From The Journals of Water Days 1986

We cowered beneath our beds as bullets caved in the sheets of plastic we put up as windows. My mother was choking on gun powder and tiny splinters of wood, but somehow she managed to hold in her cough. I felt her tears float across my cheeks, but I kept my eyes closed.

Outside, the military trucks roared up and down the narrow spaces between the shanties. It was different from the sound we were used to: the blare of squeaky sirens when they came on afè ofisièl, what they called official business.

"Jesus, Marie, Joseph. Mother Jesus, look after us."

My mother was mouthing the same prayer, her grip growing tighter on me with each refrain.

The day before, I'd seen a group of men tie a militia man to a light post, pour kerosene in his mouth, carve a hole in his chest and dive in for the heart. The heart fisherman, whose daughter had been raped and made pregnant by the militia man, he got frustrated when he couldn't find the heart and cried out that the militia man had died too soon.

The soldiers were there momentarily to revenge that death and the deaths of other militia men who had been caught by crowds and tied to poles to die. They were shooting at the seaside shanties because they weren't sure who the militia killers were, which meant they were at war with all of us.

"Jesus, Marie, Joseph. They'll drive us quickly into the ground," my mother said.

The roars of their mufflers were fading as soon as they had started. My mother grabbed my face and smacked her lips between my eyebrows.

"Jesus, Marie, Joseph. Thank you. You watched over us. But next time. Who knows next time?"

She wiped her apron across her forehead as we crawled out from the dust. A few pennies popped out of her bra and bounced on the floor. I chased the coins across the clay, slipping some in my pocket as I collected them.

"I could have gotten diarrhea from shock," she said extending her hand for the coins. "I saw you take my pennies. Don't you know how much water I need to carry on my head and sell all day long to get those pennies?"

"Can I have a cola?"

"You choose your supper. Cola or rice and beans? Rice and beans or cola?"

"Cola."

"Don't complain when you can't sleep from hunger and gas."

The neighbors were all out inspecting damage. There were large holes in most of the shanties and a dead pig squirting blood from behind a fence. We were not hit too hard, except for the blown plastic window which had come down on me like pieces of a shredded wedding veil.

Monsié Christophe's tap station had been shot through and was pumping water faster than the fat pig was pumping blood. Usually he would sell a pail of water for fifty cents to everyone except my mother who could get one out of him for forty. When breads, mangos, or straw hats didn't sell, my mother would buy a pail of water, go to the boardwalk and sell it for as much as a dollar. During water rations, she could sell it for two.

Monsié Christophe's large water drums were filled with as many holes as cheap lace. He quickly warmed up some tar and tried to patch up the holes. His son Tobin was helping him, but the water flooded the dry dust, mixing with the pig's blood as the ground soaked it up.

"Ronald, come over and help me here," Monsié Christophe shouted at me. "Your time won't be wasted."

The force of the water was too much and the tar too hot and sticky to hold it in.

"Come now, all of you," cried Monsié Christophe to the neighbors who had gathered...