Shannon Costello

An article in the Washington Post referred to the dingy Haitian part of Miami.  I thought, “Hey- I’ve been there!”  It wasn’t necessarily intentional, of course (Shannon:  always include the zipcode when looking for directions on Google Maps, ok?).  There were the churches (l’eglise).  There was the meat shop selling goat meat.  A few blocks later we saw some sort of bar, the kind that is painted bright purple and has no windows.  I don’t know that it was a Haitian bar, I just know it wasn’t the nice part of town.  But none of this was as compelling for me as the view of downtown Miami from across Biscayne Bay.

If you look at a map of Miami you will see that there is a thin strip of land between the city and the Atlantic Ocean.  It looks super impressive from the air.  The land is so low and flat the skyscrapers seem to grow right out of the water.

We had about twenty minutes before we needed to show up at the airport, so we drove a little way across the bay, pulled off into a parking area, and walked to the edge of the bay, facing the city.  The buildings are still impressive from there.  I remember one of them was rainbow colored.  I saw a cruise ship docked.  And there were fruits (like oranges, pineapple tops) floating in the water; they felt like remnants from some sumptuous meal.

But there were other things in the water.  A man’s shoe.  It always bothers me when I see just one shoe somewhere it doesn’t belong.  Where is the other one?  I saw what looked like a large tortoise, maybe two feet long.  But when I got closer I saw that it was floating upside down, and that it had no head.  Actually, there was a head nearby, floating in the water, but it was some odd type of cow, not your ordinary dairy cow.  What was it doing there?!  Er, I know it was floating, but how did it get there?  There were some live birds swooping around, too.  And I saw a black cat.  It was thin- I could see its bones sticking out as it picked its way among the rocks.  Could a cat get through that maze of boulders quickly?  I stepped a little closer and the cat took off.

It’s not the Haitian part of town that haunts me.  It’s that view of a beautiful city across the bay with a cow’s head floating in the water- a wealthy socialite that presents a carefree face to the world even though she can’t quite hide the fact that something is wrong.