Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

  "This is for you to wear on your trip," she said.

  My mother's face was in my dreams all night long. She was wrapped in yellow sheets and had daffodils in her hair. She opened her arms like two long hooks and kept shouting out my name. Catching me by the hem of my dress, she wrestled me to the floor. I called for Tante Atie as loud as I could. Tante Atie was leaning over us, but she could not see me. I was lost in the yellow of my mother's sheets.

  I woke up with Tante Atie leaning over my bed. She was already dressed in one of her pink Sunday dresses, and had perfume and face powder on. I walked by her on my way to the wash basin. She squeezed my hand and whispered, "Remember that we are going to be like mountains and mountains don't cry."

  "Unless it rains," I said.

  "When it rains, it is the sky that is crying."

  When I came from the wash basin, she was waiting for me with a towel. It was one of many white towels that she kept in a box under her bed, for special occasions that never came. I used the towel to dry my body, then slipped into the starched underwear and the dress she handed to me.

  The suitcase was in a corner in the kitchen. The table was covered with white lace cloth. Tante Atie's special, unused china plates and glasses were filled with oatmeal and milk.

  She led me to the head of the table and sat by my side. A slight morning drizzle hit the iron grills on the door.

  "If it rains, will I still have to go?" I asked her.

  She ran her finger over a shiny scar on the side of her head.

  "Yes, you will have to go," she said. "There is nothing we can do to stop that now. I have already asked someone to come and drive us to the aéroport."

  She took a sip from the milk in her glass and forced a large smile.

  "You should not be afraid," she said. "Martine was a wonderful sister. She will be a great mother to you. Crabs don't make papayas. She is my sister."

  She reached inside her pocket and pulled out the card that I had made her for Mother's Day. It was very wrinkled now and the penciled words were beginning to fade.

  "I would not let you read it to me, but I know it says some very nice things," she said, putting the card next to my plate. "It is not so pretty now, but your mother, she will still love it."

  Before she could stop me, I began to read her the words.

  My mother is a daffodil,

  limber and strong as one.

  My mother is a daffodil,

  but in the wind, iron strong.

  "You see," Tante Atie shrugged, "it was never for me." She slipped the card in the pocket of my dress. "When you get there, you give that to her."

  "She will not be able to see the words," I said.

  "She will see them fine and if she cannot see them, you read them to her like you just did for me and from now on, her name is Manman.

  Chabin, the lottery agent, peeked his head through the open door, waving his record book at us.

  "We do not want to play today," Tante Atie said.

  "I am here to pay you," Chabin said. "Don't you follow the results? Your number, it came out. You are a winner."

  Tante Atie looked very happy.

  "How much did I win?" she asked.

  "Ten gourdes," he said.

  He counted out the money and handed it to her.

  "You see," Tante Atie said, clutching her money. "Your mother, she brings me luck."

  The Peugeot taxi came for us while we were still at the table. I left Tante Atie's kitchen, my breakfast uneaten and the dishes undone.

  The drizzle had stopped. The neighbors were watching as the driver carried my one suitcase to the car.

  The Augustins came over to say good-bye. Madame Augustin slipped a crisp pink handkerchief in my hand as she kissed me four times—twice on each cheek.

  "If you study hard, you will have no trouble with your English," Monsieur Augustin said as he firmly shook my hand.

  I held Tante Atie's hand as we climbed into the back seat. Our faces were dry, our heads up. We were like sunflowers, staring directly at the sun.

  Before pulling away, the driver turned his head and complimented us on our very clean yard.

  "My child, she cleans it," Tante Atie said.

  The car scattered the neighbors and the factory workers, as they waved a group farewell. Maybe if I had a really good friend my eyes would have clung to hers as we were driven away. A red dust rose between me and the only life that I had ever known. There were no children playing, no leaves flying about. No daffodils.

  Chapter 5

  The sun crawled across our faces as the car sped into Port-au-Prince. I had never been to the city before. Colorful boutiques with neon signs lined the street. Vans covered with pictures of flowers and horses with wings scurried up and down and made sudden stops in the middle of the boulevards.

  Tante Atie gasped each time we went by a large department store or a towering hotel. She shouted the names of places that she had visited in years past.

  When they were teenagers, she and my mother would save their pennies all year long so they could come to the city on Christmas Eve. They would tell my grandmother that they were traveling with one of the old peddlers, but that was never their plan. They would take a tap tap van in the afternoon so as to arrive in Port-au-Prince just as the sun was setting, and the Christmas lights were beginning to glow. They stood outside the stores in their Sunday dresses to listen to the sounds of the toy police cars and talking dolls chattering over the festive music. They went to Mass at the Gothic cathedral, then spent the rest of the night sitting by the fountains and gazing at the Nativity scenes on the Champs-de-Mars. They bought ice cream cones and fireworks, while young tourists offered them cigarettes for the privilege of taking their pictures. They pretended to be students at one of the gentry's universities and even went so far as describing the plush homes they said they lived in. The white tourists flirted with them and held their hands. They laughed at silly jokes, letting their voices rise and fall like city girls. Later, they made rendezvous for the next night, which of course they never kept. Then before dawn, they took a van back home and slipped into bed before my grandmother woke up.

  I looked outside and saw the bare hills that bordered the national highway.

  "We are almost there," the driver said as he slowed down, almost to a stop.

  We waited for a while for the car to move.

  "Is there some trouble?" asked Tante Atie.

  "There is always some trouble here," the driver said. "They are changing the name of the airport from Francois Duvalier to Mais Gate, like it was before Francois Duvalier was president."

  Tante Atie's body tensed up.

  "Did they have to do it today?" Tante Atie asked. "She will be delayed. We cannot miss our appointment."

  "I will do what I can," the driver said, "but some things are beyond our control."

  I moved closer to the window to get a better look. Clouds of sooty smoke were rising to the sky from a place not too far ahead.

  "I think there is a fire," the driver said..

  Tante Atie pushed her head forward and tried to see.

  "Maybe the world, it is ending," she said.

  We began to move slowly in a long line of cars. Dark green army vans passed through narrow spaces between cars. The driver followed the slow-paced line. Soon we were at the airport gate.

  We stopped in front of the main entrance. The smoke had been coming from across the street. Army trucks surrounded a car in flames. A group of students were standing on top of a hill, throwing rocks at the burning car. They scurried to avoid the tear gas and the round of bullets that the soldiers shot back at them.

  Some of the students fell and rolled down the hill. They screamed at the soldiers that they were once again betraying the people. One girl rushed down the hill and grabbed one of the soldiers by the arm. He raised his pistol and pounded it on top of her head. She fell to the ground, her face covered with her own blood.

  Tante Atie grabbed my shoulder and shoved me qu
ickly inside the airport gate.

  "Do you see what you are leaving?" she said.

  "I know I am leaving you."

  The airport lobby was very crowded. We tried to keep up with the driver as he ran past the vendors and travelers, dragging my suitcase behind him.

  As we waited on the New York boarding line, Tante Atie and I looked up at the paintings looming over us from the ceiling. There were pictures of men and women pulling carts and selling rice and beans to make some money.

  A woman shouted "Madame," drawing us out of the visions above us. She looked breathless, as though she had been searching for us for a long time.

  "You are Sophie Caco?" she asked, speaking directly to me.

  I nodded.

  Tante Atie looked at her lean body and her neat navy uniform and hesitated before shaking her hand.

  "I will take good care of her," she said to Tante Atie in Creole. She immediately took my hand. "Her mother is going to meet her in New York. I spoke to her this morning. Everything is arranged. We cannot waste time."

  Tante Atie's lips quivered.

  "We have to go now," the lady said. "You were very tardy."

  "We were not at fault," Tante Atie tried to explain.

  "It does not matter now," the lady said. "We must go."

  Tante Atie bent down and pressed her cheek against mine.

  "Say hello to your manman for me," she said. "You must not concern yourself about me."

  The driver tapped Tante Atie's shoulder.

  "There could be some more chaos," he said. "I want to go before things become very bad."

  "Don't you worry yourself about me," Tante Atie said. "I am not going to be lonely. I will be with your grandmother. Just you always remember how much your Tante Atie loves and cherishes you."

  The woman tugged at my hand.

  "We really must go," she said.

  "She is going," Tante Atie said, releasing my hand.

  The woman started walking away. I moved along with her taking big steps to keep up. I kept turning my head and waving at Tante Atie. Her large body stood out in the middle of the airport lobby.

  People rubbed against her as they rushed past. She stood in the same spot wiping her tears with a patchwork handkerchief. In her pink dress and brown sandals, with the village dust settled on her toes, it was easy to tell that she did not belong there. She blended in neither with the smiling well-dressed groups on their way to board the planes nor with the jeans-clad tourists whom the panhandlers surrounded at the gate.

  She stood by the exit gate and watched as the woman pulled me though a glass door onto the runway leading to the plane.

  The plane was nearly full. There were only a few empty seats. I followed the woman down the narrow aisle. She showed me to a seat by a window. I slipped in quickly and looked outside, hoping to see Tante Atie heading safely home.

  I only saw a patch of the smoky sky. The woman left. She soon came back with a little boy. He was crying and stomping his feet, struggling to wiggle out of her grasp. She cornered him against the seats and pressed him into the chair. She held him down with both her hands. He stopped fighting, slid upward in the seat, raised his head, and spat in her face.

  His shirt was soaked with the saliva that was still dripping from either side of his mouth. He rubbed his already-red eyes with the back of his hand. Leaning forward, he pressed his face against the seat in front of him. It was almost as though he was trying to find a way to muffle his own sobs.

  I reached over to stroke his head. He grabbed my hand and dug his teeth into my fingers. I hit his arm and tried to get him to release my fingers. He bit even harder. I smacked his shoulder. He let go of my fingers and began to scream.

  The woman rushed over. She pulled him from the seat, raised him up to her chest, and rocked him in her arms. He clung to her body for a moment then pulled away, digging his fingers into her neck. She stumbled backwards and nearly fell. He slipped out of her arms and ran out of her reach. She dashed down the aisle after him.

  A tall man blocked the aisle and stood in the little boy's way. He began to cry louder when he noticed that he was cornered. He jumped on a passenger's lap and began to pound his head on a side window. The man grabbed him and wrestled him back to his seat. He strapped him down with his seatbelt, then leaned over and did the same for me.

  As soon as his seatbelt was on, the boy sat still. Both the man and the woman stood over him and watched him carefully, as though they were expecting him to reach up and grab one of their eyeballs. He did nothing. He sat back in his seat, bent his head, and wept silently.

  , "What is the matter with him?" the man said in French.

  "His father died in that fire out front. His father was some kind of old government official, très corrupt," she whispered. "Très guilty of crimes against the people."

  "And we are letting him travel?"

  "He does not have any more relatives here. His father's sister lives in New York. I called her. She is going to meet him there."

  "I can see why he is upset," the man said.

  The plane began to roar towards the sky. I looked outside and saw the cars heading away. I could not tell Tante Atie's taxi from the others.

  The sound of the engine silenced the boy's sobs. He soon fell asleep, and shortly after, so did I.

  Chapter 6

  Children, we are here." The woman was shaking both of us at the same time.

  The plane was empty. We walked down a long passageway, the woman first, with the little boy's hand in hers, and then me. She rushed us by the different lines without stopping. She only waved each time and flashed a large manila envelope.

  We soon joined a crowd and watched as suitcases filed past us on a moving mat.

  "Do you see your bags?" she asked.

  I saw my suitcase and pointed to it. She walked over and picked it up and put it on the floor next to me. We waited for the little boy to point out his, but he did not.

  She leafed through his papers and said, "Jean-Claude, do you see your suitcase?"

  He buried his face in her skirt and began to cry. She walked over and checked the stubs on the suitcases. He did not have any.

  We walked down another corridor. Then a glass gate opened itself and we were out in a lobby filled with people holding balloons and flowers. Some of them burst forward to hug loved ones.

  A woman moaned as she walked towards Jean-Claude. She grabbed him and squeezed his little body against hers.

  "They've killed my brother," she cried. "Look at him, look at my brother's son."

  She carried him away in her arms, his face buried in her chest.

  My mother came forward. I knew it was my mother because she came up to me and grabbed me and begin to spin me like a top, so she could look at me.

  The woman who had been with me looked on without saying anything.

  "Stay here," my mother said to me in Creole.

  She walked over to a corner with the woman, whispered a few things to her, and handed her what seemed like money.

  "I cannot thank you enough," my mother said.

  "There is no need," the woman said. She bowed slightly and walked away.

  I raised my hand to wave good-bye. The woman had already turned her back and was heading inside. It was as though I had disappeared. She did not even see me anymore.

  As the woman went through the gate, my mother kissed me on the lips.

  "I cannot believe that I am looking at you," she said. "You are my little girl. You are here."

  She pinched my cheeks and patted my head.

  "Say something," she urged. "Say something. Just speak to me. Let me hear your voice."

  She pressed my face against hers and held fast.

  "How are you feeling?" she asked. "Did you have a nice plane flight?"

  I nodded.

  "You must be very tired," she said. "Let us go home."

  She grabbed my suitcase with one hand and my arm with the other.

  Outside it was overcast and coo
l.

  "My goodness." Her scrawny body shivered. "I didn't even bring you something to put over your dress."

  She dropped the suitcase on the sidewalk, took off the denim jacket she had on and guided my arms through the sleeves.

  A line of cars stopped as we crossed the street to the parking lot. She was wobbling under the weight of my suitcase.

  She stopped in front of a pale yellow car with a long crack across the windshield glass. The paint was peeling off the side door that she opened for me. I peered inside and hesitated to climb onto the tattered cushions on the seats.

  She dropped the suitcase in the trunk and walked back to me.

  "Don't be afraid. Go right in."

  She tried to lift my body into the front seat but she stumbled under my weight and quickly put me back down.

  I climbed in and tried not to squirm. The sharp edge of a loose spring was sticking into my thigh.

  She sat in the driver's seat and turned on the engine. It made a loud grating noise as though it were about to explode.

  "We will soon be on our way," she said.

  She rubbed her hands together and pressed her head back against the seat. She did not look like the picture Tante Atie had on her night table. Her face was long and hollow. Her hair had a blunt cut and she had long spindly legs. She had dark circles under her eyes and, as she smiled, lines of wrinkles tightened her expression. Her fingers were scarred and sunburned. It was as though she had never stopped working in the cane fields after all.

  "It is ready now," she said.

  She strapped the seatbelt across her flat chest, pressing herself even further into the torn cushions. She leaned over and attached my seatbelt as the car finally drove off.

  Night had just fallen. Lights glowed everywhere. A long string of cars sped along the highway, each like a single diamond on a very long bracelet.

  "We will be in the city soon," she said.

  I still had not said anything to her.

  "How is your Tante Atie?" she asked. "Does she still go to night school?"