"Reveye ou, bel fanm, wake up pretty lady," Marianne Joseph said to her slumbering partner, Geraldine Marcelin. It was Saturday, and after a long week of work as a member of the Haitian National Police, Geraldine Marcelin was hoping to sleep in. Marianne is a morning person and Geraldine is definitely not. Groaning, Geraldine mumbled something under her breath and looked at Marianne. What the fuck is wrong with this bitch? Geraldine wondered, though she worked up a smile as she gazed at Marianne.
"Ba mwen la pe, se samedi li ye, leave me alone, it's Saturday," Geraldine grumbled at Marianne, and she buried her face in her pillow. Marianne sat up and looked at Geraldine, who was trying hard to get back to sleep. In the commune of Fort Saint Michel, northern Haiti, the sun had risen, but Geraldine did not feel like greeting it. Marianne, who'd spent ages as a maid in the house of the affluent Mathieu family, was used to getting up early. Certain habits were hard to break...
Marianne patted Geraldine's gorgeous bum, and then got up and headed out of the bedroom, and toward the kitchen down the hall. She began preparing breakfast, consisting of buttered bread, avocados she'd purchased the day before, and of course, two steamy cups of overly sugared coffee, prepared in the Haitian style. Marianne sat at the table and waited for the delicious scent of the food to work its way throughout the house.
"Bonjour, Adele, kijan ou ye? Good morning, Adele, how are you?" Marianne said softly, gently rubbing the dog's head. Adele had woken up, unlike her mistress, and was now begging Marianne for some scraps. Marianne got up and took some meat from the pantry, and threw a couple of large pieces to Adele, who promptly wolfed it down. The dog wagged her tail in contentment, and Marianne grinned. At least someone appreciates an early riser...
Geraldine lay in bed, but although her eyes were closed, she was not sleeping. The previous week at work was hell. First, in her capacity as a patrol supervisor with the Haitian National Police, Geraldine ran into some difficulties. A new officer named Marc Lapointe made a point of challenging her authority, and Geraldine ended up ripping him a new one, right in front of everyone at the casern. Second of all, the entire Haitian National Police was on alert for a new kind of Zinglendo, mountainside bandits who made their living by robbing travelers all over Haiti. They were the bane of the tourism industry...
Yeah, Geraldine was not having a good time. As one of a few female members of the Haitian National Police, she had her hands full both with the bad guys and her own colleagues. Progress has always been a slow process in certain institutions on the island of Haiti, and policing appears to be one of them. Geraldine's father, former Haitian Armed Forces member Gerald Marcelin raised her to be stoic, but the young Haitian policewoman was not made of steel...
When Geraldine asked Marianne to move in with her a few weeks ago, she hadn't been fully prepared for how much her life would change. As a single lesbian, Geraldine was considered an oddity both at work and in her personal life. The island of Haiti is deeply conservative, and for the most part, LGBT people are closeted. It's not like in America or Canada where gays, lesbians and bisexuals run around doing their own thing, without fear or shame. In Haiti, one of the worst insults a person could use against a man is the term Masisi, which meant fag in Haitian Creole. There was another derogatory term for women who sleep with other women, and that term is Madivinez.
