The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [31]
He walked over and kissed the women, shook hands with the men, and patted the children’s heads.
“Please, where’s my aunt?” he asked of the entire crowd.
“She’ll soon be here,” a woman replied. “We sent for her.”
Once he knew his aunt was on her way, he did his best to appear interested in catching up. Many in the crowd complained that once he got to New York, he forgot about them, never sending the watch or necklace or radio he’d promised. Surprised that they’d taken his youthful pledges so seriously, he offered some feeble excuses. “It’s not so easy to earn money in New York. . . . I thought you’d moved to the capital. . . . I didn’t know your address.”
“Where would we have gone?” one of the men rebutted. “We were not so lucky as you.”
He was glad when he heard his aunt’s voice, calling his name. The crowd parted and she appeared, pudgy yet graceful in a drop-waist dress. Her face was round and full, her skin silken and very black, her few wrinkles, in his estimation, more like beauty marks than signs of old age. Two people were guiding her by the elbows. As they were leading her to him, she pulled herself away and raised her hands in front of her, searching for him in the breeze. He had almost forgotten that she was blind, had been since the day of the fire that had taken his parents’ lives.
The crowd moved back a few feet as he ran into her arms. She held him tightly, angling her head to kiss the side of his face.
“Dany, is it you?” She patted his back and shoulders to make sure.
“I brought him here for you,” the old man said.
“Old Zo, why is it that you’re always mixed up in everything?” she asked, joking.
“True to my name,” the old man replied, “I’m a bone that fits every stew.”
The crowd laughed.
“Let’s go in the house,” his aunt told him. “It’s hot out here.”
As they started for her front door, he took her hand and tried to guide her, but found himself an obstacle in her path and let go. Once they were inside, she felt her way to her cot and sat down on the edge.
“Sit with me, Da,” she said. “You have made your old aunt a young woman again.”
“How are you?” He sat down next to her. “Truly?”
“Truly fine,” she said. “Did Popo tell you different?”
For years now, he’d been paying a boyhood friend in Port-au-Prince, Popo, to come and check on her once a month. He would send Popo money to buy her whatever she needed and Popo would in turn call him in New York to brief him on how she was doing.
“No,” he said. “Popo didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then why did you come?” she asked. “I’m not unhappy to see you, but you just dropped out of the sky. There must be a reason.” She felt for his face, found it, and kissed it for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Were you sent back?” she asked. “We have a few boys here in the village who have been sent back. Many don’t even speak Creole anymore. They come here because this is the only place they have any family. There’s one boy not far from here. I’ll take you to visit him. You can speak to him, one American to another.”
“You still go on your visits?” he asked.
“When they came to fetch me, I was with a girl in labor,” she said.
“Still midwifing?”
“Helping the midwife,” she replied. “You know I know every corner of these mountains. If a new tree grows, I learn where it is. Same with children. A baby’s still born the same way it was when I had sight.”
“I meant to come sooner,” he said, watching her join and separate her fingers like tree branches brushing against each other. Both her hands had been burned during the fire that had followed the explosion at his parents’ house, but over the years the burn marks had smoothed into her skin and were now barely visible.
“I knew that once the time was right you’d come back,” she said. “But why didn’t you send word that you were