Edwidge Danticat - The Dew Breaker

The men assigned themselves to him and his pain.

“He’s in shock,” they said.

“Can’t you see he’s not able to speak?”

“He’s not even looking at her. He’s looking at the floor.”

“He has a stomachache,” Ti Fanm intercepted.

She brought him some salted coffee, which he drank in one gulp.

“He should lie down,” one of the men said.

“But where?” another rebutted. “Not next to her.”

“He must have known she was going to die.” He heard Old Zo’s voice rising above the others. “He came just in time. Blood calls blood. She made him come so he could see her before she died. It would have been sad if she’d died behind his back, especially given the way he lost his parents.”

They were speaking about him as though he couldn’t understand, as if he were solely an English speaker, like Claude. He wished that his stomach would stop hurting, that he could rise from the edge of the cot and take control of the situation, or at least participate in the preparations, but all he wanted to do was lie down next to his aunt, rest his head on her chest, and wrap his arms around her waist, the way he had done when he was a boy. He wanted to close his eyes until he could wake up from this unusual dream where everyone was able to speak except the two of them.

By midday, he felt well enough to join Old Zo and some of the men who were opening an empty slot in the family mausoleum. He was in less pain now, but was still uncomfortable and moved slower than the others.

Old Zo announced that a Protestant minister would be coming by the next morning to say a prayer during the burial. Old Zo had wanted to transport the body to a church in the next village for a full service, but Dany was sure that his aunt wouldn’t have wanted to travel so far, only to return to her own yard to be buried.

“I’ve been told that the coffin’s almost ready,” Old Zo said. “She’ll be able to rest in it during the wake.”

Ti Fanm and the other women were inside the house, bathing his aunt’s body and changing her into a blue dress he’d sent her last Christmas through Popo. He had seen the dress in a store window on Nostrand Avenue and had chosen it for her, remembering that blue was her favorite color. The wrapping was still intact; she had never worn it.

Before he left the room he watched as Ti Fanm handed a pair of rusty scissors along with the dress to one of the oldest women, who proceeded to clip three small pieces from the inner lining. As the old woman “marked” the dress, the others moaned, some whispering and some shouting, “Estina, this is your final dress. Don’t let anyone take it from you. Even if among the other dead there are some who are naked, this is your dress and yours alone. Don’t give it away.”

He’d heard his aunt talk about this ritual, this branding of the final clothes, but had never seen it done before. His parents’ clothes had not been marked because they had been secretly and hastily buried. Now in his pocket he had three tiny pieces of cloth that had been removed from the lining of his aunt’s last dress, and he would carry them with him forever, like some people carry locks of hair or fingernails.

He had always been perplexed by the mixture of jubilation and sorrow that was part of Beau Jour’s wakes, by the fact that some of the participants played cards and dominoes while others served tea and wept. But what he most enjoyed was the time carved out for the mourners to tell stories about the deceased, singular tales of first or last encounters, which could make one either chuckle or weep.

The people of his aunt’s village were telling such stories about her now. They told of how she had once tried to make coffee and filtered dirt through her coffee pouch, how she had once delivered the village’s only triplets, saving all three babies and the mother.

“In the city that kind of birthing might have required a serious operation,” Old Zo said, “but we didn’t need the city doctors. Estina knew what to do.”

“Here’s one she brought into the world,” a man said, pushing a boy forward.

“Here’s another,” someone else said.

“She birthed me,” a young man said. “Since my mother died, she’s been like a mother to me, because she was the only other person present at my birth.”

They told of how as a young woman his aunt had embroidered a trousseau that she carried everywhere with her, thinking it would attract a husband. They spoke of her ambition, of her wanting to be a baby seamstress, so she could make clothes for the very same children she was ushering into the world. If he could have managed it, he would have told her neighbors how she had treated her burns herself after the fire, with poultices and herbs. He’d have spoken of her sacrifices, of the fact that she had spent most of her life trying to keep him safe. He would have told of how he hadn’t wanted to leave her, to go to New York, but she’d insisted that he go so he would be as far away as possible from the people who’d murdered his parents.

Claude arrived at the wake just as it was winding down, at a time when everyone was too tired to do anything but sit, stare, and moan, when through sleepy eyes the reason for the all-night gathering had become all too clear, when the purple shroud blowing from the doorway into the night breeze could no longer be ignored.

“I’m sorry, man,” Claude said. “Your aunt was such good people. One of a kind. I’m truly sorry.”

Claude moved forward, as if to hug Dany, his broad shoulders towering over Dany’s head. Dany stepped back, cringing. Maybe it was what his aunt had told him, about Claude having killed his father, but he didn’t want Claude to touch him.

Claude got the message and walked away, drifting toward a group of men who were nodding off at a table near the porch railing.

When he walked back inside the house, Dany found a few women sitting near the plain pine coffin, keeping watch over his aunt. He was still unable to look at her in the coffin for too long. He envied these women the ten years they’d spent with her while he was gone. He dragged his sisal mat, the one he’d been sleeping on these last two nights, to a corner, one as far away from the coffin as possible.

It could happen like that, Ti Fanm had said. A person his aunt’s age could fall asleep talking and wake up dead. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. Death was supposed to be either quick and furious or drawn out and dull, after a long illness. Maybe Old Zo was right. Blood calls blood. Perhaps she had summoned him here so he could at last witness a peaceful death and see how it was meant to be mourned. Perhaps the barber was not his parents’ murderer after all, but just a phantom who’d shown up to escort him back here.

He could not fall asleep, not with the women keeping watch over his aunt’s body being so close by. Not with Ti Fanm coming over every hour with a cup of tea, which was supposed to cure his bellyaches forever.

He didn’t like her nickname, was uncomfortable using it. It felt too generic to him, as though she were one of many from a single mold, with no distinctive traits of her own.

“What’s your name?” he asked when she brought him her latest brew.

She seemed baffled, as though she were thinking he might need a stronger infusion, something to calm his nerves and a memory aid too.

“Ti Fanm,” she replied.

“Non,” he said. “Your true name, your full name.”

“Denise Auguste,” she said.

The women who were keeping watch over his aunt were listening to their conversation, cocking their heads ever so slightly in their direction.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said.