Edwidge Danticat - Breath, Eyes, Memory

"I thought so," he said. "Whenever I'm in New York, I sublet in the neighborhood and I have never seen you walking around before."

"We moved about a year ago."

"That's about the last time I was in Brooklyn."

"Where are you the rest of the year?"

"In Providence."

I was immediately fascinated by the name. Providence. Fate! A town named for the Creator, the Almighty. Who would not want to live there?

"I am away from my house about six months out of the year," he said. "I travel to different places with my band and then after a while I go back for some peace and quiet."

"What is it like in Providence?" I asked.

"It is calm. I can drive to the river and watch the sun set. I think you would like it there. You seem like a deep, thoughtful kind of person."

I am.

"I like that in people. I like that very much."

He glanced down at his feet as though he couldn't think of anything else to say.

I wanted to ask him to stay, but my mother would be home soon.

"I work at home," he finally said, "in case you ever want to drop by."

I spent the whole week with my ear pressed against the wall, listening to him rehearse. He rehearsed day and night, sometimes twelve to ten hours without stopping. Sometimes at night, the saxophone was like a soothing lullaby.

One afternoon, he came by with a ham-and-cheese sandwich to thank me for letting him use the phone. He sat across from me in the living room while I ate very slowly.

"What are you going to study in college?" he asked.

"I think I am going to be a doctor."

"You think? Is this something you like?"

"I suppose so," I said.

"You have to have a passion for what you do."

"My mother says it's important for us to have a doctor in the family."

"What if you don't want to be a doctor?"

"There's a difference between what a person wants and what's good for them."

"You sound like you are quoting someone," he said.

"My mother."

"What would Sophie like to do?" he asked.

That was the problem. Sophie really wasn't sure. I had never really dared to dream on my own.

"You're not sure, are you?"

He even understood my silences.

"It is okay not to have your future on a map," he said. "That way you can flow wherever life takes you."

"That is not Haitian," I said. "That's very American."

"What is?"

"Being a wanderer. The very idea."

"I am not American," he said. "I am African-American."

"What is the difference?"

"The African. It means that you and I, we are already part of each other."

I think I blushed. At least I nearly choked on my sandwich. He walked over and tapped my back.

"Are you all right?"

"I am fine," I said, still short of breath.

"I think you are a fine woman," he said.

I started choking again.

I knew what my mother would think of my going over there during the day. A good girl would never be alone with a man, an older one at that. I wasn't thinking straight. It was nice waking up in the morning knowing I had someone to talk to.

I started going next door every day. The living room was bare except for a couch and a few boxes packed in a corner near his synthesizer and loud speakers.

At first I would sit on the linoleum and listen to him play. Then slowly, I moved closer until sometimes he would let me touch the keyboard, guiding my fingers with his hand on top of mine.

Between strokes, I learned the story of his life. He was from a middle-class New Orleans family. His parents died when he was young. He was on his own by the time he was fifteen. He went to college in Providence but by his sophomore year left school and bought a house there. He was lucky he had been left enough money to pursue his dream of being a musician. He liked to play slave songs, Negro spirituals, both on his saxophone and his piano, slowing them down or speeding them up at different tempos. One day, he would move back to Providence for good, and write his own songs.

I told him about Croix-des-Rosets, the Augustins, and Tante Atie. They would make a great song, he said. He had been to Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil several times, trying to find links between the Negro spirituals and Latin and island music.

We went to a Haitian record store on Nostrand Avenue. He bought a few albums and we ate lunch every day listening to the drum and conch shell beats.

"I am going to marry you," he said at lunch one day. "Even though I already know the problems that will arise. Your mother will pass a watermelon over it, because I am so old."

Ever since we had become friends, I'd stopped thinking of him as old. He talked young and acted young. As far as I was concerned he could have been my age, but with more nurtured kindness, as Tante Atie liked to say.

"You are not very old," I told him.

"Not very old, huh?"

"Age doesn't matter."

"Only the young can say that. I am not sure your mother will agree."

"We won't have to tell her."

"She can tell I'm old just by looking at me."

"How old are you?"

"Old. Older than you."

One day when I was in his house, I sneaked a peek at his driver's license and saw the year that he was born. He was my mother's age, maybe a month or two younger.

"They say men look distinguished when they get old," I said.

"Easy for you to say."

"I believe in the young at heart."

"That's a very mature thing to say."

It was always sad to leave him at night. I wanted to go to hear him play with his band, but I was afraid of what my mother would think.

He knocked on my door very late one night. My mother was away, working the whole night. I came out and found him sitting on the steps out front. He still had on his black tuxedo, which he had worn to work. He brought me some posters of the legends who were his idols: Charlie Bird Parker and Miles Davis.

"Sophie, you should have heard me tonight," he said. "I was so hot you could have fried a plantain on my face."

We both laughed loudly, drawing glares from people passing by.

"Can you go out to eat?" he asked. "Somewhere, anywhere. I'm so high from the way I played, don't let me down."

I called my mother at the old lady's house, on the pretense that I was wishing her a good night. Then we drove to the Cafe des Arts on Long Island, which was always open late, Joseph said.

I drank my first cappuccino with a drop of rum. We shared a tiny cup; he was worried about driving back and finding my mother at home, waiting for me. He told me to raise my head through the roof of his convertible, as we sped on the freeway, hurrying to make it home before sunrise. I felt like I was high enough to wash my hair in a cloud and have a star in my mouth.

"I am being irresponsible," he said. "Your mother will have me arrested. Thank God you are over eighteen."

He held my hand on the doorstep, swaying my pinky back and forth.

"You do wonders for my English," I said, hoping it wasn't too forward.

"You're such a beautiful woman," he said.

"You think I am a woman? You're the first person who has called me that."

"In that sad case, everyone else is blind."

I leaned my head on his shoulder as we watched the morning sky lighten.

"Can you tell I like you?" he asked.

"I can tell."

"Do you like me?"

"You will not respect me if I say yes," I said.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Where do you get such notions?"

"How do I know you're not just saying these things so you can get what you want."

"What do you think I want?" he asked.

"What all men want."

"Which is?"

"I don't want to say it."

"You will have to say it," he said. "What is it? Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness?" He quickly let go of my hand. "I'm not about that. I am older than that. I am not going to say I am better than that because I am not a priest, but I'm not about that."