Breath, Eyes, Memory

Chapter 1

A flattened and drying daffodil was dangling off the little card that I had made
my aunt Atie for Mother's Day. I pressed my palm over the flower and squashed
it against the plain beige cardboard. When I turned the corner near the house, I
saw her sitting in an old rocker in the yard, staring at a group of children
crushing dried yellow leaves into the ground. The leaves had been left in the sun
to dry. They would be burned that night at the konbit potluck dinner.
I put the card back in my pocket before I got to the yard. When Tante Atie
saw me, she raised the piece of white cloth she was embroidering and waved it at
me. When I stood in front of her, she opened her arms just wide enough for my
body to fit into them.
"How was school?" she asked, with a big smile.
She bent down and kissed my forehead, then pulled me down onto her lap.
"School was all right," I said. "I like everything but those reading classes they
let parents come to in the afternoon. Everybody's parents come except you. I
never have anyone to read with, so Monsieur Augustin always pairs me off with
an old lady who wants to learn her letters, but does not have children at the
school."
"I do not want a pack of children teaching me how to read," she said. "The
young should learn from the old. Not the other way. Besides, I have to rest my
back when you have your class. I have work."
A blush of embarrassment rose to her brown cheeks.
"At one time, I would have given anything to be in school. But not at my age.
My time is gone. Cooking and cleaning, looking after others, that's my school
now. That schoolhouse is your school. Cutting cane was the only thing for a
young one to do when I was your age. That is why I never want to hear you
complain about your school." She adjusted a pink head rag wrapped tighdy
around her head and dashed off a quick smile revealing two missing side teeth.
"As long as you do not have to work in the fields, it does not matter that I will
never learn to read that ragged old Bible under my pillow."
Whenever she was sad, Tante Atie would talk about the sugar cane fields,
where she and my mother practically lived when they were children. They sawpeople die there from sunstroke every day. Tante Atie said that, one day while
they were all working together, her father—my grandfather— stopped to wipe
his forehead, leaned forward, and died. My grandmother took the body in her
arms and tried to scream the life back into it. They all kept screaming and
hollering, as my grandmother's tears bathed the corpse's face. Nothing would
bring my grandfather back.
The bòlèt man was coming up the road. He was tall and yellow like an amber
roach. The children across the road lined up by the fence to watch him, clutching
one another as he whistled and strolled past them.
This albino, whose name was Chabin, was the biggest lottery agent in the
village. He was thought to have certain gifts that had nothing to do with the
lottery, but which Tante Atie believed put the spirits on his side. For example, if
anyone was chasing him, he could turn into a snake with one flip of his tongue.
Sometimes, he could see the future by looking into your eyes, unless you closed
your soul to him by thinking of a religious song and prayer while in his presence.
I could tell that Tante Atie was thinking of one of her favorite verses as he
approached. Death is the shepherd of man and in the final dawn, good will be the
master of evil.
"Honneur, mes belles, Atie, Sophie."
Chabin winked at us from the front gate. He had no eyelashes—or seemed to
have none. His eyebrows were tawny and fine like corn silk, but he had a thick
head of dirty red hair.
"How are you today?" he asked.
"Today, we are fine," Tante Atie said. "We do not know about tomorrow."
"Ki niméro today?" he asked. "What numbers you playing?"
"Today, we play my sister Martine's age," Tante Atie said. "Sophie's mother's
age. Thirty-one. Perhaps it will bring me luck."
"Thirty-one will cost you fifty cents," he said.
Tante Atie reached into her bra and pulled out one gourde.
"We will play the number twice," she said.
Even though Tante Atie played faithfully, she had never won at the bòlèt. Not
even a small amount, not even once.She said the lottery was like love. Providence was not with her, but she was
patient.
The albino wrote us a receipt with the numbers and the amount Tante Atie had
given him.
The children cringed behind the gate as he went on his way. Tante Atie raised
her receipt towards the sun to see it better.
"There, he wrote your name," I said pointing to the letters, "and there, he
wrote the number thirty-one."
She ran her fingers over the numbers as though they were quilted on the
paper.
"Would it not be wonderful to read?" I said for what must have been the
hundredth time.
"I tell you, my time is passed. School is not for people my age."
The children across the street were piling up the leaves in Madame Augustin's
yard. The bigger ones waited on line as the smaller ones dropped onto the pile,
bouncing to their feet, shrieking and laughing. They called one another's names:
Foi, Hope, Faith, Esperance, Beloved, God-Given, My Joy, First Born, Last
Born, Asefi, Enough-Girls, Enough-Boys, Deliverance, Small Misery, Big
Misery, No Misery. Names as bright and colorful as the giant poincianas in
Madame Augustin's garden.
They grabbed one another and fell to the ground, rejoicing as though they had
flown past the towering flame trees that shielded the yard from the hot Haitian
sun.
"You think these children would be kind to their mothers and clean up those
leaves," Tante Atie said. "Instead, they are making a bigger mess."
"They should know better," I said, secretly wishing that I too could swim in
their sea of dry leaves.
Tante Atie threw her arms around me and squeezed me so hard that the
lemon-scented perfume, which she dabbed across her chest each morning, began
to tickle my nose.
"Sunday is Mother's Day, non?" she said, loudly sucking her teeth. "The
young ones, they should show their mothers they want to help them. What you
see in your children today, it tells you about what they will do for you when you
are close to the grave."I appreciated Tante Atie, but maybe I did not show it enough. Maybe she
wanted to be a real mother, have a real daughter to wear matching clothes with,
hold hands and learn to read with.
"Mother's Day will make you sad, won't it, Tante Atie?"
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"You look like someone who is going to be sad."
"You were always wise beyond your years, just like your mother."
She gently held my waist as I climbed down from her lap. Then she cupped
her face in both palms, her elbows digging |into the pleats of her pink skirt.
I was going to sneak the card under her pillow Saturday night so that she
would find it as she was making the bed on Sunday morning. But the way her
face drooped into her palms made me want to give it to her right then.
I dug into my pocket, and handed it to her. Inside was a poem that I had
written for her.
She took the card from my hand. The flower nearly fell off. She pressed the
tape against the short stem, forced the baby daffodil back in its place, and
handed the card back to me. She did not even look inside.
"Not this year," she said.
"Why not this year?"
"Sophie, it is not mine. It is your mother's. We must send it to your mother."
I only knew my mother from the picture on the night table by Tante Atie's
pillow. She waved from inside the frame with a wide grin on her face and a large
flower in her hair. She witnessed everything that went on in the bougainvillea,
each step, each stumble, each hug and kiss. She saw us when we got up, when
we went to sleep, when we laughed, when we got upset at each other. Her
expression never changed. Her grin never went away.
I sometimes saw my mother in my dreams. She would chase me through a
field of wildflowers as tall as the sky. When she caught me, she would try to
squeeze me into the small frame so I could be in the picture with her. I would
scream and scream until my voice gave out, then Tante Atie would come and
save me from her grasp.
I slipped the card back in my pocket and got up to go inside. Tante Atie
lowered her head and covered her face with her hands. Her fingers muffled her
voice as she spoke.When I am done feeling bad, I will come in and we will find you a very nice
envelope for your card. Maybe it will get to your mother after the fact, but she
will welcome it because it will come directly from you."
"It is your card," I insisted.
"It is for a mother, your mother." She motioned me away with a wave of her
hand. "When it is Aunt's Day, you can make me one."
"Will you let me read it to you?"
"It is not for me to hear, my angel. It is for your mother."
I put the card back in my pocket, plucked out the flower, and dropped it under
my shoes.
Across the road, the children were yelling each other's names, inviting passing
friends to join them. They sat in a circle and shot the crackling leaves high above
their heads. The leaves landed on their faces and clung to their hair. It was
almost as though they were caught in a rain of daffodils.
I continued to watch the children as Tante Atie prepared what she was
bringing to the potluck. She put the last touches on a large tray of sweet potato
pudding that filled the whole house with its molasses scent.
As soon as the sun set, lamps were lit all over our quarter. The smaller
children sat playing marbles near whatever light they could find. The older boys
huddled in small groups near the school yard fence as they chatted over their
books. The girls formed circles around their grandmothers' feet, learning to sew.
Tante Atie had promised that in another year or so she would teach me how to
sew.
"You should not stare," she said as we passed a nearsighted old woman
whispering mystical secrets of needle and thread to a little girl. The girl was
squinting as her eyes dashed back and forth to keep up with the movements of
her grandmother's old fingers.
"Can I start sewing soon?" I asked Tante Atie.
"Soon as I have a little time," she said.
She put her hand on my shoulder and bent down to kiss my cheek.
"Is something troubling you?" I asked.
"Don't let my troubles upset you," she said.
"When I made the card, I thought it would make you happy. I did not mean tomake you sad."
"You have never done anything to make me sad," she said. "That is why this
whole thing is going to be so hard."
A cool evening breeze circled the dust around our feet.
"You should put on your blouse with the long sleeves," she said. "So you don't
catch cold."
I wanted to ask her what was going to be so hard, but she pressed her finger
over my lips and pointed towards the house.
She said "Go" and so I went.
One by one the men began to file out of their houses. Some carried plantains,
others large Negro yams, which made your body itch if you touched them raw.
There were no men in Tante Atie's and my house so we carried the food
ourselves to the yard where the children had been playing.
The women entered the yard with tins of steaming ginger tea and baskets of
cassava bread. Tante Atie and I sat near the gate, she behind the women and me
behind the girls.
Monsieur Augustin stacked some twigs with a rusty pitchfork and dropped his
ripe plantains and husked corn on the pile. He lit a long match and dropped it on
the top of the heap. The flame spread from twig to twig, until they all blended
into a large smoky fire.
Monsieur Augustin's wife began to pass around large cups of ginger tea. The
men broke down into small groups and strolled down the garden path, smoking
their pipes. Old tantes—aunties—and grandmothers swayed cooing babies on
their laps. The teenage boys and girls drifted to dark corners, hidden by the
shadows of rustling banana leaves.
Tante Atie said that the way these potlucks started was really a long time ago
in the hills. Back then, a whole village would get together and clear a field for
planting. The group would take turns clearing each person's land, until all the
land in the village was cleared and planted. The women would cook large
amounts of food while the men worked. Then at sunset, when the work was
done, everyone would gather together and enjoy a feast of eating, dancing, and
laughter.
Here in Croix-des-Rosets, most of the people were city workers who laboredin baseball or clothing factories and lived in small cramped houses to support
their families back in the provinces. Tante Atie said that we were lucky to live in
a house as big as ours, with a living room to receive our guests, plus a room for
the two of us to sleep in. Tante Atie said that only people living on New York
money or people with professions, like Monsieur Augustin, could afford to live
in a house where they did not have to share a yard with a pack of other people.
The others had to live in huts, shacks, or one-room houses that, sometimes, they
had to build themselves.
In spite of where they might live, this potluck was open to everybody who
wanted to come. There was no field to plant, but the workers used their
friendships in the factories or their grouping in the common yards as a reason to
get together, eat, and celebrate life.
Tante Atie kept looking at Madame Augustin as she passed the tea to each
person in the women's circle around us.
"How is Martine?" Madame Augustin handed Tante Atie a cup of steaming
tea. Tante Atie's hand jerked and the tea sprinkled the back of Madame
Augustin's hand.
"I saw the facteur bring you something big yesterday." Madame Augustin
blew into her tea as she spoke. "Did your sister send you a gift?"
Tante Atie tried to ignore the question.
"Was it a gift?" insisted Madame Augustin. "It is not the child's birthday
again, is it? She was just twelve, no less than two months ago."
I wondered why Tante Atie had not showed me the big package. Usually, my
mother would send us two cassettes with our regular money allowance. One
cassette would be for me and Tante Atie, the other for my grandmother. Usually,
Tante Atie and I would listen to our cassette together. Maybe she was saving it
for later.
I tried to listen without looking directly at the women's faces. That would have
been disrespectful, as bad as speaking without being spoken to.
"How is Martine doing over there?" asked Stephane, the albino's wife. She
was a sequins piece worker, who made herself hats from leftover factory
sequins. That night she was wearing a gold bonnet that make her look like a star
had landed on her head.
"My sister is fine, thank you," Tante Atie finally answered.Madame Augustin took a sip of her tea and looked over at me. She gave me a
reprimanding look that said: Why aren't you playing with the other children? I
quickly lowered my eyes, pretending to be studying some random pebbles on the
ground.
"I would wager that it is very nice over there in New York," Madame
Augustin said.
"I suppose it could be," said Tante Atie.
"Why have you never gone?" asked Madame Augustin.
"Perhaps it is not yet the time," said Tante Atie.
"Perhaps it is," corrected Madame Augustin.
She leaned over Tante Atie's shoulder and whispered in a not so low voice,
"When are you going to tell us, Atie, when the car comes to take you to the
airplane?"
"Is Martine sending for you?" asked the albino's wife.
Suddenly, all the women began to buzz with questions.
"When are you leaving?"
"Can it really be as sudden as that?"
"Will you marry there?"
"Will you remember us?"
"I am not going anywhere," Tante Atie interrupted.
"I have it on good information that it was a plane ticket that you received the
other day," said Madame Augustin. "If you are not going, then who was the
plane ticket for?"
All their eyes fell on me at the same time.
"Is the mother sending for the child?" asked the albino's wife.
"I saw the delivery," said Madame Augustin.
"Then she is sending for the child," they concluded.
Suddenly a large hand was patting my shoulder.
"This is very good news," said the accompanying voice. "It is the best thing
that is ever going to happen to you."I could not eat the bowl of food that Tante Atie laid in front of me. I only kept
wishing that everyone would disappear so I could go back home.
The night very slowly slipped into the early hours of the - morning. Soon
everyone began to drift towards their homes. On Saturdays there was the house
to clean and water to fetch from long distances and the clothes to wash and iron
for the Mother's Day Mass.
After everyone was gone, Monsieur Augustin walked Tante Atie and me
home. When we got to our door he moved closer to Tante Atie as though he
wanted to whisper something in her ear. She looked up at him and smiled, then
quickly covered her lips with her fingers, as though she suddenly remembered
her missing teeth and did not want him to see them.
He turned around to look across the street. His wife was carrying some of the
pots back inside the house. He squeezed Tante Atie's hand and pressed his cheek
against hers.
"It is good news, Atie," he said. "Neither you nor Sophie should be sad. A
child belongs with her mother, and a mother with her child."
His wife was now sitting on the steps in front of their bougainvillea, waiting
for him.
"I did not think you would tell your wife before I had a chance to tell the
child," said Tante Atie to Monsieur Augustin.
"You must be brave," he said. "It is some very wonderful news for this child."
The night had grown a bit cool, but we both stood and watched as Monsieur
Augustin crossed the street, took the pails from his wife's hand and bent down to
kiss her forehead. He put his arms around her and closed the front door behind
them.
"When you tell someone something and you call it a secret, they should know
not to tell others," Tante Atie mumbled to herself.
She kept her eyes on the Augustin's house. The main light in their bedroom
was lit. Their bodies were silhouetted on the ruffled curtains blowing in the night
breeze. Monsieur Augustin sat in a rocking chair by the window. His wife sat on
his lap as she unlaced her long braid of black hair. Monsieur Augustin brushed
the hair draped like a silk blanket down Madame Augustin s back. When he was
done, Monsieur Augustin got up to undress. Then slowly, Madame Augustin
took off her day clothes and slipped into a long-sleeved night gown. Their
laughter rose in the night as they began a tickling fight. The light flickered offand they tumbled into bed.
Tante Atie kept looking at the window even after all signs of the Augustins
had faded into the night.
A tear rolled down her cheek as she unbolted the door to go inside. I
immediately started walking towards our bedroom. She raced after me and tried
to catch up. When she did, she pressed her hand down on my shoulder and tried
to turn my body around, to face her.
"Do you know why I always wished I could read?"
Her teary eyes gazed directly into mine.
"I don't know why." I tried to answer as politely as I could.
"It was always my dream to read," she said, "so I could read that old Bible
under my pillow and find the answers to everything right there between those
pages. What do you think that old Bible would have us do right now, about this
moment?"
"I don't know," I said.
"How can you not know?" she asked. "You try to tell me there is all wisdom
in reading but at a time like this you disappoint me."
"You lied!" I shouted.
She grabbed both my ears and twisted them until they burned.
I stomped my feet and walked away. As I rushed to bed, I began to take off
my clothes so quickly that I almost tore them off my body.
The smell of lemon perfume stung my nose as I pulled the sheet over my
head.
"I did not lie," she said, "I kept a secret, which is different. I wanted to tell
you. I needed time to reconcile myself, to accept it. It was very sudden, just a
cassette from Martine saying, 'I want my daughter,' and then as fast as you can
put two fingers together to snap, she sends me a plane ticket with a date on it. I
am not even certain that she is doing this properly. All she tells me is that she
arranged it with a woman who works on the airplane."
"Was I ever going to know?" I asked.
"I was going to put you to sleep, put you in a suitcase, and send you to her.
One day you would wake up there and you would feel like your whole life here
with me was a dream." She tried to force a laugh, but it didn't make it past herthroat. "I had this plan, you see. I thought it was a good plan. I was going to tell
you this, that in one week you would be going to see your mother. As far as you
would know, it would just be a visit. I felt it in my heart and took it on Monsieur
Augustin's advice that, once you got there, you would love it so much that you
would beg your mother to let you stay. You have heard with your own two ears
what everyone has said. We have no right to be sad."
I sunk deeper and deeper into the bed and lost my body in the darkness, in the
folds of the sheets.
The bed creaked loudly as Tante Atie climbed up on her side.
"Don't you ever tell anyone that I cry when I watch Donald and his wife
getting ready for bed," she said, sobbing.
I groped for my clothes in the dark and found the Mother's Day card I had
made her. I tucked it under her pillow as I listened to her mumble some final
words in her sleep.