Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

“Mother’s Day will make you sad, won’t it, Tante Atie?” “Why do you say that?” she asked. “You look like someone who is going to be sad.”

“Don’t you ever tell anyone that I cry when I watch Donald and his wife getting ready for bed,” she said, sobbing. I groped for my clothes in the dark and found the Mother’s Day card I had made her. I tucked it under her pillow as I listened to her mumble some final words in her sleep.

I seem to pick the Haitian stories where a young girl is without her biological mother. I also seem to go after the stories that mamke you cry within the first chapter.

When my mother was home, she made me read out loud from the English composition textbooks. The first English words I read sounded like rocks falling in a stream. Then very slowly things began to take on some meaning. There were words that I heard often. Words that jump out of New York Creole conversations, like the last kernel in a cooling popcorn machine. Words, among others, like TV, building, feeling, which Marc and my mother used even when they were in the middle of a heated political discussion in Creole. Mwen geu yon feeling. I have a feeling Haiti will get back on its feet one day, but I’ll be dead before it happens. My mother, always the pessimist.

The author's descriptions always paint a picture. I like this about her.

“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.

Interesting...

“White hair is a crown of glory,” said my grandmother. “I don’t have white hair,” said Tante Atie. “Only good deeds demand respect. Do you not want Sophie to respect you?” “Sophie is not a child anymore, old woman. I do not have to be a saint for her.”

You can tell there are a whole bunch of secrets going on.

Later, I took my camera out of my suitcase and took a few pictures of my grandmother holding Brigitte. “They do scare me, those things,” she said. “The light in and out. The whole thing is suspect. Seems you can trap somebody’s soul in there.”

lol.....

“If the wood is well carved,” said my grandmother, “it teaches us about the carpenter. Atie, you taught Sophie well.”

“She looks good so far, but keep an eye on her and call me if anything unusual happens. If you go to Haiti again anytime soon, leave your angel behind. I am not sure there’s enough Haitian in her to survive another mountain.”

Is this statement foreshadowing an event to come?