The Dew Breaker

NIGHT TALKERS

He thought that the mountain would kill him, that he would never see the other side. He had been walking for two hours when suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his side. He tried some breathing exercises he remembered from medical shows on television, but it was hard to concentrate. All he could think of, besides the pain, was his roommate, Michel, who’d had an emergency appendectomy a few weeks before in New York. What if he was suddenly stricken with appendicitis, here on top of a mountain, deep in the Haitian countryside, where the closest village seemed like a grain of sand in the valley below?

Hugging his midsection, he left the narrow trail and took cover from the scorching midday sun under a tall, arched, wind-deformed tree. Avoiding a row of anthills, he slid down onto his back over a patch of grainy pebbled soil and closed his eyes, shutting out, along with the sapphire sky, the craggy hills that made up the rest of his journey.

He was on his way to visit his aunt Estina, his father’s older sister, whom he’d not seen since he moved to New York ten years before. He had lost his parents to the dictatorship twenty-five years before that, when he was a boy, and his aunt Estina had raised him in the capital. After he moved to New York, she returned to her home in the mountains where she’d always taken him during school holidays. This was the first time he was going to her village, as he’d come to think of it, without her. If she had been with him, she would have made him start his journey earlier in the day. They would have boarded a camion at the bus depot in Port-au-Prince before dawn and started climbing the mountain at sunrise to avoid sunstroke at high noon. If she had known he was coming, she would have hired him a mule and sent a child to meet him halfway, a child who would know all the shortcuts to her village. She also would have advised him to wear a sun hat and bring more than the two bottles of water he’d consumed hours ago.

But no, he’d wanted to surprise her; however, the only person he was surprising was himself, by getting lost and nearly passing out and possibly lying there long enough to draw a few mountain vultures to come pick his skeleton clean.

When he finally opened his eyes, the sun was beating down on his face in pretty, symmetrical designs. Filtered through the long, upturned branches of what he now recognized as a giant saguaro cactus, the sun rays had patterned themselves into hearts, starfishes, and circles looped around one another.

He reached over and touched the cactus’s thick trunk, which felt like a needle-filled pincushion or a field of dry grass. The roots were close to the soil, a design that his aunt Estina had once told him would allow the plant to collect as much rainwater as possible. Further up along the spine, on the stem, was a tiny cobalt flower. He wanted to pluck it and carry it with him the rest of the way, but his aunt would scold him. Most cactus flowers bloomed only for a few short days, then withered and died. He should let the cactus enjoy its flower for this brief time, his aunt would say.

The pain in his midsection had subsided, so he decided to get up and continue walking. There were many paths to his aunt’s house, and seeing the lone saguaro had convinced him that he was on one of them.

He soon found himself entering a village, where a girl was pounding a pestle in a mortar, forming a small crater in the ground beneath the mortar as a group of younger children watched.

The girl stopped her pounding as soon as she saw him, causing the other children to turn their almost identical brown faces toward him.

“Bonjou, cousins,” he said, remembering the childhood greeting his aunt had taught him. When he was a boy, in spite of the loss of his parents, he had thought himself part of a massive family, every child his cousin and every adult his aunt or uncle.

“Bonjou,” the children replied.

“Ki jan w ye?” the oldest girl added, distinguishing herself. How are you?

“Could I have some water, please?” he said to her, determining that she was indeed the one in charge.

The girl turned her pestle over to the next-oldest child and ran into the limestone house as he dropped his backpack on the ground and collapsed on the front gallery. The ground felt chilly against his bare legs, as though he’d stumbled into a cold stream with his shorts and T-shirt on.

As one of the younger boys ran off behind the house, the other children settled down on the ground next to him, some of them reaching over and stroking his backpack.

The oldest girl came back with a glass in one hand and an earthen jar in the other. He watched as she poured the water, wondering if it, like her, was a mirage fabricated by his intense thirst. When she handed him the water, he drank it faster than it took her to pour him another glass, then another and another, until the earthen jar was clearly empty.

She asked if he wanted more.

“Non,” he replied. “Mèsi.” Thank you.

The girl went back into the house to put the earthen jar and glass away. The children were staring up at him, too coy to question him and too curious not to stare. When the girl returned, she went back to her spot behind the mortar and pestle and just stood there as though she no longer knew what to do.

An old man carrying a machete and a sisal knapsack walked up to the bamboo gate that separated the road from the house. The young boy who had run off earlier was at his side.

“How are you, konpè?” the old man asked.

“Uncle,” he said, “I was dying of thirst until your granddaughter here gave me some water to drink.”

“My granddaughter?” The old man laughed. “She’s my daughter. Do you think I look that old?”

Toothless, he did look old, with a grizzly white beard and a face full of folds and creases that seemed to map out every road he had traveled in his life.

The old man reached over and grabbed one of three wooden poles that held up the front of the house. He stood there for a while, saying nothing, catching his breath. After the children had brought him a calabash filled with water-the glass and earthen jar were obviously reserved for strangers-and two chairs for him and the stranger, he lit his pipe, exhaled a fragrant cloud of fresh tobacco, and asked, “Where are you going, my son?”

“I’m going to see my aunt, Estina Estème,” he replied. “She lives in Beau Jour.”

The old man removed the pipe from his mouth and reached up to scratch his beard.

“Estina Estème? The same Estina Estème from Beau Jour?”

“The same,” he said, growing hopeful that he was not too far from his aunt’s house.

“You say she is your aunt?”

“She is,” he replied. “You know her?”

“Know her?” the old man retorted. “There are no strangers in these mountains. My grandfather Nozial and her grandfather Dorméus were cousins. Who was your father?”

“My father was Maxo Jean Dorméus,” he said.

“The one killed with his wife in that fire?” the old man asked. “They only had the one boy. Estina nearly died in that fire too. Only the boy came out whole.”

“I am the boy,” he said, an egg-sized lump growing in his throat. He hadn’t expected to be talking about these things so soon. He had prepared himself for only one conversation about his parents’ death, the one he would inevitably have with his aunt.

The children moved a few inches closer to him, their eyes beaming as though they were being treated to a frightening folktale in the middle of the day.

“Even after all these years,” the old man said, “I’m still so sad for you. So you are that young man who used to come here with Estina, the one who went to New York some years back?”

The old man looked him up and down, as if searching for burn marks on his body, then ordered the children to retreat.

“Shoo,” he commanded. “This is no talk for young ears.”

The children quickly vanished, the oldest girl resuming her work with the mortar and pestle.

Rising from his chair, the old man said, “Come, I’ll take you to Estina Estème.”

Estina Estème lived in a valley between two lime-green mountains and a giant waterfall, which sprayed a fine mist over the banana grove that surrounded her one-room house and the teal ten-place mausoleum that harbored the bones of many of her forebears. Her nephew recognized the house as soon as he saw it. It had not changed much, the sloped tin roof and the wooden frame intact. His aunt’s banana grove seemed to have flourished; it was greener and denser than he remembered. Her garden was packed with orange and avocado trees-a miracle, given the barren mountain range he’d just traveled through.

When he entered his aunt’s yard, he was greeted by a flock of hens and roosters that scattered quickly, seeking shelter on top of the family mausoleum.

He rushed to the front porch, where an old faded skirt and blouse were drying on the wooden railing. The door was open, so he ran into the house, leaving behind the old man and a group of neighbors whom the old man had enticed into following them by announcing as he passed their houses that he had with him Estina Estème’s only nephew.

In the small room was his aunt’s cot, covered with a pale blue sheet. Nearby was a calabash filled with water, within easy reach so she could drink from it at night without leaving her bed. Under the cot was her porcelain chamber pot and baskets filled with a few Sunday dresses, hats, and shoes.

The old man peeked in to ask, “She’s not here?”

“No,” he replied, “she’s not.”

He was growing annoyed with the old man, even though he would never have found his aunt’s house so quickly without his help.

When he walked out of the house, he found himself facing a dozen or so more people gathered in his aunt’s yard. He scanned the faces and recognized one or two, but couldn’t recall the names. Many in the group were nudging one another, whispering while pointing at him. Others called out, “Dany, don’t you know me anymore?”

He walked over and kissed the women, shook hands with the men, and patted the children’s heads.

“Please, where’s my aunt?” he asked of the entire crowd.

“She’ll soon be here,” a woman replied. “We sent for her.”

Once he knew his aunt was on her way, he did his best to appear interested in catching up. Many in the crowd complained that once he got to New York, he forgot about them, never sending the watch or necklace or radio he’d promised. Surprised that they’d taken his youthful pledges so seriously, he offered some feeble excuses. “It’s not so easy to earn money in New York… I thought you’d moved to the capital… I didn’t know your address.”

“Where would we have gone?” one of the men rebutted. “We were not so lucky as you.”

He was glad when he heard his aunt’s voice, calling his name. The crowd parted and she appeared, pudgy yet graceful in a drop-waist dress. Her face was round and full, her skin silken and very black, her few wrinkles, in his estimation, more like beauty marks than signs of old age. Two people were guiding her by the elbows. As they were leading her to him, she pulled herself away and raised her hands in front of her, searching for him in the breeze. He had almost forgotten that she was blind, had been since the day of the fire that had taken his parents’ lives.

The crowd moved back a few feet as he ran into her arms. She held him tightly, angling her head to kiss the side of his face.

“Dany, is it you?” She patted his back and shoulders to make sure.

“I brought him here for you,” the old man said.

“Old Zo, why is it that you’re always mixed up in everything?” she asked, joking.

“True to my name,” the old man replied, “I’m a bone that fits every stew.”

The crowd laughed.

“Let’s go in the house,” his aunt told him. “It’s hot out here.”

As they started for her front door, he took her hand and tried to guide her, but found himself an obstacle in her path and let go. Once they were inside, she felt her way to her cot and sat down on the edge.

“Sit with me, Da,” she said. “You have made your old aunt a young woman again.”

“How are you?” He sat down next to her. “Truly?”

“Truly fine,” she said. “Did Popo tell you different?”

For years now, he’d been paying a boyhood friend in Port-au-Prince, Popo, to come and check on her once a month. He would send Popo money to buy her whatever she needed and Popo would in turn call him in New York to brief him on how she was doing.

“No,” he said. “Popo didn’t tell me anything.”

“Then why did you come?” she asked. “I’m not unhappy to see you, but you just dropped out of the sky. There must be a reason.” She felt for his face, found it, and kissed it for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Were you sent back?” she asked. “We have a few boys here in the village who have been sent back. Many don’t even speak Creole anymore. They come here because this is the only place they have any family. There’s one boy not far from here. I’ll take you to visit him. You can speak to him, one American to another.”

“You still go on your visits?” he asked.

“When they came to fetch me, I was with a girl in labor,” she said.

“Still midwifing?”

“Helping the midwife,” she replied. “You know I know every corner of these mountains. If a new tree grows, I learn where it is. Same with children. A baby’s still born the same way it was when I had sight.”

“I meant to come sooner,” he said, watching her join and separate her fingers like tree branches brushing against each other. Both her hands had been burned during the fire that had followed the explosion at his parents’ house, but over the years the burn marks had smoothed into her skin and were now barely visible.

“I knew that once the time was right you’d come back,” she said. “But why didn’t you send word that you were on your way?”

“You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t just drop out of the sky. I came because I want to tell you something.”

“What is it, Da?” she asked, weaving and unweaving her fingers. “Are you finally getting married?”

“No,” he said. “That’s not it. I found him. I found him in New York, the man who killed Papa and Manman and took your sight.”

Why the old man chose that exact moment to come through the door he would never know. Perhaps it was chance, serendipity, or maybe simply because the old man was a nosy pain in the ass. But just then Old Zo came in, pushing the mortar-and-pestle girl ahead of him. She was carrying a covered plate of food.

“We brought you something to refresh you,” he told Dany.

His aunt seemed neither distressed nor irritated by the interruption. She could have sent Old Zo and the girl away, but she didn’t. Instead she told them to put their offering on an old table in the corner. The girl quietly put the plate down and backed out of the room, avoiding Dany’s eyes.

“I hope you’re both hungry,” the old man said, not moving from his spot. “Everyone is going to bring you something.”

Clusters of food-bearing people streamed in and out of the house all afternoon. He and his aunt would sample each plate, then share the rest with the next visitor until everyone in the valley had tasted at least one of their neighbors’ dishes.

By the time all the visitors had left and he and his aunt were alone together, it was dark and his aunt showed no interest in hearing what he had to say. Instead she offered him her cot, but he talked her into letting him have the sisal mat she’d spread out on the floor for herself.

She fell asleep much more quickly than he did. Mid-dream, she laughed, paid compliments, made promises, or gave warnings. “Listen, don’t go too far. Come back soon. What a strong baby! I’ll make you a dress. I’ll make you coffee.” Then she sat up in her cot to scold herself, “Estina, you are waking the boy,” before drifting once again into the images in her head.

In the dark, listening to his aunt conduct entire conversations in her sleep, he realized that aside from blood, she and he shared nocturnal habits. They were both palannits, night talkers, people who wet their beds, not with urine but with words. He too spoke his dreams aloud in the night, to the point of sometimes jolting himself awake with the sound of his own voice. Usually he could remember only the very last words he spoke, but remained with a lingering sensation that he had been talking, laughing, and at times crying all night long.

His aunt was already awake by the time he got up the next morning. With help from Old Zo’s daughter, who seemed to have been rented out to his aunt for the duration of his visit, she had already set up breakfast on the small table brought out to the front gallery from inside the house. His aunt seemed restless, almost anxious, as if she’d been waiting for him to rise for hours.

“Go wash yourself, Da,” she said, handing him a towel. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Low shrubs covered in dew brushed against his ankles as he made his way down a trail toward the stream at the bottom of the fall. The water was freezing cold when he slipped in, but he welcomed the sensation of having almost every muscle in his body contract, as if to salute the dawn.

Had his father ever bathed in this stream? Had his parents soaked here together, in this same spot, when they’d come to stay with his aunt? He had so little information and so few memories to draw on that every once in a while he would substitute moments from his own life in trying to re-create theirs. But lately what was taking up the most space in his mind was not the way his parents had lived but the way they had died.

A group of women were coming down the path toward the river with calabashes and plastic jugs balancing on top of their heads. They would bathe, then fill their containers further up, closer to the fall. He remembered spending hours as a boy watching the women bathe topless, their breasts flapping against their chests as they soaped and scrubbed themselves with mint and parsley sprigs, as if to eradicate every speck of night dust from their skin.

When he got back to his aunt’s house, he had a visitor, a short, muscular boy with a restrained smile and an overly firm handshake. The boy’s brawny arms were covered with tattoos from his elbows down to his wrists, his skin a canvas of Chinese characters, plus kings and queens from a card deck. One-Eyed Jack, Hector, Lancelot, Judith, Rachel, Argine, and Palas, they were all there in miniature, carved into his nut-brown skin in navy blue and red ink.

“I sent for Claude,” his aunt announced. “He’s the one I was telling you about, one of the boys who was sent back.”

Claude was sitting next to his aunt, on the top step in front of the house, dipping his bread in the coffee Old Zo’s daughter had just made.

“Claude understands Creole and is learning to speak bit by bit,” his aunt said, “but he has no one to speak English to. I would like you to talk with him.”

Claude was probably in his late teens, too young, it seemed, to have been expatriated twice, from both his native country and his adopted land. Dany sat down on the step next to Claude, and Old Zo’s daughter handed him a cup of coffee and a piece of bread.

“How long have you been here?” he asked Claude.

“Too long, man,” Claude replied, “but I guess it could be worse. I could be down in the city, in Port, eating crap and sleeping on the street. Everyone here’s been really cool to me, especially your aunt. She’s really taken me under her wing.”

Claude flapped his heavily tattooed arms, as if to illustrate the word “wing.”

“When I first got here,” he continued, “I thought I’d get stoned. I mean, I thought people would throw rocks at me, man. Not the other kind of stoned. I mean, coming out of New York, then being in prison in Port for three months because I had no place to go, then finally my moms, who didn’t speak to me for the whole time I was locked up, came to Port and hooked me up with some family up here.”

His aunt was leaning forward with both hands holding up her face, her white hair braided like a crown of gardenias around her head. She was listening to them speak, like someone trying to capture the indefinable essence of a great piece of music. Watching her face, the pleasure she was taking in the unfamiliar words made him want to talk even more, find something drawn-out to say, tell a story of some kind, even recite some poetry, if only he knew any.

“So you’re getting by all right?” he asked Claude.

“It took a lot of getting used to, but I’m settling in,” Claude replied. “I got a roof over my head and it’s quiet as hell here. No trouble worth a damn to get into. It’s cool that you’ve come back to see your aunt, man. Some of the folks around here told me she had someone back in New York. I had a feeling when she’d ask me to speak English for her.”

Claude reached down and picked up a couple of pebbles from the ground. It seemed to Dany that he could easily crush them if he wanted to, pulverize them with his fingertips. But instead he took turns throwing them up in the air and catching them, like a one-handed juggler. “It’s real big that you didn’t forget her, that you didn’t forget your folks,” he went on. “I wish I’d stayed in touch more with my people, you know; then it wouldn’t be so weird showing up here like I did. These people don’t even know me, man. They’ve never seen my face before, not even in pictures. They still took me in, after everything I did, because my moms told them I was their blood. I look at them and I see nothing of me, man, blank, nada, but they look at me and they say he has so-and-so’s nose and his grandmother’s forehead, or some shit like that.” One of Claude’s pebbles fell on the ground, missing his hand. He did not bend down to pick it up, but threw the others after it. “It’s like a puzzle, a weird-ass kind of puzzle, man,” he said. “I’m the puzzle and these people are putting me back together, telling me things about myself and my family that I never knew or gave a fuck about. Man, if I’d run into these people back in Brooklyn, I’d have laughed my ass off at them. I would’ve called them backward-ass peasants. But here I am.”

His aunt was engrossed, enthralled by Claude’s speech, smiling at times while the morning rays danced across her eyes, never penetrating her pupils. He was starting to think of his aunt’s eyes as a strange kind of prism, one that consumed light rather than reflected it.

“I can’t honestly say I love it here,” Claude seemed to be wrapping up, “but it’s worked out good for me. It saved my life. I’m at peace here, and my family seems to have made peace with me. I came around; I can honestly say I was reformed in prison. I would’ve been a better citizen than most if they hadn’t deported me.”

“You still have a chance,” Dany said, not believing it himself. “You can do something with your life. Maybe you’re back here for a reason, to make things better.”

He was growing tired of Claude, tired of what he considered his lame excuses and an apparent lack of remorse for whatever it was he’d done.

“How long will you be staying?” Claude asked.

“A while,” Dany said.

“Is there anything you want to do?” Claude asked. “I know the area pretty well now. I take lots of walks to clear my head. I could show you around.”

“I know where things are,” Dany said. “And if I don’t remember, my aunt can-”

“It’s just with her not being able to see-”

“She can see, in her own way.”

“Cool, man. I was just trying to be helpful.”

Even with the brusque way their conversation ended, Claude seemed happy as he left. He had gotten his chance to speak English and tell his entire life story in the process.

After Claude’s departure, Old Zo’s daughter came up and took the empty coffee cup from Dany’s hand. She lingered in front of him for a minute, her palm accidentally brushing against his fingertips. At times, she seemed older than she looked. Maybe she was twenty, twenty-five, but she looked twelve. He wondered what her story was. Were those children he had seen in Old Zo’s yard hers? Did she have a husband? Was he in the city? Dead?

She hesitated before stepping away, as though she gave too much thought to every move she made. When she finally walked away, Dany’s aunt asked him, “Do you know why Claude was in prison?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Do you know what his people say?”

“What do his people say?”

“They say he killed his father.”

That night, Dany dreamed that he was having the conversation he’d come to have with his aunt. They were sitting on the step where he and Claude had spoken. He began the conversation by recalling with his aunt the day his parents died.

He was six years old and his father was working as a gardener in Port-au-Prince. The night of the explosion, he had been at home with his parents and his aunt, who was visiting from Beau Jour, when they heard a loud crash outside. His father went out first, followed by his mother. Dany was about to go after them when he heard the shots. His aunt grabbed him and pinned him to the ground, but somehow he managed to wiggle out of her grasp.

Outside, most of the wooden porch was already on fire. The smoke was so dense he could barely see his parents, his mother slumped over his father on the ground.

Behind him the front door was covered in flames. He ran out to the yard and called out for his aunt at the top of his lungs.

“Shut up now or I’ll shoot you too!” someone was shouting from the street.

It was a large man with a face like a soccer ball and a widow’s peak dipping into the middle of his forehead. The man was waving a gun at him as he opened his car door, and he only lowered the gun to drive away. His aunt then crawled out of the house and away from the porch, coughing the smoke out of her lungs. She was unable to see.

He dreamed his aunt saying, “Yes, this is how it happened, Da,” then urging him to elaborate on what he’d begun to tell her before Old Zo and his daughter had walked into her house. “You said you saw that same man in New York, Da? Are you sure it was him?”

The man who had killed his parents was now a barber in New York. He had a wife and a grown daughter, who visited often. Some guys from work had told him that a barber was renting a room in the basement of his house. When he went to the barbershop to ask about the room, he recognized the barber as the man who had waved the gun at him outside his parents’ house.

“It’s been so many years,” the dream aunt said. “Are you sure he’s the one?”

He took the empty room in the barber’s basement. He couldn’t sleep for months, spending his weekends in nightclubs to pass the time. He visited the barbershop regularly for haircuts, arriving early in the morning soon after he opened. He would sit and watch the barber, now a much thinner man, turn on his radio, then sweep the entire shop before lining up his tools and calling him to the chair. His heart would race as the barber draped a black cape over his chest, then sheared paths through his hair until barely a stubble was left on top of his head. All the while he would study the pictures on the walls, campaign posters for local elections, hairstyle samples that he never chose from, asking the barber only to “cut as much as you can.”

The barber never made conversation, never said, “How do you like the basement?” He only asked in a soft voice that sounded nothing like the hoarse and angry voice that had threatened him so many years ago, “Would you like a shave?”

He never turned down the shaves, for he thought it would give the barber a chance to have a closer look at his face, to remember him. He always expected the barber’s large hands to tremble, but it was his own body that quivered instead, his forehead and neck that became covered with sweat, melting the shaving cream on his chin, forcing the barber to offer him extra napkins and towels and warn him to stay still to avoid nicks and cuts.

Finally, two nights ago, when the barber’s wife was away at a religious retreat-he looked for such opportunities all the time and hadn’t found one until then-he climbed the splintered steps to the first floor, then made his way with a flashlight to the barber’s bedroom.

“What did you do?” the dream aunt asked.

He stood there and listened to the barber breathing. The barber was snoring, each round of snores beginning with a grunt and ending in a high-pitched moan. He lowered his face toward the barber’s widow’s peak, hoping he would wake him up and startle him to death. When he was a boy, he’d heard about political prisoners being choked in their sleep, their faces swelling, their eyes bulging out of their heads. He wanted to do the same thing now to the barber. Or maybe press a pillow down on his face. Or simply wake him up to ask him “Why?”

Looking down at the barber’s face, which had shrunk so much over the years, he lost the desire to kill. It wasn’t that he was afraid, for he was momentarily feeling bold, fearless. It wasn’t pity, either. He was too angry to feel pity. It was something else, something less measurable. It was the dread of being wrong, of harming the wrong man, of making the wrong woman a widow and the wrong child an orphan. It was the realization that he would never know why-why one single person had been given the power to destroy his entire life.

He was trembling again. His whole body, it seemed, was soaked with sweat as he tiptoed out of the barber’s room. Even when he was back in the basement calling about flights to Port-au-Prince, he couldn’t shake the feeling that after all these years the barber might finally make good on his promise to shoot him, just as he had his parents.

Dany woke himself with the sound of his own voice reciting his story. His aunt was awake too; he could make out her outline in the dark. It looked as though she was sitting up in her cot, pushing the chamber pot beneath her, to relieve herself.

“Da, were you dreaming about your parents?” She leaned over and replaced the chamber pot back under the bed. “You were calling their names.”

“Was I?” He would have thought he was calling the barber.

“You were calling your parents,” she said, “just this instant.”

He was still back there, on the burning porch, hoping that his mother and father would rise and put out the fire. He was in the yard, watching the barber’s car speed away and his aunt crawling off the porch, on her belly, like a blind snake. He was in that room in Brooklyn, with the barber, watching him sleep. Now his aunt’s voice was just an echo of things he could no longer enjoy-his mother’s voice, his father’s laugh.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the backs of his hands.

“I should have let you continue telling me what you came here to say.” His aunt’s voice seemed to be floating toward him in the dark. “It’s like walking up these mountains and losing something precious halfway. For you, it would be no problem walking back to find it because you’re still young and strong, but for me it would take a lot more time and effort.”

He heard the cot squeak as she lay back down.

“Tante Estina,” he said, lying back on the small sisal mat himself.

“Wi, Da,” she replied.

“Were my parents in politics?”

“Oh, Da,” she said, as if protesting the question.

“Please,” he said.

“No more than any of us,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“They didn’t do anything bad, Da,” she said, “or anything at all. I didn’t know all my brother’s secrets, but I think he was taken for somebody else.”

“Who?” he asked.

“M pa konnen,” she said.

He thought maybe she’d said a name, Lubin or Firmin.

“Who were they mistaken for?” he asked her again.

“M pa konnen,” she repeated. “I don’t know, Da. Maybe they were mistaken for all of us. There’s a belief that if you kill people, you can take their knowledge, become everything they were. Maybe they wanted to take all that knowledge for themselves. I don’t know, Da. All I know is I’m very tired now. Let me sleep.”

He decided to let her rest. They should have a chance to talk again. She went back to sleep, whispering something he could not hear under her breath, then growing silent. When he woke up the next morning, she was dead.

It was Old Zo’s daughter who let out the first cry, announcing the death to the entire valley. Sitting near the body, on the edge of his aunt’s cot, Dany was doubled over with an intense bellyache. Old Zo’s daughter took over immediately, brewing him some tea while waiting for their neighbors to arrive.

The tea did nothing for him. He wasn’t expecting it to. Part of him was grateful for the pain, for the physically agonizing diversion it provided him.

Soon after Old Zo’s daughter’s cry, a few of the village women started to arrive. It was only then that he learned Old Zo’s daughter’s name, at least her nickname, Ti Fanm, Little Woman, which the others kept shouting as they badgered her with questions.

“What happened, Ti Fanm?”

“Ti Fanm, did she die in her sleep?”

“Did she fall, Ti Fanm?”

“Ti Fanm, did she suffer?”

“Ti Fanm, she wasn’t even sick.”

“She was old,” Ti Fanm said in a firm and mature voice. “It can happen like that.”

They didn’t bother asking him anything. He wouldn’t have known how to answer anyway. After he and his aunt had spoken in the middle of the night, he thought she had fallen asleep. When he woke up in the morning, even later than he had the day before, she was still lying there, her eyes shut, her hands resting on her belly, her fingers intertwined. He tried to find her pulse, but she had none. He lowered his face to her nose and felt no breath; then he walked out of the house and found Ti Fanm, sitting on the steps, waiting to cook their breakfast. The pain was already starting in his stomach. Ti Fanm came in and performed her own investigation on his aunt, then let out that cry, a cry as loud as any siren he had heard on the streets of New York.

His aunt’s house was filled with people now, each of them taking turns examining his aunt’s body for signs of life, and when finding none immediately assigning themselves, and one another, tasks related to her burial. One group ran off to get purple curtains, to hang shroudlike over the front door to show that this was a household in mourning. Another group went off to fetch an unused washbasin to bathe the corpse. Others were searching through the baskets beneath his aunt’s cot for an appropriate dress to change her into after her bath. Another went looking for a carpenter to build her coffin.

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.

“You’re deserving,” she said, using an old-fashioned way of acknowledging his gratitude.

She was no longer avoiding his eyes, as though his grief and stomach ailment and the fact that he’d asked her real name had rendered them equals.

He got up and walked outside, where many of his aunt’s neighbors were sleeping on mats on the porch. There was a full moon overhead and a calm in the air that he was not expecting. In the distance, he could hear the waterfall, a sound that, once you got used to it, you never paid much attention to. He walked over to the mausoleum, removed his shirt, and began to wipe it, starting at the base and working his way up toward the flat top surface and the cross. It was clean already. The men had done a good job removing the leaves, pebbles, and dust that had accumulated on it while they were opening his aunt’s slot, but he wanted to make sure it was spotless, that every piece of debris that had fallen on it since was gone.

“Need help?” Claude asked from a few feet away.

He’d been sitting on the porch with some of the men.

Dany threw his dusty shirt on the ground, climbed on top of the mausoleum, and sat down. His aunt’s body would be placed in one of the higher slots, one of two not yet taken.

“Excuse me,” Dany said, “for earlier.”

“I understand,” Claude said. “I’d be a real asshole if I got pissed off at you for anything you did or said to me at a time like this. You’re in pain, man. I get that.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it pain,” Dany said. “There’s no word yet for it. No one has thought of a word yet.”

“I know, man,” Claude said. “It’s a real bitch.”

In spite of his huge muscles and oversized tattoos, Claude seemed oddly defenseless, like a refugee lost at sea, or a child looking for his parents in a supermarket aisle. Or maybe that’s just how Dany wanted to see him, to make him seem more normal, less frightening.

“I hear you killed your father,” Dany said.

The words sounded less severe coming out of his mouth than they did rolling around in his head. Claude pushed both his hands into his pants pockets and looked off into the distance toward the banana groves.

“Can I sit?” he asked, turning his face back toward the mausoleum platform, where Dany was sitting.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Dany said. “It’s not my business.”

“Yes, I killed my old man,” Claude said in the same abrupt tone that he used for everything else. “Everyone here knows that by now. I wish I could say it was an accident. I wish I could say he was a bastard who beat the crap out of me and forced me to defend myself. I wish I could tell you I hated him, never loved him, didn’t give a fuck about him at all. I was fourteen and strung out on shit. He came into my room and took the shit. It wasn’t just my shit. It was shit I was hustling for someone else. I was really fucked up and wanted the shit back. I had a gun I was using to protect myself out on the street. I threatened him with it. He wouldn’t give my shit back, so I shot him.”

There was even less sorrow in Claude’s voice than Dany had expected. Perhaps Claude too had never learned how to grieve or help others grieve. Maybe the death of a parent early in life, either by one’s own hand or by others, eliminated that instinct in a person.

“I’m sorry,” Dany said, feeling that someone should also think of a better word for their particular type of sorrow.

“Sorry?” Claude wiped a shadow of a tear from his face with a quick swipe of the back of his hand. “I’m the luckiest fucker alive. I’ve done something really bad that makes me want to live my life like a fucking angel now. If I hadn’t been a minor, I’d have been locked up for the rest of my life. They might have even given me the chair. And if the prisons in Port had had more room, or if the police down there were worth a damn, I’d be in a small cell with a thousand people right now, not sitting here talking to you.”

Claude threw his hands up in the air and, raising his voice, as if to call out to the stars slowly evaporating from the sky, shouted, “Even with everything I’ve done, with everything that’s happened to me, I’m the luckiest fucker on this goddamned planet. Someone somewhere must be looking out for my ass.”

It would be an hour or so now before Dany’s aunt’s burial at dawn. The moon was already fading, slipping away, on its way to someplace else. The only thing Dany could think to do for his aunt now was to keep Claude speaking, which wouldn’t be so hard, since Claude was already one of them, a member of their tribe. Claude was a palannit, a night talker, one of those who spoke their nightmares out loud to themselves. Except Claude was even luckier than he realized, for he was able to speak his nightmares to himself as well as to others, in the nighttime as well as in the hours past dawn, when the moon had completely vanished from the sky.