a practiced hand, I would carefully place the rod on the red flame, the porch filling with the faint scent of heated metal. This comforting aroma, a testament to the countless hours spent breathing life back into silent radios, would linger in the air as we patiently waited for the rod to reach the ideal temperature. The rod would gradually change color, from a dull red to a vibrant orange, indicating that it was ready for soldering. Sometimes, he would use two rods. While one was heating, he would work carefully with the other to solder on the circuit board. By the time the one he was using cooled off, the one in the fire would be ready. I would eagerly swap out the rods with him, our hands briefly touching as we exchanged tools. The procedure would repeat again and again all morning. He would give me a break at noon, saying, “Mèsi pitit fi m.” Besides repairing radios, raising Creole pigs was his most important source of income. When I was growing up in the village, life was hard for everyone, but it was more complicated for people who didn’t raise pigs. Those who couldn’t provide for their children gave them away to relatives or strangers as restavèk, enslaved children. These children worked as domestic workers, hoping their masters would educate them. But more often than not, they were abused physically and sexually. Their masters treated them like animals, making them work from dawn to dusk on household chores. I have always vowed to myself that I would rather drink the entire ocean than give my child away.
Each unspoken word from my father’s silence pierced through my mother like a dagger, leaving her desperate to decipher his hidden emotions. With a pleading glance and a hopeful nod, their silent communication revealed the desperation that consumed them. Yet, she understood his silence most intimately. Though his heart expanded with affection for her, my father could never break his pride well enough to surrender to her sweetness. He believed the sum of his manhood was in his ability to provide and protect.
And she knew that. In this way, I grew up like most Haitian children, who rarely or never hear comforting words from their parents. For this reason, I have often felt invisible, forcing me to find a sense of self-esteem from within. From a young age, I constantly yearned for a kind word to reassure me, to tell me I was beautiful and intelligent. I longed for my mom and dad to express their love and pride in me. But life didn’t grant me this gift. I would notice my shadow stretching across the wall, its outline dis- tinct even in the half-light that filled the room. But strangely, seeing my shadow brought me an almost comforting sense of satisfaction. This feeling had accompanied me since my earliest memories. My fascination with my shadow grew inexplicably, and. I often adjusted the lamp in my room, carefully crafting the perfect amount of light to summon it. In those fleeting moments, my shadow reminded me of my presence in a world where I often felt unnoticed. It provided solace, a constant companion in my solitude, assuring me that even in the dimly lit corners of the world, I left an imprint—a reminder that I was here, I was real, and I mattered.
Shifting my focus to the room, I checked on my son in his cot. Even with the noise of thunder and the pig’s squealing, he stayed asleep. Eager to quiet the noise of the pig, I hastily wrapped my hair in a scarf, slid my feet into my rain boots, and opened the front door. I could barely see the narrow passage that led to the pigsty. Lightning flashed along the horizon, followed by a boom of thunder. The village had no electricity, which differed from when I was growing up. Back then, there used to be a generator near the church that powered the whole village, and my father was the only one with a black-and-white TV. He would use aluminum bowls to make his own antenna and attach them to a pole on top of a coconut tree. Some-times, on Sunday nights or to watch the news, the neighbors would gather around the TV under a pergola covered with coconut leaves that my father built in the front yard. But since then, darkness has again overtaken us; even the moon is afraid to rise as if it has been laid in its grave.
Before stepping outside, I grabbed my lamp and turned the knob to increase the flame. The trees were wet and dripped heavily onto my shoulders as I walked.
From afar, I could see the pig lying on her right side, still screaming. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I ran, struck my left foot against a rock, and almost fell into a puddle. My father once told me that hitting a left foot means bad luck, and it means that something terrible is about to happen.
The whole village seemed to be asleep. Usually, the women would be the first to wake, tie their hips with scarves, and carry heavy loads on top of their heads to the market. Although nameless and anonymous, they were the ones who kept the village going. They were the ones who washed the clothes, ironed, cooked, and put the kids through school, the ones who slept late and woke early, the ones who worked the land, who harvested, the ones with aborted dreams and betrayed trusts. Killing the pigs caused most men to leave and seek a better home overseas, and they never came back. Those who stayed became like beggars and ended up with nothing.
That night, it seemed like I was the only living soul awake. As I got closer, I saw a torrent of blood coming from the pig’s vagina, and her whole rectum and udder appeared mutilated. Not too far from her, I saw what seemed to be the remains of piglets scattered on the wet ground. As I watched her, confused, lightning continued to cross the horizon, and now a furious hail mingled with heavy rain began to fall.
“I should have gotten an umbrella,” I said, standing before the carnage. The storm raged on, and I felt devastated as the pain my family went through twenty years ago washed over me.
It was the first week of July 1980 when the news spread in the village. An old man, my father’s friend, was the first who ran to our house to tell my father that the government had begun the slaughter of all the black pigs in the country.
“Why would the government do such a terrible thing?” my father asked.
“The United States wants our government to kill all of our pigs because of the African swine flu,” the old man said.
“But we are not in Africa, and what does that have to do with us in the village?”
“The disease has already been killing pigs in the Dominican Republic. The American government is afraid that our pigs might be infected, and if that happens, it might also affect pigs in the United States. Therefore, our pigs must be slaughtered before that even happens.”
“This is nonsense,” my father said as he began sharpening a knife with a mill file he grabbed from a small table. “Who tested the pigs? How can one know for sure if the pigs are sick or not? And even if they are sick, why don’t they send us a vet?”
The next day, the town crier walked throughout the village with a megaphone to announce the news. He stopped at every house, corner, and crossroad, and informed the peasants that their pigs would be slaughtered. “You can sell them to the government,” he said. “Or you can just let them be killed. If you choose to sell them, the government will pay you $40 for the big pigs, $20 for the mediums, and $5 for the small ones.”
The villagers knew the government’s offer was five or six times less than what the pigs were worth, and they showed little interest in selling them. As the news spread, some villagers panicked and began slaughtering their pigs. Since they didn’t have refrigerators, they ate what they could and threw the rest away. Others, who were more intelligent, hid their pigs far away in the mountains.
My father had fifty pigs in a big pigsty in our backyard. He was renowned for knowing how to fatten up pigs. One of them would occasionally be affected by lampas, an inflammatory disease that caused the pig’s palate to be swollen.
My father would always call the old man, a short, bearded man who strolled as if on a long meditative journey. When asked why he walked so slowly, he would reply, “I am saving my fast walking for the day I really need it.”
The sick pig would not eat until the old man had removed the lampas. He would come with a jilèt, a double-edged razor blade, and piman zwazo, bird’s eye chili. A few people would help by holding the pig down. After removing the swollen membrane with the razor, he would mix corn bran, water, and chili in a pot and force the pig to eat the spicy food until it would start eating on its own again.
My father would castrate most male piglets and leave a few as potential breeders. After making two incisions over the scrotum, he would squeeze the testicles until they popped out, then spray the open wound with betadine to prevent the pig from being infected. The castrated pigs would be fed more often, so their meat smelled and tasted better. When they reached a certain weight, my father would sell them to street vendors, who would then slaughter them to sell in the nearby market. He would also occasionally kill one for us to eat. In a nearby room whose entrance had colorful beaded curtains, my mother would chop the meat. She would cook some of it, coat the rest with salt, and store it in a seven-gallon bucket.
Two weeks had elapsed since news of the extermination spread throughout the village. Then, one Saturday morning, the militia entered the village with guns, knives, and machetes. They went from house to house, like a procession of absurdities, slaughtering all the big, medium, and small pigs. None were saved.
When they arrived at our house, they asked to see my father since he had the biggest pigsty in the village. They were already shouting his name as he prepared to step outside.
“Henri, come outside. We are here to kill all your damn pigs.”
My father put his shirt on, grabbed the knife, concealed it under his shirt, and met them in the backyard.
“My pigs are not sick,” he declared commandingly as a last effort to convince them.
“Why don’t you shut up before I put a bullet in your head,” one ordered, chuckling, as he gripped an Uzi in his right hand and a cigarette in the other.
My mother urgently signaled for me to go back inside as if some-thing horrible was about to happen. I threw myself into my father’s arms and cried.
“Close your eyes,” he told me. My body trembled uncontrollably before he even finished the sentence. And I wept. I clung to him tighter, only to be plucked away by my mother.
The soldiers slit the pigs’ throats, one after another. Blood spurted all over, spraying their faded blue uniforms and black leather boots. Suddenly, my father pulled the knife from under his shirt and, scowling at the nearest soldier, lunged at him. The soldier stepped back reflexively, blocking my father’s hand and throwing him off balance. My father fell to the ground. The soldier, wrist bleeding, pointed his gun at my father as he tried to get back on his feet.
Adjani Okpu-Egbe, Wailing Princes, 2012. Mixed media on found wooden board. Courtesy of the artist.
“Don’t shoot him,” said a soldier who appeared to be the sergeant.
Then, pointing at my father, he shouted, “Drop the knife.”
My father was handcuffed and ordered to remain seated after drop- ping his weapon. “You’re lucky I didn’t let him blast you,” the sergeant told him. Meanwhile, with some pigs still shrieking, the backyard becoming a stage for their morbid and chaotic spectacle. Others died with their eyes wide open, leveling an accusing gaze. From the nearby church, the tolling of its giant bells covered the village with a sad and lingering tone. The tower that held the bells dominated the village. The bell ringer, a good friend of my father, would ring the bells for different village events, including festivals, masses, and funerals. He once told my father that the bells were blessed by Pope Pius X in 1910 and were given to the village by a religious congregation.
The day when the pigs were slaughtered, the bell ringer rang the bells half-muffled, and their soft, mournful toll could be heard miles away. In less than an hour, all fifty pigs were gone. Blood flowed on the ground like a river, leaving gelatinous mud in the pigsty. The blood’s smell, which the wind carried away, filled our backyard, crossing huts and marshes until it reached the farthest ends of the village.
When I turned to my father, he had swollen eyes like an abscess that was ready to burst, and he wanted so much to cry. He tried his best to restrain his sobs as a child might, but the tears still rose like heavy tides, shining on the edges of his eyelids and slowly dripping down his cheeks. I was ten years old when that terrible massacre happened.
The hail and rain had settled, and I counted the dead piglets. I could have kept two and sold eight, and I would have used that money to pay the school fees for my son and buy food. Memories of past hardships flooded my mind as I faced yet another loss.
It was still dark, and all dreams were fading into the night. I put the lamp down, removed my shirt, and placed it around the pig’s vulva to stop the bleeding. That didn’t seem to help her since it was all chewed up.
Along the fence, I heard a bizarre growling. I hid behind the almond tree and stared into the dark. A few minutes later, the growling stopped, followed by low barks. I remained behind the tree and was staring through the fencing planks when I saw the silhouette of a dog.
This brought to mind the many dogs I knew in the village, each with its own story. “Whose dog is this?” I muttered to myself. I knew all the dogs because they constantly roamed the streets. My neighbor had a black one with a broken leg. He was a limping skeleton, and his ribs could be seen under his skin. A few doors from my house, there was a male and a female that kids would throw rocks at every time they locked together while mating.
Upon quietly approaching the fence, I saw a white dog. I didn’t know where it came from. The sight reminded me of a conversation with a friend who once told me not to trust white dogs.
“They are hypocrites,” he said. “They will pretend to be your friend and then maul you to death. They would put their paws on your neck until you stop breathing and die.”
“What does a dog’s color have to do with whether it is vicious?” I asked him.
He nodded and said that one day, I would understand.
Many years have passed since that conversation. Now, I was asking myself the same question: “What does the dog’s color have to do with it eating my pig and my piglets?”
The dog in front of me resumed growling as it chewed on something. I approached and realized that it was devouring a piglet. As soon as it saw me, it lunged at me. I took a few steps back. As I watched the dog, I felt a rage welling up inside me. I bent down and grabbed a big mud-covered rock. I stared at the pig. The rain had washed off the blood from its vagina, whose color had changed from red to pink. I turned to the dog and hurled the rock, which smashed against its head. It fell back into the mud and let out a long, wincing yelp.
I rushed at the beast, my rage growing, and grabbed it by its hind legs. I dragged it behind me in the mud and through the rainwater. The dog was still alive but half-conscious and dazed. Blood was coming from the big hole made by the rock. I dragged it with all my rage and strength and left it whining at the door while I went inside to grab a machete. I chopped the thing into small pieces.
When I returned to the pigsty, my pig was dead. I picked up the lamp from the ground and noticed the flame had already been extin- guished. My shadow had faded away. I sat there, catching my breath, grieving and desperate. It felt like I was waiting for something. Meaning or deliverance, I had no idea.
When I got up to go inside, it had rained again. Upon arriving at the entrance, I noticed my child at the crack of the doorway, standing petrified before me. I had never seen him so frightened. “Manman, why did you kill the dog?” His voice was a trembling whisper. I experienced the weight of life’s sorrows and all its brutalities burdening me as I gazed at my hands and clothes, stained with mud and blood. “Go back to bed, son,” I replied, sighing. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
However, this morning may never arrive. What kind of information should I share with my son? Should I tell him about my life? That of my parents? That of my grandparents? About the constant fight of the people in this impoverished country to escape poverty? But how to tell? From which story should I start? At what end, at what knot to hold the rope of history? The words were lodged in my throat, like debris from a monstrous world.
As I stood in the room, I heard the rain cascading on the corrugated roof panels, my mind consumed by the daunting task of explaining to my son why I killed the dog.
Sitting at the small wooden table, my son furrowed his gaze in concentration over me.
His question, so simple yet so profound, hung in the air between us. I swallowed hard, forcing a smile. “It’s complicated, my son. Sometimes, there are many reasons things are the way they are.”
He nodded, his young mind grappling with concepts far beyond his years. I kissed the top of his head, the faint scent of his hair mingling with the familiar smells of the room.
He lay down, and I resumed washing my hands in the soapy water in the small plastic bucket.
Outside, an owl was singing a morbid song, invading the room’s silence, and in my heart was the heavy burden of absence.
I expected there would be a time when my son would be able to carry the weight of our history. Up to that point, all I could do was keep him close and trust that he would muster the strength to confront his past and build a more promising future.
For now, the silence between us spoke volumes. Each unspoken word, each unanswered question, hung in the air like a dense fog. I remained silent, unable to articulate our history, a heavy burden I carried alone.
My parents had been the same; their silence shrouded our house- hold. They never spoke of the hardships, the losses, the betrayals. I learned of our struggles through whispers and fragmented stories, pieced together like a broken mosaic.
The walls were gradually engulfed by creeping shadows as the moonlight struggled to penetrate the door slots, leaving the rooms in dark- ness. After washing and changing out of my clothes, I felt my way to the bedroom, where my son lay in his cot in one corner. I took a deep breath, feeling the familiar sting of tears forming. The memories of the night surged forward, threatening to drown me in a sea of pain and regret. The need to protect my son from the truth and the guilt of keeping it from him tore at me.
I whispered, trembling, “We’ll have a conversation in the morning, son. I promise.”
Settling back into his pillows, my son reluctantly nodded, his curiosity temporarily satisfied.
Within the confines of the bedroom, I hurled myself onto the bed, my head filled with echoes of massacres. The horrifying night kept replaying in my mind, vivid and unyielding. The violence, fear, and desperate act to defend myself flooded my mind again, just as natural, and terrifying as always.
I closed my eyelids, trying to push the memories away, but they clung to me, refusing to let go. My mother’s failed dreams, my father’s pigs, which those wretched soldiers—those dogs—had killed; my father, who did everything he could to save them; my pig and its piglets, which that white dog devoured; the white dog’s eyes, full of pain and confusion, haunted me, a reminder of the trauma that I had tried so hard to bury. Unable to find peace, I moved uncomfortably in bed, the sheets knotting around me as I desperately tried to sleep.
The darkness outside grew lighter as time passed, and the first signs of dawn appeared through the window. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the conversation to come. I knew I couldn’t keep running from the past or hide the truth from my son. The weight of the impending revelation hung heavy in the air. He deserved to know, and I needed to face it, no matter how painful.
With a heavy heart, I waited for the sun to rise, which promised a new day and the hope of finally finding the courage to share my story.