Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [48]
We decorated the living room for Caroline's shower. Pink streamers and balloons draped down from the ceiling with the words Happy Shower emblazoned on them.
Ma made some patties from ground beef and codfish. She called one of her friends from Saint Agnes to bake the shower cake cheap. We didn't tell her friend what the cake was for. Ma wrote Caroline's name and the date on it after it had been delivered. She scrubbed the whole house, just in case one of the strangers want-ed to use our bathroom. There wasn't a trace of dirt left on the wallpaper, the tiles, even the bathroom cabinets. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then whenever we had company my mother became a goddess.
Aside from Ma and me, there were only a few other people at the shower: four women from the junior high school where we taught and Mrs. Ruiz.
Ma acted like a waitress and served everyone as Caroline took center stage sitting on the loveseat that we designated the "shower chair." She was wearing one of her minidresses, a navy blue with a wide butterfly collar. We laid the presents in front of her to open, after she had guessed what was inside.
"Next a baby shower!" shouted Mrs. Ruiz in her heavy Spanish accent.
"Let's take one thing at a time," I said.
"Never too soon to start planning," Mrs. Ruiz said. "I promise to deliver the little one myself. Caroline, tell me now, what would you like, a girl or a boy?"
"Let's get through one shower first," Caroline said.
I followed Ma to the kitchen as she picked up yet another empty tray.
"Why don't you sit down for a while and let me serve?" I asked Ma as she put another batch of patties in the oven. She looked like she was going to cry.
When it was time to open the presents, Ma stayed in the kitchen while we all sat in a circle watching Caroline open her gifts.
She got a juicer, a portable step exerciser, and some other household appliances from the school-teachers. I gave her a traveling bag to take on her honeymoon.
Ma peeked through the doorway as we cooed over the appliances, suggesting romantic uses for them: breakfasts in bed, candlelight dinners, and the like. Ma pulled her head back quickly and went into the kitchen.
She was in the living room to serve the cake when the time came for it. While we ate, she gathered all of the boxes and the torn wrapping paper and took them to the trash bin outside.
She was at the door telling our guests good-bye as they left.
"Believe me, Mrs. Azile, I will deliver your first grand-child," Mrs. Ruiz told her as she was leaving.
"I am sorry about your son," I said to Mrs. Ruiz.
"Now why would you want to bring up a thing like that?" Mrs. Ruiz asked.
"Carmen, next time you come I will give you some of my bone soup," Ma said as Mrs. Ruiz left.
Ma gave me a harsh look as though I had stepped out of line in offering my belated condolences to Mrs. Ruiz.
"There are things that don't always need to be said," Ma told me.
Caroline packed her gifts before going to bed that night. The boxes were nearly full now.
We heard a knock on the door of our room as we changed for bed. It was Ma in her nightgown holding a gift-wrapped package in her hand. She glanced at Caroline's boxes in the corner, quickly handing Caro-line the present.
"It is very sweet of you to get me something," Caro-line said, kissing Ma on the cheek to say thank you.
"It's very nothing," Ma said, "very nothing at all."
Ma turned her face away as Caroline lifted the present out of the box. It was a black and gold silk teddy with a plunging neckline.
'At the store," Ma said, "I told them your age and how you would be having this type of a shower. A girl there said that this would make a good gift for such things. I hope it will be of use."
"I like it very much," Caroline said, replacing it in the box.
After Caroline went to bed, I went to Ma's room for one of our chats. I slipped under the covers next to her, the way Caroline and I had come to her and Papa when our dreams had frightened us.
"That was nice, the teddy you got for Caroline," I said. "But it doesn't