“I should have let you and Aline leave with Moy like you planned,” she said.

Moy was standing a few steps away, fighting back his tears.

“Is Manman alive?” I asked Tante Rose.

“We are going to take you to see her,” Tante Rose said.

LATER

Manman cried, too, when she saw me, except she cried much longer than Tante Rose did. As soon as Moy carried me into the house and put me down on the bed, Manman lay down next to me and just cried and cried and cried. At times she sobbed loudly. Other times she just moaned and said, “I don’t know what I would have done … I don’t know what I would have done …”

I was so happy to see Manman that I wanted to reach up and kiss her, but she wouldn’t let me move. She wouldn’t even let me speak.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10

Manman seems all right except she walks with a limp. Tante Rose took both our temperatures before she left for work this morning.

My body is aching less now after a full day of everyone looking after me, Nadine and Esther making me soup and tea, Manman rubbing my arms and legs with castor oil, and Moy peeking into the room now and then to check on me.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11

Manman has finally allowed me to leave the room, but Moy follows me everywhere with a worried look on his face. This is all new to Moy, the frightening part of the city.

The bump on the back of my head has shrunk some. Even though I am not trying to listen, I overhear Manman and Tante Rose discussing whether they should call Papa and tell him what happened.

Manman thinks it’s best that Papa does not know what happened as he would worry.

“Victor will be mad when he hears that we kept this from him,” Tante Rose says.

“We are alive,” Manman says. “That’s all he needs to know.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12

I went up on Tante Rose’s roof when no one was looking. I wanted to be outside, to look up at the sky and see the mountains in the distance. Despite the shootings and the pipe bombs, people are still going about their lives, walking to and from church, visiting with friends and family.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13

This afternoon while Manman and Tante Rose were in another part of the house, Moy came into the bedroom to see how I was doing. I took the opportunity to ask him some questions, to help me fill in the void between the time of the explosion and the time I woke up in the hospital.

Moy was in Léogâne, in class, when the explosion happened. After his class someone told him that a bomb had hit a camion in Carrefour. He knew we were coming back that same day and, even if we were not in the camion that had been hit, we would be stuck in Carrefour anyway, so he went there immediately to see if he could find us.