The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [51]
But just then, when he looked at the sweet juice, which I was enjoying very much myself, saying “C’est à ce prix qu’ils mangent du sucre en Europe,” I replied, “Okay, your majesty,” feeling glad that at least his father wasn’t the only thing on his mind.
“I’m sharing with you Voltaire’s words,” he said. “I tell you that in Europe they eat sugar with our blood in it and you mock me with a colonial title.”
I realized then that it was going to be business as usual, just an ordinary Romain conversation, and so I said, “It seems to me we consume a lot of sugar here too. Does that mean we’re drinking our own blood?”
He laughed and said, “Imbecile, you’re like that baby pig who deigns to ask its mother how come her nose is so big and ugly. Let me be the mother and tell you, ‘Pig, son, one day you’ll find this out for yourself.’ ”
We both laughed. Then his face grew somber and he said, “You know, I’m not listening to the radio or watching television that much. Tante Vesta is, but I’m not.”
“Why watch television or listen to the radio?” I said. “If you want to know what’s happening, hit the béton, the pavement, go out into the streets.”
I was feeling cocky, brazen. I’d ventured out when Romain had not. I’d slipped away from my mother’s grasp to do something she disapproved of, visit with Romain. I felt I had an edge on him. I could now tell him about things he hadn’t yet witnessed, things that were going on out there in our new world.
“I know I shouldn’t be feeling this,” he said, brushing aside my attempted boast by simply ignoring it, “but I can’t help it. I’m a little worried about Regulus. I know the old man isn’t going to sit around waiting for them to get him, but it seems that people like him are going to die very painful deaths.”
“When was the last time you saw Regulus?” I asked.
“Last May eighteenth,” he said. “He was marching in the Flag Day parade on the national palace grounds with all those other macoutes. I went to watch the stupid parade, just to spot him.”
“They probably won’t find him,” was all I could think to say. “He has so many women. One of them will hide him good. Maybe he’ll cross the border, go to the Dominican Republic.”
“Maybe,” Romain said, halfheartedly agreeing to all those possibilities. Maybe Regulus would survive and emerge from all this a new man, repent for all his sins, reclaim all his children, offer them his name—if they still wanted it—beg their forgiveness, both for what he’d done to them and for what he had done to his country.
My mother popped into my head once again. By now she’d probably noticed that I was gone and was furiously looking for me, ordering Rosie and Vaval to join the search. She would think I was out running around with the demonstrators, trying to discover where they would go next, see who they’d find and what they’d do.
“What’s the matter?” Romain asked.
“I’m worried about my mother,” I confessed. “She might be fretting about me.”
“Twelve years old,” he said, “and still Mama’s baby. I’m going to make you a man today. We’re going to do like those guys, like Regulus. We’re going to escape.”
We didn’t tell Vesta where we were going. We simply hurried past her, Romain mumbling that we’d be right back.
“Come back here!” Vesta yelled as we rushed out of the house. “Do you know what’s going on out there? Come back!”
As we sprinted away, I asked Romain, “Where are we going?”
“If we had someplace in mind,” he said, “then we’d be going on a trip, not escaping.”
Most of the shops near Romain’s house were closed even as the streets were growing more and more crowded. On the way to the bus depot, we found ourselves in the middle of a mock funeral procession with a group of “pallbearers” carrying two wooden coffins, one for the president and the other for his wife. Some of the men in the crowd donned priest’s cassocks