Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

  "What else would I call it?

  "You have never called it that since we've been together. Home has always been your mother's house, that you could never go back to."

  I searched through the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink, trying to find a clean glass for a drink of water. In the nursery were the large drums he sometimes used in performance.

  "I was calling the ancestral spirits, asking them to make you come back to me," he said.

  "Your prayers were answered."

  I went to the living room and crashed on the sofa. It suddenly occurred to me that I was surrounded by my own life, my own four walls, my own husband and child. Here I was Sophie—mâitresse de la maison. Not a guest or visiting daughter, but the mother and sometimes, more painfully, the wife.

  "We'll deal with this, won't we?" asked Joseph, pushing his tongue in my left ear. "I need to know that we can get through all this."

  In the living room was a fuzzy picture of a very fat me lying naked with a newborn on my stomach. Joseph had been too excited to focus when we brought the baby home that first night. All I kept thinking was, Thank God it was a Caesarean section. The tearing from a natural birth would have totally destroyed me.

  I reached over and tapped Brigitte's nose.

  "I need to know. Did you leave on impulse or had you been planning to go for a long time?" he asked.

  "We weren't connecting physically."

  "Did you find an aphrodisiac?"

  "I don't need an aphrodisiac. I need a little more understanding."

  "I do understand. You are usually reluctant to start, but after a while you give in. You seem to enjoy it."

  I called Brigitte's pediatrician to make an appointment. I gave Brigitte her bath, and laid her down while Joseph tapped a few keys on his saxophone.

  I called my mother, but she did not pick up the phone. Her answering machine did not pick up either. I changed into a sweatsuit to go to bed. Joseph came to bed in a thick terry-cloth robe.

  "If our skins touch," he said, "I won't be able to resist you."

  We held each other while trying to make out the plot of an old black-and-white movie. It was about lovers, a young girl and her painting instructor.

  At midnight, I called my mother.

  She sounded anxious when she answered.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Marc is here with me," she said.

  She told me she loved me and hung up the phone.

  Joseph rocked me in his arms while we listened to the cooing sounds Brigitte made in her sleep.

  "My mother is pregnant," I said.

  "You will finally have a sibling, a kindred spirit."

  It felt better when I thought of it that way.

  "Brigitte will be older than her aunt," he said. "Isn't that nice?"

  Our pediatrician, Karen, was happy to see Brigitte.

  She was an middle-aged Indian woman who had sewn me up in the emergency room at the Providence hospital and had subsequendy seen me through my pregnancy.

  "Looks like you've lost weight," she said.

  I held Brigitte's feet while she examined her.

  I nearly dropped to my knees with gratitude when she told me that Brigitte was okay.

  "We'll follow the regular schedule for checkups," she said, filling out her chart.

  "Only a mountain can crush a Haitian woman," I said.

  "In that case, your daughter has proven herself a real Haitian woman," Karen said.

  "Tell me how it was," she asked as I dressed Brigitte after the physical. "You were going to the provinces, weren't you? There are warnings against all kinds of things in places like that."

  "It is somewhat dry where I went. There are not a lot of swamps for malaria or any of those things you warned me about. I was careful about the baby's water. We always boiled it for a long time."

  "She looks good so far, but keep an eye on her and call me if anything unusual happens. If you go to Haiti again anytime soon, leave your angel behind. I am not sure there's enough Haitian in her to survive another mountain."

  I called Joseph from the hospital to tell him that everything was all right. When Brigitte and I came home, there was a large dinner waiting for us. Fried chicken, glazed potatoes, and broiled vegetables. Everything came frozen out of a box, but still managed to retain some flavor.

  We decided to start giving Brigitte a few more adventurous solids. I pureed some sweet potatoes and boiled some carrots and fed her small spoonfuls. I ate everything on my plate, forcing myself to resist the urge to purge my body.

  After dinner, I called my mother.

  "When are you going to come and have dinner with Marc and me?"

  "We'll come as soon as we can," I said.

  "How's the baby?"

  "Good," I said, "How's yours?"

  "Don't call it that," she said. "I haven't decided if I will follow through. It's fighting me though. More and more of a fighter every day."

  "Is Marc there?"

  "Yes, but he can sleep and I can't. I am watching television. I don't know. It's really hard. You know what happens now. I look at every man and I see him."

  "Marc?"

  "Non non," she whispered. "Him. Le rioleur, the rapist. I see him everywhere."

  "Have you told Marc?"

  "He thinks my body is in shock from getting pregnant after all the cancer treatment."

  "You should tell someone."

  "You cannot report a ghost to the police."

  Joseph's hands were creeping up my arm and going through the top of my nightgown.

  "I tried to get rid of it," she said, "Today. But they wanted me to think about it for twenty-four hours. When I thought of taking it out, it got more horrifying. That's when I began seeing him. Over and over. That man who raped me."

  "We'll come and visit you this weekend," I said.

  "I want Joseph to meet Marc."

  I felt his other hand creeping up my thighs, his hair smelling like aftershave as his face approached mine.

  "Manman, I have to go," I said. "We'll visit with you on the weekend. Maybe Saturday."

  "Saturday will be a wonderful day then," she said.

  He reached over and pulled my body towards his. I closed my eyes and thought of the Marassa, the doubling. I was lying there on that bed and my clothes were being peeled off my body, but really I was somewhere else. Finally, as an adult, I had a chance to console my mother again. I was lying in bed with my mother. I was holding her and fighting off that man, keeping those images out of her head. I was telling her that it was all right. That it was not a demon in her stomach, that it was a child, like I was once a child in her body. I was telling her that I would never let anyone put her away in a mental hospital, that I would take care of her. I would visit her every night in my doubling and, from my place as a shadow on the wall, I would look after her and wake her up as soon as the nightmares started, just like I did when I was home.

  I kept thinking of my mother, who now wanted to be my friend. Finally I had her approval. I was okay. I was safe. We were both safe. The past was gone. Even though she had forced it on me, of her sudden will, we were now even more than friends. We were twins, in spirit. Marassas.

  "Can we visit my mother this weekend?" I asked Joseph.

  "Whatever you want." He was panting.

  "You were very good," he said.

  "I kept my eyes closed so the tears wouldn't slip out."

  I waited for him to fall asleep, then went to the kitchen. I ate every scrap of the dinner leftovers, then went to the bathroom, locked the door, and purged all the food out of my body.

  Chapter 31

  There were three of us in my sexual phobia group. We gave it that name because that's what Rena—the therapist who introduced us—liked to call it.

  Buki, an Ethiopian college student, had her clitoris cut and her labia sewn up when she was a girl. Davina, a middle-aged Chicana, had been raped by her grandfather for ten years.

  We met at Davina's ho
use. She was the only one of us with a place to herself. Buki lived in a college dorm and, of course, I lived with Joseph.

  Davina had a whole room in her house set aside for our meetings. When we came in, we changed into long white dresses that Buki had sewn for us. We wrapped our hair in white scarves that I had bought. As we changed in the front room, I showed them the statue of Erzulie that my grandmother had given me. Davina told me to take it into the room myself, as I pondered what it meant in terms of my family.

  The air in our room smelled like candles and incense. We sat on green heart-shaped pillows that Davina had made. The color green stood for life and growth.

  We bowed our heads and recited a serenity prayer.

  God grant us the courage to change those things we can, the serenity to accept the things we can't, and the wisdom to know the difference."

  I laid the Erzulie next to our other keepsakes, the pine cones and seashells we collected on our solitary journeys.

  "I am a beautiful woman with a strong body." Davina led the affirmations.

  "We are beautiful women with strong bodies." We echoed her uncertain voice.

  "Because of my distress, I am able to understand when others are in deep pain."

  "Because of our distress, we are able to understand when others are in deep pain."

  I heard my voice rise above the others.

  "Since I have survived this, I can survive anything."

  Buki read us a letter she was going to send to the dead grandmother who had cut off all her sexual organs and sewn her up, in a female rite of passage.

  There were tears rolling down her face as she read the letter.

  "Dear Taiwo. You sliced open my soul and then you told me I can't show it to anyone else. You took a great deal away from me. Because of you, I now carry with me an untouchable wound."

  Sobbing, she handed me the piece of paper. I continued reading the letter for her.

  "Because of you, I feel like a helpless cripple. I sometimes want to kill myself. All because of what you did to me, a child who could not say no, a child who could not defend herself. It would be easy to hate you, but I can't because you are part of me. You are me."

  We each wrote the name of our abusers in a piece of paper, raised it over a candle, and watched as the flames consumed it. Buki blew up a green balloon. We went to Davina's backyard and watched as she released it in the dark. It was hard to see where the balloon went, but at least it had floated out of our hands.

  I felt broken at the end of the meeting, but a little closer to being free. I didn't feel guilty about burning my mother's name anymore. I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too.

  It was up to me to avoid my turn in the fire. It was up to me to make sure that my daughter never slept with ghosts, never lived with nightmares, and never had her name burnt in the flames.

  When I came home from the meeting, I found Joseph sitting in the living room with Brigitte on his lap.

  "Listen to this." He grabbed her and jumped up. "Say it again, pumpkin."

  "Say what again?" I asked.

  "She said Dada."

  At his prodding, Brigitte said something that sounded like Dada.

  "Say it again." We were both cheering.

  Her eyes lit up as she watched us.

  "Sweetie, say it again, please," I said, secretly rooting for "Mama."

  She clapped her hands, keeping up with our excitement.

  "Oh please, honey, say it again. Dada. Dada."

  "Mama. Mama. Manman."

  She said Dada and laughed.

  Joseph jumped up in the air and simulated a high five.

  "She's saving Mama for when she can really talk," I said. "Dada is such a random sound."

  "You're green with envy and you know it."

  I went to the kitchen to make myself some tea.

  "How was the meeting?" he asked.

  "Good."

  "Your mother called. She says she urgently needs to talk to you."

  The baby was saying Dada over and over, trying to capture all his attention.

  "Your therapist called too," he said. "She wanted to know if you'd be coming for your visit tomorrow. I said yes."

  I let him play with the baby while I went in to call my mother.

  "Marc is downstairs making me some eggs," she said.

  "Are you all right?" I asked. "Joseph said it was urgent."

  "It was an urgent feeling. I just wanted to hear your voice."

  "Are you sure you're okay?"

  "You think it's unhealthy, don't you? My sudden dependence on you."

  "As long as you're all right."

  "How is my granddaughter?"

  "Fine. How about you? How is your situation?"

  "I can't sleep. Are you coming this weekend?"

  "On Saturday," I said.

  "I am really happy we have this time again."

  "Me too."

  "I got a telegram from Manman today. She said everything is ready now for her funeral. She's glad about that."

  "Did you tell her that you're pregnant?"

  "I'll tell her when I'm further along. I don't want her to worry about me going crazy again."

  "You sure you're feeling all right?"

  "Better. Maybe this child, she's getting used to me. Man-man tells me she's worried Atie will die from chagrin. Louise left a big hole in her. It's sad."

  "She loved her."

  "Atie will live. She always has."

  I heard Marc's voice offering her some scrambled eggs.

  "I'll wait for you on Saturday," she said.

  "Bye, Mama."

  "Bye, my star."

  I sat up and wrote Tante Atie a letter. Now that she was reading, I wanted to send her something that only her eyes could see, something that she didn't have to have other people listen to. I imagined her standing there next to me, as we reminisced about the konbit potlucks, the lotteries we almost never won, and our dead relatives who we had such a kinship to, as though they were our restless spirits, shadows wandering in the darkness as our bodies slipped into bed.

  Chapter 32

  My therapist was a gorgeous black woman who was an initiated Santeria priestess. She had done two years in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, which showed in the brightly colored prints, noisy bangles, and open sandals she wore.

  Her clinic was in a penthouse overlooking the Seekonk River. "You pulled a sudden disappearing act last week," she said as I looked over the collection of Brazilian paintings and ceremonial African masks on her walls.

  She put out a cigarette while looking through my file. "Let's go for a stroll so you can tell me all about it."

  We usually had our sessions in the woods by the river.

  "So what is happening in your life?" she asked, waving a stick towards a stray dog behind us.

  I told her about my sudden trip to Haiti, the trip that had caused me to miss my appointment the week before. I told her about my mother coming for me and my finding out that my grandmother, and her mother before her, had all been tested.

  "I thought we were going to do some more work before you could actually try confrontational therapy," she said.

  "I wasn't thinking about it as confrontational therapy. I just felt like going. And since Joseph was away I took advantage and went."

  "I know a woman who went back to Brazil and took a jar full of dust from her mother's grave so she would always have her mother line with her. Did you have a chance to reclaim your mother line?"

  "My mother line was always with me," I said. "No matter what happens. Blood made us one."

  "You're telling me you never hated your mother."

  "I felt a lot of pain."

  "Did you hate her?" she asked.

  "Maybe hate is not the right word."

  "We all hate people at one time or another. If we can hate ourselves, why can't we hate other people?"

  "I can't say I hated her."

  "You
don't want to say it. Why not?" she asked.

  "Because it wouldn't be right, and maybe because it wouldn't be true."

  "Maybe? You hesitate—"

  "She wants to be good to me now," I said, "and I want to accept it."

  "That's good."

  "I want to forget the hidden things, the conflicts you always want me to deal with. I want to look at her as someone I am meeting again for the first time. An acquaintance who I am hoping will become a friend. I grew up believing that people could be in two places at once. Meeting for the first time again is not such a hard concept."

  We watched a crew team paddling across the river.

  "Did you ask your grandmother why they test their daughters?" she asked.

  "To preserve their honor."

  "Did you express your anger?"

  "I tried, but it was very hard to be angry at my grandmother. After all she was only doing something that made her feel like a good mother. My mother too."

  "And how was it, seeing your mother?"

  "She is pregnant now."

  "So she is in a relationship."

  "It's the same man she was involved with when I was there."

  "Are they married?"

  No.

  "They sleep together?"

  "Obviously."

  "Did she sleep with him when you were home?" she asked.

  "She would never have a man in the house when I was home. It would be a bad example."

  "How does it make you feel knowing that she slept with someone? Don't you feel betrayed that after all these years, she does the very thing that she didn't want you to do?"

  "I can't feel mad anymore."

  A jogging couple bumped my shoulders as they raced by.

  "Why aren't you mad anymore?" she asked.

  "I feel sorry for her."

  "Why?"

  "The baby, it's roused up a lot of old emotions in my mother."

  "What kinds of emotions?"

  "Maybe emotions is not the word. It's brought back images of the rape."

  "Like you did."

  "Yes," I said. "Like I did."

  "What about your father? Have you given him more thought?"

  "I would rather not call him my father."

  "We will have to address him soon. When we do address him, I'll have to ask you to confront your feelings about him in some way, give him a face."