The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [21]
A few more people arrived. They shed their clothes and squeezed into the spaces left in the water. Void of ceremony, this was a silent farewell to Joel, a quiet wake at dawn.
“Your people killed Joel rushing home to their twin babies, didn’t they?” Mimi asked. “I hear this is how it happened.”
“Yes. That’s how it was.”
“Beatriz thinks she’ll be the godmother of one of the twins.”
“The señor and the señora will decide.”
“What Beatriz wants, she is often given.”
“Do you always call her Beatriz?” I asked.
“I don’t have to christen her ‘Señorita’ in your presence, do I?”
I thought of Señora Valencia, whom I had known since she was eleven years old. I had called her Señorita as she grew from a child into a young woman. When she married the year before, I called her Señora. She on the other hand had always called me Amabelle.
“I don’t call her ‘Beatriz’ in her presence,” Mimi explained. “But what would be so terrible if we did say only their Christian names?”
“It would demonstrate a lack of respect,” I said. “The way you’d never call one of these old women by their names. You call them ‘Man’ even though they’re not your mother.”
Mimi flinched and looked down at her coffee bean bracelet. She seemed pained for a moment as she glanced at the old women, perhaps searching for her mother’s smile beneath their scowls.
“What does it matter if Beatriz and your lady become angry with us?” she said. “If they let us go, at least we’d have a few days of freedom before dying from hunger.”
“There is your brother who counts on you,” I said, wanting to halt this needless quarrel in light of the heavier pains in the air. “Even when he’s buried in debt, he can always secure a meal from you.”
“Or from you,” she insisted.
“But you are his blood,” I said. “With myself, if we quarrel, he won’t eat from me.”
“I thank you for reminding me why I’m so bound to the misery of that woman’s house,” she said. “When you and my brother set up house together, then perhaps I will be free.”
Everyone watched Kongo as he emerged from the stream. He walked off, leaning on a broken broom handle that served him as a cane. Sebastien and his friend Yves, who had also been on the road when Joel was killed, followed behind Kongo, ready to catch him if the broom handle failed. Yves had a shaved head that shimmered as bright as Kongo’s machete under the morning sun. He and Sebastien followed Kongo back to the compound.
“When will you and Sebastien start living in the same house together?” Mimi asked. “If my brother is too timid to ask, I can act as a go-between.”
“Yesterday Juana called me a nonbehever because I don’t normally pray to the saints,” I said. “She asked me if I believed in anything, and all I could think to say was Sebastien.”
“I’ll have to tell Sebastien.” Mimi splashed the water with her palms. The others turned to stare, cutting their eyes at her for seeming too joyful on such a day. She paddled the water with more force, making it rise up and shield her like a curtain of glass. She was like a naked statue in one of those fountains at the town square with water sprouting out of her navel and mouth.
“No sad faces,” she said. “Joel’s well enough where he is. He’d want us to be glad for him. We should give him a joyous wake to send his spirit on its way. He would want us to laugh and be grateful he’s not here now.”
Félice walked out of the stream and went to dress in the bushes. Mimi was one of the last people still left in the water.
“Mimi’s only a child,” I said, following Félice. “She didn’t know what she was saying.”
“This must be what it means to get old,” Félice said, in her usual urgent voice, which sometimes blurred the words when she was speaking. She covered the hairy birthmark with her hands as she chose her words and forced them out. “I could hate no one when I was young. Now I can and I do.”
Dropping her head onto my shoulder, she pressed her forearms into my ribs as she leaned against me. Her body felt heavy and limp; I was afraid she was going to faint and fall right there at my feet.
“Courage, dear one,” I said, trying