The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [36]
“I am not rejoicing,” he said. “And even if I was—”
“It would not be right,” I said. “We would not have wanted them to rejoice when Joël died.”
Silence was his most piercing weapon when he was angry. He said nothing for some time.
“Who are these people to you?” he asked, pushing at a few of the boils until the blood and pus bubbled to the surface. “Do you think they’re your family?”
“The señora and her family are the closest to kin I have,” I said.
“And me?” he asked.
“You too,” I said, wanting to announce that he came first.
“We’ll see,” he said.
I thought of what Mimi had suggested in the stream the day after Joel had died. An eye for an eye, she had said. Did one only have to wish for it to make it true?
“What are you going to do with Papi’s wood?” I asked.
“What am I going to do with what wood?” he asked.
“This wood,” I said, pointing behind him. “The wood I gave you for Joel’s coffin.”
“Kongo didn’t make use of it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll keep it for the next time somebody dies.”
He sat up and leaned against the gray cement wall, looked at the doorway through the scarred fingers laced over his face. Yves yawned loudly from outside, waiting for the right moment to come in and bed down for the night.
Sebastien rose, put on his clothes, and walked me back out into the night. We said nothing to each other as we walked to Señora Valencia’s house. On the way, we walked past the ravine where Joel had been buried. A fast breeze darted through the bamboo and lemongrass on either side of the road, blowing through them like a chorus of flutes and whistles.
Félice was ahead of us on the road, pacing back and forth over the steep edge of the ravine. Her posture as she tipped towards the gorge reminded me of myself standing at the river’s brim the day my parents had drowned.
Sebastien and I accompanied Félice back to the gates of Doña Sabine’s house. She went along with us, glad, I thought, to have been found.
The next morning, before dawn, while everyone was still asleep, Juana and I watched from the doorway of the old sewing room as Señor Pico padded his son’s coffin with a pile of clean sheets from his wife’s armoire and placed him in the casket. The señor was wearing his ceremonial khakis with his cap set in perfect alignment with his seashell-shaped ears. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to see Juana and me standing there.
“You have not slept at all, Señor,” Juana reminded him.
“You should wake the señora now,” he said.
Señora Valencia got up to drape a web of fragile lace over her son’s colorfully painted coffin. Papi and one of the señora’s maternal relations held the other end of the heirloom lace-bordered sheets, helping her to fold the cloth small enough to cover the casket without trailing onto the ground.
Señora Valencia bent down to kiss the coffin through the sunflower design of the lace and then walked back to her room. Her daughter was sleeping in her cradle. She picked her up and took her to her bed.
Señor Pico and Papi together carried the coffin away.
Once the casket was in the first automobile, Señor Pico came back to the bed where his wife sat with her daughter cradled against her chest. He removed his cap and placed it between his right armpit and elbow. Brushing his lips against his wife’s forehead, he avoided his daughter’s tiny hand, which she intuitively held out towards her father as if in recognition of his face or to ward off the stinging expression of disfavor growing more and more pronounced on it each time he laid eyes on her. Her gesture was like her own way of making amends for having lived in her brother’s place, as if to say that she, too, wanted to be present for the burial and watch her brother’s descent into the nothingness they had once shared as two.
“Don’t be anxious, everything will go perfectly well,” Señor Pico assured his wife as though he was discussing yet another military operation.
Señora Valencia watched her husband march out of the room. As his Packard pulled away, she covered her ears with both hands to protect herself