The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [102]
“I would like to know what became of the stream,” I said.
“What stream?” she asked.
“The one that starts at the waterfall.”
“There have been a lot of houses constructed here,” she said, “but the houses have not replaced everything. There are many waterfalls still. If you like, I can show you the closest one that remains.”
Garaged behind the main house was a wide, two-toned, green and white automobile with a yellow vinyl interior. Sylvie climbed into the back first. Then I took the seat beside the señora’s. I saw the señora stifle a gasp as she realized that because of my bad knee, one of my legs now appeared much shorter than the other.
A man came running out from one of the smaller houses when she started up the automobile.
“Señora, you are going out?” he asked, resting his arm on the door on her side.
“I will not be long,” she said.
“Should I not go with you?” he asked.
“Please open the gate for us,” she said.
The man buttoned the last two buttons of his shirt as he hastened to the gate. Even though he was running as fast as his legs could carry him, the señora’s automobile still reached the gate before he did. She waited there for him to open it for her.
“This is my daughter’s automobile,” she said, driving through the parted gates. “Our Rosalinda, Amabelle, she is so beautiful. She is my whole life. We get along very well, as it might have been with Mami and me. This car was a marriage gift from her father. She taught me to drive so I can move about by myself when I wish. He does not even know, my husband, that I can drive an automobile, isn’t that so, Sylvie?”
“That is so, Señora,” said Sylvie.
The señora drove her car almost at walking speed through the same streets I had previously traversed, then made a sudden turn that took us beyond all the large houses into wide open meadows, old cane land now filled with wheat and corn fields, the mountain ranges looming over them. We drove past clusters of casitas and small farms where children ran out to chase the car. Finally the señora added some speed, charging through a narrow trail inside a corn field that led abruptly to a long braid of water that grew wider as we climbed to its source.
The señora stopped the automobile with a sudden jolt that sent Sylvie’s chin pounding into the back of my seat. We were nearly at the cliff above a giant waterfall, watching the water slide over the ledge into a deep pool, rising and falling with white foam spray. The drop was much longer and the pool deeper than the one I remembered. Perhaps time had destroyed my sense of proportion and possibilities. Or perhaps this was another fall altogether.
We sat there and watched the cascade change colors, from tear-clear to liquid orange.
“Perhaps it’s just rained in the mountains, the fall is so strong,” she said. “I understand why you would come this very long distance to see it. When we were children, you were always drawn to water, Amabelle, streams, lakes, rivers, waterfalls in all their power; do you remember?”
I did.
“When I didn’t see you, I always knew where to find you, peeking into some current, looking for your face. Since then I can’t tell you how many streams and rivers and waterfalls I have been to, looking for you.”
We watched the pool until it was a perfect mirror of the sky, where the sun was about to set. Sylvie cleared her throat several times, a signal, perhaps, that she thought it was time for us to leave. When we didn’t move, the anxious frown became more pronounced on her face; she wiped her sweaty palms on her lap and tried to temper the audible racing of her breath.
“What is it, Sylvie?” asked the señora. “Are you ill?”
Sylvie’s upper lip was sweating, turning darker, and for a moment the outline of her face reminded me of Joel’s lover, Félice, who’d had a beet-colored birthmark where she would have had a mustache had she been born a man.
“A question,” Sylvie said, her voice rising and falling quickly, beyond her control. “If I could ask a question?”
The señora reached for a handkerchief from one of the hidden compartments