Edwidge Danticat - Breath, Eyes, Memory

"That's all right. I told you after the baby was born. As long as it takes, I will wait."

"But, what if I never get over it? What if I never get fixed?"

"You're not a machine. You can't go to a shop and get fixed. It will happen slowly. I've always told you this, haven't I? I will be there for you."

"Why didn't you answer the phone the first time?" I asked.

"I was practicing," he said. "Should I drive down and get you?"

"I told my mother I'd spend the night here with her. I'll rent a car and drive home tomorrow."

"All this traveling, isn't it rough on Brigitte?"

"She's got Caco blood. She's a strong one; she'll be fine."

"I want you to have the pediatrician check her out the minute you get home."

"I will."

"How's your mother?"

"She wants us all to have dinner with her male friend soon."

"You mean her boyfriend?"

"I suppose."

"I wouldn't have guessed that you went to Haiti. I wouldn't have known at all if it weren't for her. I was going to fly down to get you, but she wanted to find you herself."

"She didn't find me. I wasn't lost."

"You know what I mean."

"I know. My mother can be very overwhelming sometimes."

"She wanted to see you very badly. Did you work things out?"

"We talked," I said.

"Is she home? I'd like to thank her."

"You can thank her when you see her."

"And when will I see you?" he asked.

"Tomorrow."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"There will be no pressure or anything," he said. "I promise you."

He wanted to hear Brigitte one more time. I tickled her feet and she laughed on cue.

"Does she speak Creole?" he asked.

"She didn't speak very much."

"She might have said Daddy and I missed it."

"She didn't."

"Is she walking on her own?"

"We've only been away a few days."

"It seems like ages. Does she still reach for people's food?"

"She does that."

"Can I come for you? I'll drive down there right now."

"It's better for me if I find my own way back. I am the one who left. I should come back myself."

I laid out a comforter in the guest room. I put the baby down on the guest bed, surrounded by four large pillows.

My mother walked in to check on us when she came home.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

"Fine," I said. "How was your visit?"

"I went to see Marc." Her voice cracked. "I had something to tell him."

"Was it good? Was it bad?"

"Depends on how you look at it. Did you call your husband?"

"Yes."

"He will be happy to see you." She cradled the door as though she wasn't sure what to say next. "The baby, she's okay?"

"Fine," I said.

"Well, good night."

Breakfast was plentiful: all the things that made me feel most guilty when I ate them-bacon and eggs and extremely sweet café au lait.

"I thought you would be hungry" she said, "on the road to recovery. How can you resist all this food?"

"It's not as simple as that."

I had a piece of toast while my mother gave my daughter her formula. She looked like she hadn't slept much. The eggplant shade came back to her skin, as it always did before she applied her skin bleaching creams.

"You didn't look very happy when you came home last night," I said.

"Someone like me, you see me happy, you know I'm

pretending," she said.

"Is something wrong?"

"Brace yourself. I know you are not going to believe what I have to tell you. Sophie, your mother is pregnant."

"Pregnant?" I stuttered.

"Marc and I, we have-"

"You sleep together?"

She nodded, looking ashamed.

"How far along are you?" I asked.

"A month or so."

"Are you going to marry him?"

"Jesus Marie Joseph. Am I going to do what?"

"Doesn't he want to marry you?"

"Of course he wants to marry me, but look at me. I am a fat woman trying to pass for thin. A dark woman trying to pass for light. And I have no breasts. I don't know when this cancer will come back. I am not an ideal mother."

Brigitte wrapped her arms around my mother's neck as my mother burped her.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"That's what I don't know."

"What does Marc want?"

"It's my decision. Supremely, it's mine. I am very scared. I don't know. The nightmares, they're coming back."

"In Dame Marie, it didn't seem like you slept at all."

"Whenever I'm there, I feel like I sleep with ghosts. The first night I was there, I woke up pounding at my stomach."

"What are you going to do about the baby?"

"I don't know."

"You can marry Marc and have the baby."

"And repeat my great miracle of being a super mother with you? Some things one should not repeat."

"Think of it as a second chance."

"I've had the second chance of my life by being spared death from this cancer. I can't ask too much."

"Do you love Marc?"

"I think I love him. Since you left, he stays with me at night and wakes me up when I have the nightmares."

"You still won't go for help?"

"I know I should get help, but I am afraid. I am afraid it will become even more real if I see a psychiatrist and he starts telling me to face it. God help me, what if they want to hypnotize me and take me back to that day? I'll kill myself. Marc, he saves my life every night, but I am afraid he gave me this baby that's going to take that life away."

"You can't say that."

"The nightmares. I thought they would fade with age, but no, it's like getting raped every night. I can't keep this baby."

"It must have been much harder then but you kept me."

"When I was pregnant with you, Manman made me drink all kinds of herbs, vervain, quinine, and verbena, baby poisons. I tried beating my stomach with wooden spoons. I tried to destroy you, but you wouldn't go away."

She reached over and handed Brigitte back to me.

"When I was carrying you, you were brave," she said. "You wanted to live. You wanted to taste salt, as my mother would say. You were going to kill me before I killed you."

– "What are you going to do about this one?"

"She's a fighter too. She's already fighting me."

"Do you know that it's a girl?"

"I don't know. I never want to know. I think it's a girl because you ended up being a girl. I can't go through night after night of the next nine months living these nightmares that same way again."

"Are you going to take it out?"

She crossed herself.

"Jesus Marie Joseph. Every time I even think of that, the nightmares get worse. It bites at the inside of my stomach like a leech. Last night after I talked to Marc about letting it go, I felt the skin getting tight on my belly and for a whole minute I couldn't breathe. I had to lie down and say I had changed my mind before I could breathe normally."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"I know, these things, they sound crazy to me too, but maybe that's what it wants, to drive me crazy."

"You should talk to someone. Someone other than Marc, someone outside the whole situation."

"I am trying to keep one step ahead of a mental hospital. They would probably put me away thinking that I might hurt both myself and this child."

"When you and Marc are together, do you have the nightmares then?"

"I pretend; it is like eating grapefruit. I was tired of being alone. If that's what I had to do to have someone wake me up at night, I would do it. But never in my life did I think I could get pregnant."

"You didn't use birth control?"

She laughed through her tears.

"I would have never imagined we could be having this conversation. Maybe if I spend more time with you, I will want this baby. I would want this child if the nightmares weren't so bad. I can't take them. One morning, I will wake up dead."