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I AM SEVENTEEN years old (although because of my size and my easygoing nature I look much older) and I live in Port-au-Prince, on Capois Street, near Place du Champ-de-Mars. I live with my mother and my young sister. My father died a few years ago. My mother is still very beautiful. Large, moist eyes, bright flushed cheeks and a sad smile. The kind of tragic beauty that is very attractive to men. But as they say, she is a one-man woman. My father was not handsome (we have a large photograph of him in the living room), but he was tall and elegant. He always wore white and changed his shirt at least three times a day. They say women were crazy about him, which drove my mother to despair. According to her, what made my father different from other men was his great sensitivity and his keen sense of responsibility. “I can always count on your father,” my mother would say every time I forgot to do something. As far as she is concerned, my father is still alive. She talks about him every day. She quotes him every chance she gets. If I come home a bit late on a Friday night, my mother never fails to point out that I behave badly only because my father isn’t there. She never says because he’s dead. My mother talks so frequently about my father that often I find myself thinking as she does. Some days, at around two o’clock in the afternoon, a feeling comes over me that he’s about to walk into the house and, as was his invariable custom, toss his hat onto the table.

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