Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge Danticat [9]
She took a sip from the milk in her glass and forced a large smile.
"You should not be afraid," she said. "Martine was a wonderful sister. She will be a great mother to you. Crabs don't make papayas. She is my sister."
She reached inside her pocket and pulled out the card that I had made her for Mother's Day. It was very wrinkled now and the penciled words were beginning to fade.
"I would not let you read it to me, but I know it says some very nice things," she said, putting the card next to my plate. "It is not so pretty now, but your mother, she will still love it."
Before she could stop me, I began to read her the words.
My mother is a daffodil,
limber and strong as one.
My mother is a daffodil,
but in the wind, iron strong.
"You see," Tante Atie shrugged, "it was never for me." She slipped the card in the pocket of my dress. "When you get there, you give that to her."
"She will not be able to see the words," I said.
"She will see them fine and if she cannot see them, you read them to her like you just did for me and from now on, her name is Manman.
Chabin, the lottery agent, peeked his head through the open door, waving his record book at us.
"We do not want to play today," Tante Atie said.
"I am here to pay you," Chabin said. "Don't you follow the results? Your number, it came out. You are a winner."
Tante Atie looked very happy.
"How much did I win?" she asked.
"Ten gourdes," he said.
He counted out the money and handed it to her.
"You see," Tante Atie said, clutching her money. "Your mother, she brings me luck."
The Peugeot taxi came for us while we were still at the table. I left Tante Atie's kitchen, my breakfast uneaten and the dishes undone.
The drizzle had stopped. The neighbors were watching as the driver carried my one suitcase to the car.
The Augustins came over to say good-bye. Madame Augustin slipped a crisp pink handkerchief in my hand as she kissed me four times—twice on each cheek.
"If you study hard, you will have no trouble with your English," Monsieur Augustin said as he firmly shook my hand.
I held Tante Atie's hand as we climbed into the back seat. Our faces were dry, our heads up. We were like sunflowers, staring directly at the sun.
Before pulling away, the driver turned his head and complimented us on our very clean yard.
"My child, she cleans it," Tante Atie said.
The car scattered the neighbors and the factory workers, as they waved a group farewell. Maybe if I had a really good friend my eyes would have clung to hers as we were driven away. A red dust rose between me and the only life that I had ever known. There were no children playing, no leaves flying about. No daffodils.
Chapter 5
The sun crawled across our faces as the car sped into Port-au-Prince. I had never been to the city before. Colorful boutiques with neon signs lined the street. Vans covered with pictures of flowers and horses with wings scurried up and down and made sudden stops in the middle of the boulevards.
Tante Atie gasped each time we went by a large department store or a towering hotel. She shouted the names of places that she had visited in years past.
When they were teenagers, she and my mother would save their pennies all year long so they could come to the city on Christmas Eve. They would tell my grandmother that they were traveling with one of the old peddlers, but that was never their plan. They would take a tap tap van in the afternoon so as to arrive in Port-au-Prince just as the sun was setting, and the Christmas lights were beginning to glow. They stood outside the stores in their Sunday dresses to listen to the sounds of the toy police cars and talking dolls chattering over the festive music. They went to Mass at the Gothic cathedral, then spent the rest of the night sitting by the fountains and gazing at the Nativity scenes on the Champs-de-Mars. They bought ice cream cones and fireworks, while young tourists offered them cigarettes for the privilege of taking their pictures.