Reprinted with the permission of Backbeat Books
©2005 Robin Meloy Goldsby

The Almond Tree

L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.
(The essential is invisible to the eyes.)
—Saint Exupery, The Little Prince

Never ever, never ever, never ever kiss the boss, says Voice of Reason. But I don’t listen.

I’ve been going to Haiti for many years. I play the piano and lull away the time eating fresh mango and roast poulet and lying in the sunshine. Yes, I kiss the boss, but not as much as I’d like. The man I love is a busy guy. In addition to running a large casino, hotel, restaurant, and nightclub in Haiti, he has a wife and grown children in the States. For six years, Owner-man has been telling me that he’ll be leaving his wife any day now. His beautiful baritone voice resonates with promises he thinks he can keep, but I don’t believe him any longer. He’ll never leave his wife. Maybe for his next girlfriend, but not for me. I sit in the shade of a poolside umbrella and listen as the Yellow Bird trio sings.

Wish dat I were a yellow bird,
I fly away wid you,
But I am not a yellow bird,
So here I sit,
Nothin' else to do.

These days when I’m not playing I whittle away the time in Haiti under a big almond tree with my friend Mona, a stunning Haitian woman who runs the restaurant and supervises the interior decorating of the hotel’s rooms. We feed scrambled eggs to a three-legged iguana named Lefty who visits us every morning as we sit under our tree, and we plot the details of the trip we’ll take someday to Provence.

Another friend, a red-haired Lebanese woman named Gladys, owns the island’s Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Gladys is famous. When the Pope visited Haiti, she fried 3,000 buckets of chicken to feed him and his entourage. I’m sorry I missed that spectacle. I love the idea of the Pope eating a large bucket with all the fixins. Gladys teaches me to play golf and how to tee off from the first hole of the Petionville Country Club without injuring the goats grazing on the fairway. Mona teaches me how to crochet a bedspread. We are an unlikely trio—a Haitian, an Arab, and a WASP—and we think have answers for everything. We talk politics and tell jokes and solve the world’s problems. Easy to do, when you’re sitting poolside in the shade of an ancient almond tree being served champagne by smiling waiters with ebony faces. You can forget who you are.

Inside the hotel I lose track of the poverty on the other side of the wall. I play the piano for the rich and educated elite, government dignitaries, and the Seventh Avenue garmentos who run factories and sweatshops in neighboring Port-au-Prince. But that gets boring, and before I know it, I break out of my golden cage and begin exploring the neighborhood around me.

The streets are full of life—music and art and optimism beyond belief. I can’t understand all the cheerfulness in the face of so much destitution. Owner-man talks about the “privilege of poverty,” like there is some kind of honor in growing up poor. He speaks with pride about his own childhood in a New York City slum—walking to school with playing cards under his socks to prevent the wet and cold from seeping through the tears in his shoes, taking manual-labor jobs as child to help his mother pay for groceries, playing soccer with a rolled-up newspaper in the streets of Brooklyn. “That’s the kind of thing that gives a kid ambition,” he says.

I don’t think so, not at all.

I meet a teenaged boy named Rodley who has been left an orphan by the AIDS epidemic. He dusts my piano, serves drinks, and chatters about getting away from Haiti someday and going to college in America. Owner-man has given Rodley a job and paid for his schooling. For my birthday, Rodley gives me a flower pot that he has painted himself.

My favorite casino waiter is a middle-aged man named Pressoir. He’s shy, wears big thick glasses, and is suffering from localized alopecia, a stress-related-disorder that has left one side of his head bald. Pressoir supports a family of eight on his waiter’s salary, about a $100 a month. He carries pictures of his children and his brother’s children in his wallet. “Les gosses sont ce qu'il y a de plus cher dans ma vie,” he says. They are everything to me.

Let her fly away,
On de sky away,
Picker coming soon,
Pick from night to noon,
Black and yellow you,
Like banana too,
He might pick you someday.

Mona introduces me to local craftspeople who sell their brightly colored paintings and bed covers on the street outside the hotel grounds. Marie-Claude, a woman I’ve commissioned to make dresses for me, invites me for tea. Her home is a thatched-roof hut with no walls and a mud floor. Red and yellow fabric hangs from the roof and creates privacy for the family. The table is covered with red oilcloth. Her six children all sleep on one large straw mat on the floor. There is no electricity or running water. The hut is cheerful and colorful and full of art. No walls, but the paintings are everywhere, suspended from the ceiling and propped against the old wooden cupboard.

“My children paint,” says Marie-Claude. She speaks slowly, in French, aware that I don’t understand Creole.

“Where are the children now?” I ask. “Are they at school?”

“Non. Les gosses ne vont pas à l'école.Ils y iront peut-être l'année prochaine, quand j'aurai du fric.” The children don’t go to school. Maybe next year, if there is money.

“The little ones are playing football and the others are in the mountains collecting wood for charcoal. My daughter has gone to the market with her father to help him sell the paintings. But these paintings here, I will never sell them. They are my favorites,” she says. “Regardez, ce tableau pourrait s'intituler l'espoir.” This one is about hope.

Every single painting I’ve seen in Haiti is about hope.

On top of the cabinet I notice a small drum and a guitar.

“You see, we make music, too. Just like you. Every night, when the sun goes to sleep, we pray and give thanks for the good things. Like music. And the colors of the dawn. Some people aren’t so lucky—they can’t hear or see what is there for the taking. You know, I listen to your music over the wall of the hotel in the evening. I always try to get closer so I can swim in the sound of the piano.”

“You should come in,” I say.

“It is not my place to do that,” she says with a little laugh. “Je resterai dans mon petit coin et j'y serai très heureuse de vous écouter.” I’ll stay on my side of the wall and be happy to hear what I can. “My cousin is a waiter at the hotel. He tells me it’s a dream come true to have such a job.”

She pours the tea into spotless china cups that are chipped around the edges. With her graceful index finger she points to the faded floral design on the edge of the delicate saucer. “Aren’t these flowers the most beautiful color?” she asks.

“Yes, they’re beautiful. Your home is beautiful,” I say. And I mean it.

“My life is beautiful,” Marie-Claude says. “Where there is life, there is beauty. Where there is beauty, there is life.”

Did your lady frien',
Leave de nest again?
Dat is very sad,
Make me feel so bad,
You can fly away,
In the sky away,
You're more lucky dan me.

This will be my last trip to Haiti. Owner-man pleads with me to return, but I’ve grown tired of feeling useless. I’ve seen too much and learned too little. I’m a piano player. The Haitians don’t need more music. They don’t need more art, or hope, or compassion, or nodding, spoiled young American women pretending to understand the unfairness of life. What they need is a break.