The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [79]
12
He was dreaming. Once again he was a boy in Léogâne, and he and his mother were working together in her garden. It was a cool morning and the sun was just rising, a golden mist surrounding them.
The earth was warm and moist when he touched it, the seedbeds smelling of decaying vegetable peel. As the sun rose higher in the sky, he could hear cocks crowing, dogs barking, birdcalls, and wings flapping, and his father gently moving toward his mother and himself to quietly watch them work before heading out to one of his early-morning mason lodge meetings.
Once more he was alone in the garden with his mother. Her long thick black hair, freed from the dark rag she usually kept it wrapped in, rose and fell on her shoulders in the morning breeze. Around them the seeds they’d planted together had magically taken root and were turning into trees—mango, papaya, guava, and avocado trees. From among the roots, herbs, and healing weeds, his mother reached down and plucked a bundled fern, a fèy wònt, a mimosa pudica or shame plant. She took one of his hands and guided it toward the tiny leaflets. When his index finger touched the prickly spine, the little leaves collapsed onto themselves as if to shut him out. She motioned for him to wait a while, for she never spoke in his dreams, and magically the leaves turned outward and reopened. She encouraged him to try this a few more times, tapping the shame plant to watch it close, then open and close once more. Then she handed him a sprig, motioning for him to hold on to it.
His dream abruptly ended with the sound of his front door being opened and shut. He sat up quickly to receive his visitor, reaching for his .38 where he usually kept it on the floor near the mattress by his head. But he didn’t find it there. Emptied of bullets, it had remained, like his car and his hidden money, at the barracks. Then the events of the previous night came back to the forefront of his mind. The wait. The church. The minister. The shots. His throbbing, itching face, which felt as though it were being clawed. And this woman, this woman who had opened and closed his door, this woman who was standing there in a nightgown or a slip, covered with dirt and blood (his blood?), her eyes reddened, her face streaked with tears. This woman, she was holding a bottle of honey, three pieces of ginger, and a sprig of yerba buena that she probably meant to pound into some concoction to place on the wound on his face. This woman? Who was she again?
He was afraid to ask her name, afraid that he would recognize it. Maybe she was someone he’d been with before, someone he’d once brought home when he was too drunk to remember.
He was relieved when she asked a question first. And though she looked shell-shocked and insane, her voice didn’t sound it. It was as calm as a stream or one of those tranquil brooks his mother was repeatedly taking him to in his dreams.
“What did they do to you?” she asked.
This was the most forgiving question he’d ever been asked. It suddenly opened a door, produced a small path, which he could follow.
“I’m free,” he said. “I finally escaped.”
Her posture was crooked, but her mind seemed clear. She had placed her wares on the floor, laid them out one by one at the foot of the mattress.
One day he would try to make her understand why he’d put it like that. In many ways it was true. He had escaped from his life. He could no longer return to it, no longer wanted to.
He would tell her the real truth later, much later, once he’d told her a series of other things, about his mother, his father, the garden, Léogâne.
What made him think there would be a later? Why was he so sure that she wasn’t going to walk out on him in the next minute, the next hour, even the next day? Because she also looked as though there was something she was anxious to tell. Perhaps it was the thing that just then was making her cry. Or maybe it was the answer to those very questions