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Dogs
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
33 Dogs Wednesday morning, an elephant walked the streets of Port-au-Prince after a visit with the president. The elephant was led by a dandy dwarf. This fellow had a large, red, heavily made-up smile on his clown’s face, which nevertheless looked grim under a green top hat. There were two camels walking along as well, and four tigers kept two by two in a cage. On each camel sat a woman wearing a night-blue sequin dance suit, black-netting tights, and inch-long black eyelashes. The crowd that followed them, eyes popping and jaws dropping, did much to increase the annoyance, boredom, and heat discomfort of the tigers which leaned heavily against their cages’ iron bars. 3 4 D o g s The crowd had never seen the likes of these creatures. People elbowed each other to get closer and closer—closer to see the tigers panting, the women smoking in sexy poses, the camels drooling, the dwarf cracking his whip, the elephant dropping dung on the newly repaved avenue of the Champ de Mars plaza. The animals—from a Mexican circus in town for a couple of days—had just come out of the palace’s gardens where the president had given a party for children. Like most of them do, I too liked the circus when I was a child. Now I don’t. But Vivi does. She—the one who prefers that I do not call her “Mother”—has created her own sort of circus. She has Titus and Brutus and Melodie and Somalie. And she also has Jolie and Venus and Darling and Harmonie. While Katia , Noisette, and Puce are the ever-lounging girls, Sophie, Papito, Barry, and Max are her daytime gatekeepers. Nino is the only male allowed on the bed during the day. All of them are dogs. They are offshoots of the gutter, the neighboring slums, or born out of her failed attempts to spay the females. Puppies live in baskets hidden at the bottom of closets or locked in the bathroom behind pulled curtains as if Vivi were growing marijuana. Keeping puppies out of sight is partly the way she manages space and partly done for my benefit. At Vivi’s house, there is a stock group of dogs I recognize each time I visit even though the whole lot of them are usually sectioned off in various rooms according to natural compatibility. And there are a shifting number of dogs in transit, those recently rescued, for whom she still actively looks for a home other than hers. When I come visit, as I do today, I wear pants. I find the familiar horde at the second-floor wrought iron door screeching with excitement or growling, baring teeth, depending on the dog. Vivi comes hurriedly and orders, “Back! Back!” and, smiling, “How are you, Love?” If they don’t obey, which is always the case, she grabs tail, neck, skin, ear, whatever is handy. [34.238.143.70] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:04 GMT) D o g s 35 “Wait, I’ll get the keys.” But first, she drags one barking dog at a time back up the stairs to the third floor’s partitioned area of the living room, after having been careful not to stumble over them while they resist arrest. I can guess when there is a new dog because Vivi then displays ill-wrapped purple bandages (stained from methylene blue) around her toes, forearms, and fingers that get in the way of her sorting out the many keys to the many locks and padlocks of the many doors, closets, and cabinets of her house. “If at sixteen I could swim across the Seine in the dead of winter , it’s not a dogfight that’s going to scare me.” But today, she is in her late seventies and age has taught her to fear what she reads in me. “I know why you are here,” she warns me while she is opening the door. “I don’t want to hear about it.” She locks the door behind me and we go up the tall narrow stairway that leads directly to the living room and adjoining kitchen area. The two rooms make up one large space. The steps look freshly mopped and neat even though there are some missing mosaics here and there. Vivi suddenly trips. She catches herself quickly by holding onto the sidewalls of the stairway. I regularly send someone...