The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [55]
Monsieur Christophe remains very much alive, Rosie and Vaval tell me when I call now and then to check on them, but he has retired and has turned the tap station and other businesses he’s since acquired over to his son Tobin.
To everyone who asks me about my father, I tell and retell the myth that my mother so carefully crafted and guarded for me, that my father perished before I was born, lost his life to something “political.”
As for you, my son, your myth is this: it’s now past midnight; if you’re born today, on this, the anniversary of the day that everything changed for me, on the day that I became a man, your name will be Romain, after my first true friend.
THE FUNERAL SINGER
WEEK 1
Rézia, the owner of Ambiance Créole, the sole Haitian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, recites a long speech from the class manual:
“Four scones and seven tears ago, our fathers blew up this condiment . . .”
Odd, but Rézia doesn’t have a lisp when she attempts to speak English. Everything just gets mixed up in her mouth, like a birdcall in a storm.
Rézia always carries a white muslin handkerchief. As it flaps back and forth, ever so abruptly, it releases more and more of its vetiver fragrance, all the while looking like a kite that she’s using to send messages far away.
In spite of Rézia’s vetiver, the air in the classroom is scorching and it stings. The air conditioner has stopped humming as if to listen to us talk.
Mariselle, who’s shaped like a pencil even in her heavy French suit, stands up in a perfectly straight line and, in her deep voice that sounds like two people, simply states her name. She says it so quickly that it sounds shorter, as though she’s given herself a nickname, solely for the purposes of the class.
She’s asked to repeat her name. After a third time, she announces each syllable and they merge into two beautiful words, Mari Sèl, Salt Mary or Solitary Mary. You’re tempted to add “Pray for us” and I do, under my breath. I can’t stop watching the way she tugs at her thick, curly hair each time she opens her mouth, and I can see her scalp rise and fall as she pulls and releases, pulls and releases.
I wish I could sing to introduce myself. Perhaps everyone would be listening too hard to look at me.
I would sing “Brother Timonie.” It’s a song my father, a fisherman, used to sing whenever he thought a storm was coming.
I’d begin by asking everyone to pretend they were rowing with me, and I’d sing, Brother Timonie, row well, my friend. Don’t you see we’re in trouble? Brother Timonie, the wind’s blowing hard. And we must make it back to land.
This is not the first time I’ve called on Brother Timonie. At least it’s not the first time I’ve tried.
I asked my father once, Who was Brother Timonie?
He didn’t know. Maybe a fisherman who died at sea. Most of the songs he knew were about people who’d died at sea.
When I stand to speak, tapping my feet against my chair, the teacher decides to turn my introduction into an inquisition.
“And what do you do?” Her voice hisses, but is flat, never rising or falling.
I do nothing, I want to say. Not yet. I have been expelled from my country. That’s why I’m in this class at twenty-two years old.
Once we’re all done, the teacher presents herself, saying, “I’m June. You can call me June. If you pay attention and study hard, the test will be a piece of cake and you’ll all be considered high school graduates in no time.” She looks young and beefy and flat-chested and sits on the desk with her bare cream legs dangling in front of us. She doesn’t know what an enormous vow she’s made. A diploma in no time? It’s like those lawyers who promise green cards in a few weeks.
Rézia nicknames her “Flat Tit” when she notices how like little dandelion buds her breasts look in her pleated strapless sundress. Mariselle is Mother Mary and I’m “the baby funeral singer.” I am one of the few professional funeral singers of my generation.