The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [80]
Yves returned to his mother’s house that night and I stayed at Man Denise’s. After she fell asleep, I crept back inside and lay down at the foot of her bed. I heard her breath whistling, like someone who tried even in her sleep not to disturb others.
When she woke up in the middle of the night to use her blue enameled chamber pot, she tripped and nearly fell on top of me. I moved the pot closer to her and she climbed on it without questioning what I was doing there.
The next morning before dawn, I went out and sat with the women vendors, who made themselves coffee before moving to the next station on their journey.
As they drank their coffee, the women wondered out loud whether Mimi and Sebastien had disappeared forever in the country of death—as they called it—or if maybe things had returned to normal. Maybe everyone had returned to their everyday work, they hoped.
While they were talking, I heard Man Denise call for water. I hurried inside, ahead of one of the girls who looked after her, picked up the earthen jar leaning against the wall, and handed her a cup of water. She was not fully awake when I held it to her lips. After taking a few sips, she pushed my hand away.
The room had brightened a bit with the morning light. She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to recognize me.
“Which one of them are you?” she asked.
“Amabelle,” I said.
“If you’ve come to pay for the night, put the money on one of the drums,” she said.
“I have not come to pay,” I said.
“What, then?” she asked.
I put the earthen jar and the cup back against the wall.
“I knew Mimi and Sebastien over there,” I said.
She sat up and reached for my ears, rolling my cheeks between her fingers as though my face belonged to her.
“You knew my Micheline and my Sebastien,” she said. “My Mimi and Sebastien, you knew them?”
“Yes,” I said.
Her face broadened with a pained smile. She let go of me and clapped her hands together. “I didn’t want my children to go and stay there forever,” she said. “Their father was killed in the hurricane; Sebastien had a cage full of pigeons that also died in the hurricane, and he was so sad. After the hurricane, this house was taken from us by the Yankis; they wanted to make a road of this house. It was given back to us only after they left. Because we had no house, my son went there first, and me, because I was weak in the lungs, I was to go live with my brother in Port-au-Prince. I had no money so my daughter followed Sebastien and they both sent me some. I came back from Port-au-Prince when the land was given back to us, but my children, maybe they didn’t know that the Yankis left, maybe they didn’t know that the house was ours again.”
She fished in the pocket of her dress and pulled out three painted yellow coffee beans, the kind that Mimi and Sebastien’s bracelets had been made of.
I tapped them with the tip of my fingers and watched as they bounced against one another in her palm.
“These are mine,” she said, closing her hand around them, “from my own bracelet, which broke long ago. I made one bracelet for each of my children and one for myself, but when I was anxious over the children, I tugged too hard at the bracelet and the thread broke. This is all I have left of the beads from my bracelet.”
I wanted her to let me touch the beads again. She reached into the pocket of her dress and lay them there.
“Sit for a moment,” she said.
I moved closer and sat on the edge of her bed.
“So you knew my Micheline?” she asked.
“I did.”
“She was always untamed for a young girl,” she smiled. “Her father gave her the name Micheline. Did she ever tell you this?”
“No,” I said. “She never did.”
“But Sebastien, you knew more about him? You knew him well.”
“Very well,” I said.
She smiled a knowing smile, Sebastien’s smile, her cheeks ballooning, then caving down on the sides of her lips.
“I named him Sebastien myself,” she said, “after the saint. You know of Saint Sebastien, who died not once, but twice.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“The first time,