The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [9]
As we approach Gabrielle Fonteneau’s house, my father breaks the silence in the car by saying, “Now you see, Ka, why your mother and me, we have never returned home.”
The Fonteneaus’ house is made of bricks and white coral, on a cul-de-sac with a row of banyans separating the two sides of the street.
My father and I get out of the car and follow a concrete path to the front door. Before we can knock, an older woman appears in the doorway. It’s Gabrielle Fonteneau’s mother. She resembles Gabrielle Fonteneau, or the way Gabrielle looks on television, with stunning almond eyes, skin the color of sorrel and spiraling curls brushing the sides of her face.
“We’ve been looking out for you,” she says with a broad smile.
When Gabrielle’s father joins her in the doorway, I realize where Gabrielle Fonteneau gets her height. He’s more than six feet tall.
Mr. Fonteneau extends his hands, first to my father and then to me. They’re relatively small, half the size of my father’s.
We move slowly through the living room, which has a cathedral ceiling and walls covered with Haitian paintings with subjects ranging from market scenes and first communions to weddings and wakes. Most remarkable is a life-size portrait of Gabrielle Fonteneau sitting on a canopy-covered bench in what seems like her parents’ garden.
Out on the back terrace, which towers over a nursery of azaleas, hibiscus, dracaenas, and lemongrass, a table is set for lunch.
Mr. Fonteneau asks my father where he is from in Haiti, and my father lies. In the past, I thought he always said he was from a different province each time because he’d really lived in all of those places, but I realize now that he says this to reduce the possibility of anyone identifying him, even though thirty-seven years and a thinning head of widow-peaked salt-and-pepper hair shield him from the threat of immediate recognition.
When Gabrielle Fonteneau makes her entrance, in an off-the-shoulder ruby dress, my father and I both rise from our seats.
“Gabrielle,” she coos, extending her hand to my father, who leans forward and kisses it before spontaneously blurting out, “My dear, you are one of the most splendid flowers of Haiti.”
Gabrielle Fonteneau looks a bit flustered. She tilts her head coyly and turns toward me.
“Welcome,” she says.
During the meal of conch, fried plantains, and mushroom rice, Mr. Fonteneau tries to draw my father into conversation by asking him, in Creole, when he was last in Haiti.
“Thirty-seven years,” my father answers with a mouthful of food.
“No going back for you?” asks Mrs. Fonteneau.
“I have not yet had the opportunity,” my father replies.
“We go back every year,” says Mrs. Fonteneau, “to a beautiful place overlooking the ocean, in the mountains of Jacmel.”
“Have you ever been to Jacmel?” Gabrielle Fonteneau asks me.
I shake my head no.
“We’re fortunate,” Mrs. Fonteneau says, “that we have a place to go where we can say the rain is sweeter, the dust is lighter, our beaches prettier.”
“So now we are tasting rain and weighing dust?” Mr. Fonteneau says and laughs.
“There’s nothing like drinking the sweet juice from a coconut fetched from your own tree.” Mrs. Fonteneau’s eyes are lit up now as she puts her fork down to better paint the picture for us. She’s giddy; her voice grows louder and higher, and even her daughter is absorbed, smiling and recollecting with her mother.
“There’s nothing like sinking your hand in sand from the beach in your own country,” Mrs. Fonteneau is saying. “It’s a wonderful feeling, wonderful.”
I imagine my father’s nightmares. Maybe he dreams of dipping his hands in the sand on a beach in his own country and finding that what he comes up with is a fistful of blood.
After lunch, my father asks if he can have a closer look at the Fonteneaus’ garden. While he’s taking the tour, I make my confession about the sculpture to Gabrielle Fonteneau.
She frowns as she listens, fidgeting, shifting her weight from