D.P.

Hence is a "DP". That's what his friends call him when they are sitting under the tarps, sipping beers and watching soccer. The term is cool and a bit affectionate, I think. "DP" means deported. Hence lived in the United States for eighteen years. He is short, with a small bread and a gold grill across his front teeth. Last year, he had a run in with the law and they packed him up and shipped him off. We figured out that his apartment in New York was a few blocks from where I live now, Prospect Park South. Hence tells a story about a white woman he was dating who was jealous that he wasn't spending enough money on her and destroyed him by telling lies to the cops. It seems to me a very Haitian drama, people seeking to destroy other people. Either way, he found himself chased by the cops, they told him to get on the ground, and then they kicked him when he was down. His shoes were brand new. Three days old. Really nice shoes. When they took him to jail, they took away his brand new shoes and he never saw them again. He was seething with indignation as he remember this. Then came the chains around his wrists and around his ankles. You can't even use the bathroom without someone helping you when you, he said. They put him on a plane to Haiti without letting him settle things up in New York: his car, his apartment, his job. Hence had money in the bank, where is all my money now?! They are stole my money, won't even let me get it to live here. When the drop you off in Haiti, he said, they give you nothing. You got nothing. They don't even give you clothes. He had to spend eight days in prison in Haiti before they let him out. Claire, he said, they don't feed you in prison here. You ain't got no food. What you suppose to do then, huh? I don't know, Hence, I said. I have no idea. No one in either government makes any effort to reintegrate DPs into the society or help them tie up loose ends from America, or even access the resources they had earned there. They just unchain them and push them off the plane in their prison clothes and prison sneakers. The only think keeping Hence from going crazy, he said, is that he still had family here, family that came and looked from him in the prison and got him out. Most DPs, they don't got family here. They don't have a life here, they ain't coming back to anything. That's why they go crazy, start beating people, killing people. Soon as they get dropped in the airport, some of them just start punching and kicking. Maybe they just want to be killed. (I have heard from other people that much of the violence in Haiti is from criminals deported from America, especially the kidnappings) Now Hence is just one more Haitian refugee. I used to drive a Lexus, he said. I had nice shoes, nice job, I could go to a bar in any part of the city and I had friends there. Claire, man, I don't have money to do nothing now!! I got no home, I can't buy clothes, sometimes I can't even find money to eat. Look at this: he took off his sandals to show me the holes that had worn through the heel and that were starting to show under the balls of the feet. I just gotta keep wearing them cause I don't got no money for more. The indignity of poverty is even greater for those who know something different.