Chevelle's Story

chapter 5

Chevelle and Abel spent the next few hours talking about everything from their favorite movies to their biggest fails at love. Chevelle's had been back in Haiti when—despite the many warnings of her friends—she'd lost her virginity to her lifelong crush, Stanley Rameau, only for him to give her gonorrhea and never speak to her again.

Her first introduction to the special cruelty men reserve for the women they have already used up.

It had hurt at the time—both the heartbreak and the gonorrhea—but considering what's out there, Chevelle knew she was one of the lucky ones.

She was convinced that her encounter with Stanley somewhat contributed to the mental instability she still experienced today, but she'd gotten over the heartbreak soon enough when she travelled to the capital a few months later and met Wilson Felix at the Port-au-Prince jazz festival.

Wilson Felix: a twenty-four-year-old saxophone player with two first names, thick locs down to his waist, and a weakness for beautiful women. He had spotted Chevelle in the audience and jumped offstage, playing his instrument as he maneuvered through the crowd until he reached her. He kissed her hand, promised that he would be back for more, and for the rest of the night Chevelle didn't take her eyes off of him once. Wilson found Chevelle after his band finished their set, and they talked for hours, spending the rest of Chevelle's time at the jazz festival together. Chevelle was sixteen and naïve, and so she fell in love quickly; she didn't know any better.

Her romance with Wilson had been a whirlwind, sweeping Chevelle off her feet and making her realize how small her world had been before him. Wilson proposed to Chevelle some months later—the same week her parents told their family they would be moving to America. By then, Chevelle was four months shy of eighteen and she wanted to run away and marry Wilson before her parents could make her move, but two days before she planned to run away, the earthquake hit. Wilson died in the earthquake.

Abel, on the other hand, had had a much less turbulent love life. He was handsome and a man, so these things had always come quite easy to him. Possibly too much so.

Abel had always been passionate, and so rather than just sex, he enjoyed being in relationships, even if they were short-lived. He had his first girlfriend in the ninth grade—a two-month relationship with a girl named Lucille. Abel couldn't remember her last name, but he remembered that she was the first girl who ever touched his penis. And she'd been a tenth grader at the time, so that automatically made him cooler. After Lucille, Abel hopped from girl to girl and it was mostly unserious—serial dating, if you will. And then university came.

After graduating high school, Abel found himself growing tired of the games. He craved a real intimacy—one he hadn't even known yet—and since, as we all know, he's quite the looker, he didn't really have to go searching for that intimacy; it kind of just found him.

The first time Abel Seifu was truly in love was in his sophomore year of undergrad when he met Delphine Strauss in his Principles of Agronomy seminar. Delphine was a Senegalese-German student athlete who ran the fastest 200-meter dash the school had ever seen and was also the only other person in Abel's agronomy class that wasn't white, so they became quick friends. Abel had thought he was in love back in high school with his (first of three) senior year girlfriends, Ivy Aguta, but when he met Delphine, he realized just how empty all of his previous relationships had been. Something about Delphine and Abel just clicked. There was a certain fullness to their relationship—a depth that couldn't be manufactured, only felt.

Abel and Delphine dated until the end of Abel's junior year when he graduated early and moved across the country despite Delphine's pleas for him to stay close until she graduated in another two years and could join him. And although his relationship with Delphine ended sourly, it still taught Abel more about love and about himself than any of his countless others had.