Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat [64]
I grabbed my suitcase from the closet and threw a few things inside.
"I am going with you," Joseph said.
"What about Brigitte? Who will look after her? I can't take her into this."
"Let's sit down and think of some way."
I didn't have time to sit and think.
"You stay. I go. It's that simple."
He didn't insist anymore. He helped me pack my bag. We woke up the baby and he drove me to the bus station.
We held each other until the bus was about to pull out.
I gave Brigitte a kiss on the forehead.
"Mommy will bring you a treat from the market."
She began to cry as I boarded the bus. Joseph took her away quickly, not looking back.
Marc was waiting in the house in Brooklyn when I got there. Somehow I expected there to be detectives, and flashing cameras, but this was New York after all. People killed themselves every day. Besides, he was a lawyer. He knew people in power. He simply had to tell them that my mother was crazy.
There was a trail of dried blood, down from the stairs to the living room and out to the street where they must have loaded her into the ambulance. The bathroom floor was spotless, however, except for the pile of bloody sheets stuffed in trash bags in the corner.
"Sophie, will you sit down?" Marc said, following me as I raced in and out of every room in the house. "I need to tell you how things will proceed."
I rushed into my mother's room. It was spotless and her bed was properly made. In her closet, everything was in some shade of red, her favorite color since she'd left Haiti.
"I was cleared beyond any doubt in your mother's accident. I have used what influence I have to make this very expeditious for all of us. I have contacted a funeral home. They will get her from the morgue and they will ship her to a funeral home in Dame Marie."
If I died mute, I would never speak to him again. I would never open my mouth and address a word to him.
"We can see her in the funeral home," he said. "They will ship her tomorrow night. That's the earliest possible. They have a service. They notify the family. I have already had your family notified."
How dare he? How could he? To send news that could kill my grandmother, by telegram.
"You can sleep at my house until the flight tomorrow night."
I had no intention of going to his house. I was going to spend the night right there, in my mother's house.
He did not leave me. He stayed in the living room and ate Chinese food while I crouched in the fetal position in the large bed in my mother's room.
Joseph let me listen to Brigitte's giggles when I called home. I heard a voice say Mama, but I knew it was his. She was still saying Dada, even though I knew he had tried to coach her.
"One day we'll all take a trip together," he said.
"This trip I must make alone."
"We are waiting for you," he said, "we love you very much. Don't stay there too long."
I lay in my mother's bed all night fighting evil thoughts: It is your fault that she killed herself in the first place. Your face took her back again. You should have stayed with her. If you were here, she would not have gotten pregnant.
When I woke up the next day, Marc was asleep on the sofa.
"Would you pick something for your mother to be buried in?" he asked.
He spoke to me the way older men addressed orphan children, with pity in his voice. If we had been in Haiti, he might have given me a penny to ease my pain.
I picked out the most crimson of all my mother's clothes, a bright red, two-piece suit that she was too afraid to wear to the Pentecostal services.
It was too loud a color for a burial. I knew it. She would look like a Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them. She was the only woman with that power. It was too bright a red for burial. If we had an open coffin at the funeral home, people would talk. It was too loud a color for burial, but I chose it. There would