Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [53]
"I'll visit you and Ma when I come back," she said. "Just don't go running off with any Brazilian soccer players."
Caroline and I were both sobbing by the time she walked over to say good-bye to Ma. She kissed Ma on the cheek and then quickly hopped in the taxi without looking back. Ma ran her hand over the window, her finger sliding along the car door as it pulled away.
"I like how you stood up and spoke for your sister," she said.
"The toast?"
"It was good."
"I feel like I had some help," I said.
That night, Ma got a delivery of roses so red that they didn't look real.
"Too expensive," she said when the delivery man handed them to her.
The guy waited for her to sign a piece of paper and then a bit longer for a tip.
Ma took a dollar out of her bra and handed it to him.
She kept sniffing the roses as she walked back to the kitchen.
"Who are they from?" I asked.
"Caroline," she said. "Sweet, sweet Caroline."
Distance had already made my sister Saint Sweet Caroline.
"Are you convinced of Caroline's happiness now?" I asked.
"You ask such difficult questions."
That night she went to bed with the Polaroid wed-ding photos and the roses by her bed. Later, I saw her walking past my room cradling the vase. She woke up several times to sniff the roses and change the water.
That night, I also dreamt that I was with my father by a stream of rose-colored blood. We made a fire and grilled a breadfruit for dinner while waiting for the stream to turn white. My father and I were sitting on opposite sides of the fire. Suddenly the moon slipped through a cloud and dived into the bloody stream, filling it with a sheet of stars.
I turned to him and said, "Look, Papy. There are so many stars."
And my father in his throaty voice said, "If you close your eyes really tight, wherever you are, you will see these stars."
I said, "Let's go for a swim."
He said, "No, we have a long way to travel and the trip will be harder if we get wet."
Then I said, "Papa, do you see all the blood? It's very beautiful."
His face began to glow as though it had become like one of the stars.
Then he asked me, "If we were painters, which landscapes would we paint?"
I said, "I don't understand."
He said, "We are playing a game, you must answer me.
I said, "I don't know the answers."
"When you become mothers, how will you name your sons?"
"We'll name them all after you," I said.
"You have forgotten how to play this game," he said.
"What kind of lullabies do we sing to our children at night? Where do you bury your dead?"
His face was fading into a dreamy glow.
"What kind of legends will your daughters be told? What kinds of charms will you give them to ward off evil?"
I woke up startled, for the first time afraid of the father that I saw in my dreams.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and went down to the kitchen to get a glass of warm milk.
Ma was sitting at the kitchen table, rolling an egg between her palms. I slipped into the chair across from her. She pressed harder on both ends of the egg.
"What are you doing up so late?" she asked.
"I can't sleep," I said.
"I think people should take shifts. Some of us would carry on at night and some during the day. The night would be like the day exactly. All stores would be open and people would go to the office, but only the night people. You see, then there would be no sleeplessness."
I warmed some cold milk in a pan on the stove. Ma was still pressing hard, trying to crush the egg from top and bottom. I offered her some warm milk but she refused.
"What did you think of the wedding today?" I asked.
"When your father left me and you behind in Haiti to move to this country and marry that woman to get our papers," she said, "I prepared a charm for him. I wrote his name on a piece of paper and put the paper in a cal-abash. I filled the calabash with honey and next to it lit a candle. At midnight every night, I laid