Breath, Eyes, Memory

Chapter 9

I was eighteen and going to start college in the fall. My mother continued working her two jobs, but she put in even longer hours. And we moved to a one-family house in a tree-lined neighborhood near where Marc lived.

In the new place, my mother had a patch of land in the back where she started growing hibiscus. Daffodils would need more care and she had grown tired of them.

We decorated our new living room in red, everything from the carpet to the plastic roses on the coffee table. I had my very own large bedroom with a new squeaky bed. My mother's room was even bigger, with a closet that you could have entertained some friends in. In some places in Haiti, her closet would have been a room on its own, and the clothes would not have bothered the fortunate child who would sleep in it.

Before the move, I had been going to a Haitian Adventist school that went from elementary right to high school. They had guaranteed my mother that they would get me into college and they had lived up to their pledge. Now my first classes at college were a few months away and my mother couldn't have been happier. Her sacrifices had paid off.

I never said this to my mother, but I hated the Maranatha Bilingual Institution. It was as if I had never left Haiti. All the lessons were in French, except for English composition and literature classes. Outside the school, we were "the Frenchies," cringing in our mock-Catholic-school uniforms as the students from the public school across the street called us "boat people" and "stinking Haitians."

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. Mwin gin 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.

There were other words that helped too, words that looked almost the same in French, but were pronounced differently in English: nationality, alien, race, enemy, date, present. These and other words gave me a context for the rest that I did not understand.

Eventually, I began to hear myself that I read better. I answered swiftly when my mother asked me a question in English. Not that I ever had a chance to show it off at school, but I became an English speaker.

"There is great responsibility that comes with knowledge," my mother would say. My great responsibility was to study hard. I spent six years doing nothing but that. School, home, and prayer.

Tante Atie once said that love is like rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

I was eighteen and I fell in love. His name was Joseph and he was old. He was old like God is old to me, ever present and full of wisdom.

He looked somewhat like Monsieur Augustin. He was the color of ground coffee, with a cropped beard and a voice like molasses that turned to music when he held a saxophone to his lips.

He broke the monotony of my shuffle between home and school when he moved into the empty house next door to ours.

My mother never trusted him. In the back of my mind echoed her constant warning, "You keep away from those American boys." The ones whose eyes followed me on the street. The ones who were supposedly drooling over me afterwards, even though they called me a nasty West Indian to my face. "You keep away from them especially. They are upset because they cannot have you."

Aside from Marc, we knew no other men. Men were as mysterious to me as white people, who in Haiti we had only known as missionaries. I tried to imagine my mother's reaction to Joseph. I could already hear her: "Not if he were the last unmarried man on earth."

When she came home during the day and saw him sitting on his porch steps next door, she would nod a quick hello and walk faster. She wrapped her arms tighter around me, as though to rescue me from his stare.

Somehow, early on, I felt that he might like me. The way his eyes trailed me up the block gave him away. My mother liked to say, "I admire priests because they like women for more than their faces and their buttocks." Joseph's look went beyond the face and the buttocks.

He looked like the kind of man who could buy a girl a meal without asking for her bra in return.

Whenever I went by his stoop, I felt like we were conspiring. How could I smile without my mother noticing and how could he respond to her brisk hello and mine too, without letting her see that wink that was for me alone?

At night, I fantasized that he was sitting somewhere pining away, dreaming about me, thinking of a way to enter my life. Then one day, like rain, he came to my front door.

I was stretched out on the couch with a chemistry book when I heard the knock. I looked through the security peephole to check. It was him.

"Can I use your phone?" he asked. "I've had mine disconnected because I'm going out of town soon."

I opened the door and led him to the phone. Our fingers touched as I handed it to him. He dialed quickly, smiling with his eyes on my face.

"Did we get it?" he asked into the phone.

His feet bounced off the ground when he heard the answer. "Yes!" he shouted. "Yes!"

He handed me back the phone with a wink.

"Have you ever really wanted something great and gotten it?" he asked.

My face must have been blank.

He asked me the question again, then suddenly slapped his forehead.

"I haven't even introduced myself."

"My name is Sophie," I said, jumping ahead.

"I am Joseph," he said. I knew.

"Was it good news you just got?"

"What gave me away?"

He looked at me as though he was waiting for me to say something equally witty. I wasn't as glib, as fast on my feet. I couldn't think of anything.

"It was good news," he answered. "I just found out that we got a gig in the East Village from now until our tour starts."

A gig?

"A job. I am a musician."

"I know," I said. "Sometimes I hear you playing at night."

"Does it bother you?"

"Non, it's very pretty."

"I detect an accent," he said.

Oh please, say a small one, I thought. After seven years in this country, I was tired of having people detect my accent. I wanted to sound completely American, especially for him.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"Haiti."

"Ah," he said, "I have never been there. Do you speak Creole?"

"Oui, Oui," I ventured, for a laugh.

"We, we," he said, pointing to me and him. "We have something in common. Mwin aussi. I speak a form of Creole, too. I am from Louisiana. My parents considered themselves what we call Creoles. Is it a small world or what?"

I shook my head yes. It was a very small world.

"You live alone?" he asked.

My mother's constant suspicion prodded me and I quickly said, "No." Just in case he was thinking of coming over tonight to kill me. This was New York, after all. You could not trust anybody.

"I live with my mother."

"I have seen her," he said.

"She works."

"Nights?"

"Sometimes."

"Did you two just move here?"

"Yes, we did."

"I thought so," he said. "Whenever I'm in New York, I sublet in the neighborhood and I have never seen you walking around before."

"We moved about a year ago."

"That's about the last time I was in Brooklyn."

"Where are you the rest of the year?"

"In Providence."

I was immediately fascinated by the name. Providence. Fate! A town named for the Creator, the Almighty. Who would not want to live there?

"I am away from my house about six months out of the year," he said. "I travel to different places with my band and then after a while I go back for some peace and quiet."

"What is it like in Providence?" I asked.

"It is calm. I can drive to the river and watch the sun set. I think you would like it there. You seem like a deep, thoughtful kind of person."

I am.

"I like that in people. I like that very much."

He glanced down at his feet as though he couldn't think of anything else to say.

I wanted to ask him to stay, but my mother would be home soon.

"I work at home," he finally said, "in case you ever want to drop by."

I spent the whole week with my ear pressed against the wall, listening to him rehearse. He rehearsed day and night, sometimes twelve to ten hours without stopping. Sometimes at night, the saxophone was like a soothing lullaby.

One afternoon, he came by with a ham-and-cheese sandwich to thank me for letting him use the phone. He sat across from me in the living room while I ate very slowly.

"What are you going to study in college?" he asked.

"I think I am going to be a doctor."

"You think? Is this something you like?"

"I suppose so," I said.

"You have to have a passion for what you do."

"My mother says it's important for us to have a doctor in the family."

"What if you don't want to be a doctor?"

"There's a difference between what a person wants and what's good for them."

"You sound like you are quoting someone," he said.

"My mother."

"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.

"You're not sure, are you?"

He even understood my silences.

"It is okay not to have your future on a map," he said. "That way you can flow wherever life takes you."

"That is not Haitian," I said. "That's very American."

"What is?"

"Being a wanderer. The very idea."

"I am not American," he said. "I am African-American."

"What is the difference?"

"The African. It means that you and I, we are already part of each other."

I think I blushed. At least I nearly choked on my sandwich. He walked over and tapped my back.

"Are you all right?"

"I am fine," I said, still short of breath.

"I think you are a fine woman," he said.

I started choking again.

I knew what my mother would think of my going over there during the day. A good girl would never be alone with a man, an older one at that. I wasn't thinking straight. It was nice waking up in the morning knowing I had someone to talk to.

I started going next door every day. The living room was bare except for a couch and a few boxes packed in a corner near his synthesizer and loud speakers.

At first I would sit on the linoleum and listen to him play. Then slowly, I moved closer until sometimes he would let me touch the keyboard, guiding my fingers with his hand on top of mine.

Between strokes, I learned the story of his life. He was from a middle-class New Orleans family. His parents died when he was young. He was on his own by the time he was fifteen. He went to college in Providence but by his sophomore year left school and bought a house there. He was lucky he had been left enough money to pursue his dream of being a musician. He liked to play slave songs, Negro spirituals, both on his saxophone and his piano, slowing them down or speeding them up at different tempos. One day, he would move back to Providence for good, and write his own songs.

I told him about Croix-des-Rosets, the Augustins, and Tante Atie. They would make a great song, he said. He had been to Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil several times, trying to find links between the Negro spirituals and Latin and island music.

We went to a Haitian record store on Nostrand Avenue. He bought a few albums and we ate lunch every day listening to the drum and conch shell beats.

"I am going to marry you," he said at lunch one day. "Even though I already know the problems that will arise. Your mother will pass a watermelon over it, because I am so old."

Ever since we had become friends, I'd stopped thinking of him as old. He talked young and acted young. As far as I was concerned he could have been my age, but with more nurtured kindness, as Tante Atie liked to say.

"You are not very old," I told him.

"Not very old, huh?"

"Age doesn't matter."

"Only the young can say that. I am not sure your mother will agree."

"We won't have to tell her."

"She can tell I'm old just by looking at me."

"How old are you?"

"Old. Older than you."

One day when I was in his house, I sneaked a peek at his driver's license and saw the year that he was born. He was my mother's age, maybe a month or two younger.

"They say men look distinguished when they get old," I said.

"Easy for you to say."

"I believe in the young at heart."

"That's a very mature thing to say."

It was always sad to leave him at night. I wanted to go to hear him play with his band, but I was afraid of what my mother would think.

He knocked on my door very late one night. My mother was away, working the whole night. I came out and found him sitting on the steps out front. He still had on his black tuxedo, which he had worn to work. He brought me some posters of the legends who were his idols: Charlie Bird Parker and Miles Davis.

"Sophie, you should have heard me tonight," he said. "I was so hot you could have fried a plantain on my face."

We both laughed loudly, drawing glares from people passing by.

"Can you go out to eat?" he asked. "Somewhere, anywhere. I'm so high from the way I played, don't let me down."

I called my mother at the old lady's house, on the pretense that I was wishing her a good night. Then we drove to the Cafe des Arts on Long Island, which was always open late, Joseph said.

I drank my first cappuccino with a drop of rum. We shared a tiny cup; he was worried about driving back and finding my mother at home, waiting for me. He told me to raise my head through the roof of his convertible, as we sped on the freeway, hurrying to make it home before sunrise. I felt like I was high enough to wash my hair in a cloud and have a star in my mouth.

"I am being irresponsible," he said. "Your mother will have me arrested. Thank God you are over eighteen."

He held my hand on the doorstep, swaying my pinky back and forth.

"You do wonders for my English," I said, hoping it wasn't too forward.

"You're such a beautiful woman," he said.

"You think I am a woman? You're the first person who has called me that."

"In that sad case, everyone else is blind."

I leaned my head on his shoulder as we watched the morning sky lighten.

"Can you tell I like you?" he asked.

"I can tell."

"Do you like me?"

"You will not respect me if I say yes," I said.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Where do you get such notions?"

"How do I know you're not just saying these things so you can get what you want."

"What do you think I want?" he asked.

"What all men want."

"Which is?"

"I don't want to say it."

"You will have to say it," he said. "What is it? Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness?" He quickly let go of my hand. "I'm not about that. I am older than that. I am not going to say I am better than that because I am not a priest, but I'm not about that."

"Then what do you want with me?" I asked.

"The pursuit of happiness."

"Are you asking me to be with you?"

"Yes. No. It's not the way you think. Let's just go to sleep, solitaire, separately. Fare thee well. Good night."

He waited for me to go inside. I locked the door behind me. I heard him playing his keyboard as I lay awake in bed. The notes and scales were like raindrops, teardrops, torrents. I felt the music rise and surge, tightening every muscle in my body. Then I relaxed, letting it go, feeling a rush that I knew I wasn't supposed to feel.

Chapter 10

My mother came home early the next night. "We're going out," she said. "We have not done anything, the two of us, in too long."

A musty heat surrounded us as we stood on the platform waiting for a subway train to come.

Inside the train, there were listless faces, people clutching the straps, hanging on. In Haiti, there were only sugar cane railroads that ran from the sugar mill in Port-au-Prince to plantation towns all over the countryside. Sometimes on the way home, some kids and I would chase the train and try to yank sugar cane sticks from between the wired bars.

As the D train sped over the Brooklyn Bridge, its lights swaying on the water below, my mother kept her eyes on the river, her face beaming as if she was a guest on the moon.

"Ah, if Manman would agree to come to America, then Atie would see this," she said.

"Do you think you'll ever go back to Haiti?" I asked.

"I have to go back to make final arrangements for your grandmother's resting place. I want to see her before she dies, but I don't want to stay there for more than three or four days. I know that sounds bad, but that is the only way I can do it. There are ghosts there that I can't face, things that are still very painful for me."

I waited for the train to sink below the city so I could have her full attention.

"I am past eighteen now," I said. "Is it okay if I like someone?"

"Do you like someone?" she asked.

"I am asking, just in case I do."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?" she asked.

I was afraid to tell her right away.

"Nothing has happened yet," I said.

"I would hope not," she said. "Who is it?"

She waited for me to speak, but I wanted to hold on to my secret just a bit longer.

"Let me tell you a few things," she said. "You have to get yourself a man who will do something for you. He can't be a vagabond. I won't have it."

"He is not a vagabond."

"How do you know? Do you think he will walk up to you and say, 'Hi, I am a vagabond'?"

I trust- "You are already lost," she said. "You tell me you trust him and I know you are already lost. What's his name?"

Henry was the first name I could think of.

"Henry what?"

I thought hard for a last name for my Henry.

"Henry Je ne sais quoi."

"Don't you dare play with me."

"I was just joking," I said. "I know his last name. It is Henry Napoleon."

"Of the Leogane Napoleons?" My mother closed her eyes as though there was a long family registry in her brain.

The Leogane Napoleons? Why had I chosen them? There were more illustrious Haitian families. I could see my mother's mind working very quickly. Were they rich? Poor? Black? Mulatto? Were they of peasant stock? Literate? Professionals?

"I want to meet him," she said.

"He is not here." I thought quickly. "He went back to Haiti after graduation."

"is he coming back?"

"I don't know."

"I want to meet his parents. It's always proper for the parents to talk first. That way if there's been any indiscretion, we can have a family meeting and arrange things together. It's always good to know the parents."

"The parents are in Haiti with him."

"Are they ever coming back?"

"I don't know."

"Find out. I want to meet them when they get back."

I leaned over and kissed her cheek to show her that I appreciated her trying to be a good mother. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but the words would not roll off my tongue. I had to be more careful now that my mother knew I had a love interest. I cooked all her favorite meals and had them ready for her when she got home. I even used the mortar and pestle to crush onions and spices to add those special flavors she liked. I got A and Bs in chemistry and tried to hide my chagrin whenever Joseph was on a gig in another part of the country.

My mother waited very patiently for Henry Napoleon of the Leogane Napoleons to come back from Haiti. Every time she asked about him, she took advantage of the moment to give me some general advice.

"It is really hard for the new-generation girls," she began. "You will have to choose between the really old-fashioned Haitians and the new-generation Haitians. The old-fashioned ones are not exactly prize fruits. They make you cook plantains and rice and beans and never let you feed them lasagna. The problem with the new generation is that a lot of them have lost their sense of obligation to the family's honor. Rather than become doctors and engineers, they want to drive taxicabs to make quick cash."

My mother had somehow learned from someone at work that the Leogane Napoleons were a poor but hardworking clan. She said that in Haiti if your mother was a coal seller and you became a doctor, people would still look down on you knowing where you came from. But in America, they like success stories. The worse off you were, the higher your praise. Henry's mother had sold coal in Haiti, but now her son was going to be a doctor. Henry's was a success story.

Joseph was away for a month. He sent me postcards and letters from the road. Each day I rushed to the mailbox, making sure I got them before my mother did. I put his jazz-legend posters on my walls and stared at them day and night.

Whenever my mother was home, I would stay up all night just waiting for her to have a nightmare. Shortly after she fell asleep, I would hear her screaming for someone to leave her alone. I would run over and shake her as she thrashed about. Her reaction was always the same. When she saw my face, she looked even more frightened.

"Jesus Marie Joseph." She would cover her eyes with her hands. "Sophie, you've saved my life."

Chapter 11

His first night back home, I went to hear Joseph play. My mother was working. I took a chance. I put on a tight-fitting yellow dress that I had hidden under my mattress. Joseph wore a tuxedo with a tie and cumberbund made of African kente cloth.

"You look like you're all grown up," he said.

"A lot of time has gone by," I said.

"What's time to you and me?"

"Out of sight, out of mind."

"Not your sight and not my mind."

He always knew all the right things to say.

In the car, he told me about how all the towns looked alike after a while when he was traveling and how he kept thinking about me and feeling guilty about my mother, because he was wanting to steal me away from her.

The whole evening was like one daydream. I had never imagined myself in a place like the Note. There was a large dance floor with pink and yellow lights twinkling from the ceiling. That night Joseph played the tenor saxophone. There was a whimpering sound to it, like a mourning cry.

After the show, we drove over the bridge, into dawn.

"I have to go away again," he said, on the steps of my house. "We have to play in Florida. I think you would love Florida."

He took a small silver ring from his pinky and slipped it onto mine. I felt my eyes close. I let in my first kiss.

I did not see him for a while. He was back from Florida but packing to return to Providence. We went for dinner at the Note. This time he wasn't playing. We sat at a table with the other customers. He asked me to marry him.

I didn't say no, but I didn't say yes. I wanted time to think. My mother would never allow it. She would go crazy.

"Let's have dreams on it," he said, "and if you never bring it up again, neither will I."

That night, I slept hugging my secret.

When my mother came home from work, we went on another ride on the train to watch the lights on the bridge. I wanted to tell her that I loved someone. Like maybe she loved Marc, or like she had loved before.

"Manman, Henry Napoleon is never coming back," I said.

"It's too bad," she said. "I hear from Maryse at work that he is in medical school in Mexico."

"Really?"

"You didn't know? I thought he was the one sending you these letters from all over the country."

She was quiet as the train raced over the bridge and back down to the tunnel.

"There are secrets you can't keep," she said. "Not from your mother anyway."

The next night, after seeing Joseph, I came home to find my mother sitting in the living room. She was sitting there rocking herself, holding a belt in her hand.

"I thought you were dead," she said when I walked in.

I tried to tell her that I had not done anything wrong, but it was three in the morning. I wished that I had not asked Joseph to let me go in alone. Perhaps if he had been there. Who knows?

"Where were you?" She tapped the belt against her palm, her lifelines becoming more and more red. She took my hand with surprised gentleness, and led me upstairs to my bedroom. There, she made me lie on my bed and she tested me.

I mouthed the words to the Virgin Mother's Prayer: Hail Mary… so full of grace. The Lord is with You… You are blessed among women… Holy Mary. Mother of God. Pray for us poor sinners.

In my mind, I tried to relive all the pleasant memories I remembered from my life. My special moments with Tante Atie and with Joseph and even with my mother.

As she tested me, to distract me, she told me, "The Marassas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person, duplicated in two. They looked the same, talked the same, walked the same. When they laughed, they even laughed the same and when they cried, their tears were identical. When one went to the stream, the other rushed under the water to get a better look. When one looked in the mirror, the other walked behind the glass to mimic her. What vain lovers they were, those Marassas. Admiring one another for being so much alike, for being copies. When you love someone, you want him to be closer to you than your Mamssa. Closer than your shadow. You want him to be your soul. The more you are alike, the easier this becomes. When you look in a stream, if you saw that man's face, wouldn't you think it was a water spirit? Wouldn't you scream? Wouldn't you think he was hiding under a sheet of water or behind a pane of glass to kill you? The love between a mother and daughter is deeper than the sea. You would leave me for an old man who you didn't know the year before. You and I we could be like Marassas. You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand?

"There are secrets you cannot keep," my mother said after the test.

She pulled a sheet up over my body and walked out of the room with her face buried in her hands. I closed my legs and tried to see Tante Atie's face. I could understand why she had screamed while her mother had tested her. There are secrets you cannot keep.

Chapter 12

I did not tell Joseph what happened. He left for Providence and stayed away for five weeks. My mother still worked night shifts. She had no choice. However, she would test me every week to make sure that I was still whole.

When Joseph returned, I did my best to avoid him. I was hoping he would go back to Providence and forget that he had ever met me. He did not give up so easily. One night he banged on the door for two hours and finally I opened it.

"I'm leaving for Providence after next week for good," he said coldly. "I wanted to know if there was anything in this house you wanted."

"I don't want anything," I said, walking away.

I twirled the ring around my fingers while listening to the saxophone wailing in the dark. My mother rarely spoke to me since she began the tests. When she went out with Marc, I refused to go and she showed no desire to take me along.

I was feeling alone and lost, like there was no longer any reason for me to live. I went down to the kitchen and searched my mother's cabinet for the mortar and pestle we used to crush spices. I took the pestle to bed with me and held it against my chest.

The story goes that there was once a woman who walked around with blood constantly spurting out of her unbroken skin. This went on for twelve long years. The woman went to many doctors and specialists, but no one could heal her. The blood kept gushing and spouting in bubbles out of her unbroken skin, sometimes from her arms, sometimes from her legs, sometimes from her face and chest. It became a common occurrence, soaking her clothes a bright red on very special occasions-weddings and funerals. Finally, the woman got tired and said she was going to see Erzulie to ask her what to do.

After her consultation with Erzulie, it became apparent to the bleeding woman what she would have to do. If she wanted to stop bleeding, she would have to give up her right to be a human being. She could choose what to be, a plant or an animal, but she could no longer be a woman.

The woman was tired of bleeding, so she went home and divided her goods among her friends and loved ones. Then she went back to Erzulie for her transformation.

"What form of life do you want to take?" asked Erzulie. "Do you want to be a green lush plant in a garden? Do you want to be a gentle animal in the sea? A ferocious beast of the night?"

The woman thought of all the animals that she had seen, the ones that people feared and others that they loved. She thought of the ones that were small. Ones that were held captive and ones that were free.

"Make me a butterfly," she told Erzulie. "Make me a butterfly."

"A butterfly you shall be," said Erzulie.

The woman was transformed and never bled again.

My flesh ripped apart as I pressed the pestle into it. I could see the blood slowly dripping onto the bed sheet. I took the pestle and the bloody sheet and stuffed them into a bag. It was gone, the veil that always held my mother's finger back every time she tested me.

My body was quivering when my mother walked into my room to test me. My legs were limp when she drew them aside. I ached so hard I could hardly move. Finally I failed the test.

My mother grabbed me by the hand and pulled me off the bed. She was calm now, resigned to her anger.

"Go," she said with tears running down her face. She seized my books and clothes and threw them at me. "You just go to him and see what he can do for you."

I waited until I heard her moaning in her sleep. I gathered my things and stuffed them into a suitcase. I had to dress quickly. I tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door.

I knocked on Joseph's door and waited for him to answer.

"Are you in trouble?" he asked.

He took me inside and sat me down.

I was limping a little. My body ached from the wound the pestle had made. I handed him my suitcase and the pinky ring he had given me.

"I am ready for a real ring," I said.

"You want to get married?"

I nodded.

"But we have to do it now," I said. "Right this very minute."

"Without a priest?"

"I don't care."

I was bound to be happy in a place called Providence. A place that destiny was calling me to. Fate! A town named after the Creator, the Almighty. Who would not want to live there?