Breath, Eyes, Memory Part 11

Her room was crowded with old baskets, dusty crates, and rusting steel drums. On an old dresser was a statue of Erzulie, our G.o.ddess of love who doubled for us as the Virgin Mother. Her face was the color of corn, and wrapped around her long black hair was a tiny blue handkerchief.

I went to Tante Atie's room to get Brigitte. Tante Atie was bouncing up and down on her four-poster bed with Brigitte between her legs. Her room had no windows. Instead, she had large quilts with bird and fish patterns, over the louvers on her wall.

I took Brigitte back to my room for a sponge bath. She giggled as I sprinkled scented talc between her legs. Her body was a bit warmer than usual. I looked for the infant thermometer that I had brought with me. I found it, broken in its case, the mercury scattered in the container.

There was splash in the bath house outside the window. My grandmother was naked in the bath shack, with the rickety door wide open. She raised a handful of leaves towards the four corners of the sky, then rapped the stems under her armpits. She swayed her body several times, shaking the leaves loose from her b.u.t.tocks.

My grandmother had a curved spine and a pineapple-sized hump, which did not show through her clothes. Some years earlier, my mother had grown egg-sized mounds in both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then had them taken out of her.

Chapter 17.

We ate ca.s.sava sandwiches for breakfast. I dunked mine in a ceramic cup, steaming with dense black coffee. The ca.s.sava melted in the coffee, making one thick brew.

When I was younger, Tante Atie would always pa.s.s me more ca.s.sava once I had completely drowned my own.

Both Tante Atie and my grandmother ate their ca.s.sava properly. They chipped off the fragile ends with their teeth and then ventured a sip of the scalding coffee.

I kept my daughter on my lap as I dunked a spoon in the cup, trying to rescue the ca.s.sava. My grandmother glanced over at Tante Atie, then quickly looked away.

Tante Atie kept her head down as she ate. In the distance, a bell tolled from the cathedral in the town, the bell that early in the morning signaled indigents' funerals.

I abandoned the ca.s.sava and ran a small brush through Brigitte's hair, placing a small white barrette at the tip of a pigtail in the middle of her head.

My grandmother threw her head back and swallowed her coffee in one gulp. She reached into her blouse, pulled out a cracked clay pipe, and slipped the mouthpiece between her lips.

"I'm going to do the mache," announced my grandmother. She unhooked her satchel from the back of her chair as she got up from the table. One of her legs dragged slighdy behind the other. The inside of her lagging foot was so callused that it had the same texture as the red dust in the yard.

"Can I come too?" I asked my grandmother.

"Surely," she said. "You just follow my shadow."

Brigitte let out a loud cry as I handed her to Tante Atie.

"Mommy will bring you a nice treat from the market," I said, hearing Tante Atie's voice echo from my childhood.

Brigitte shrieked loudly, her face tied up in tear-soaked knots.

"Hurry, go," urged Tarite Atie.

I rushed down the road to catch up with my grandmother.

In the cane fields, the men were singing songs, once bellowed at the old konbits.

"Bonjou, Grandme Ife," they chanted.

"Bonjou, good men," replied my grandmother.

"This here is my granddaughter, Uncle Bazie," my grandmother said to an old man sitting on the side of the road.

He was slashing a machete across a thin piece of sugar cane. He took off his hat and bowed in my direction.

"Whereabouts she from?" asked the old man.

"Here," answered my grandmother. "She's from right here."

My grandmother shopped like an army general on rounds.

"Man Legros. Time is G.o.d's to waste, not ours. I want a few cinnamon barks, some ginger roots, and sweet potatoes to boil in my milk. Make the potatoes sweet enough so I won't need to put sugar in the milk."

"Only the Grand Master, He can do that," answered Man Legros, as she tugged at an old ap.r.o.n around her waist.

"I want me a mamit of red beans too," said my grandmother. "The beans don't need sweetness."

She watched closely as Man Legros dug a tin cup into a hill of beans, spread out on a piece of cardboard on the ground.

"Give those beans some time to settle in the cup," said my grandmother. "Let them rest in the cup. Between you, between me. We know half of them is pebbles."

"No pebbles here," said Man Legros. She had a blackened silver tooth on either side of her mouth.

My grandmother reached inside her blouse and pulled out a small bundle. She unwrapped a cord around the little pouch, fished out a handful of crumpled gourdes and paid Man Legros.

Louise was sitting at her stand, selling colas to a few Macoutes dressed in bright denim uniforms and dark sungla.s.ses. They were the same ones who had gotten in the van yesterday. Louise was chatting and laughing along with them, as though they were all old friends.

One of them was staring at me. He was younger than the others, maybe even a teenager. He stood on the tip of his boots and shoved an old man aside to get a better look. I walked faster. He grabbed his crotch with one hand, blew me a kiss, then turned back to the others.

The kite boy was tugging at the young Macoute's starched denim pants, begging for a penny. The Macoute reached inside his pocket and handed the child a coin. The boy dashed across the road to buy a piece of sugar cane and mint candy.

My grandmother grabbed my hand and pulled me away. We walked up to a line of cloth and hat vendors with samples draped across their chests, and hats piled on their heads.

"I have this at home," said my grandmother, rubbing the edge of a white fabric against her face. "It will be for my burial."

"Have you come to buy my pig?" Louise asked. She followed us as we toured the fruit stands. My grandmother refused the mango chunks that the vendors handed to her, preferring instead to squeeze and pump the custard apples she wanted to buy.

"You well, Grandme Ife?" Louise asked, jumping in front of my grandmother.

"Oui, I got up this morning. I am well."

"And you Sophie, you well?"

"Very well," I answered. "Thank you."

"Will you buy the pig?"

"Don't you have things to look after?" snapped my grandmother.

The boy with the kite was sitting in Louise's stand for her. Louise kept following us, ignoring my grandmother's coldness.

"My foot, you see, you stepped on it!" The baby-faced Macoute was shouting at a coal vendor.

He rammed the back of his machine gun into the coal vendor's ribs.

"I already know the end," said my grandmother. She grabbed my hand and pulled me away. She wobbled quickly, her sandals hissing as the lazy foot swept across the ground.

Louise rushed back to her stand. My grandmother and I hurried to the flamboyant and started on the road home.

I turned back for one last look. The coal vendor was curled in a fetal position on the ground. He was spitting blood. The other Macoutes joined in, pounding their boots on the coal seller's head. Every one watched in shocked silence, but no one said anything.

My grandmother came back for me. She grabbed my hand so hard my fingers hurt.

"You want to live your nightmares too?" she hollered.

We walked in silence until we could hear the konbit song from the cane fields. The men were singing about a platon-nade, a loose woman who made love to the men she met by a stream and then drowned them in the water.

My grandmother spat in the dirt as we walked by Louise's shack.

"Are you mad at Louise?" I asked.

"People have died for saying the wrong things," answered my grandmother.

"You don't like Louise?"

"I don't like the way your Tante Atie has been since she came back from Croix-des-Rosets. Ever since she has come back, she and I, we are like milk and lemon, oil and water. She grieves; she drinks tafia. I would not be surprised if she started wearing black for her father again."

"Maybe she misses Croix-des-Rosets."

"Better she go back, then. You bring a mule to water, but you cannot force it to drink the water. Why did she come back? If she had married there, would she not have stayed?"

"If she had married there, then you would be living with her and her husband."

"Those are the old ways," she said. "These days, they go so far, the children. People like me, we look after ourselves."

"Tante Atie wants to look after you."

"I looked after myself all the years she was in Croix-des-Rosets. I look after myself now. Next when we hear from your mother, I will ask her to send for Atie, so Atie can go and see New York, see the grandness like you have."

"Don't you want to go?"

"I have one foot in this world and one foot in the grave. Non, I do not want to go. But Atie, she should go. She cannot stay out of duty. The things one does, one should do out of love."

"Do you tell her that you do not want her to stay?"

"I would tell her if she ever engaged me in talk. Your Tante Atie she has changed a lot since she was with you. The reading, it is only one thing."

"I think it is very good that she has learned to read," I said. "It is her own freedom."

"There is a story that is told all the time in the valley. An old woman has three children. One dies in her body when she is pregnant. One goes to a faraway land to make her fortune and never does that one get to come back alive. The last one, she stays in the valley and looks after her mother."

Tante Atie was the last.

Chapter 18.

Tante Atie was stretched out in an old rocker. Brigitte lay on her lap. My grandmother took her beans to the yard to pick out the pebbles. She fanned a small fire with her hat, washed the beans, then put them to boil in a pot.

Brigitte yawned in her sleep as I picked her up. Tante Atie got up, grabbed her notebook from the floor, and peered at the pages. She held the notebook so close to her face, I thought there was a mirror inside.

"I did not realize you would remember the words of my card this long," I said.

"When you have something precious, you do not forget it."

She pressed her notebook against her chest as she started for the road.

"Are you going to the mache?" my grandmother called out.

"You need something?" asked Tante Atie.

"The Macoutes were doing damage," my grandmother said.

"Fighting?" asked Tante Atie.

"You just wait awhile," said my grandmother. "Don't go there now."

"Fighting who?" Tante Atie looked worried.

"I did not ask," said my grandmother.

"They hurt anybody?"

"The coal man, Dessalines."

"Dessalines? Why?"

"When people hate you they beat your animals. I don't know'

"Old woman, I am going to get a remedy for a lump in my calf and it cannot wait." Tante walked down the road, racing towards the marketplace.