From our house, when it is not so dark like it is tonight, I can see a chain of mountains and braids of water running down the mountains to become waterfalls and rivers. In the daytime, when the sun is high in the sky, you almost cannot see the water at all, just a glow mixed in with the sun. It looks like the pictures of crystals and diamonds in the books Madame Auguste keeps in the schoolhouse. The mountains are more beautiful still at sunset. Then they look blue and gold, like one of the paintings that Moy’s artist friend, Bòs Dezi, makes to sell at the tourist market in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

I must admit that I am afraid of the dark, even though you would not know it because I am out here alone so late at night. My grandfather, Granpè Nozial, sometimes tells very scary stories about the night. One of the scariest stories is about a three-legged horse named Galipòt, who trots down the mountains at night looking for his fourth leg. The three-legged horse is named Galipòt because if you say the three syllables really fast, “Ga-li-pòt-Ga-li-pòt-Ga-li-pòt,” it makes the sound of three hooves hitting the ground. If you see Galipòt and run, he thinks you’re his fourth leg and he chases you.

I have never seen this horse myself, and most of the time I believe, as Papa used to say, that maybe these kinds of things only exist in the “streams of our dreams.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19

Last night I did not share the biggest news. Manman came home with a cassette from Papa. After supper, the three of us gathered in the front room to listen to the cassette.

Papa sends us cassettes and money from New York once a month. Papa sends the money to pay for my schooling and for Moy’s training to be a tailor. (Moy chose that himself rather than going to university in the city.) Moy uses a lot of his money to buy sketching paper. Even though Manman thinks he is making designs for shirts and pants for his tailor’s classes, I have looked over his shoulder a few times and I have seen that he is really drawing shapes and faces like Bòs Dezi does before he makes one of his paintings. Sometimes Moy draws girls, too, but never anyone I know.

The money Papa sends us also pays for food and clothes and any extra things we need. Manman does not really have to sell dous at the market, but with Papa gone, she likes to keep herself busy and she likes for us to keep ourselves occupied, too. So she works at making and selling the confections and Moy works the cornfields and looks after Papa’s cows even when Moy also has to go to tailor school.