Dany Laferriere - The Return

a carefree young woman?

Her fleeting smile moves me more than tears.

I hear my mother singing

from the room next door.

The news of my father’s death

has finally reached her consciousness.

Sorrow is her daily escort,

the empty days

alternating with the magic of the first smile.

Everything resurfaces.

I finally catch a few words

of my mother’s song

that speaks of panicked sailors,

rough seas

and a miracle just when

all hope seems lost.

She likes to listen to the radio on the little set I sent her a few years back. Tuned to the same prayer station. She listens only to sermons and religious music except for Chansons d’autrefois, the show where the singers hit notes so high they make the old dog whimper from under the chair where it sleeps.

I go back and forth from the hotel

to the house hidden behind the oleander.

My mother is surprised I won’t stay

with her.

It’s because I don’t want to give her the illusion

we’re living together again

when my life has gone on without her

for so long.

I keep coming back to her

in everything I write.

I spend my life interpreting

the slightest shadow on her brow.

Even from a distance.

As I get dressed I think of that woman

who spent her life taking care of other people.

It’s a way of hiding too.

Now for the first time she is laid bare.

My mother in her naked pain.

I’m in a friend’s car on the way to her house. I remember we never listened to music back then. The radio was just for the news. All it played were the same speeches celebrating the glory of the President. They went so far we sometimes wondered whether he didn’t smile at all that flattery. He was compared to the greatest men, even to Jesus once. My mother reacted with a burst of dry laughter. We had to pretend we were listening so the neighbors wouldn’t suspect us of not supporting the regime. We turned up the volume. Our neighbors did the same. An atmosphere of collective paranoia. Those were dark years. Our blood ran cold every time we heard classical music. Right after, they would announce a failed coup, which was always a pretext for carnage. I ended up associating classical music with violent death.

Every morning, on the radio, a stentorian voice

would remind us of our oath to the flag

followed by the nasal voice of Duvalier

himself who would declare “I am the flag, one and

indivisible.” I’ve been allergic to political speeches

ever since.

I picture my mother dancing

with a chair

in the shadows of the little living room.

She dances her sadness at five o’clock

in the afternoon.

Like a Lorca poem

about Franco’s bloody nights.

My mother loved numbers. Every morning she made her budget of the day’s expenses in a school notebook. Since she was always short of money, having lost her job right after my father left, she spent hours counting and recounting the few coins she had. Endless calculations. I do the same thing today, but with words. The bank was farther from my mother than the dictionary is from my hand.

The neighbor boy lets me know with a nod of his head

that my mother has fallen asleep again

still humming her song about the sailors

lost at sea to whom an angel appeared.

I use the break to talk with my sister

in the room at the back

where it’s as hot as an oven.

My sister is even more secretive than my mother.

Seeing her constant smile it’s hard to imagine

she lives in a country ravaged by dictatorship

like a hurricane

that has been punishing the island for twenty years.

She tells me about her life at work where people call her a snob because she makes a point of buying a novel as soon as she gets paid and because she wears perfume to the office. The more she treats people with respect, the more they plot against her. As if she reminded them of that precious thing they have lost along the way: their own self-respect.

My sister talks calmly

without looking at me.

She is like a little girl forgotten

by her parents in the dark woods

who wonders how long it will take

before the pack catches up to her.

Back at the house, she discovers her mother sitting on the gallery, silent and sad. My mother who was once so lighthearted. Of course I look after her expenses, but my sister has to face the travails of daily life. She’s forced to watch my mother’s health deteriorate, and struggle through her dark days: “I’m afraid one day I’ll be too worn out to go get her at the bottom of the well.” This time she looks at me, and I see the years of my absence written on her face. We remain silent for a time. Then slowly a smile blooms. The dark cloud has passed.

Sitting in the darkened living room with my sister, I watch my mother go about her evening business. She inspects the kitchen down to the last crumb before lighting the lamp and placing it in the middle of the table. Then she scrapes the remains of the meal into a blue plastic bowl. Only then does she sit down to eat. That’s her ritual.

Why is she eating from this plastic bowl when I sent her a new set of dishes? From underneath the sofa my sister pulls out the big box of silverware that has never been removed from its packaging. She doesn’t like it? On the contrary — it’s her treasure. She takes it out once a month and cleans it. In the lamplight, her face is serene. She is still beautiful. She is wearing her face for special days. As soon as you leave, my sister tells me, she’ll put her dark-day face back on.

I am overcome with such a feeling of remorse.

The feeling that everything is wasted.

My mother, and then my sister.

The women have paid the price in this house.

I go out to see my nephew on the gallery. He was listening to the news on my mother’s transistor radio. I sit next to him. Do you ever dream? Yes, but I don’t remember. I used to dream every night when I was young, and every morning I would tell my grandmother my dream. Why? At the time, we would tell our dreams. Anyway, I always dreamed the same dream. Actually, I had two kinds of dreams. In the first, I had wings. I flew over the town. And I slipped through the window of certain houses to watch girls I was in love with sleep. My nephew laughs. And the second kind? I dreamed of the devil. The same thing every time. All of a sudden we heard a terrible racket. The devils were coming. We hurried to get inside before they showed up. You never knew that house, I say to my nephew. My mother talks about it all the time. It was a big house with lots of doors and windows. It feels like a century ago. . We tried to close them. But the devils were everywhere. When we closed a door, they came in through the window. Nowadays, those devils have been replaced by real killers in the light of day. But I keep having the same dreams wherever I go. In hotel rooms all around the world. That’s the only thing that hasn’t changed with me. I have the same ritual: I lie down between white sheets, read a while, then turn off the light and drop into a universe full of devils. You should keep holy water in your suitcase. That’s what my grandmother used when I had nightmares. But I treasure those dreams. They’re the only thing that’s left of my life from before.

My mother and my sister

come out to be with us

on the gallery.

A choir singing religious music on the radio.

My mother accompanies them.

Evening falls.

A cold face in the pale early morning light.

A young shark in a Cardin shirt