The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [30]
“Uncle,” he said, “I was dying of thirst until your granddaughter here gave me some water to drink.”
“My granddaughter?” The old man laughed. “She’s my daughter. Do you think I look that old?”
Toothless, he did look old, with a grizzly white beard and a face full of folds and creases that seemed to map out every road he had traveled in his life.
The old man reached over and grabbed one of three wooden poles that held up the front of the house. He stood there for a while, saying nothing, catching his breath. After the children had brought him a calabash filled with water—the glass and earthen jar were obviously reserved for strangers—and two chairs for him and the stranger, he lit his pipe, exhaled a fragrant cloud of fresh tobacco, and asked, “Where are you going, my son?”
“I’m going to see my aunt, Estina Estème,” he replied. “She lives in Beau Jour.”
The old man removed the pipe from his mouth and reached up to scratch his beard.
“Estina Estème? The same Estina Estème from Beau Jour?”
“The same,” he said, growing hopeful that he was not too far from his aunt’s house.
“You say she is your aunt?”
“She is,” he replied. “You know her?”
“Know her?” the old man retorted. “There are no strangers in these mountains. My grandfather Nozial and her grandfather Dorméus were cousins. Who was your father?”
“My father was Maxo Jean Dorméus,” he said.
“The one killed with his wife in that fire?” the old man asked. “They only had the one boy. Estina nearly died in that fire too. Only the boy came out whole.”
“I am the boy,” he said, an egg-sized lump growing in his throat. He hadn’t expected to be talking about these things so soon. He had prepared himself for only one conversation about his parents’ death, the one he would inevitably have with his aunt.
The children moved a few inches closer to him, their eyes beaming as though they were being treated to a frightening folktale in the middle of the day.
“Even after all these years,” the old man said, “I’m still so sad for you. So you are that young man who used to come here with Estina, the one who went to New York some years back?”
The old man looked him up and down, as if searching for burn marks on his body, then ordered the children to retreat.
“Shoo,” he commanded. “This is no talk for young ears.”
The children quickly vanished, the oldest girl resuming her work with the mortar and pestle.
Rising from his chair, the old man said, “Come, I’ll take you to Estina Estème.”
Estina Estème lived in a valley between two lime-green mountains and a giant waterfall, which sprayed a fine mist over the banana grove that surrounded her one-room house and the teal ten-place mausoleum that harbored the bones of many of her forebears. Her nephew recognized the house as soon as he saw it. It had not changed much, the sloped tin roof and the wooden frame intact. His aunt’s banana grove seemed to have flourished; it was greener and denser than he remembered. Her garden was packed with orange and avocado trees—a miracle, given the barren mountain range he’d just traveled through.
When he entered his aunt’s yard, he was greeted by a flock of hens and roosters that scattered quickly, seeking shelter on top of the family mausoleum.
He rushed to the front porch, where an old faded skirt and blouse were drying on the wooden railing. The door was open, so he ran into the house, leaving behind the old man and a group of neighbors whom the old man had enticed into following them by announcing as he passed their houses that he had with him Estina Estème’s only nephew.
In the small room was his aunt’s cot, covered with a pale blue sheet. Nearby was a calabash filled with water, within easy reach so she could drink from it at night without leaving her bed. Under the cot was her porcelain chamber pot and baskets filled with a few Sunday dresses, hats, and shoes.
The old man peeked in to ask, “She’s not here?”
“No,” he replied, “she’s not.”
He was growing annoyed with the old man, even though he would never have found his aunt’s house so quickly without his help.
When he walked out of the