Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [30]
He took Emilie's passport and flipped through it quickly.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, handing the passport back to her. "It is after curfew."
"The lady was not feeling well," I said. "So she asked me to take her for a walk."
"Didn't you hear the signals?" asked Toto. "The cur-few has already started. You would not want to have blood on your nice communion dress."
Two other soldiers passed us on their way to the field. They were dragging the blood-soaked body of a beard-ed man with an old election slogan written on a T-shirt across his chest: ALONE WE ARE WEAK, TOGETHER WE ARE A FLOOD. The guards were carrying him, feet first, like a breech birth.
Emilie moved toward the body as though she want-ed to see it better.
"You see nothing," Toto said, reaching up to turn Emilie's face. Her eyes twitched from Toto's touch on her cheek.
"Under God's sky, you do this to people!" she hollered in a brazen Creole.
Toto laughed loudly.
"We are doing that poor indigent a favor burying him," he said.
Emilie moved forward, trying to follow the guards taking the body into the yard.
"You see nothing," Toto said again, grabbing her face. She raised her arm as if to strike him. He seized her wrist in midair and whisked her hand behind her back.
"You see nothing," he said, his voice hissing between his teeth. "Repeat after me. You see nothing."
"I see nothing," I said in her place. "The lady does not understand."
"I see you," she saidin Creole. "How can that be nothing?"
"Peace, let her go," I said.
"You are a coward," she told him.
He lowered his head so he was staring directly into her eyes. He twisted her arm like a wet rag.
"Peace, have mercy on her," I said.
"Let her ask for herself," he said.
She stamped her feet on his boots. He let go of her hand and tapped his rifle on her shoulder. Emilie looked up at him, angry and stunned. He moved back, aiming his rifle at her head, squinting as though he was going to shoot.
"Peace!" I hollered.
My eyes fell on Raymond's as he walked out of the field. I mouthed the word, pleading for help. Peace. Peace. Peace.
"They'll go," Raymond said to Toto.
"Then go!" Toto shouted. "Let me watch you go."
"Let's go," I said to Emilie. "My grandmother will be mad at me if I get killed."
Raymond walked behind us as we went back to the road.
"The password has changed," he said. "Stop say-ing peace.'"
By the time I turned around to look at his face, he was already gone.
Emilie and I said nothing to each other on the way back. The sound of bullets continued to ring through the night.
"You never look them in the eye," I told her when we got to the yellow house doorstep.
"Is that how you do it?"
I helped her up the steps and into the house.
"I am going to sew these old pieces of cloth onto my mother's blanket tonight," she said.
She took a needle from my grandmother's bundle and began sewing. Her ringers moved quickly as she stitched the pieces together.
"I should go," I said, eyeing the money still on the table.
"Please, stay. I will pay you more if you stay with me until the morning."
"My grandmother will worry."
"What was your mother's name?" she asked.
"Marie Magdalene," I said.
"They should have given you that name instead of the one you got. Was your mother pretty?"
"I don't know. She never took portraits like the ones you have of yours."
"Did you know those men who were in the yard tonight?"
"Yes."
"I didn't fight them because I didn't want to make trouble for you later," she said. "We should write down their names. For posterity."
"We have already had posterity," I said.
"When?"
"We were babies and we grew old."
"You're still young," she said. "You're not old."
"My grandmother is old for me."
"If she is old for you, then doesn't it matter if you get old? You can't say that. You can't just say what she wants for you to say. I didn't get in a fight with them because I did not want them to hurt you," she said.
"I will stay with you," I said, "because I know you are afraid."
I curled my body on the floor next