Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [54]
"You can t believe that, Ma," I said.
"I know what I know," she said. "I am an adult woman. I am not telling you this story for pity."
The kitchen radio was playing an old classic on one of the Haitian stations.
Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you.
I had to leave you before I could understand you.
"Would you like to see my proposal letter?" Ma asked.
She slid an old jewelry box across the table towards me. I opened it and pulled out the envelope with the letter in it.
The envelope was so yellowed and frail that at first I was afraid to touch it.
"Go ahead," she said, "it will not turn to dust in your hands."
The letter was cracked along the lines where it had been folded all of these years.
My son, Carl Romélus Azile, would be honored to make your daughter, Hermine Francoise Genie, his wife.
"It was so sweet then," Ma said, "so sweet. Promise me that when I die you will destroy all of this."
"I can't promise you that," I said. "I will want to hold on to things when you die. I will want to hold on to you."
"I do not want my grandchildren to feel sorry for me," she said. "The past, it fades a person. And yes. Today, it was a nice wedding."
My passport came in the mail the next day, addressed to Gracina Azile, my real and permanent name.
I filled out all the necessary sections, my name and address, and'listed my mother to be contacted in case I was in an accident. For the first time in my life, ,1 felt truly secure living in America. It was like being in a war zone and finally receiving a weapon of my own, like standing on the firing line and finally getting a bullet-proof vest.
We had all paid dearly for this piece of paper, this final assurance that I belonged in the club. It had cost my parent's marriage, my mother's spirit, my sister's arm.
I felt like an indentured servant who had finally been allowed to join the family.
The next morning, I went to the cemetery in Rosedale, Queens, where my father had been buried. His was one of many gray tombstones in a line of foreign unpronounceable names. I brought my passport for him to see, laying it on the grass among the wild daisies surrounding the grave.
"Caroline had her wedding," I said. "We felt like you were there."
My father had wanted to be buried in Haiti, but at the time of his death there was no way that we could have afforded it.
The day before Papa's funeral, Caroline and I had told Ma that we wanted to be among Papa's pallbearers.
Ma had thought that it was a bad idea. Who had ever heard of young women being pallbearers? Papa's funeral was no time for us to express our selfish childishness, our American rebelliousness.
When we were children, whenever we rejected symbols of Haitian culture, Ma used to excuse us with great embarrassment and say, "You know, they are American."
Why didn't we like the thick fatty pig skin that she would deep-fry so long that it tasted like rubber? We were Americans and we had no taste buds. A double tragedy.
Why didn't we like the thick yellow pumpkin soup that she spent all New Year's Eve making so that we would have it on New Year's Day to celebrate Haitian Independence Day? Again, because we were American and the Fourth of July was our independence holiday.
"In Haiti, you own your children and they find it natural," she would say. "They know their duties to the family and they act accordingly. In America, no one owns anything, and certainly not another person."
"Caroline called," Ma said. She was standing over the stove making some bone soup when I got home from the cemetery. "I told her that we would still keep her bed here for her, if she ever wants to use it. She will come and visit us soon. I knew she would miss us."
"Can I drop one bone in your soup?" I asked Ma.
"It is your soup too," she said.
She let me drop one bone into the boiling water.