Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [50]
Madame Maryse was fidgeting a bit, shifting the weight of her round frame from one fuzzy red–covered foot to another. She looked at some of the townspeople clustered on the beach, then turned her gaze back to the door where the girl had entered the shack, then glanced back toward the water where many of her neighbors were sitting by the dimming bonfire with the fisherman’s widow who was still sobbing and rocking her face in her hands.
Gaspard followed Madame Maryse’s gaze and remembered how during the first three years of his daughter’s life, he used to dream of his girl, a little baby lying in his arms at night. Then in the morning, while he was on the water, he would imagine seeing her baby face bobbing in and out of the gentle wake of his fishing boat. He would instantly fear that she had joined her mother in death and would anxiously wait for the news of it to make its way to him, but it never did. She remained as alive as he was, and he was even more afraid of the possibility of seeing her in the flesh, as fearful as he was that she might have the face she had inherited, her mother’s. He never dreamed of his wife, though. That part of it, something in him kept locked away out of sadness and guilt. He had been absent when his wife had died and his child was born. He had been hoping to get one last series of catches before his daughter came. He had been at sea.
The crowd on the beach was beginning to thin out. People were slowly drifting away, heading back toward town. He felt sad that he had nothing more to say to this woman who was offering his daughter a new life, this woman who from now on his daughter would call mother. He had once fantasized that he would marry her, but he knew that even with her preferences for questionable men she would still consider him inferior, socially beneath her. And now there she was, growing impatient as his daughter refused to come out of his house.
“How much is she bringing with her?” she asked.
“I’ll get her,” he said.
He felt the woman’s solid and perhaps judgmental gaze on his back as he headed for the house. He was doing his best not to stumble, but each time the soles of his feet dug into the cooling sand, he was certain he would fall over.
Gaspard could immediately tell when he entered the shack that his daughter was not there. Several fast-moving creatures darted into further darkness as he inspected the foam mattress his daughter usually slept on. It was covered with its usual patchwork blanket, untouched since she had carefully pulled it tight and tucked the corners under that morning. Hanging from a wire hanger nailed to the wall were her school uniforms. He picked up the kerosene lamp by the door and, using it to light his way, searched all four corners of the room.
When he didn’t find her, he ran out to the beach and screamed her name. Madame Maryse rushed to his side, saw the look of panic on his face, and joined in the shouting of Claire’s name. Others did too, walking off in different directions until they had searched the entire moonlit stretch of the beach. Some even walked to the edge of the water, calling Claire’s name into the horizon.
When after some time Claire did not surface, many of Gaspard’s neighbors walked over to him and took turns telling him some variation of, Maybe the girl fell asleep somewhere. She will surely be home by morning.
The fisherman’s widow came to embrace him, her grief momentarily stalled by his. Her face was swollen from crying and the mourning scarf around her coarse black hair slid toward the back of her very long neck. She was his wife’s age, the age his wife would have been now, too young to bear such a burdensome grief, yet too old to start over.
The fisherman’s widow, like many of the others, thought that Claire might have gone to town and encouraged those heading there to continue their search. Gaspard, however, was certain that Claire would return soon and wanted to be at home when she did.