The Dew Breaker

by Edwidge Danticat

  Every time she read the letter, she tried to find something else between the lines, a note of sympathy, commiseration, condolence. But it simply wasn’t there. The more time went by, the more brittle and fragile the letter became. Each time she held the paper between her fingers she wondered how her mother had not torn it with the pen she’d used to compose each carefully inscribed word. How had the postal workers in both Port-au-Prince and Brooklyn not lacerated the thin page and envelope? And how had the letter not turned to dust in her purse during her bus ride to and from work? Or while rubbing against the inner lining of the left pocket of her nursing uniform, where she kept it all day long?

  She carefully folded the letter once again and replaced it in her pocket as one of her colleagues approached the corner table by the window that she occupied in solitude for a whole hour each working day. Josette kissed her on both cheeks while fumbling in her own pocket for lunch money. As Nadine’s lunch hour was winding down, Josette’s was just beginning.

  Nadine smiled to herself at this ability of Josette’s to make an ordinary encounter feel so intimate, then turned her face to the view outside, to the brown buildings and their barred windows. She let her eyes linger on the nursing station of the Psych ward across the alley and entertained a vision she often had of seeing a patient dive out of one of the windows.

  “Ms. Hinds is back from ICU,” Josette was saying. “She’s so upset and sezi that Doctor Vega had to give her a sedative.”

  Nadine and Josette worked different ends of Ear, Nose, and Throat and saw many post-op patients wake up bewildered to discover that their total laryngectomies meant they would no longer be able to talk. No matter how the doctors, nurses, and counselors prepared them, it was still a shock.

  Josette always gave Nadine a report on the patients whenever she came to take over the table. She was one of the younger Haitian RNs, one of those who had come to Brooklyn in early childhood and spoke English with no accent at all, but she liked to throw in a Creole word here and there in conversation to flaunt her origins. Aside from the brief lunch encounters, and times when one or the other needed a bit of extra help with a patient, they barely spoke at all.

  “I am going now,” Nadine said, rising from her seat. “My throne is yours.”

  When she returned to her one-bedroom condo in Canarsie that evening, Nadine was greeted by voices from the large television set that she kept on twenty-four hours a day. Along with the uneven piles of newspapers and magazines scattered between the fold-out couch and the floorto-ceiling bookshelves in her living room, the television was her way of bringing voices into her life that required neither reaction nor response. At thirty, she’d tried other hobbies— African dance and drawing classes, Internet surfing—but these tasks had demanded either too much effort or too much superficial interaction with other people.

  She took off the white sneakers that she wore at work and remained standing to watch the last ten minutes of a news broadcast. It wasn’t until a game show began that she pressed the playback button on her blinking answering machine.

  Her one message was from Eric, her former beau, suitor, lover, the near father of her nearly born child.

  “Alo, allo, hello,” he stammered, creating his own odd pauses between Creole, French, and English, like the electively mute, newly arrived immigrant children whose worried parents brought them to the ward for consultations, even though there was nothing wrong with their vocal cords.

  “Just saying hello to you.” He chose heavily accented English. Long pause. “Okay. Bye.”

  Whenever he called her now, which was about once a month since their breakup, she removed the microcassette from the answering machine and placed it on the altar she had erected on top of the dresser in her bedroom. It wasn’t anything too elaborate. There was a framed drawing that she had made of a cocoa-brown, dewy-eyed baby that could as easily have been a boy as a girl, the plump, fleshy cheeks resembling hers and the high forehead resembling his. Next to the plain wooden frame were a dozen now dried red roses that Eric had bought her as they’d left the clinic after the procedure. She had once read about a shrine to unborn children in Japan, where water was poured over altars of stone to honor them, so she had filled her favorite drinking glass with water and a pebble and had added that to her own shrine, along with a total of now seven microcassettes with messages from Eric, messages she had never returned.

  That night, as the apartment seemed oddly quiet in spite of the TV voices, she took out her mother’s letter for its second reading of the day, ran her fingers down the delicate page, and reached for the phone to dial her parents’ number. She’d almost called many times in the last three months, but had lost her nerve, thinking her voice might betray all that she could not say. She nearly dialed the whole thing this time. There were only a few numbers left when she put the phone down, tore the letter into two, then four, then eight, then countless pieces, collapsed among her old magazines and newspapers, and wept.

  Another letter arrived at Nadine’s house a week later. It was on the same kind of airmail paper, but this time the words were meticulously typed. The as and os, which had been struck over many times, created underlayers, shadows, and small holes within the vowels’ perimeters.

  Ma chère Nadine,

  Your father and I thank you very much for the extra money. Your father used it to see a doctor, not about his knees, but his prostate that the doctor says is inflamed. Not to worry, he was given some medications and it seems as if he will be fine for a while. All the tests brought us short for the monthly expenses, but we will manage. We would like so much to talk to you. We wait every Sunday afternoon, hoping you will return to our beautiful routine. We pray that we have not abused your generosity, but you are our only child and we only ask for what we need. You know how it is when you are old. We have tried to telephone you, but we are always greeted by your répondeur, which will not accept collect calls. In any case, we wait to hear from you.

  Your mother and father who embrace you very tightly.

  The next day, Nadine ignored her tuna melt altogether to read the letter over many times. She did not even notice the lunch hour pass. Josette arrived sooner than she expected. Josette, like all the other nurses, knew not to ask any questions about Nadine’s past, present, future, or her international-looking mail. Word circulated quickly from old employees to new arrivals that Nadine Osnac was not a friendly woman. Anyone who had sought detailed conversations with her, or who had shown interest in sharing the table while she was sitting there, had met only with cold silence and a blank stare out to the Psych ward. Josette, however, still occasionally ventured a social invitation, since they were both from the same country and all.

  “Some of the girls are going to the city after work,” Josette was saying. “A little banbòch to celebrate Ms. Hinds’ discharge tomorrow.”

  “No thanks,” Nadine said, departing from the table a bit more abruptly than usual.

  That same afternoon, Ms. Hinds began throwing things across her small private room, one of the few in the ward. Nadine nearly took a flower vase in the face as she rushed in to help. Unlike most of the patients in the ward, who were middle-aged or older, Ms. Hinds was a twenty-fiveyear-old nonsmoker.

  When Nadine arrived, Ms. Hinds was thrashing about so much that the nurses, worried that she would yank out the metal tube inserted in her neck and suffocate, were trying to pin her down to put restraints on her arms and legs. Nadine quickly joined in the struggle, assigning herself Ms. Hinds’ right arm, pockmarked from weeks of IVs in hard-to-conquer veins.

  “Where’s Doctor Vega?” Josette shouted as she caught one of Ms. Hinds’ random kicks in her chest. Nadine lost her grip on the IV arm. She was looking closely at Ms. Hinds’ face, her eyes tightly shut beneath where her eyebrows used to be, her thinner lower lip protruding defiantly past her upper one as though she were preparing to spit long distance in a contest, her whole body hairless under the cerulean-blue hospital gown, which came with neither a bonnet nor
a hat to protect her now completely bald head.

  “The doctor’s on his way,” one of the male nurses said. He had a firm hold of Ms. Hinds’ left leg, but couldn’t pin it down to the bed long enough to restrain it.

  “Leave her alone,” Nadine shouted to the others.

  One by one, the nurses each took a few steps back, releasing Ms. Hinds’ extremities. With her need to struggle suddenly gone, Ms. Hinds curled into a fetal position and sank into the middle of the bed.

  “Let me be alone with her,” Nadine said in a much softer voice.

  The others lingered a while, as if not wanting to leave, but they had other patients to see to, so, one at a time, they backed out the door.

  Nadine lowered the bed rail to give Ms. Hinds a sense of freedom, even if limited.

  “Ms. Hinds, is there something you want?” she asked.

  Ms. Hinds opened her mouth wide, trying to force air past her lips, but all that came out was the hiss of oxygen and mucus filtering through the tube in her neck.

  Nadine looked over at the night table, where there should have been a pad and pen, but Ms. Hinds had knocked them onto the floor with the magazines her parents had brought for her. She walked over and picked up the pad and pen and pushed them toward Ms. Hinds, who was still lying in a ball in the middle of the bed.

  Looking puzzled, Ms. Hinds turned her face toward Nadine, slowly unwrapping her body from around itself.

  “I’m here, Ms. Hinds,” Nadine said, now holding the pad within a few inches of Ms. Hinds’ face. “Go ahead.”

  Ms. Hinds held out the gaunt fingers of her right hand. The fingers came apart slowly; then Ms. Hinds extended the whole hand, grabbing the pad. She had to force herself to sit up in order to write and she grimaced as she did so, trying to maintain her grip on the pad and slide up against the pillow Nadine propped behind her back.

  Ms. Hinds scribbled down a few quick words, then held up the pad for Nadine to read. At first Nadine could not understand the handwriting. It was unsteady and hurried and the words ran together, but Nadine sounded them out, one letter at a time, with some encouragement from Ms. Hinds, who slowly moved her head up and down when Nadine guessed correctly.

  “I can’t speak,” Nadine made out.

  “That’s right,” Nadine said. “You can’t.”

  Looking even more perplexed at Nadine’s unsympathetic reaction, Ms. Hinds grabbed the pad from Nadine’s hand and scribbled, “I’m a teacher.”

  “I know,” Nadine said.

  “WHY SEND ME HOME LIKE THIS?” Ms. Hinds scribbled next.

  “Because we have done all we can for you here,” Nadine said. “Now you must work with a speech therapist. You can get an artificial larynx, a voice box. The speech therapist will help you.”

  “Feel like a basenji,” Ms. Hinds wrote, her face sinking closer to her chest.

  “What’s a b-a-s-e-n-j-i?” Nadine asked, spelling out the word.

  “A dog,” Ms. Hinds wrote. “Doesn’t bark.”

  “A dog that doesn’t bark?” Nadine asked. “What kind of dog is that?”

  “Exists,” Ms. Hinds wrote, as she bit down hard on her quivering lower lip.

  That night at home, Nadine found herself more exhausted than usual. With the television news as white noise, she dialed Eric’s home phone number, hoping she was finally ready to hear his voice for more than the twenty-five seconds her answering machine allowed. He should be home resting now, she thought, preparing to start his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College.

  Her mind was suddenly blank. What would she say? She was trying to think of something frivolous, a line of small talk, when she heard the message that his number had been changed to one that was unlisted.

  She quickly hung up and redialed, only to get the same message. After dialing a few more times, she decided to call her parents instead.

  Ten years ago her parents had sold everything they owned and moved from what passed for a lower-middle-class neighborhood to one on the edge of a slum, in order to send her to nursing school abroad. Ten years ago she’d dreamed of seeing the world, of making her own way in it. These were the intangibles she’d proposed to her mother, the kindergarten teacher, and her father, the camion driver, in the guise of a nursing career. This was what they’d sacrificed everything for. But she always knew that she would repay them. And she had, with half her salary every month, and sometimes more. In return, what she got was the chance to parent them rather than have them parent her. Calling them, however, on the rare occasions that she actually called rather than received their calls, always made her wish to be the one guarded, rather than the guardian, to be reassured now and then that some wounds could heal, that some decisions would not haunt her forever.

  “Manman,” her voice immediately dropped to a whisper when her mother’s came over the phone line, squealing with happiness.

  For every decibel Nadine’s voice dropped, her mother’s rose. “My love, we were so worried about you. How are you? We have not heard your voice in so long.”

  “I’m fine, Manman,” she said.

  “You sound low. You sound down. We have to start planning again when you can come or when we can come see you, as soon as Papa can travel.”

  “How is Papa?” she asked.

  “He’s right here. Let me put him on. He’ll be very glad to hear you.”

  Suddenly her father was on the phone, his tone calmer but excited in his own way. “We were waiting so long for this call, chérie.”

  “I know, Papa. I’ve been working really hard.”

  They never spoke of difficult things during these phone calls, of money or illnesses or doctors’ visits. Papa always downplayed his aches and pains, which her mother would highlight in the letters. Events were relayed briefly, a list of accomplishments, no discussion of failures or losses, which could spoil moods for days, weeks, and months, until the next phone call.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Her mother took back the phone. Nadine could imagine her skipping around their living room like a child’s ball bouncing. “Is there anyone in your life?”

  “No, Manman,” she said.

  “Don’t wait too long,” her mother said. “You don’t want to be old alone.”

  “All right, Manman.”

  “Papa and I saw a kolibri today.” Her mother liked moving from one subject to another. Her parents loved birds, especially hummingbirds, and never failed to report a sighting to her. Since every schoolboy made it his mission to slingshot hummingbirds to death, she was amazed that there were any left in Port-au-Prince, especially in her parents’ neighborhood.

  “It was just a little one,” her mother was saying. “Very small.”

  She could hear her father add, “It’s very clever. I think it’s going to last. It loves our new hibiscus.”

  “You have hibiscus?” Nadine asked.

  “Just a hedge,” her mother said. “It’s just starting to blossom. It brings us bees too, but I wouldn’t say we have a hive.”

  “That’s nice, Manman,” she said. “I have to go now.”

  “So soon?”

  “Please say good night to Papa.”

  “Okay, my heart.”

  “I promise I’ll call again.”

  The next morning, Nadine watched as Ms. Hinds packed her things and changed into a bright-yellow oversized sweatsuit and matching cap while waiting for the doctor to come and sign her discharge papers.

  “My mother bought me this hideous outfit,” Ms. Hinds wrote on the pad, which was now half filled with words: commands to the nurses, updates to her parents from the previous evening’s visit.

  “Is someone coming for you?” Nadine asked.

  “My parents,” Ms. Hinds wrote. Handing Nadine the pad, she reached up and stroked the raised tip of the metal tube in her neck, as if she were worried about her parents seeing it again.

  “Good,” Nadine said. “The doctor will be here soon.”

  Nadine was tempted to warn Ms. Hinds that
whatever form of relief she must be feeling now would only last for a while, the dread of being voiceless hitting her anew each day as though it had just happened, when she would awake from dreams in which she’d spoken to find that she had no voice, or when she would see something alarming and realize that she couldn’t scream for help, or even when she would realize that she herself was slowly forgetting, without the help of old audio or videocassettes or answering-machine greetings, what her own voice used to sound like. She didn’t say anything, however. Like all her other patients, Ms. Hinds would soon find all this out herself.

  Nadine spent half her lunch hour staring at the barred windows on the brown building across the alley, watching the Psych nurses scribbling in charts and filing them, rushing to answer sudden calls from the ward.

  Josette walked up to the table much earlier than usual, obviously looking for her.

  “What is it?” Nadine asked.

  “Se Ms. Hinds,” Josette said. “She’d like to say good-bye to you.”

  She thought of asking Josette to tell Ms. Hinds that she couldn’t be found, but fearing that this would create some type of conspirational camaraderie between her and Josette, she decided against it.

  Ms. Hinds and her parents were waiting by the elevator bank in the ward. Ms. Hinds was sitting in a wheelchair with her discharge papers and a clear plastic bag full of odds and ends on her lap. Her father, a strapping man, was clutching the back of the wheelchair with moist, nervous hands, which gripped the chair more tightly for fear of losing hold. The mother, thin and short like Ms. Hinds, looked as though she was fighting back cries, tears, a tempest of anger, barters with God.

  Instead she fussed, trying to wrench the discharge papers and the bag from her daughter, irritating Ms. Hinds, who raised her pad from beneath the bag and scribbled quickly, “Nurse Osnac, my parents, Nicole and Justin Hinds.”