Edwidge Danticat - Breath, Eyes, Memory

"Did your mother do this to you?"

"From the time a girl begins to menstruate to the time you turn her over to her husband, the mother is responsible for her purity. If I give a soiled daughter to her husband, he can shame my family, speak evil of me, even bring her back to me."

"When you tested my mother and Tante Atie, couldn't you tell that they hated it?"

"I had to keep them clean until they had husbands."

"But they don't have husbands."

"The burden was not mine alone."

"I hated the tests," I said. "It is the most horrible thing that ever happened to me. When my husband is with me now, it gives me such nightmares that I have to bite my tongue to do it again."

"With patience, it goes away."

"No Grandme Ife, it does not."

"Ti Alice, she has passed her examination."

The sky reddened with a sudden flash of lightning. "Now you have a child of your own. You must know that everything a mother does, she does for her child's own good. You cannot always carry the pain. You must liberate yourself."

We walked to my room and put my daughter down to sleep.

"I will go soon," I told my grandmother, "back to my husband."

"It is better," she said. "It is hard for a woman to raise girls alone."

She walked into her room, took her statue of Erzulie, and pressed it into my hand.

"My heart, it weeps like a river," she said, "for the pain we have caused you."

I held the statue against my chest as I cried in the night. I thought I heard my grandmother crying too, but it was the rain slowing down to a mere drizzle, tapping on the roof.

The next morning, I went jogging, along the road, through the cemetery plot, and into the hills. The sun had already dried some of the puddles from the drizzle the night before.

Along the way, people stared at me with puzzled expressions on their faces. Is this what happens to our girls when they leave this place? They become such frightened creatures that they run like the wind, from nothing at all.

Three days later, my mother came. When I first caught a glimpse of her, she was sitting on the back of a cart being pulled by two teenage boys.

Eliab raced to the yard, grabbed my grandmother's hand, and yanked her towards the road.

My mother was shielding her face from us, hiding behind a red umbrella.

My grandmother followed Eliab to the edge of the road.

"That lady," Eliab said, pointing at the umbrella guarding my mother's face. "That lady, she says she belongs to you."

Tante Atie was in the yard boiling some water for our morning coffee. She got up quickly when my grandmother started screaming my mother's name.

"Min Martine!"

"Tololo. Tololo," Eliab chimed in as though it was his long-lost mother who had come back.

My grandmother grabbed her broom and speared it in the ground to anchor herself.

My mother folded the red umbrella and laid it on top of a large suitcase on the cart next to her.

Some of the road vendors gathered around her to say hello.

My mother kissed them on the cheek and stroked their children's heads. They looked curiously at her cerise jumper, ballooned around her small frame.

My grandmother was trembling on the spot where she was standing. Tante Atie put her hands on her hips and stared ahead. She did not look the least bit surprised.

A plantain green scarf floated in the breeze behind my mother. She skipped through the dust and rushed across the yard. Eliab circled around her like a wingless butterfly.

My mother walked over and kissed my grandmother. Tante Atie moved slowly towards her, not particularly excited. My mother was glowing.

Tante Atie tapped her lips against my mother's cheeks, then went back to fanning the cooking sticks with my grandmother's hat.

"Sak pasé, Atie?" asked my mother.

"You," answered Tante Atie fanning the flames. "You're what's new."

I clung to the porch railing as my anchor. It had been almost two years since the last time we saw each other. My mother's skin was unusually light, a pale mocha, three or four shades lighter than any of ours.

Brigitte's body tightened, as though she could sense the tension in mine.

"I see you still wear the deuil," my mother said to my grandmother.

"It is all the same," answered my grandmother. "The black is easier; it does not get dirty."

"Mon Dieu, you do not look bad for an old lady," said my mother. "And you have been talking about arranging your funeral like it was tomorrow."

"Your skin looks lighter," said my grandmother. "Is it prodwi? You use something?"

My mother looked embarrassed.

"It is very cold in America," my mother said. "The cold turns us into ghosts."

"Papa Shango, the sun here, will change that," my grandmother said.

"I am not staying long enough for that," my mother said. "When I got your telegram, I decided to come and see Sophie and take care of your affairs at the same time. I plan to stay for only three days. This is not the visit I owe you. This is just circumstance. When I come again, I will stay with you for a very long time."

I watched her from the railing, waiting for her to look over and address me personally.

She looked very young and thin, but for the most part healthy. Because of the roomy size of her jumper, I couldn't tell whether or not she was wearing her prosthetic bra.

"Sophie, walk to your mother," said my grandmother.

They were all staring at me, even Eliab. My mother put her hands in her pockets. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to see my face through the sun's glare.

Brigitte began to twist in my arms. She sensed something.

"Sophie, walk to your mother." My grandmother's voice grew more forceful.

My mother looked uncomfortable, almost scared.

I did not move. We stared at each other across the yard, each waiting for the other to yield. As her daughter, I was expected to walk over and greet her first. However, I did not trust my legs. I wasn't sure I could make it down the steps without slipping and hurting both myself and Brigitte.

"Walk to your mother." My grandmother was becoming angry.

"It is okay," my mother said, coming towards me. "I will walk to her."

She climbed onto the porch and kissed me on the cheek.

Brigitte reached up to grab a large loop earring on my mother's right lobe.

"You didn't send word you were coming," I said.

"Let me see her," she said, extending her hands for Brigitte. Brigitte leaned forward. I let her slip into my mother's grasp.

"How old is she now?" she asked.

"Almost six months."

She made funny faces at Brigitte.

"I got all the pictures you sent me," she said.

"Why didn't you answer?"

"I couldn't find the words," she said. "How are you?"

"I've been better."

She went back to the yard to pay the cart boys and took Brigitte with her.

"You're not staying here, are you?" she asked when she came back to the porch.

She tickled Brigitte's armpits as she spoke, giggling along with her.

I reached for my daughter. She pressed Brigitte's body against her chest and would not give her back.

"Manman asked me to come here and make things better between us. It's not right for a mother and daughter to be enemies. Manman thinks it puts a curse on the family. Besides, your husband came to me and I could not refuse him."

"You've seen him?"

"Oh, the flames in your eyes."

"How is he?"

"Worried. I told him we would be back in three days."

"You can't make plans for me."

"I did."

We were speaking to one another in English without realizing it.

"Oh that cling-clang talk," interrupted my grandmother. "It sounds like glass breaking."

Brigitte was pulling at my mother's earrings. My mother took them off and handed them to me.