Breath, Eyes, Memory (13 page)

"I will go soon," I told my grandmother, "back to my husband."

"It is better," she said. "It is hard for a woman to raise girls alone."

She walked into her room, took her statue of Erzulie, and pressed it into my hand.

"My heart, it weeps like a river," she said, "for the pain we have caused you."

I held the statue against my chest as I cried in the night. I thought I heard my grandmother crying too, but it was the rain slowing down to a mere drizzle, tapping on the roof.

The next morning, I went jogging, along the road, through the cemetery plot, and into the hills. The sun had already dried some of the puddles from the drizzle the night before.

Along the way, people stared at me with puzzled expressions on their faces. Is this what happens to our girls when they leave this place? They become such frightened creatures that they run like the wind, from nothing at all.

Chapter 24

T
hree days later, my mother came. When I first caught a glimpse of her, she was sitting on the back of a cart being pulled by two teenage boys.

Eliab raced to the yard, grabbed my grandmother's hand, and yanked her towards the road.

My mother was shielding her face from us, hiding behind a red umbrella.

My grandmother followed Eliab to the edge of the road.

"That lady," Eliab said, pointing at the umbrella guarding my mother's face. "That lady, she says she belongs to you."

Tante Atie was in the yard boiling some water for our morning coffee. She got up quickly when my grandmother started screaming my mother's name.

"Min Martine!"

"Tololo. Tololo," Eliab chimed in as though it was his long-lost mother who had come back.

My grandmother grabbed her broom and speared it in the ground to anchor herself.

My mother folded the red umbrella and laid it on top of a large suitcase on the cart next to her.

Some of the road vendors gathered around her to say hello.

My mother kissed them on the cheek and stroked their children's heads. They looked curiously at her cerise jumper, ballooned around her small frame.

My grandmother was trembling on the spot where she was standing. Tante Atie put her hands on her hips and stared ahead. She did not look the least bit surprised.

A plantain green scarf floated in the breeze behind my mother. She skipped through the dust and rushed across the yard. Eliab circled around her like a wingless butterfly.

My mother walked over and kissed my grandmother. Tante Atie moved slowly towards her, not particularly excited. My mother was glowing.

Tante Atie tapped her lips against my mother's cheeks, then went back to fanning the cooking sticks with my grandmother's hat.

"Sak pasé, Atie?" asked my mother.

"You," answered Tante Atie fanning the flames. "You're what's new."

I clung to the porch railing as my anchor. It had been almost two years since the last time we saw each other. My mother's skin was unusually light, a pale mocha, three or four shades lighter than any of ours.

Brigitte's body tightened, as though she could sense the tension in mine.

"I see you still wear the deuil," my mother said to my grandmother.

"It is all the same," answered my grandmother. "The black is easier; it does not get dirty."

"Mon Dieu, you do not look bad for an old lady," said my mother. "And you have been talking about arranging your funeral like it was tomorrow."

"Your skin looks lighter," said my grandmother. "Is it prodwi? You use something?"

My mother looked embarrassed.

"It is very cold in America," my mother said. "The cold turns us into ghosts."

"Papa Shango, the sun here, will change that," my grandmother said.

"I am not staying long enough for that," my mother said. "When I got your telegram, I decided to come and see Sophie and take care of your affairs at the same time. I plan to stay for only three days. This is not the visit I owe you. This is just circumstance. When I come again, I will stay with you for a very long time."

I watched her from the railing, waiting for her to look over and address me personally.

She looked very young and thin, but for the most part healthy. Because of the roomy size of her jumper, I couldn't tell whether or not she was wearing her prosthetic bra.

"Sophie, walk to your mother," said my grandmother.

They were all staring at me, even Eliab. My mother put her hands in her pockets. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to see my face through the sun's glare.

Brigitte began to twist in my arms. She sensed something.

"Sophie, walk to your mother." My grandmother's voice grew more forceful.

My mother looked uncomfortable, almost scared.

I did not move. We stared at each other across the yard, each waiting for the other to yield. As her daughter, I was expected to walk over and greet her first. However, I did not trust my legs. I wasn't sure I could make it down the steps without slipping and hurting both myself and Brigitte.

"Walk to your mother." My grandmother was becoming angry.

"It is okay," my mother said, coming towards me. "I will walk to her."

She climbed onto the porch and kissed me on the cheek.

Brigitte reached up to grab a large loop earring on my mother's right lobe.

"You didn't send word you were coming," I said.

"Let me see her," she said, extending her hands for Brigitte. Brigitte leaned forward. I let her slip into my mother's grasp.

"How old is she now?" she asked.

"Almost six months."

She made funny faces at Brigitte.

"I got all the pictures you sent me," she said.

"Why didn't you answer?"

"I couldn't find the words," she said. "How are you?"

"I've been better."

She went back to the yard to pay the cart boys and took Brigitte with her.

"You're not staying here, are you?" she asked when she came back to the porch.

She tickled Brigitte's armpits as she spoke, giggling along with her.

I reached for my daughter. She pressed Brigitte's body against her chest and would not give her back.

"Manman asked me to come here and make things better between us. It's not right for a mother and daughter to be enemies. Manman thinks it puts a curse on the family. Besides, your husband came to me and I could not refuse him."

"You've seen him?"

"Oh, the flames in your eyes."

"How is he?"

"Worried. I told him we would be back in three days."

"You can't make plans for me."

' "I did."

We were speaking to one another in English without realizing it.

"Oh that cling-clang talk," interrupted my grandmother. "It sounds like glass breaking."

Brigitte was pulling at my mother's earrings. My mother took them off and handed them to me.

"You and I, we started wrong," my mother said. "You are now a woman, with your own house. We are allowed to start again."

The mid-morning sky looked like an old quilt, with long bands of red and indigo stretching their way past drifting clouds. Like everything else, eventually even the rainbows disappeared.

Chapter 25

M
y mother changed into a sun dress to parcel out what she had brought. Under the spaghetti straps, I could see the true unbleached ebony shade of her skin. In contrast, her face looked like the palm of a hand.

My grandmother reached over and cupped her hands over my mother's prosthetic bra.

"Do they hurt?" asked my grandmother.

"No," my mother answered, "because they are not really part of me."

She had brought cloth for my mother and Tante Atie to share. Packaged rice and beans and packaged spices for my grandmother.

I got the diapers and underclothes that Joseph had sent for the baby, along with some T-shirts and shorts for me.

"If you were not such a stubborn old woman," my mother said to my grandmother, "I would move you and

Atie to Croix-des-Rosets or the city. I could buy you a bougainvillea. You would have electricity, and all kinds of modern machines."

"I like myself here," said my grandmother. "I need to see about my papers for this land and I need to have all the things for my passing. With all my children here, this is a good time."

Tante Atie was writing in her notebook. My mother leaned over to look. Tante Atie pulled her notebook away and slammed it shut.

"We will see the notary about the land papers," said my grandmother. "We will do it tomorrow."

"What will you do with the land?" asked Tante Atie.

"I want to make the papers show all the people it belongs to."

Tante Atie did not go to Louise's house, but spent the evening in the yard, staring at the sky.

My mother could not sleep. She went outside and sat with Tante Atie. They looked up for a long time without saying a word.

Finally my mother said, "Do you remember all the unpleasant stories Manman used to tell us about the stars in the sky?"

"My favorite," said Tante Atie, "was the one about the girl who wished she could marry a star and then went up there and, as real as her eyes were black, the man she wished for was a monster."

"Atie, you remember everything."

"I liked what Papa said better. He thought, Papa, that the stars were brave men."

"Maybe he was right," my mother said.

"He said they would come back and fall in love with me. I wouldn't say that was right."

"We used to fight so hard when we saw a star wink. You said it was winking at you. I thought it was winking at me. I think, Manman, she told us that unpleasant story about the stars to stop the quarrels."

"Young girls, they should be allowed to keep their pleasant stories," Tante Atie said.

"Why don't you sleep in your bed?" asked my mother.

"Because it is empty in my bed."

"You had flanneurs, men who came to ask for your hand."

"Until better women came along."

"How could you not be chosen? You are Atie Caco."

"Atie Caco to you. Special to no one."

"You were so beautiful, Atie, when you were a girl. Papa, he loved you best."

"I have then the curse of a girl whose papa loved her best."

Tante Atie rubbed the scar on the side of her head. They looked up at the sky and pointed to a blinking star.

"You can keep the brightest ones," said Tante Atie. "When you are gone, I will have them all to myself."

"We come from a place," my mother said, "where in one instant, you can lose your father and all your other dreams."

Chapter 26

M
y mother and grandmother left early for the notary's. Tante Atie was not in her room. Eliab was playing with pieces of brown paper, stuffing them with leaves to make cigars.

I called him to buy me some milk from the market.

"The new lady," he said, "does she belong to you?"

"Sometimes I claim her," I said, "sometimes I do not."

I gave him some money to buy me some goat milk from the market. He came back with some milk in a cut-off plastic container and a large mango for himself.

"That young fellow, he wants to marry your daughter," my grandmother said as she and my mother walked into the yard.

Eliab looked embarrassed.

"Does that fellow know?" my mother laughed. "My daughter has a very old husband."

My mother was carrying a few large bundles.

I had never seen my grandmother so happy. My mother was glowing.

"We are now landowners," my mother said. "We all now own part of La Nouvelle Dame Marie."

"Did this land not always belong to you and Tante Atie?" I asked my mother.

"Yes, but now you have a piece of it too."

She flashed the new deed for the house.

"La
terre sera également divisée," she read the document. "Equally, my dear. The land is equally divided between Atie and me and you and your daughter."

My grandmother pulled out a dressy church hat that she had bought for Tante Atie.

"Sunday we go to the cathedral," said my mother. "We meet Manmans priest."

My mother kissed the bottom of Brigitte's feet.

"Where is Atie?" asked my mother. "I got her a hat that will make her look downright chic."

"She went out," I said.

"The gods will punish me for Atie's ways." My grandmother moaned.

Tante Atie kept her eyes on the lantern on the hills as we ate dinner that night. She was squinting as though she wanted to see with her ears, like my grandmother.

"I look forward to the Mass on Sunday," my grandmother said, breaking the silence. "I want that young priest. The one they call Lavalas. I want him to sing the last song at my funeral."

Brigitte shook the new rattle that my mother had brought her.

My grandmother took Brigitte from me and put a few rice grains in her mouth. My daughter opened her mouth wide, trying to engulf the rice.

Tante Atie walked up the steps and went back to her room.

"I don't know," my grandmother said. "Her mood changes more than the colors in the sky. Take her with you when you return to New York."

"I have asked her before," my mother said. "She wants to be with you."

"She feels she must," my grandmother said. "It's not love. It is duty."

Everything was rustling in Tante Atie's room, as though she were packing. She was mumbling to herself so I dared not peek in. In the yard my mother and grandmother were sitting around the table, passing my grandmother's old clay pipe back and forth to each other.

"Manman, will you know when your time comes to die?" my mother asked sadly.

"The old bones, they will know."

"I want to be buried here when I die," my mother said.

"You should tell Sophie. She is your daughter. She will respect your wishes."

"I don't want much," my mother said. "I don't want a Mass like you. I want to be buried the day after I die. Just like the old days when we kept our dead home."

"That is reason for you and Sophie to be friends," my grandmother said. "She can carry out your wishes. I can help, but she is your child."

My mother paced the corridor most of the night. She walked into my room and tiptoed over to my bed. I crossed my legs tightly, already feeling my body shivering.

I shut my eyes tightly and pretended to be asleep.

She walked over to the baby and stood over her for a long time. Tears streamed down her face as she watched us sleep. The tears came harder. She turned and walked out.

My mother walked into the room at dawn while I was changing Brigitte's diapers.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Fine," she said.

"Do you still have trouble sleeping?" I tried to be polite.

"It's worse when I am here," she said.

"Are you having nightmares?"

"More than ever," she said.

My old sympathy was coming back. I remembered the nightmares. Sometimes, I even had some myself. I was feeling sorry for her.

"I thought it was my face that brought them on," I said.

"Your face?"

"Because I look like him. My father. A child out of wedlock always looks like its father."

She seemed shocked that I remembered.

"When I first saw you in New York, I must admit, it frightened me the way you looked. But it is not something that I can help. It is not something that you can help. It is just part of our lives.

"As a woman, your face has changed. You are a different person. Besides, I have always had nightmares. Every night of my life. It was just stronger then, because that was the first time I was seeing that face."

"Why did you put me through those tests?" I blurted out.

"If I tell you today, you must never ask me again."

I wanted to reserve my right to ask as many times as I needed to. I was not angry with her anymore. I had a greater need to understand, so that I would never repeat it myself.

"I did it," she said, "because my mother had done it to me. I have no greater excuse. I realize standing here that the two greatest pains of my life are very much related. The one good thing about my being raped was that it made the testing stop. The testing and the rape. I live both every day."

"You're not dressed yet?" My grandmother was standing in the doorway. "I am ready to go."

My mother placed her hand on my grandmother's shoulder and signaled for her to wait. She turned back to me and said in English, "I want to be your friend, your very very good friend, because you saved my life many times when you woke me up from those nightmares."

My mother went to my grandmother's room to dress and soon they left for the road.

They came back a few hours later with a pan full of bloody pig meat.

In our family, we had come to expect that people can disappear into thin air. All traces lost except in the vivid eyes of one's memory. Still, Tante Atie had never thought that Louise would leave her so quickly, without any last words.

That night, Tante Atie had a glazed look on her face as she ate the fried pork.

"Forgive me if I don't go to Mass ever again. I will choke on the Communion if I take it angry."

Louise had sold her pig, taken my grandmother's money, and left the valley, without so much as a good-bye to Tante Atie.