Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat [34]
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 maché?" 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.
"You have a lump on your calf?" asked my grandmother.
By then, Tante Atie was already gone.
My grandmother and I spent the day watching the beans boil. The kite boy wandered into the yard with a slingshot. He aimed his pebbles at a few small birds lodged in the tcha tcha tree. He had no successes, but kept trying, encouraged by an occasional cheer from my grandmother and me.
"Eliab, come get some water," my grandmother called out.
Eliab crawled under the porch where my mother kept a clay jug full of water. He soaked his stomach as he raised the jug to his lips.
. . .
The beans were cooked as the sun set. My grandmother mixed them with some maize, which we ate with chunks of avocado.
Tante Atie did not come