“You can’t answer the cell phone during prayers,” I said to myself. “Especially during these prayers at the hour that Christ died.”
“But this is probably an emergency, and you are a doctor as well as a priest!”
“No, it’s not right. Don’t answer it.”
Whenever I talk to myself, the dialogue is always feisty.
The phone buzzed in my pocket, unanswered, three persistent times. It could wait. The prayers would be over in just a few more minutes. The phone buzzed again. I discretely looked at it, just to see what name appeared on the screen. It was Raphael. That could mean only one thing: that she was dead.
My blood turned cold, and a shiver ran down my spine. The hougan (voodoo priest) had told this perfectly healthy young woman, just a week ago, that she would not live past the “prayers of Calvary hill.” It was in her cards. She could not live past the hour of Christ’s death, unless she drank the potion he could make to save her. Now sure enough, she was dead. As the prayers of Calvary hill were coming to their conclusion, so was she coming to hers.
Her name was Marie Louise. She and her brothers and sisters were born to impoverished Haitian cane cutters in the bitter sugar fields of the Dominican Republic. The mother and father having died, the children were thrown over the border into Haiti a dozen years ago, during one of the frequent Haitian roundups by Dominican officials. They landed in Haiti where they had never lived, where they knew no one, and where they could not even speak Creole. A Haitian social worker gathered them up and delivered them to our orphanage, where we have spent many years getting to know and love, and struggling to deal with, this complex family.
Earlier Good Friday morning, while enjoying a coffee, a few of us were getting ready to start the day. I was getting ready to go to visit a friend who is facing the huge challenge of brain cancer. Good Friday was a good day for such a visit: we were commemorating an absolutely stark reality, that was nevertheless overflowing with grace; a grace as dark as it was powerful. Our chatter was interrupted by a disturbing call. Marie Louise was very sick in Kenscoff, and needed help. Off we went. Sure enough, her condition was disastrous. It was clear to me immediately that her whole nervous system was under full scale attack. I was sure she was reeling from a poison. We did our best to resuscitate and stabilize her, and when there was nothing more we could add to her treatments, I left her in the care of Raphael. I had other sick people to see, and I also needed to be on time for the prayers at 3pm at the orphanage on the mountain. I thought Marie Louise stood a chance with our treatments. I had seen these things before. Usually there is a lot of hysteria associated with them. I underestimated this time how much was terror and how much was the physiology of poison. I didn’t underestimate in terms of treatment, but in terms of prognosis. I did not expect her to die.
In shock, I uttered the final “prayer of Calvary hill”. I had no idea what to think or what to do next. But for sure, I needed to get her body. The Sisters and children of the orphanage started to pray the rosary for Marie Louise. Alfonso and I headed to Port au Prince to find a coffin, and to bring her body home.
It was a long sad drive back up the mountain. It was late at night, and we gathered to bathe her body and dress her, and place her in the coffin. As we bathed her, I thought of Joseph of Aramathea, and the sacred body he prepared for burial, freshly taken off the cross, two millennia ago that very day. Both his corpse and ours were destroyed by jealousy and hatred. And there was no lack of blood in either case. His, from many afflicted wounds, hers from massive internal bleeding that poured out her mouth and nose as we prepared her for burial. Across the span of twenty centuries, we understood the sadness and the urgency of what Joseph had done for the dead Christ- the last possible act of kindness and respect.
Joseph had to observe the Jewish command to bury Jesus before sunset. We were supposed to observe the Catholic command not to bury Marie Louise until Monday. But we could not keep this un-embalmed body, in the tropics, and full of poisons, in an orphanage, from Friday to Monday. We had no choice but to arrange a simple burial, with prayers and without a funeral mass, on Holy Saturday morning, and that is what we did.
Timid heads of hundreds of orphan children peered into her coffin. Alfonso, with wet eyes and trembling hands, placed an image of the risen Christ into her cold hands. Susana and others who spoke a last goodbye did so with quivering and broken voices. And all of us had hearts as heavy as the heaviest lead.
We struggled to understand the story, the one that Marie Louise had herself painted. She had come to see Alfonso a week before, to explain a grave problem. She was in love with a man who already had a girlfriend and a child. She also had become pregnant by him. Even though the boyfriend insisted on her ending the pregnancy a few months earlier, there was still strong jealousy on the part of the other woman, who went to see a hougan to put a death curse on her. A different hougan, whom she sought for help, wanted $300 Haitian dollars to make a potion to protect her. Marie Louise was looking for that money.
Alfonso insisted, rightly, that God’s power is absolute, that to buy into these cures and this way of thinking is like stepping into quicksand. To stay close to the God of life, and to stay away from these evil incantations and their hypnotic power, was the only way to face them. (Good Friday is the most dramatic expression of this message imaginable.) He gave Marie Louise a cross to wear around her neck, to remind her of God’s love and power. Such discussions are almost daily occurrences in Haiti, so alive are the convictions that misfortune, illness and death have their source in a personal curse.
Two days before her fateful one, Marie Louis was at the orphanage again. A lovely dress, fresh makeup, cheerful conversation, helping in the kitchen. But before she left, she asked again for $300, which was once again denied.
Desolation of desolations. After her burial, we went to Kenscoff to try to understand more fully everything that had happened. I spoke with the boyfriend, the two girls who lived with her, with neighbors. I tried to find the hougan. I spent Easter Sunday in this dreary pursuit, only to find out that Marie Louise’s life was one of prostitution and drugs, of nightlong parties in filthy bars. Desolation of desolations. Those who filled her days and nights were nowhere to be found when she needed them. We were the only ones to try to rescue her from deadly poisons, to shed tears for her, to prepare her tenderly for burial, to commend her to the earth with prayers for her soul. Desolation of desolations. In spite of all her years with us, she never centered herself in what is true about love, but sought it in the places where, as the Bible says, Satan crouches like a lion ready to devour you if you are foolish enough to come near. Desolation of desolations. Marie Louise had come to us as child out of a nightmare, only to leave us as a young woman into a nightmare again. But this I know for sure: at five years old and again at twenty years old, we were truly home for her. May she rest in that comfort now.
Religions have always played contradictory roles in society. Some aspects are liberating and life-giving. Others are enslaving and destructive. Christianity has dealt some death-blows in her long and very human history. So has Voodoo. But Christianity is a religion that lives in the public eye, with an identifiable authorities that must take responsibility for her activity in society. Voodoo lives in the shadows, ever secretive, with never anyone to hold responsible. Christianity must continually restate her purpose and goals, ever refined by public challenge. Superstitions become replaced by convincing descriptions of mystery, and the demands of mystery on us. Maybe one day Voodoo will be forced into this most necessary dynamic.
Late that night, Good Friday, after a long tragic day, I stepped outside exactly at midnight to look at the stars. There was a wonder in the sky. The southern cross, of all things, shone like a diamond in the velvet sky, beneath clouds lit up by the full easter moon. I thought of God’s promise to Noah, after the great flood. If there could ever be a rainbow at midnight, there it was.
“Desperado, won’t you come down from your fences, Put down your defenses, and open the gate. It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you! You better let somebody love you Before its too late.”*
*Jackson Browne
Fr. Rick Frechette
NPH Team for Excellence in Healthcare
NPH cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1954.
www.nph.org
Fr. Rick Frechette is the Director of the Team for Excellence in Healthcare of NPH International. NPH cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1954. Fr. Rick works every day in the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Stacey Wilson. She offers rational thought to my brain 99% of the time. Caring souls I depend on for fresh advice. Can’t argue with that, so I signed up.