An old lady was trying to kill a rooster in the yard behind her house. The rooster escaped her grasp and ran around headless until it collapsed in the middle of the road. We walked around the b.l.o.o.d.y trail as the lady picked up the dead animal.
"Have you brought your daughter to Martine?" Tante Atie asked.
"She never answers my letters. When I called her, she slammed the phone down on me. She has not seen my daughter. We have not spoken since I left home."
"That"s very sad for both of you. Very sad since you and Martine don"t have anybody else over there. And Martine"s head is not in the best condition."
A man hammered nails into a coffin in front of his roadside hut.
"Honneur, Monsie Frank," Tante Atie called out to the coffin builder.
"Respect." He flashed back a friendly smile.
"We have always heard that it is grand there," said Tante Atie. "Is it really as grand as they say, New York?"
"It"s a place where you can lose yourself easily."
"Grand or not grand, I am losing myself here too."
We pa.s.sed Man Grace"s farm, with the bamboo fence around it. The house was worn out and wind-whipped. There were large wooden boards on the windows.
"When did Man Grace die?" I asked Tante Atie.
"Almost the day I came back to live here," she said.
"What was wrong with her?"
"She went to bed and just stopped breathing. It must have been her time. It was very hard on Louise when her monman died. Louise and Grace, they had slept in the same bed all her life. Louise was in the bed when Grace went to Guinea. To this day, it tears her open to sleep alone."
My grandmother"s house still looked the same. I dropped my suitcase on the porch and followed Tante Atie out to the back.
Grandme Ife was sprinkling water in the dust, before doing her sweeping.
"Old woman, I brought your children," Tante Atie said.
"Age and wedlock tames the beast," said my grandmother. "Am I looking at Sophie?"
I moved closer, pressing her fingers against my cheeks.
"Did you even have b.r.e.a.s.t.s the last time I saw you?" asked my grandmother.
"It has not been that long," Tante Atie said.
My grandmother"s eyes were filled with tears. She buried her face in my chest and wrapped her arms around my waist.
"I called my daughter Brigitte Ife," I said. "The Ife is after you."
She stretched her neck to get a closer look.
"Do you see my granddaughter?" she asked, tracing her thumb across Brigitte"s chin. "The tree has not split one mite. Isn"t it a miracle that we can visit with all our kin, simply by looking into this face?"
Chapter 15.
The lights on a distant hill glowed like a candle light vigil. We ate supper at the small table on the back porch, A New York skyline was emblazoned in sequins across Tante Atie"s chest. I had hurriedly bought a matching pair of i LOVE NEW YORK sweatshirts for her and my grandmother, forgetting about the lifelong deuil, which kept my grandmother from wearing anything but black, to mourn my grandfather.
My grandmother chewed endlessly on the same piece of meat, as her eyes travelled back and forth between my face and Tante Atie"s chest. I swallowed a mouthful of soursop juice, savoring the heavy screen of brown sugar lingering on my tongue.
"Does your mother still cook Haitian?" asked Tante Atie with a full mouth.
"I am not sure," I said.
My grandmother lowered her eyelids, sheltered her displeasure, and continued chewing.
"And you? Can you make some dishes?" Tante Atie asked.
"You will have to let me cook a meal," I said.
A small draft blew the cooking embers through the yard. My daughter eagerly clawed my neck as I slipped her bottle into her mouth.
"Do you go there again tonight?" my grandmother asked Tante Atie.
"The reading, it takes a lot of time," Tante Atie said.
"Why do you not go to the reading cla.s.ses?"
"You want me to go the whole distance at night?"
"If you had your lessons elsewhere," said my grandmother, "they would be during the day. The way you go about free in the night, one would think you a devil."
"The night is already in my face, it is. Why should I be afraid of it?"
"I would like it better if you were learning elsewhere."
"I like where I am."
"Can you read only by moonlight?"
"Knowledge, you do not catch it in the air, old woman. I have to labor at it. Is that not right, Sophie?"
My grandmother did not give me a chance to answer.
"You can only labor in the night?"
"Reading, it is not like the gifts you have. I was not born with it."
"Most people are born with what they need," said my grandmother.
"I was born short of my share."
"You say that to your Makers when you see them in Guinea."
"Do not send me off to my Makers, old woman. Besides, my Makers should hear me from this place." My aunt raised her head to the star-filled sky. "Hear me! Great G.o.ds that made the moon and the stars. You see what you have done to me. You were stingy with the clay when you made this creature."
"Blasphemy!" spat my grandmother. "Why can"t the girl come here and teach you your letters?"
Tante Atie got up from the table and walked to the yard. She poured some juice over the cooking ashes as she came back to collect our plates.
She took the plates to the yard, scrubbed them with a soap-soaked palm leaf, then laid them out to dry.
"Before you go into the night, why don"t you read to us from your reading book?"
My grandmother shut both her eyes as she twirled a rooster feather in her ear.
Tante Atie walked into the house and came back with a composition notebook wrapped in brown paper. She raised the notebook so it covered her face and slowly began to read. At first she stuttered but soon her voice took on an even flow.
She read the very same words as those I"d written on the card that I had made for her so long ago, on Mother"s Day.
My mother is a daffodil, limber and strong as one.My mother is a daffodil, but in the wind, iron strong.
When she was done, she raised her head from behind the pages and snapped the notebook shut.
"I have never forgotten those words. I have written them down."
She got up and began walking away. "I am off into the night," she said. "The spirits of alone-ness, they call to me."
They put me in my mother"s room. It had the same four-poster bed and the same mahogany wardrobe with giant hibiscus carved all over it. The mirror on the wardrobe had a wide reflection so that you could see what was happening out on the front and back porches. Even as far as the tcha tcha tree out towards the road.
The mattress sank as I sat on the bed, changing my daughter by the light of a tet gridap, a tin-can lamp, named after bald-headed girls.
My grandmother was sleeping in the next room. She mumbled in her sleep, like an old warrior in the midst of a battle. My mother used to make the same kinds of sounds. Lage mwin. Leave me alone.
I lay on the mattress with my daughter on my belly. Her breath felt soothing and warm against my bare skin. All we were missing was Joseph.
When I was pregnant, Joseph would play his saxophone for us, alone in the dark. He would put the horn very close to my stomach and blow in a soft whisper. Brigitte would come alive inside me, tickling like a feather under my skin. Joseph would press his ear against my stomach to hear her every move. He was always afraid that her sudden rotations would hurt me inside. We would both get real quiet, to give her a chance to calm down. Sometimes if she had trouble going to sleep, he would stroke my belly and both she and I would doze off immediately.
I put on one of Joseph"s old shirts to sleep in. Tracing my fingers across my daughter"s spine, I asked her questions that she could not possibly answer, questions that even I didn"t know the answers to.
"Are you going to remember all of this? Will you be mad at Mommy for severing you from your daddy? Are you going to inherit some of Mommy"s problems?"
My daughter was shaking slightly beneath her night shirt. I felt a sudden urge to tell her a story. When I was a little girl, Tante Atie had always seen to it that I heard a story, especially when I could not sleep at night.
"Crick."
"Crack?"
"Honor?"
"Respect."
There was magic in the images that she had made out of the night. She would rock my body on her lap as she told me of fishermen and mermaids bravely falling in love. The mermaids would leave stars for the fishermen to pick out of the sand. For the most beloved fishermen, the mermaids would leave their combs, which would turn to gold when the fishermen kissed them.
Brigitte woke up with a loud wail. She moaned, reaching up to touch my face. I picked up a wet towel and rubbed it over her body.
After her feeding, I opened the window a crack. My grandmother would scold me if she knew I was letting the night air into the house.
Tante Atie was standing in the yard, waving to an invisible face. I walked away from the window and lay back down on the bed with my daughter.
My grandmother was pacing loudly in the next room as Tante Atie giggled loudly in the yard. It sounded like she had been drinking. Tante Atie walked up to the house, her feet pounding the cement.
"Is the lesson over?" asked my grandmother.
"Old woman, you will wake up Sophie," Tante Atie said.
"White hair is a crown of glory," said my grandmother.
"I don"t have white hair," said Tante Atie.
"Only good deeds demand respect. Do you not want Sophie to respect you?"
"Sophie is not a child anymore, old woman. I do not have to be a saint for her."
Chapter 16.
I got up to watch the sun rise. I sat on the back steps, as clouds of smoke rose from charcoal pits all over the valley. A few small lizards darted through the dew-laden gra.s.s, their gizzards bloated like bubble gum. A group of women came trotting along the road, sitting side-saddle on overloaded mules. got up to watch the sun rise. I sat on the back steps, as clouds of smoke rose from charcoal pits all over the valley. A few small lizards darted through the dew-laden gra.s.s, their gizzards bloated like bubble gum. A group of women came trotting along the road, sitting side-saddle on overloaded mules.
I walked into a small wooden shack, split by a wall of tin into a latrine and a bathing room. In the bathing room was a metal basin filled with leaves and rainwater.
Even though so much time had pa.s.sed since I"d given birth, I still felt extremely fat. I peeled off Joseph"s shirt and scrubbed my flesh with the leaves in the water. The stems left tiny marks on my skin, which reminded me of the giant goose b.u.mps my mother"s testing used to leave on my flesh.
I raised a handful of leaves to my nose. They were a potpourri of flesh healers: catnip, senna, sarsaparillas, corrosol, the petals of blood red hibiscus, forget-me-nots, and daffodils.
After the bath, I wrapped a towel around me and ran back inside the house. My grandmother was sitting on the edge of her canopy bed. Her mattress had open seams where she stuffed her most precious belongings.
"Sophie, se ou?"
"It"s me." I said, standing in the doorway.