Krik_ Krak! - Edwidge Danticat [6]
Célianne had a girl baby. The woman acting as a mid-wife is holding the baby to the moon and whispering prayers.. . . God, this child You bring into the world, please guide her as You please through all her days on this earth. The baby has not cried.
We had to throw our extra things in the sea because the water is beginning to creep in slowly. The boat needs to be lighter. My two gourdes in change had to be thrown overboard as an offering to Agwé, the spirit of the water. I heard the captain whisper to someone yesterday that they might have to do something with some of the people who never recovered from seasickness. I am afraid that soon they may ask me to throw out this notebook. We might all have to strip down to the way we were born, to keep ourselves from drowning.
Célianne's child is a beautiful child. They are calling her Swiss, because the word Swiss was written on the small knife they used to cut her umbilical cord. If she was my daughter, I would call her soleil, sun, moon, or star, after the elements. She still hasn't cried. There is gossip circulating about how Célianne became pregnant. Some people are saying that she had an affair with a married man and her parents threw her out. Gossip spreads here like everywhere else.
Do you remember our silly dreams? Passing the university exams and then studying hard to go until the end, the farthest of all that we can go in school. I know your father might never approve of me. I was going to try to win him over. He would have to cut out my heart to keep me from loving you. I hope you are writing like you promised. Jesus, Marie, Joseph! Everyone smells so bad. They get into arguments and they say to one another, "It is only my misfortune that would lump me together with an indigent like you." Think of it. They are fighting about being superior when we all might drown like straw.
There is an old toothless man leaning over to see what I am writing. He is sucking on the end of an old wooden pipe that has not seen any fire for a very long time now. He looks like a painting. Seeing things simply, you could fill a museum with the sights you have here. I still feel like such a coward for running away. Have you heard anything about my parents? Last time I saw them on the beach, my mother had a kriz. She just fainted on the sand. I saw her coming to as we started sailing away. But of course I don't know if she is doing all right.
The water is really piling into the boat. We take turns pouring bowls of it out. I don't know what is keeping the boat from splitting in two. Swiss isn't crying. They keep slapping her behind, but she is not crying.
of course the old president didn't come, they arrested a lot of people at the airport, shot a whole bunch of them down, i heard it on the radio, while we were eating tonight, i told papa that i love you. i don't know if it will make a difference, i just want him to know that i have loved somebody in my life, in case something happens to one of us, i think he should know this about me, that i have loved someone besides only my mother and father in my life, i know you would understand, you are the one for large noble gestures, i just wanted him to know that i was capable of loving somebody, he looked me straight in the eye and said nothing to me. i love you until my hair shivers at the thought of anything happening to you. papa just turned his face away like he was rejecting my very birth, i am writing you from under the banyan tree in the yard in our new house, there are only two rooms and a tin roof that makes music when it rains, especially when there is hail, which falls like angry tears from heaven, there is a stream down the hill