Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat [0]
Memory
Copyright © 1994 by Edwidge Danticat
All rights reserved.
The text of this novel includes
words and phrases in Haitian Creole.
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York NY 1000
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Danticat, Edwidge, 1969-
Breath, eyes, memory / by Edwidge Danticat.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56947-142-8
1. Haitian Americans—New York (NY.)—Fiction.
2. Haitian Americans—Travel—Haiti—Fiction. 3. Women—New York (NY.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.A5815B74 1994
813'.54—dc20 93-39256
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 98765432
Breath, Eyes,
Memory
Edwidge Danticat
To the brave women of Haiti, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, daughters, and friends, on this shore and other shores.
We have stumbled but we will not fall.
Much thanks to my father and mother, Andre and Rose Danticat. My brothers Kelly, Karl, and Eliab Andre. My cousins Nick and Jean. My uncle Joseph and Aunt Denise in Haiti. My uncle Franck here. My uncle Max, wherever you are.
Much thanks to the old gang, Chantal, Maryse, Stephanie, Michele and Sandra. The whole gang at Barnard! Suzanne Guard—my guardian angel. To Christopher Dunn for muito amor and support. And Laura Hruska, for believing I could.
Contents
One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Two
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Three
Chapter 15
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Four
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
One
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 saw people die there from sunstroke every day. Tante Atie said that, one day while they were all working together, her father—my grandfather