The Half-Built Home

By Morose Leonard

Lebon Dominique is a married man, who wakes up one day and wonders how in the world he ended up cheating on his wife. When did he lose his faith in marriage? When, over the course of his thirty-three years, did he lose his faith in God? Turning back seems impossible, until his sister announces shes getting married in the familys home country of Haiti, in Le Cap. Its the perfect opportunity for Lebon to clear his head. The only problem is that nothing is clear in Haiti.

The day after his sisters wedding, Le Cap explodes in violent uprising. Someone has to pay, and the authorities wish it could be Cergoa half-crazed witch doctor whose rage incites the unrest to grow. Lebon does his best to lay low. He has been spending a lot of time with Simone, a young woman employed to watch over Lebon during his time on home soil.

Lebon develops a fondness for Simone, but has no idea that Cergo has intentions to make her his wife. Lebons sought-after clarity is suffocated by his newfound feelings for Simone and the violence of a country in uproar. He has become a target for an angry witch-doctor. Yet, in the midst of turmoil, Lebon finds unexpected enlightenment on the Haitian beach, thanks to an unlikely source.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450293600

Morose Leonard

Morose Leonard has a masters degree in creative writing from Manhattanville College and a masters degree in English from Iona College. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, but he lived in Cap-Haitian, Haiti, until 1989. He currently resides in Rockland Country, New York, where he teaches English at Spring Valley High.

Book preview

The

Half-Built Home

Morose Leonard

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

TheHalf-Built Home

Copyright © 2011 Morose Leonard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-9358-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9359-4 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9360-0 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011906629

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 07/14/2011

To my mother and Delta,

Whose steadfastness I admire.

I thank IUniverse for helping me realize my dream. Thank you, in particular, to Courtney Light, Sarah Disbrow, and Joseph Poenish, for walking me through the process.

I would also like to thank my teachers and classmates at Manhattanville College for their invaluable critiquing of the novel, and for supporting me. Special thanks to John Herman, whose mentorship I treasured. Thank you for encouraging me to complete the manuscript and to seek getting it published.

I thank my family and friends whose support and love sustain me. Special thanks to: Laurette, Yousef, Lemmy, Denis, Destin, Steve, Roger, Marsha, Islaine, and Mozart, who have shared your stories with me, which invariably shaped this story.

A special shout out to the English Department at Spring Valley High School, and to Elizabeth Matsuda, in particular, for your perceptive suggestions and advice. Last, but not least, a special shout out to all my students, former and current, for teaching me that life is a great dream to be realized.

Contents

Part 1:

Promises

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part 2:

Grown

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part 3:

The Haitian Dust

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Part 4:

The Father

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Part 1:

Promises

Chapter 1

When I was saved, I was in charge of the campus ministry, and a girl—Cynthia was her name—who was in my Bible group called me over to her house one afternoon, confessing she was weakening in her faith. She wanted to study the scriptures. The front door would be open, she had said, just in case she’d still be in the shower when I got there. (I never saw it coming.)

She came out, soaking wet—a red satin robe clinging to her shape—her golden-apple skin gleaming, and she stood there panty-less, sans bra, her love-fruits ripe for plucking with fiery tongue. I wanted to die.

When I rushed out of her bedroom with the stain of my lust cool and uncomfortable in my jeans, I saw Mrs. Gentille, her mother, in the hallway coming toward the bedroom. I’d heard, or thought I’d heard, the shuffling of her feet on the tiled floor, had jumped up and hurried out of the room, terrified, relieved.

Mrs. Gentille was looking at me, half-surprised, half-glad to see me standing in the hallway, pulling my shirt down like a sheepish boy. I kissed her like my mother had taught me to do, glad to answer her questions about school, about my mother and my sister—glad that she sent them her love. Then watching me, Mrs. Gentille called Cynthia, who had managed to clothe herself before she met her mother at the bedroom door.

In her hard Haitian accent, she scolded Cynthia. "I thought I tole you not let garçon in the house when I’m not der, Mrs. Gentille said, loud enough for me to hear. I know Lebon is good boy, but he still boys. Order boys not come here for school or God."

I know, Ma, Cynthia snapped.

What has become of me?

And now again I see myself dying, wanting to die, and fighting off the urge.

What’s the matter?

Michelle’s voice comes to me like a baby-moan. She props herself next to me on the bed, and in the shadows stretched with the setting sun, she looks unreal. Her dark, shiny hair is limp. Her face is moist. Her gleaming eyes are dimmed by something verging on confusion and concern.

The guilt grows. I shove the sheets aside and begin to dress.

Michelle too gets off the bed, but she isn’t in a hurry. She waits, naked, as though unaware that she is naked. Her head is down as if in prayer, the way she does as she searches for the right words to say. I sit to tie my shoes, my back to her, wanting her to say something, anything, to quiet the thoughts in my head chewing me out. We’re teachers, for God’s sake. Both married.

She walks over to where I stand and plucks her clothes off the carpet floor.

Does this have something to do with Joe? she asks.

Her husband’s name strikes me as injurious—considering. It’s like a sudden light blasting a place meant for dark. You are no better than he is. You, Lebon Dominique, are as much of a jerk and much more of a hypocrite than Joe.

So much for that …

At the front door to Michelle’s apartment, I fumble with my car keys, clueless about how to leave. The coming was easy enough.

She looks at me like one does a beggar, wishing she had change to spare. Have a good summer break, Lou, she says, sparing me. Before we know, it’ll be September. Our knuckleheads will come back, and we’ll wish for summer again. She laughs me off. I wave good-bye, and drive away.

It’s only been two weeks since the last day of school, and now we’re empty again. In Michelle’s case, she drowns herself in those kids’ needs, often nursing their private hurts long into the afternoons to suppress her own. Joe cheated on me, she had said to me, out of the blue, one interminable Friday—without self-consciousness. And somehow I wanted to love that pain away. There was goodness in that, goodness I longed for, goodness I have lost.

A sudden flash of summer downpour pelts the Suffern streets. Raindrops crash onto the car’s windshield in myriad craters, to be wiped out by the wipers, only to come again in an endless swish-swash war. The guilt won’t settle. It coils itself around my windpipe, and I can’t swallow.

I decide against going down to the Baptist Church where mother’s memorial was held. The poor woman had convinced everyone that she aged without wear. Her American life, which meant lifting old folks, night in, night out, on and off their sickbeds, could not afford her to be weak. Too much depended on that old wheelbarrow.

We had convinced her—my wife, Victoria, and I—that we were trying to have kids. That was the only way Mother would consider retirement, to go back home, where she had always wanted to go to die. Within two years we’d give her a grandchild. This summer. She would have been sixty-five years old. Victoria would have been with child, or nursing a child. I would have been a father.

Chapter 2

I decide to go see Franco and his wife, Cindy, instead. They live in a quiet, mostly white neighborhood; they’re the only Filipinos on the block. I turn onto their street and glance at the house where the Haswells live. They’re an old Irish couple who’ve been married thirty-two years. They’ve always been cordial to me. Their house faces the main street. Franco and Cindy’s house flanks the right side of the cul-de-sac, so that you notice it after turning onto the dead-end street. There are children playing dodge ball in front of the house next to Cindy’s. I watch them for a while before I get out of the car.

Cindy opens the door and says, Look what the rain’s brought in! She hugs me, and I can tell then that she has accepted my fate. I am again a lost fish among lost fishes, all caught in the burning mesh of hell, to fry. She smiles, looking as good (and by that I mean pure of heart) as when we met as college kids years—ages—ago. The truth is, when it comes to this woman, if first-century Christians could cross space-time and walk our modern earth, they would see in this petite, dark-haired woman something of themselves. Cindy is righteous. Franco’s very goodness burns from hers, and in their marriage their priorities are always clear: God first, then spouse, then children, then the dammed, and then the saved. This is how love reigns in their American home.

Our common thread of Christian bond having been snipped, I remind myself that I am again a black man in a Filipino home—a suspect again in a suspicious world. I wait until she bids me in and takes me in to her living room.

Franc’s having quiet time with the girls. Should be done soon. She waits until I settle down on the sofa before she continues. Just the other day we were talking about you.

That so? Good things?

The girls kept asking what happened to you.

The guilt grows.

She studies me. I nod.

She smiles. "How’s Victoria? Haven’t heard from her in a while."

The living room is small and pleasant. We sit under the bay window, and I can see little of the house, though I remember it by heart. The opposite wall is covered with mirrors to make the room look larger. The small kitchen is to the right, opposite the front door, and to the left is the hallway leading to the rest of the house. Nothing has changed.

Victoria’s fine, I tell her. Nothing’s changed. I’ll tell her to give you a buzz.

You two should come over for dinner.

We’ll see.

Cindy settles herself bravely on the couch, and I smile, remembering how taboo it would have been for me as a Christian to be in a room alone with a woman. Many souls have perished in such trap. Purity is power.

So, how’re you two doing? Cindy asks, glancing toward the hall as if to summon Franco. In the question is the same tone I used when I mentored young Christians, one charged with genuine concern and genuine nosiness, all the while bracing itself for the most dissolute confessions by the damned.

How are the girls?

Cindy goes to the kitchen, knowing I’ll remain seated. She talks to me from there. Chrissie’s obsessed with Britney Spears, she says.

Aren’t we all?

She laughs and then adds, Elise stands all on her own now.

That so?

Tell me about it.

"Jeez! Not long ago we were kids."

The thought comes to me full, like windswept trash. Again I am in Dr. Constant’s poetry class, fascinated by this bright, confident young Cindy. Before I know it, she’s baptizing me in a pond in Central Park—she’s my spiritual mother, and I’m her fruit. Then she marries Franco. She’s crying; I’m smiling. Then Chrissie comes and takes