Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [50]
"So much like America," Ma said, shaking her head. "Everything mechanical. When you were young, every time someone asked you what you wanted to do when you were all grown up, you said you wanted to marry Pélé. What's happened to that dream?"
"Pélé who?" Caroline grimaced.
"On the eve of your wedding day, you denounce him, but you wanted to marry him, the Brazilian soccer player, you always said when you were young that you wanted to marry him."
I was the one who wanted to marry Pélé. When I was a little girl, my entire notion of love was to marry the soccer star. I would confess it to Papa every time we watched a game together on television.
In our living room, the music was dying down as the radio station announced two A.M. Ma kept her head down as she added a few last stitches to her dress for the wedding.
"When you are pregnant," Ma said to Caroline, "give your body whatever it wants. You don't want your child to have port-wine marks from your cravings."
Caroline went to our room and came back wearing her wedding dress and a false arm.
Ma's eyes wandered between the bare knees poking beneath the dress and the device attached to Caroline's forearm.
"I went out today and got myself a wedding present," Caroline said. It was a robotic arm with two shoulder straps that controlled the motion of the plastic fingers.
"Lately, I've been having this shooting pain in my stub and it feels like my arm is hurting," Caroline said.
"It does not look very real," Ma said.
"That's not the point, Ma!" Caroline snapped.
"I don't understand," Ma said.
"I often feel a shooting pain at the end of my left arm, always as though it was cut from me yesterday. The doc-tor said I have phantom pain."
"What? The pain of ghosts?"
"Phantom limb pain," Caroline explained, "a kind of pain that people feel after they've had their arms or legs amputated. The doctor thought this would make it go away."
"But your arm was never cut from you," Ma said. "Did you tell him that it was God who made you this way?"
"With all the pressure lately, with the wedding, he says that it's only natural that I should feel amputated."
"In that case, we all have phantom pain," Ma said.
When she woke up on her wedding day, Caroline looked drowsy and frazzled, as if she had aged several years since the last time we saw her. She said nothing to us in the kitchen as she swallowed two aspirins with a gulp of water.
"Do you want me to make you some soup?" Ma asked.
Caroline said nothing, letting her body drift down into Ma's arms as though she were an invalid. I helped her into a chair at the kitchen table. Ma went into the hall closet and pulled out some old leaves that she had been saving. She stuffed the leaves into a pot of water until the water overflowed.
Caroline was sitting so still that Ma raised her index finger under her nose to make sure she was breathing.
"What do you feel?" Ma asked.
"I am tired," Caroline said. "I want to sleep. Can I go back to bed?"
"The bed won't be yours for much longer," Ma said. 'As soon as you leave, we will take out your bed. From this day on, you will be sleeping with your husband, away from here."
"What's the matter?" I asked Caroline.
"I don't know," she said. "I just woke up feeling like I don't want to get married. All this pain, all this pain in my arm makes it seem so impossible somehow."
"You're just nervous," I said.
"Don't worry," Ma said. "I was the same on the morning of my wedding. I fell into a stupor, frightened of all the possibilities. We will give you a bath and then you lay down for a bit and you will rise as promised and get married."
The house smelled like a forest as the leaves boiled on the stove. Ma filled the bathtub with water and then dumped the boiled leaves inside.
We undressed Caroline and guided her to the tub, helping her raise her legs to get in.
"Just sink your whole body," Ma said, when Caroline was in the tub.
Caroline pushed her head against the side of the tub and lay there as her legs paddled playfully towards the water's surface.
Ma's eyes were