Island on the Edge of the World Read online

  About the book

  Haiti. A poor country rich in courage, strength and love. As these four women are about to discover:

  Charlie, the rootless daughter of American missionaries, now working as a hairdresser in Northern California. But the repercussions of a traumatic childhood far from home have left her struggling for her way in life.

  Bea, Charlie’s eccentric grandmother, who is convinced a reunion with Charlie’s estranged mother will help her heal.

  Lizbeth, a Texas widow who has never strayed too far from home. She is on a daunting journey into the unknown, searching for the grandchild she never knew existed.

  And Senzey, a young Haitian mother dealing with a lifetime of love and loss, who shows them the true meaning of bravery.

  Together they venture through the teeming, colorful streets of Port-au-Prince, into the worlds of do-gooders doing more harm than good, Vodou practitioners, artists, activists, and everyday Haitian men and women determined to survive against all odds.

  For Charlie, Bea, Lizbeth and Senzey, life will never be the same again …

  Contents

  Cover

  About the book

  Title page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  How you can help Haiti

  About the author

  Reading group questions

  Some delicious Haitian dishes to share

  Also by Deborah Rodriguez

  Imprint

  Read more at Penguin Books Australia

  For my two wonderful sons and my tribe of fabulous grandchildren

  Prologue

  Even at the center of the chaos surrounding her, she had never felt so completely alone. It was as though everyone who had ever been close to her had been driven away by a curse, disappearing to another place, a place where she was not allowed.

  This was not how her life was supposed to be.

  But loneliness was not new to her. She had been carrying it inside for years, missing those she had lost, yearning for things to be the way they had been. She had looked everywhere for hope, and thought she had finally found it. Yet, like everything else, that did not last.

  The woman in the cot beside her would not stop moaning. Nobody came to help. She did not blame them. There was so much work to do, and so few of them to do it. It was nobody’s fault she was still awake. As exhausted as she was, she did not want to sleep. She did not want to dream.

  Tomorrow she would be told to leave. That was fine, as this was certainly not a place where anyone would want to stay long. Busy and cramped, with echoes of pain and grief that were far louder than any sounds of joy and healing. Even in the eyes of the doctors who had looked down on her early the previous morning, their faces half-covered with masks, she had seen only weariness and frustration. Then the electricity had gone out, and they were forced to finish their work by the light of their cell phones.

  She turned onto her side and pulled the thin sheet she’d brought along with her around her aching body. The rusted iron cot squealed in protest. The night seemed to be lasting forever.

  Finally, the morning sun began its slow climb into the skies over the city, peeking through the hospital’s barred windows and streaming across the crowded room in thin white stripes. Roosters crowed, horns blared, motorbikes whirred, people shouted—a new day had begun in Port-au-Prince. As the women around her began to stir, Senzey took her pencils and pad from beneath her pillow, and started to draw.

  1

  “Voila!” Charlie spun the chair around and smiled into the mirror as she stood behind Meg. She could see her client’s mouth turn down a little at the corners as the woman struggled to unsnap the leopard-skin-patterned cape draped across her torso. Charlie quickly turned the chair back toward herself. “It makes you look ten years younger. Maybe even twelve.” She brushed stray hairs off Meg’s shoulders and, not wanting to compound the doubt, guided her away from the mirror, following the number one rule that every smart hairdresser swore by: Never, ever let the client see their reflection without the cape, or all they’ll see is fat.

  “I don’t know.” Meg twisted her head around for another look. “Do you think it makes me look—”

  “Trust me. Everyone’s going to love it.” Charlie helped her out of the cape and into her green quilted jacket.

  A silvery voice drifted across the Bea’s Hive salon. “You look magnificent, Meg.” Charlie turned to see her grandmother seated in her favorite spot—the 1970s-era Naugahyde dryer chair that was stuffed into a corner, its translucent hood tilted back in permanent repose against the wall. She shot the old woman a look, knowing full well that her grandmother couldn’t see the layering she’d added to Meg’s usual severe bob. She could only hope that Meg would simply accept her grandmother’s compliment and forget about just how blind Bea had become.

  Charlie swiped Meg’s credit card through the machine and scrounged around for a working pen among the dozens jammed into the chipped Wedgwood teapot next to the old cash register.

  “Oh, did you raise your prices? I don’t believe that’s what you used to charge me, Bea,” Meg snorted as she scrawled her signature across the slip of paper.

  “I’d be happy to do your hair for you next time if you want, Meg,” Charlie’s grandmother said without looking up from her crocheting, the orange scarf she was making for Charlie now measuring at least twelve feet long. “Just hope you won’t mind looking like a half-eaten hedgehog,” she added, under her breath.

  Charlie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “Would you care for the receipt?”

  After the brass shopkeeper’s bell mounted on top of the salon door sounded Meg’s exit, Charlie turned her attention to the client in the second chair, a tall woman whose scalp sprouted a garden of little foil packets.

  “Jeez, how do you put up with people like that?” the woman said as the screen door banged shut.

  “Oh,” Charlie sighed, “Meg’s all right, Sonja. You know how some people can be—never satisfied with anything, no matter what. We do this dance every time she comes in.”

  “Meg’s all right,” Bea echoed. “Just cheap. We all used to call her the Queen of the Alligators, her arms being so short she can never seem to reach her pockets to get out a tip.”

  After checking to make sure Sonja’s color had taken, Charlie began to unwrap each lock of hair as if it were a precious square of artisanal chocolate.

  “Do you want to know what I heard?” Sonja asked into the mirror.

  Charlie paused, fighting an overwhelming urg
e to say no. Although listening to her clients talk—in fact, getting them to talk—was part of the fine art of being a hairdresser, sometimes it became just too much. Already that day she’d heard about two cheating husbands, one thieving housekeeper, and a scandal involving a city councilman. It all seemed so petty and, frankly, boring to her.

  “A friend of a friend saw Meg’s son at the rehab facility up in Monterey,” Sonja continued. “You know, the one who caused that accident last year over at Ocean and Junipero?”

  Charlie simply nodded. Often she wished she could un-hear the things she’d been told. It was sometimes hard keeping straight what you were and weren’t supposed to know about the person in the chair, and even when you could, it could be challenging to deal with a client about whom you knew way too much. Sometimes she had to fight the urge to tell them to just shut up about their First World problems, and to share with them some of the real problems she’d witnessed growing up in a world so unlike the one they knew.

  Charlie was finding Carmel-by-the-Sea to be a real hotbed for drama queens and small-town gossip. And being a hairdresser put her at the epicenter of it all. Of course, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her clients and their problems, but what was she supposed to do about it? There was only so far lending an ear could go. She had read somewhere that psychiatrists suffered the highest rate of work-related stress of any occupation. Hairdressers, she thought, must come in a close second.

  Her grandmother, Bea, had been born and bred in Carmel, and she loved it here. She was in her element hanging out with the artists and poets, the dreamers and drifters. The old woman was even at home among the wealthy of the town, many of whom still sought her out for those talents she possessed that had nothing whatsoever to do with hairdressing.

  But Charlie, who had spent the past year helping out at her grandmother’s salon, Bea’s Hive, knew it was not for her. She hadn’t lived here since she was five, when her mother had plucked her out of kindergarten and whisked her away to help her new stepfather bring the word of the Lord to the deepest corners of the Amazon rainforest—whether the people of the Amazon rainforest wanted it or not. When a teenage Charlie first arrived, alone, back on the doorstep of Bea’s Hive, it was only to use Carmel as a hopping-off point, a place to crash temporarily, do her laundry and get her bearings before heading off to another semester at another school, another promising-sounding job in another city, another trial run in another country, and other attempts at finding a life for herself. She never intended to settle here. Apart from some ancient memories of Bea reading her bedtime stories and letting her lick cake batter off a spoon, Charlie felt no connection to this place. Nor to any place, for that matter. Her years as a third-culture kid living in a world that was not her own had left her with a rootlessness and restlessness that traveled around with her like extra baggage.

  “Well,” Sonja continued, “I know one thing. If it were me, I’d have kicked that kid out of the house a long time ago.”

  Charlie pointed Sonja toward the shampoo bowl.

  “I’m sure you would have, Sonja,” Bea chimed in. “The way you’re dealing with your own son getting booted out of the community college over that cheating thing is proof of that.”

  Charlie watched the flush rise from Sonja’s neck to her cheeks. She doubted the woman had shared that tidbit with Bea, and Charlie was well aware of how uncomfortable her grandmother’s psychic abilities could make people feel—as though someone was reading their personal journal without their permission.

  Of course, Charlie also knew plenty of things about her clients without them telling her. She could tell who’d had a facelift by the way their skin was folded into those little tucks behind the ears. Or who had a new boy toy, obvious from a sudden desire to cover their gray hairs. But her grandmother, well, she knew way, way more.

  Once washed and towel-dried, Sonja plopped herself back down in the swivel chair for a blowout, sweeping the wet bangs off her face as she leaned in toward the gilt-framed mirror. “Why can’t you give me color like yours, Charlie? And those curls!”

  “Only Mother Nature can bless a person with hair like Charlie’s,” Bea said. “Chestnut Filly, I’d call it, if it were something that could be put in a bottle. Can I get you some coffee, Sonja?”

  “Maybe Sonja would prefer some cucumber water, Bibi,” Charlie said, using the name Bea had taught her to use when she first began to talk. She watched in the mirror as her grandmother stood and turned to the ring-stained mahogany nightstand, where the old percolator rested beside the new water dispenser Charlie had insisted upon in an attempt to bring the salon into the twenty-first century.

  “Water? Nobody wants water with vegetables in it, honey.” Charlie’s grandmother ran her spotted hands over the mismatched row of mugs, stopping at the one that would now proclaim Sonja—not Bea, not Charlie—to be the World’s Best Hairdresser. She filled it to the brim without spilling a drop.

  Charlie had just taken the cup from Bea and handed it to Sonja when the bell—which her grandmother swore “renewed the energy of the room” whenever someone entered or exited through the door—tinkled again. Charlie turned to see one of her regulars entering. “Oh shit, did we have an appointment?”

  “Elaine, is that you?” Bea asked. “Elaine’s here to see me, Charlie.” The old woman pushed the purple frames of her thick, round glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, and began crossing the cluttered salon with the confidence of someone who’d walked those floors her entire life. Charlie managed, just in time, to wheel aside the plastic cart she’d snuck into the salon one day while her grandmother was napping. She’d been desperate for a proper spot to organize her tools amid the remnants of Bea’s days behind the chair—the wig stands, the rollers, the ancient styling books. Charlie was not allowed to change a thing in the salon. Despite her attempts, she’d failed to convince her grandmother to part with any of the so-called treasures she’d accumulated over the years.

  The room, with its trinkets and knickknacks, crystals and beads, felt claustrophobic to Charlie, who personally preferred to travel light. To Bea, everything told a story. The snow globe collection occupying the towel shelf? Gifts from her clients’ travels. The pile of books blocking the window? A revolving lending library that spoke volumes about the tastes of her customers. The dingy white walls were jam-packed with photos of Bea and half the town’s population—photos Bea could no longer see, yet refused to take down for a much-needed paint job. And the art! Carmel seemed to have more painters than residents, and none of them worth the paper they dribbled on, in Charlie’s opinion at least.

  Charlie let out a sigh as the two women disappeared through the door that led from the salon into the rest of the house. “Sorry for my grandmother’s rudeness. She sometimes seems to lack a filter.”

  “Bea? Please.” Sonja dismissed the apology with a wave of the hand. “She’s a hoot. Honestly? I think she’s got quite a gift. And I’m not the only one who thinks that.”

  Charlie’s stepfather had always claimed that Bea was a witch. And he meant that literally, not in the bellyaching way that most sons-in-law toss the term around. Bea was doing the work of the devil, according to his beliefs—the same beliefs he twisted into a permanent wedge he drove straight between Charlie’s mom and her own mother. As a child far away from home, Charlie had always been confused by his pronouncements and accusations, her own image of Bea as a fun-loving fairy godmother remaining vivid in her mind. Now, at twenty-seven years old, she knew better than to believe anything that man said.

  The blow-dryer started up with a purr. As Charlie twirled and pulled the brush through Sonja’s damp hair, her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with Bea over coffee that morning, as they prepared for the first client to arrive.

  “Charlie,” her grandmother had said, “I’ve had a dream.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes. She waited as Bea pulled her wavy gray hair away from her face, holding it in one blue-veined hand as she deftly wrapped a pink s
carf around her forehead with the other. She finished it off with a fancy knot, tucked the edges into place, and continued.

  “It was as if I were there. Right there in Haiti, with your mother.”

  “Huh.” Charlie did not like thinking about her mother. She’d had word, secondhand, that her parents had been reassigned to Haiti, but knew little more than that. Her grandmother had been bringing up her mother’s name a lot lately, as if dangling a piece of bait in front of Charlie’s face. So far she’d managed not to bite.

  “So what did you dream?” She placed a hand on Bea’s arm, suddenly feeling a bit guilty for ignoring her grandmother’s need to talk.

  “It was strange, Charlie. She looked anxious, and worried.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be, living with a man like that?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. It was something more, something deeper, maybe something physical.”

  “You know how dicey those places can be. She’ll be fine. She’s used to that.”

  Bea shook her head. “I’m telling you, Charlie.”

  “So then what?”

  “Then I woke up. I don’t know. Maybe something’s not right.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine, Bibi.” Charlie stood and gathered an armful of clean towels, still warm from the dryer. “It was only a dream. We all have dreams.”

  “Do you dream, Charlie?”