It was bright and hot when she arrived in Port-au-Prince, just before noon. She had worn a white dress, thinking it made her look more Haitian. The Customs officials waved her toward a checkpoint for citizens.
She was surprised, and a little annoyed, that her Haitian relatives weren't at the airport. After a half-hour drive through the dusty streets, she arrived at the guest house where she had booked rooms for her family for the week. They weren't there either.
Her adoptive parents had always raised her to be ten minutes early to everything. "I'm not sure I like Haitian time," she said.But then her mother and two sisters arrived at the steel gate. Colas climbed slowly out of an SUV. She paused and stared at her daughter's face, so like her own. Then a smile spread over her thin features.
As they embraced, the frail older woman disappeared into the arms of Mariette, a head taller, with the athletic build of the college volleyball player she once was. The first words she said to her mother were, "You're so little!"
Colas leaned back, cradled her daughter's face to study it. It was too soon to let go, so they didn't. They walked arm-and-arm into the guest house, the rest of the family trailing behind.They chatted straight through lunch with a translator. The next time you come, Colas told Mariette, you must bring your family, let me babysit the kids. "They will stay with grandma," she laughed. "They can stay the whole week."
Colas slid her chair closer to her daughter, so their shoulders touched. She reached out, and stroked Mariette's braided hair.
Mariette bit by bit gathered her mother's story, how she had ten children, seven of them still alive, and earned money from selling vegetables. She heard that her father was tall, like Mariette, and had three children by other women. Colas raised them all. "My father was a rolling stone, apparently," she said.
About a half hour later, the conversation took a serious turn."Do you remember your godmother, Rose-Marie?" Colas asked.She told Mariette how Rose-Marie, an assistant to a Haitian pastor who worked in the village, had offered to take her into her home in Port-au-Prince.
Mariette was sick and the family was struggling, so Colas said yes. She said she had visited Mariette.Then one day she went to the orphanage, and Mariette was gone.
"So, you never wanted me to be adopted?" Mariette pressed her. No, her mother said, she never agreed to her child going away.
What did she do next, Mariette asked. "I prayed," her mother replied. "I didn't know what to do. I felt sick."Over the coming days, Mariette could get little more from her mother. She cursed herself for not learning Creole.
The gap between mother and daughter only widened the next day, when she travelled to the family home in the countryside, Colas in the blouse, skirt and new shoes her daughter had given her.It took a day. And when Mariette got there, she was shocked.
The house was made of chipped cinderblock, with a roof of tree limbs topped with steel and a hard-packed dirt floor. There was no electricity, no running water. A cluster of plantain leaves out back served as the latrine, shared with several neighbours.
The nearest drinking water was a half-hour walk away, and the family washed with rain that ran off the roof into a plastic drum. A tall, faded pink sheet of plywood passed for a front door, which could be picked up and set back. The only windows were spaces in the concrete filled with old clothes for privacy.
Mariette walked inside with Colas, not taking off her sunglasses. She exited almost immediately."My initial reaction was, holy crap, I have to get out of here," shesaid later.
"It's not like I haven't seen poverty in Haiti before, but it was so personal. It's my mom."She had planned to spend the night at the house. Instead, she traveled two more hours to the one hotel in Pestel.
The next day, Junette said she would like to either move their mother to the capital or fix up her home, where two or three of her children and their families stay at any given time.The implication was clear: Mariette would pay.Her brothers walked through the home with two barefoot contractors. Mariette ended up with a rough estimate of around $5,000–far more than she could afford.
Her family saw her as the rich American relative. Her youngest sister and a niece hinted that they could go to nursing school, if they could only come up with the tuition.Colas wanted to prepare a meal, but didn't have money to buy a chicken. Mariette paid.
The neighbours flocked to the house to see the visitor. Some villagers from Deron claimed to have put children in the same orphanage as Mariette's, hoping for adoption. They praised Platel for helping the community, and one man said he was disappointed his child wasn't chosen for a life abroad.
"People are told these kids will have a better life and one day may come back," said Ilmer Resil'homme, a pastor.
"Some of them understand. Some don't."
Back in Port-au-Prince, on her final night in Haiti, Mariette brought the family for dinner at the guest house.Junette was there with her daughter. Her brother Feni came, as did her sister Aliette, with her five children.Mariette barely ate as they all talked. They wrote out a family tree that included Mariette and her kids.
Toward the end of the night, Mariette was yawning. They hugged each other, and then her family began singing hymns in Creole.Mariette had no idea what they were singing, but she recorded it on her phone. It felt like Thanksgiving.She left Haiti with a passport photo of her father, a gift from Colas. It was the only photo her mother had of Berlisse.
The details of Mariette's adoption remain a mystery. Wiebe, the Canadian facilitator, can't be located. Sandra lost touch with him and believes he died five years ago.It is unclear how much he knew.
A woman by the name of Rose-Marie Platel lives in a small apartment in the Boston neighbourhood of Mattapan, where many Haitians have settled. She says she used to live on the same street where the orphanage was located. Her friends back in Haiti and Sandra insist from photos that it's the same woman.
But this woman says she knows nothing about orphans, and was too busy raising her own children. She dismisses a visitor with a brusque wave.Adoptions in Haiti are now much more regulated. Birth parents can give up parental rights only after they appear before a court official, and attempts are made to keep the family together.
The government matches children with adoptive parents, so that they can no longer choose kids directly from an orphanage, as Sandra did.Sandra's acknowledgement of doubts about the adoption angered Mariette for a time, but she has tried to let it go."I still think it's messed up, but I'm no longer bitter," she said.
She has stayed in close touch with her new, yet old Haitian family, and her brother told her Colas now sleeps with her daughter's photo under her pillow.Mariette is trying to come up with money for them while putting her kids through school and buying a house. She plans to run a half-marathon in Miami to raise funds and visit Haiti with her husband and children.She may not know everything about her adoption, but she knows enough.
"Every single day for my entire life I have always thought of my mom," she said.
"When I wake up now I have a face to put to the name."
AP