The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [20]
Nadine lowered the bed rail to give Ms. Hinds a sense of freedom, even if limited.
“Ms. Hinds, is there something you want?” she asked.
Ms. Hinds opened her mouth wide, trying to force air past her lips, but all that came out was the hiss of oxygen and mucus filtering through the tube in her neck.
Nadine looked over at the night table, where there should have been a pad and pen, but Ms. Hinds had knocked them onto the floor with the magazines her parents had brought for her. She walked over and picked up the pad and pen and pushed them toward Ms. Hinds, who was still lying in a ball in the middle of the bed.
Looking puzzled, Ms. Hinds turned her face toward Nadine, slowly unwrapping her body from around itself.
“I’m here, Ms. Hinds,” Nadine said, now holding the pad within a few inches of Ms. Hinds’ face. “Go ahead.”
Ms. Hinds held out the gaunt fingers of her right hand. The fingers came apart slowly; then Ms. Hinds extended the whole hand, grabbing the pad. She had to force herself to sit up in order to write and she grimaced as she did so, trying to maintain her grip on the pad and slide up against the pillow Nadine propped behind her back.
Ms. Hinds scribbled down a few quick words, then held up the pad for Nadine to read. At first Nadine could not understand the handwriting. It was unsteady and hurried and the words ran together, but Nadine sounded them out, one letter at a time, with some encouragement from Ms. Hinds, who slowly moved her head up and down when Nadine guessed correctly.
“I can’t speak,” Nadine made out.
“That’s right,” Nadine said. “You can’t.”
Looking even more perplexed at Nadine’s unsympathetic reaction, Ms. Hinds grabbed the pad from Nadine’s hand and scribbled, “I’m a teacher.”
“I know,” Nadine said.
“WHY SEND ME HOME LIKE THIS?” Ms. Hinds scribbled next.
“Because we have done all we can for you here,” Nadine said. “Now you must work with a speech therapist. You can get an artificial larynx, a voice box. The speech therapist will help you.”
“Feel like a basenji,” Ms. Hinds wrote, her face sinking closer to her chest.
“What’s a b-a-s-e-n-j-i?” Nadine asked, spelling out the word.
“A dog,” Ms. Hinds wrote. “Doesn’t bark.”
“A dog that doesn’t bark?” Nadine asked. “What kind of dog is that?”
“Exists,” Ms. Hinds wrote, as she bit down hard on her quivering lower lip.
That night at home, Nadine found herself more exhausted than usual. With the television news as white noise, she dialed Eric’s home phone number, hoping she was finally ready to hear his voice for more than the twenty-five seconds her answering machine allowed. He should be home resting now, she thought, preparing to start his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College.
Her mind was suddenly blank. What would she say? She was trying to think of something frivolous, a line of small talk, when she heard the message that his number had been changed to one that was unlisted.
She quickly hung up and redialed, only to get the same message. After dialing a few more times, she decided to call her parents instead.
Ten years ago her parents had sold everything they owned and moved from what passed for a lower-middle-class neighborhood to one on the edge of a slum, in order to send her to nursing school abroad. Ten years ago she’d dreamed of seeing the world, of making her own way in it. These were the intangibles she’d proposed to her mother, the kindergarten teacher, and her father, the camion driver, in the guise of a nursing career. This was what they’d sacrificed everything for. But she always knew that she would repay them. And she had, with half her salary every month, and sometimes more. In return, what she got was the chance to parent them rather than have them parent her. Calling them, however, on the rare occasions that she actually called rather than received their calls, always made her wish to be the one guarded, rather than the guardian, to be reassured now and then that some wounds could heal, that some decisions would not haunt her forever.