There was a trail of dried blood, down from the stairs to the living room and out to the street where they must have loaded her into the ambulance. The bathroom floor was spotless, however, except for the pile of bloody sheets stuffed in trash bags in the corner.
'Sophie, will you sit down?' Marc said, following me as I raced in and out of every room in the house. 'I need to tell you how things will proceed.'
I rushed into my mother's room. It was spotless and her bed was properly made. In her closet, everything was in some shade of red, her favorite color since she'd left Haiti.
'I was cleared beyond any doubt in your mother's accident. I have used what influence I have to make this very expeditious for all of us. I have contacted a funeral home. They will get her from the morgue and they will ship her to a funeral home in Dame Marie.'
If I died mute, I would never speak to him again. I would never open my mouth and address a word to him.
'We can see her in the funeral home,' he said. 'They will ship her tomorrow night. That's the earliest possible. They have a service. They notify the family. I have already had your family notified.'
How dare he? How could he? To send news that could kill my grandmother, by telegram.
'You can sleep at my house until the flight tomorrow night.'
I had no intention of going to his house. I was going to spend the night right there, in my mother's house.
He did not leave me. He stayed in the living room and ate Chinese food while I crouched in the fetal position in the large bed in my mother's room.
Joseph let me listen to Brigitte's giggles when I called home. I heard a voice say Mama, but I knew it was his. She was still saying Dada, even though I knew he had tried to coach her.
'One day we'll all take a trip together,' he said.
'This trip I must make alone.'
'We are waiting for you,' he said, 'we love you very much. Don't stay there too long.'
I lay in my mother's bed all night fighting evil thoughts: It is your fault that she killed herself in the first place. Your face took her back again. You should have stayed with her. If you were here, she would not have gotten pregnant.
When I woke up the next day, Marc was asleep on the sofa.
'Would you pick something for your mother to be buried in?' he asked.
He spoke to me the way older men addressed orphan children, with pity in his voice. If we had been in Haiti, he might have given me a penny to ease my pain.
I picked out the most crimson of all my mother's clothes, a bright red, two-piece suit that she was too afraid to wear to the Pentecostal services.
It was too loud a color for a burial. I knew it. She would look like a Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them. She was the only woman with that power. It was too bright a red for burial. If we had an open coffin at the funeral home, people would talk. It was too loud a color for burial, but I chose it. There would be no ostentation, no viewing, neither pomp nor circumstance. It would be simple like she had wanted, a simple prayer at the grave site and some words of remembrance.
'Saint Peter won't allow your mother into Heaven in that,' he said.
'She is going to Guinea,' I said, 'or she is going to be a star. She's going to be a butterfly or a lark in a tree. She's going to be free.'
He looked at me as though he thought me as insane as my mother.
At my mother's dressing, in the Nostrand Avenue funeral home, her face was a permanent blue. Her eyelids were stretched over her eyes as though they had been sewn shut.
I called Joseph one last time before we got on the plane. He put the baby on the phone to wish me Bon Voyage. This time she said Manman. When I said good-bye, she began to cry.
'She feels your absence,' Joseph said.
'Does she sleep?' I asked.
'Less now,' he said.
My mother was the heavy luggage that went under the plane. I did not sit next to Marc on the plane. There were enough seats so that I did not have to. There were not many people going to Haiti, only those who were in the same circumstances as we were, going to weddings or funerals.
At the airport in Port-au-Prince, he spun his head around to look at everything. It had been years since he had left. He was observing, watching for changes: In the way the customs people said Merci and au revoir when you bribed them not to search your bags. The way the beggars clanked the pennies in their tin cans. The way the van drivers nearly killed one another on the airport sidewalk to reach you. The way young girls dashed forward and offered their bodies.
He had been told by the funeral home that my mother's body would follow us to the Cathedral Chapel in Dame Marie. A funeral home driver would pick her up. As soon as she got there, we could claim her and bury her, that same day, if that's what we wanted. The chauffeur arrived promptly and gave us a ride, in the hearse, to Dame Marie.
I felt my body stiffen as we walked through the mache in Dame Marie. Marc had his eyes wide open, watching. He looked frightened of the Macoutes, one of whom was sitting in Louise's stand selling her last colas.
People greeted me with waves and smiles on the way to my grandmother's house. It was as though I had lived there all my life.
Marc was straining to take in the sights. We walked silently. Louise's shack looked hollow and empty when we went by. In the cane fields, the men were singing about a mermaid who married a fisherman and became human.
My grandmother was sitting on the porch with her eyes on the road. I wondered how long she had been sitting there. For hours, through the night, since she had heard? We ran to each other. I told her everything. What I knew from him, where I blamed myself, and where he had blamed me.
She knew, she said, she knew even before she was told. When you let your salt lay in the sun, you are always looking out for rain. She even knew that my mother was pregnant. Remember, all of us have the gift of the unseen. Tante Atie was sitting on the steps with a black scarf around her head. She was clinging to the porch rail, now with two souls to grieve for.
Marc introduced himself to my grandmother, reciting his whole name.
'Dreams move the wind,' said my grandmother. 'I knew, but she never spoke of you.'
We decided to have the funeral the next morning, just among ourselves. That night we made a large pot of tea, which we shared with only Eliab and the other wandering boys. We did not call it a wake, but we played cards and drank ginger tea, and strung my wedding ring along a thread while singing a festive wake song: Ring sways to Mother. Ring stays with Mother. Pass it. Pass it along. Pass me. Pass me along.
Listening to the song, I realized that it was neither my mother nor my Tante Atie who had given all the mother-and-daughter motifs to all the stories they told and all the songs they sang. It was something that was essentially Haitian. Somehow, early on, our song makers and tale weavers had decided that we were all daughters of this land.
Marc slept in Tante Atie's room while Tante Atie slept in my grandmother's bed with her. They allowed me the courtesy of having my mother's bed all to myself.
The next day, we went together to claim my mother's body. My grandmother was wearing a crisp new black dress. She would surely wear black to her grave now. Tante Atie was wearing a purple frock. I wore a plain white dress, with a purple ribbon for my daughter. We sat on the plush velvet in the funeral chapel, waiting for them to bring her out. Tante Atie was numb and silent. My grandmother was watching for the black priest, the one they call Lavalas, to come through the door. The priest was the last missing pebble in the stream. Then we could take my mother to the hills.
Marc got up and walked around, impatiently waiting for them to wheel out her coffin. The velvet curtains parted and a tall mulatto man theatrically pushed the coffin forward.
Marc raised the olive green steel lid and felt the gold satin lining. My mother was lying there with a very calm look on her face. I reached over to brush off some of the melting rouge, leaving just enough to accentuate her dress.
She didn't feel as cold as I expected. She looked as though she was dressed for a fancy affair and we were all
