Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat [22]
Our reward was the relief in the banker’s or the clerk’s eyes when he realized how much longer the transaction with my uncle would have taken had one or both of us not been there, how many eyes might have been needed to survey the requests in his notes, how many attempts at reading the lips before coming up with some possibilities, to which my uncle would vigorously shake his head no or nod in agreement. My uncle would be appreciative too when we’d get something right. He would break into a purposely controlled grin, one designed to conceal his false teeth. His grin would have been a thunderous “Yes!” had he been able to speak, a shout to the heavens if he could have managed it.
We got to the bank at a time when it was nearly empty. My uncle walked up to a young woman who was sitting behind her desk, talking on the phone. She hung up and motioned for us to sit down.
The air-conditioning was on full blast, filling the place with a chilled perfumed air. My uncle handed her an envelope with some bills and his passbook in it. She pulled out the bills and counted them, laying each out in front of her.
Sometimes visits like this one required no conversation or any other type of exchange that might reveal my uncle’s condition. For all the woman knew, he might have been shy or ill at ease. He had been served before at that bank, but not by her. She didn’t know him.
When she was done counting the money, she spoke a number out loud, to which my uncle agreed with a nod. She then typed the amount in his passbook. And just as my uncle’s shoulders dropped, the equivalent for him of a sigh of relief, and just as he might have been thinking he would no longer need Nick or myself to accompany him to that particular woman at that particular bank, the woman leaned forward and asked, “Ta fille?” Your daughter?
My uncle nodded, the same blissful nod he used to indicate agreement when something was suddenly clear to him. He smiled broadly, while patting my tightly plaited hair.
On the sidewalk outside the bank was a man selling grated ice sweetened with syrup, a childhood delight called fresko. On the man’s wobbly patchwork cart was a block of transparent ice half buried in sawdust and surrounded by a line of colorful bottles. My eyes followed the man’s shriveled hands as he carefully tapped his grater against the ice, just as he always did, to tempt us. My uncle motioned for him to come and the cart’s rubber wheels screeched against the sidewalk as he moved toward us.
“What flavor?” the fresko seller asked, pointing to the half-full bottles glittering red, blue, yellow and green in the sun. I pointed to the beige bottle. Coconut! I had tried most of the other flavors, including mint and cherry, my other favorites.
Because we were regular customers, the vendor poured me an especially generous amount. I twirled my tongue around the icy fresko until the inside of my cheeks numbed. My uncle was unable to resist and gestured for a fresko too, coconut-flavored like mine. By the time I’d finished my own, nearly three-quarters of his would be left, and reaching down to remove the empty paper cone from my hand, he would give me the rest of his.
On the way home, we passed rows and rows of used-book sellers whose yellowed and stained books were lined up in squares on the pavement and behind ropes on carts across from the national cathedral. Standing before a young man with more children’s books than any other kind, my uncle asked me to choose one as a gift for myself. Leaning down, I picked a book that looked familiar, a book I’d owned before. It had a nun on the cover