The reading, it is only one thing.'
'I think it is very good that she has learned to read,' I said. 'It is her own freedom.'
'There is a story that is told all the time in the valley. An old woman has three children. One dies in her body when she is pregnant. One goes to a faraway land to make her fortune and never does that one get to come back alive. The last one, she stays in the valley and looks after her mother.'
Tante Atie was the last.
Chapter 18
Tante Atie was stretched out in an old rocker. Brigitte lay on her lap. My grandmother took her beans to the yard to pick out the pebbles. She fanned a small fire with her hat, washed the beans, then put them to boil in a pot.
Brigitte yawned in her sleep as I picked her up. Tante Atie got up, grabbed her notebook from the floor, and peered at the pages. She held the notebook so close to her face, I thought there was a mirror inside.
'I did not realize you would remember the words of my card this long,' I said.
'When you have something precious, you do not forget it.'
She pressed her notebook against her chest as she started for the road.
'Are you going to the mache?' my grandmother called out.
'You need something?' asked Tante Atie.
'The Macoutes were doing damage,' my grandmother said.
'Fighting?' asked Tante Atie.
'You just wait awhile,' said my grandmother. 'Don't go there now.'
'Fighting who?' Tante Atie looked worried.
'I did not ask,' said my grandmother.
'They hurt anybody?'
'The coal man, Dessalines.'
'Dessalines? Why?'
'When people hate you they beat your animals. I don't know'
'Old woman, I am going to get a remedy for a lump in my calf and it cannot wait.' Tante walked down the road, racing towards the marketplace.
'You have a lump on your calf?' asked my grandmother.
By then, Tante Atie was already gone.
My grandmother and I spent the day watching the beans boil. The kite boy wandered into the yard with a slingshot. He aimed his pebbles at a few small birds lodged in the tcha tcha tree. He had no successes, but kept trying, encouraged by an occasional cheer from my grandmother and me.
'Eliab, come get some water,' my grandmother called out.
Eliab crawled under the porch where my mother kept a clay jug full of water. He soaked his stomach as he raised the jug to his lips.
…
The beans were cooked as the sun set. My grandmother mixed them with some maize, which we ate with chunks of avocado.
Tante Atie did not come home for supper. My grandmother put some food aside for her and left the rest in the pot.
I bathed Brigitte in a large pan that my grandmother dug out from under her bed, then gave her some formula before sitting down for supper. I felt both fat and guilty after eating my supper.
Eliab and two other boys crawled under the porch for some tin plates and spooned out their portions of the meal. They sat in a circle and ate quietly, like a clan of midget chiefs.
Brigitte tried to bring her left foot to her mouth, in order to suck her toes.
'She's a quiet child,' my grandmother said.
'She's been like that since she was born.'
'Crabs don't make papayas. Your mother, she was a quiet child too.'
Brigitte reached over to grab my grandmother's nose.
'Your husband?' asked my grandmother, 'Why did you leave him so suddenly?'
'I did not leave him for good,' I said. 'This is just a short vacation.'
'Are you having trouble with any marital duties?'
'Yes,' I answered honestly.
'What is it?'
'They say it is most important to a man.'
'The night?'
'Oui.'
'You cannot perform?' she asked. 'You have trouble with the night? There must be some fulfillment. You have the child.'
'It is very painful for me,' I said.
She pulled her pouch from her pocket, pinched a few dabs of tobacco and stuffed them in her nostrils.
'Secrets remain secret only if we keep our silence,' she said. 'Your husband? Is he a good man?'
'He is a very good man, but I have no desire. I feel like it is an evil thing to do.'
'Your mother? Did she ever test you?'
'You can call it that.'
'That is what we have always called it.'
'I call it humiliation,' I said. 'I hate my body. I am ashamed to show it to anybody, including my husband. Sometimes I feel like I should be off somewhere by myself. That is why I am here.'
'Crick?' called my grandmother.
'Crack,' answered the boys.
Their voices rang like a chorus, aiding my grandmother's entry into her tale.
'Tim, tim,' she called.
'Bwa chech,' they answered. 'Tale master, tell us your tale.'
'The tale is not a tale unless I tell. Let the words bring wings to our feet.'
'How many do you bring us tonight?'
'Tonight, only one story.'
The night grew silent under her commanding tone. I lay on the bed with Brigitte, the open window allowing us a clear view of the sky. The stars fell as though the glue that held them together had come loose. They were not the stars you could wish upon. In Dame Marie, each time a star fell out of the sky, it meant that somebody would die.
'The story goes,' said my grandmother, 'that a lark saw a little girl, who he thought was the most beautiful little girl he had ever seen, from the top of his pomegranate tree.'
She clapped her hands to the rhythm of the words.
'Now the lark, he wanted more than anything to have the little girl. So one day she was on the road, going to school. The lark stopped her and said to her, How would you like a nice sweet pomegranate, you pretty little girl? When she looked up at the tree, the girl was charmed by the lark. So handsome it was, with its red and green wings and long purple tail. It was a sight. And the pomegranate, it was a beauty too. Big as your head, it was. The girl thought she could eat for weeks and not be done eating that pomegranate, so she told the bird, Yes, I would like to have that pomegranate. The bird, it said, I will give it to you for the honor of just looking at your face.
'Every day it went like this. The girl got a pomegranate and the bird, it looked at her face. One day, the bird, it said, I will give you two pomegranates if only you would kiss me. The girl thought of how sweet the pomegranates were and how everyone was nice to her at school for her sharing the fruit with them, so that one day she kissed the bird and from then on always got two pomegranates.
'This went on for a while until one day the bird, it said, Would you like to go to a faraway land with me? You are
