Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat [56]
"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