Dajabón

As the airliner began its descent, Daniel’s unease about returning home intensified. He had been back once to New Domangue in the summer of 2010. That was five years ago—a long time without a single word with his papá.

That was an awful visit, Daniel thought. The anger from it burned deeply for that year. As the years passed, however, Daniel missed his family. He began to hope that something would change, something would give, and he and his papá could reconcile things. But it didn’t happen.

Daniel never imagined the silence between them would stretch for five years. After his anger washed away, he spent two years urging his mamá to get the old man to admit his wrongs. The effort got him nothing. Tired of it, Daniel stopped trying, and almost stopped caring. Then, last week, his mamá called. Papá suffered a major stroke. Could he come home?

After the initial shock, Daniel’s anger returned, hitting him in waves. How could the old man not take care of himself better? What if the old man died before changing his attitude? Before they could come together? And why in the hell didn’t Mamá do a better job of getting through his thick skull?

It felt to Daniel as if the anger after that call would never diminish. Everything that hurt so deeply came back. If it wasn’t for Breonne urging him to be the bigger person all week, he wouldn’t have taken leave from work.

Daniel thought about this as the plane’s wing outside his window broke through the clouds, catching his attention. He could see the flat, greenish brown land below. In Newark, everything was cloaked in white and grayish brown at this time of year, but here, here it was more like on the island. It reminded him of his winter trips to the Dominican Republic. Each time he landed in the DR it filled him with a mix of emotions he could never quite describe.

Until his mamá called, Daniel had begun to consider that his future children would only know of the old man through stories, never getting to know him. Mamá would fill both their spots after he reconciled with her. She would bring the old man to life by sharing memories with her grandchildren of a man they would never get to know firsthand.

Daniel hoped maybe the stroke, in some distorted way, could end this stupid fighting once and for all. With death so nearby, maybe they could finally come to terms with, and let go, the outdated beliefs that split the family apart.

If only his mamá would be more helpful. Why didn’t she do more? All she would ever do is say how much she loved Daniel, but her duty was to her husband. What bullshit! Daniel thought.

The pilot announced they were entering the final descent. As he watched out the window, a lone fishing boat on Lake Pontchartrain chugging along, Daniel wondered what he would feel. If the old man is recovering well, would Daniel push the issue? Would that be cruel? What would his mamá do? What would she think? What if the old man is in such bad shape that trying to talk sense into him won’t be an option? He stopped himself. Best to take a breath and stop thinking about it, accept whatever comes. No matter what. Whatever comes, take it with grace. Close the eyes, deep breath in, taking in the good, deep breath out, taking out the bad, and hope it works out as it should.

Everything looked and felt different in town. The airport was cleaner, shinier than he last remembered it. The air was colder than usual. The highway leading into New Orleans was new, and there were many more overpasses crisscrossing the interstate. The road from New Orleans to New Domangue looked freshly laid, as well. In the Lower Nine, he noticed new structures that weren’t there before the storm. He saw more of the same in New Domangue, noticing the small and large changes visible off the main highway into town.

He pulled up to the New Domangue Medical Center parking garage and waited a while in his car, debating between turning around or stepping out. Would that be ok? Tell Mamá that he was tired, go straight to a hotel room? No, that wouldn’t go over too well, Daniel considered. He stayed in his car a while longer, taking a moment to practice his breathing, gather his thoughts. Take a deep breath in, hold it, let it out. In with the good, out with the bad.

As the minutes passed, he watched folks from New Domangue come and go, bundled up against the unusual cold. He imagined their lives. That one, the middle-aged man in a hunting jacket and a camouflage patterned baseball cap, walking awkwardly, a determined looking woman holding him—his wife? She was forcing him to get that limp checked in the emergency room. The old woman with a walker, she was coming to visit her sister. The heaviness in her troubled walk said to Daniel that her sister was dying. The young mother with the crying baby in a stroller hurrying inside the ER—she was at her wits’ end after a day-long battle with colic.

This was life, he thought. At one moment, you think you’re ok, blithely moving along with daily concerns until…wham! The world forces you to deal with crap that turns your life upside down, like it or not. It forces you, one way or another, to one day take stock of years of neglect or worse.

How was this going to work? Why was he even here? The old man had been awful to him and Breonne.

Then he saw a group of five people—an elderly white couple, a white pregnant woman, a black man holding the pregnant woman’s hand, and a brown child, the color of café con leche, who held the man’s other hand as he walked alongside. He knew their story instantly, only theirs was playing out differently than his. The brown child was the mixed baby those two created, with another on the way. The white people were the woman’s parents, who had come to terms with their black son-in-law. It appeared to Daniel that the man was a full-fledged member of the family, not a sideshow, not the help, but a member of the family, accepted, given his space, recognized as the man their daughter picked. Daniel stared at them, longing to be in their shoes as they disappeared into the hospital.

If a family in New Domangue could look like that in 2015, why was it so hard for his own folks? The entire DR was a fucking mess over this. It made so little sense that he didn’t know what to do with it. Beyond venting his disgust, what else could he do? He could get the old man to see his own ass backwardness, that’s what he could do, Daniel thought.

It wasn’t until he brought Breonne home that Daniel learned how deep this problem ran in his own family. He’d grown up hearing Dominicans refer to this negrito or that negrita but he never thought much of it. It never occurred to him that there was a difference between his light brown skin and darker skin. He learned the day he brought Breonne home that this difference meant a great deal to his parents.

Daniel remembered Breonne had asked him if his parents were going to be ok with her. He didn’t even consider that she was concerned about more than just cultural differences. The moment she realized her skin color was the issue, he almost lost her.

On that initial visit, the old man gave Breonne the cold shoulder. Daniel’s mamá barely did any better. Daniel was so angry with his parents after this. It took him three months to win Breonne back, to convince her that he wasn’t playing games, that he didn’t know they’d react so poorly, that their opinions meant nothing to him. Rehashing these old memories flustered him. Take a deep breath, he ordered himself. Close the eyes. Find that calm inside, the one the yoga teacher always talks about. Listen to the breath. Breathe. In with the good, out with the bad. Repeat. Slowly. Let it bring back some peace. There. Hold on to it.

Could this visit go any different? he wondered, more calmly now. Would it end any different than the last visit?

No, you’re wrong, there is no difference between us. We’re slightly lighter, but we’re black, too. What do you mean we’re not black? Where did you get that from? You’re a black man, like it or not, Papá. Oh, I have to get out of your house for calling you a black man?! Fine! But you better realize that this idea you learned back home about not being black, just know it’s nothing but bullshit they used to control you! You and Mamá, you got duped. You both black, like it or not! The sooner you realize that, the better for everyone!

Not the most intelligent, calm conversation. It always ended the same. Denial, screaming, blaming, shaming.

Falling in love with a North American was ok, so long as she wasn’t black, apparently. Daniel couldn’t take it. When he decided to marry Breonne, a couple of years before the storm, he tried one last time to reconcile with the old man, but he got nothing. So they had the wedding, invited some of his cousins who didn’t have those issues, and mostly made it a Breonne family and friends affair. It was almost as if he didn’t have a family. It still left him feeling ill when he thought of it.

Where’s that deep breath again? Take another one. Don’t get riled up, Daniel said to himself. Stop rehashing the shitty stuff. He stepped out of the car and walked towards the hospital.

Daniel’s mamá was standing near the nurse station. She was talking with a tall black woman in a lab coat. Was she the doctor, Daniel wondered, as he approached. Wouldn’t that be some shit if she was the doctor?

His mamá noticed him and put out her arm, her fingers stretched towards him, palm up, inviting him to take hold. Daniel grabbed her hand, ignoring, or perhaps forgetting, for that instance, the years of anger at her and his papá. His body moved on its own, following the contours of familiar motions. He embraced her, asked for her blessing, as was their tradition, and stood next to her.

“My son, Daniel,” she said in her heavily accented English while turning towards the woman.

“Hello, Mr. Piedro. I’m Dr. Aurelien.”

Daniel could hear a slight accent and wondered if the woman was also an immigrant, like his family. He wondered where she might be from. Which African nations spoke French? Maybe she’s from one of those. Something about her name, her accent, prompted Daniel to think she spoke French. Was it Senegal that spoke French? Or was it Ivory Coast? Of course, she could be from France, or maybe Quebec?

Daniel listened as Dr. Aurelien explained the severity of the old man’s stroke, the surgeries being considered, and the possibilities for recovery. The diagnosis was bad, the prognosis even worse. There was no way of knowing today if the old man would ever walk or talk again. In some cases, patients with similar circumstances recover fully, but many remain paralyzed. Others die within the first month of a major stroke similar to his papá’s, according to Dr. Aurelien.

While she explained the options to them, Daniel tried to imagine what it meant, if anything, to his papá to have his life in this woman’s hands. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe she was seen through the same eyes one sees the help. Yes, they’re in your house. Yes, they breathe the same air you do, walk the same halls you do, but they are not like you. They are beneath you. But that doesn’t mean one can’t interact with the help. The help is there to support you, to care for you, to make sure your creature comforts are provided. Maybe a black female doctor meant nothing, he wondered. She was the help.

After Dr. Aurelien left them, his mamá grabbed Daniel by both hands. She squeezed them tight.

“Tú papá está muy mal. Ya mismo verás,” she said, hinting that she didn’t want to let Daniel see the old man yet. “Ven,” she added, leading him away from the area and towards the elevators.

They walked to a waiting area with a wall full of vending machines. Daniel’s mamá walked up to the one dispensing cappuccinos and began to fumble through her purse. Daniel watched for a short while, transfixed by the sight of his mamá as she dug for change. She looked older than he remembered her, worn. When was the last time she slept? The last five years looked heavier, older on her, like fifteen or twenty years had passed and not five. She looked frail.

As she scooped up loose coins, Daniel felt a tinge of regret. “Mamá,” he said, as he placed his hand on her forearm, “deja eso. Yo lo hago.”

After he softly stepped into her spot, he swiped his card for two cappuccinos. They watched silently, their eyes fixed on the first cup as it dropped and filled with hot liquid. Daniel wondered what was going through her mind. Five years was a long time. As he handed her the first cup, he wondered if he had been too stubborn, making his mamá pay for his papá’s stupidity.

“Hijo,” his mamá almost whispered.

“Sí, Mamá?”

“Perdónanos,” she said, barely audible, her face aimed at her feet. She let out a long sigh.

Daniel clenched his teeth, working to hold back the rising, choking feeling suddenly forming in his throat. He’d wanted his mamá to come around years ago. Why in the world did it have to come down to this moment, in front of a goddamned vending machine while his papá lay paralyzed in a hospital bed, for her to ask him to forgive them? Why did five more years have to be thrown away? He felt like crying and punching something at the same time. Instead, he remembered his breathing exercises, took a deep breath, nodded at her, then picked up his cup and guided her slowly to an empty table.

She sat down slowly, almost as if in pain. Daniel watched his mamá the entire time, her eyes pointed to the floor. The crown of her head revealed the white she had colored over a month ago.

“Mamá,” Daniel said, “why did you and Papá hate Breonne so much, why did you hate how she looked? Why was that so important that you would risk losing your only child forever?”

His mamá looked at him. Daniel could see sadness, frustration, confusion, perhaps something else, maybe shame, in her eyes. Was that shame? Was she ashamed? Was Papá ashamed, too? They ought to be, Daniel thought. What the hell?

At the same time, it looked to Daniel like more than shame was mixed in there. What was that? He couldn’t quite place it. Or better yet, he didn’t quite understand it. What he knew as shame, Daniel soon discovered, paled in comparison to the type of shame others held deep down, the type of shame that cripples people, turns them into shells of their former selves by either making cowards of them or making monsters of them, monsters in denial of their inner revulsion at themselves.

“We do not hate Breonne,” his mamá said slowly in her difficult English, before switching to Spanish. “Maybe for a while your father had ideas about you deserving better than Breonne, and those ideas maybe had something to do with how she looked, but there was never any hatred.”

“C’mon, Mamá, that’s such bullshit,” Daniel said, years of pent up anger taking over.

His mamá looked down at the cup held between her hands. She remained silent for a minute.

Deep breath, Daniel reminded himself, deep breath. No need to get into an argument. Let her tell it. Let Mamá say what she has to say.

Her head still bowed over the cup, his mamá continued, “it’s true, Daniel, we did act in a way that looks like we hated Breonne because she is a black woman. But it was not because of her. It was because of something else.” She looked up at Daniel. “This something, I do not know how to talk about it, because I only learn here, in the hospital, to understand it. Please, listen to me. Listen to what I am going to say.”

Daniel could see in his mamá’s eyes that she wanted him to give her every word the highest degree of attention he could muster, as if his life depended on it. The look reminded him of that time when the two of them ran out of gas on a cold night in the middle of the highway and she broke the news to him. She had looked at him then the same way she looked at him now, imploring he have faith in not just the words she’s about to utter, but in the earnest and honorable intentions behind those words, the intentions of a mother wanting nothing less than her child’s wellbeing.

“Ok, Mamá, sigue,” he said, asking her to continue.

“That doctor, the one we just talked to, do you know she is Haitian?”

Of course, Daniel, thought. That makes so much more sense. “What about the doctor, Mamá?”

“Listen, she has the same last name of a family we knew back home from our younger days. It was enough.”

As the words slowly emerged from his mamá’s lips, Daniel added them to the unsolved slivers of a picture he’d carried all his life in his mind. He never knew where this picture came from, but it was always there, coming to him from time to time, never in good form, always in some destroyed state or other. This time the picture was tattered, composed of slices of color that hinted of an image. It felt to Daniel as if pieces he never thought would surface were beginning to show.

“Your papá and I agreed. This was enough,” she continued.

“Wait,” Daniel blurted. “Did you mean you and Papá? Does that mean he’s awake and knows what’s going on?”

“Yes,” Daniel’s mamá said. “He cannot talk, but we can understand each other.”

“What are you doing?” his mamá responded. Daniel stood up, ready to move the conversation to his papá’s room. “Sit down, I am not finished,” she said quietly, sternly.

“But, if Papá can communicate, I want to talk to him,” Daniel said, motioning towards the door.

His mamá grabbed his arm and looked up at him. “Sit down, please,” she said, again quietly, sternly. “Please, we cannot go yet. Listen to me. I have to tell you something important about us before you see him.”

The tattered picture came back, the small slivers growing slightly, signaling secrets without revealing anything, hinting at a past that remained hidden, unsolved.

Daniel was taken aback by his mamá’s overly firm, yet nervous touch. The concerned, solemn face and the remorseful tone in her voice impressed upon him that something grave was surfacing. How serious was this? He wondered. What could be so bad?

“Ok, Mamá, ok,” Daniel said, patting her hand as he sat back down.

“Listen carefully,” she said in Spanish. “Please do not interrupt until I am finished. This will be very hard for me. The Haitian doctor, she brought it back, you understand? It all came out with her name.”

“Her name?” Daniel asked. “What do you mean?”

“Listen,” his mamá shook her head, looked down at the now barely warm cappuccino in her hands. “Please, don’t interrupt. Let me…this is hard. Let me find my words.”

She sighed deeply, kept her eyes on the cup, and began filling in some of the missing areas of the picture.

“The last person, the last man we took in, that was his last name. He was an Aurelien. We were very young then. We loved our country, you understand. The dictator was very convincing. We believed him. We believed that the Haitians were like a disease. In those days, we felt no shame in Dajabón. We were both from the area, grew up with stories of the Parsley massacre. People called it mass murder, a genocide. Some called it a necessity. But most thought it was just propaganda against the dictator. That it never happened. We grew up in houses that said that even if the stories were true, it must have been justified. You understand?”

Daniel nodded. The picture was filling in with scattered, torn pieces. Daniel knew about Dominicans’ issues with Haitians. What Dominican didn’t? He never understood it. He had read books about the massacre at Dajabón, which had outraged him when he first learned about it. He recalled trying to talk to his parents about it when he was in his early twenties. They always found a way to never engage him. In fact, he now recalled, they usually changed the subject and never offered any comment on it, which Daniel had always found troubling. And now his mamá shared that this event was somehow a part of their lives. What? How?

His mamá, after taking a slow, deep breath, continued.

“We weren’t even born when the dictator killed those Haitians. And yes, we now know that he did do that, but back then, we weren’t so sure. By the time we were old enough, we joined his army. Since we were from the general area, we were stationed at Dajabón after our training. They put us in intelligence because of our test scores, your father and me. We got married and managed cases of suspected insurgents together, creating files on individuals, on families. You must understand—we were very patriotic. Everyone was afraid of communists in those days. Our job was to protect the country against the communists. We had men in suits from the U.S. teach us. We believed many Haitians were involved in communism. The U.S. men were very serious and they showed us how to do the work. We took it very seriously.”

“From our work, and from everything we heard and learned growing up, we thought the worst things about Haitians, and because of that, we thought the worst things about black people. Haitians were black people, so we believed they were different because of their black skin. Our work was to build cases and process targets for interrogation. We never did that part. The dictator had a separate unit for interrogations. All we did was give them the names, produce the files, process the suspected insurgents. But we knew. We knew they tortured most of the people they interrogated.”

“Our last case was named Aurelien. We remember his name. Jean Baptiste Aurelien. Your papá and I created a case on him and determined that he wasn’t a communist, but that didn’t matter. We followed orders. Like all the hundreds of others who we cleared but still came through and sometimes disappeared, we followed orders. Do you understand? This is difficult for me to say. We have kept this to ourselves for over fifty years. Aurelien was the last one. He came in for processing the night the dictator was assassinated. I believe that was 1963. If one more night had passed and Aurelien had not come in that night, he would never have come in at all.”

“You must understand. We were all on alert. Everyone was nervous. There was talk of a coup. There was talk of another assassination attempt. The communists were believed to be behind the next attempt. We were doing our duties as soldiers. Our doubts about torture on the Haitians, we couldn’t do anything about it. We followed orders. We processed, built cases, gave them names to look into and names to ignore. Sometimes they ignored us when we said not that one, he’s clean. We told our superiors, not that one, Aurelien was clean. We had no hatred for him, even if he was a Haitian. We weren’t evil. We just wanted to protect our country and our children from bad people, from bad influence, from danger. We had nothing against Aurelien. What could we do? When they brought him in, we processed him, like everyone else.”

Daniel’s mamá fell silent. She closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. Daniel waited, keenly aware that the best thing he could do at this moment was keep silent, allow his mamá to find her way through her story.

He could now see the picture coming together, more slivers falling onto the frame. Daniel could make out some sort of scene, a bridge, a river, both behind his parents, the two of them clad in crisp uniforms, but that was it. His mamá continued.

“Our work was supposed to be in secret, but people talked. We lived and worked in Dajabón. Some of the people we processed, they never went back home. People believed they were sent back to Haiti. Other people believed they were executed. Sometimes we knew. Other times we didn’t know. People talked, you know. They talked about us. In Dajabón, Dominicans mixed with Haitians. It made the work difficult. We had to be careful. We tried not to single out people who had Dominican families. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped. They were especially brutal to those people, who the interrogators called traitors to their countrymen.”

“You must understand, we were following orders. This is all we knew. We thought we were doing the right thing. Even when we didn’t like that they ignored our recommendations, that this person or that person wasn’t a threat. Even then, we knew our duty. We were loyal. Our duty was to our country, even if we didn’t agree with the interrogators. We didn’t have to like everything they did. We didn’t have to agree. We just had to complete our assignments to make our country great. That’s what we were told. That’s what we believed.”

“Aurelien, he had nothing to do with communism. For all we could tell, he was clean. A craftsman trying to make it in our country. He was good with wood. Had the best hands in Dajabón. Made his living that way. But the interrogators, sometimes when they want to let you go, on the hope that you make a mistake, they will take something from you. They took Aurelien’s ability to make a living. They destroyed his hands, disfigured both hands so badly that he could never use them again for work.”

“We learned the next day what happened to him. We felt ashamed. For the first time, we felt shame in our work. We did this. We gave them his name. His life was on our souls. That same morning, after learning about Aurelien, a car pulled up to our building with men armed with rifles. They came inside and told us they had taken over our operation now that the dictator had been killed. After that, our lives changed forever. We left the country within a month, never to return….”

Daniel could see more slivers filling in, seeing that the two young versions of his parents in uniforms were being held by people behind them, people with weapons in their hands. His parents had their hands tied behind their backs. They weren’t smiling in the picture. Behind them, as more of the picture filled in, Daniel could make out more bodies. He could see bare feet. Black bare feet, dozens of them, standing behind the men with weapons. His mamá still held her head down. He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.

“Mamá, I don’t know what to say right now,” Daniel said, then paused for a few seconds. “At least now I understand why you always refused my offer to go to the DR with me.”

His mamá let out another long, slow breath. She looked up at him. “We could never go back. That shame we felt about Aurelien only grew larger here, especially in New Domangue, where no one knew us and our history. Even the Dominicans that moved here, they knew nothing about our past. We decided to bury it, pretend there was nothing to be ashamed about, but deep down, we both knew this was not true.”

“Your papá and I never talked about it, and when you grew old enough to start asking, we did our best to keep it buried. But then you fell in love with Breonne, this only made your papá angry. You see, after being here more than twenty years we still had some of the old feelings living inside us. We still believed the dictator’s ideas about black people. So long as they lived their lives without bothering us, we were fine. But when you brought Breonne home, well, you know what happened.”

The final slivers made it onto the frame, the picture filling in completely. In the center of the frame were his parents, captors after the dictator’s assassination. They were handcuffed, being held by armed militia, some of them black men. Behind them stood a crowd of dozens of black people, most of them smiling at the camera. The young couple’s pride for their work gone, instead on their faces the humiliation of being paraded in front of a camera like trophies.

Daniel could see in the picture that despite this humiliation, their beliefs and former pride would not be vanquished. It stayed with them, festering inside their quiet, unassuming life in New Domangue, urging them, or at least his papá, to ignore the mounting evidence through the years that they had been part of something horrific. They had been complicit to atrocities against human beings. They had enabled hundreds of innocent black lives to suffer.

My God, Daniel thought, who the fuck would want to admit this to themselves? Daniel thought of Breonne. What would she do in this moment? She had urged him to be the bigger person. Would her recommendation change upon learning this? Will their relationship change after he tells her? One thing at a time, he thought.

And poor Mamá, she saw before Papá did where this was going, Daniel thought, only she chose to support him rather than challenge him. Daniel thought of her and felt all the anger he’d felt over the years, only this time it gave way to sorrow almost immediately. He considered the prison she had woven herself into and realized that had he been told this story ten or fifteen years ago, he would have reacted in anger and hatred for them both. Not that there wasn’t much to be angry about, there was plenty of it, but right now, at this moment, it felt like the wrong thing to feel. Instead, he reached out and cupped his mamá’s hands in his.

“Mamá?”

She looked up at him. Daniel could see that unlike the picture in his mind, this time her humiliation was accompanied by shame and contrition.

“Mamá, I just want to know something before any more is said,” Daniel said.

“Sí?” she asked.

“What was it that you wanted me to forgive you for when you asked me earlier?”

“Oh, Daniel,” his mamá quietly began to sob. “Your papá and I, we both now know that we have been stuck inside ideas and feelings that we needed to throw away a long time ago. We just didn’t know how. We didn’t know how to do it. Even when you begged us over the years, we just didn’t know how to do it, and we were afraid of it. Our entire lives we believed one way. What would it mean to change? We were afraid, and we were blind, you understand?”

“Our love for our country, we now realize, was abused. We didn’t know that then. We were eighteen when we decided to join the dictator’s army. What did we know? We may have been smart, but we weren’t that kind of smart. We were as stupid as the rest of the country. It took us having to fight with you defending your love for Breonne to get us to question how we once believed. But we were too afraid to talk about it. We were ashamed. And your papá, he became angry, and instead of admitting it, he just became more stubborn. We didn’t talk about what was really going on.”

“Then the stroke happened and Dr. Aurelien came into our lives this week and we realized we had no choice. She even looks like him. It was as if we were staring at his ghost. We had to know, so we asked her, without revealing who we were, we asked her if she was related. She said that she couldn’t recall a Jean Baptiste in her family who lived in the DR. Dr. Aurelien’s parents came to New Domangue straight from Haiti, so thankfully they weren’t related.”

“We were so relieved to learn this, you understand? It was by God’s grace that she wasn’t related, that she wasn’t a daughter or a granddaughter. She has been so good to us. We knew. It was time. Your father cried. I said I would tell you everything, ask for your forgiveness. He agreed.”

“We want you to forgive us for not accepting Breonne, for not accepting your love for her, for not being the type of parents you asked us to be so many times. Because we remembered Aurelien from 1963 and we knew, finally, finally, we knew, we could have done more to stop it, could have done more to save his hands, save his ability to make a living, and we knew we had a chance, we had one last chance to get it right, that is why we want you to forgive us, for being stubborn and for being blind. What we did in Dajabón is up to God to forgive, but we hope you can forgive us for this, too, for being part of something that will make you feel shame now.”

The picture in Daniel’s mind became clearer, sharper, with previously blurred details now obvious. The black people behind the militia had various deformities, missing fingers, missing hands, a missing eye, and so on. These were the tortured, the processed. Daniel knew they may never forgive, never fully get beyond the deliria that love of country inspired in their torturers.

Daniel already knew, he could. But not the young couple in the picture. He may never be able to fully forgive that couple. His mamá, as she is now, he could forgive her, and probably even the old man.

And Breonne, what would she do? He left that to his faith in her and looked at his mamá, whose eyes had returned to the cup still in her hands.

“Claro, Mamá. I am still your son. Come, let’s go see Papá.”