placing my hand between Tante Denise’s pageboy wig and the metal table.
“Leave it to me, please, miss,” the young man said in a voice so deep it sounded like it was coming out of someone else’s mouth. Straightening the wig, which had been sliding off one side of Tante Denise’s head, he used a thin sponge to apply a thick layer of dark brown foundation to her face, then brushed two lines of rouge against her cheeks. As he traced some maroon coloring over her lips, she finally began to look like her old self. In death, she’d regained a hint of the elegance and glamour of her youth, before the diabetes, before the high blood pressure, before the strokes, the departures and unbearable losses, which, according to my uncle, had troubled her much more than her physical ailments.
Tante Denise’s funeral was a success. It was a hot afternoon, yet still the church was packed, filled beyond its capacity to comfortably seat around two hundred people. Because she was the pastor’s wife and had for many years, before she became ill, cooked the free meals for the school’s lunch program, many people came to pay their respects. Those who couldn’t fit inside the church, neighbors, former and current students at the school, lined up on both sides of Rue Tirremasse.
During the service, my uncle got up from his usual seat at the altar and stumbled to the pulpit’s microphone.
“She was my friend, my wife, the woman who stood by me both when I could speak and when I was silent,” he said.
I remembered how much he had wanted to speak at Granme Melina’s funeral. At least now he could, I thought. But he was unable to say more, and he walked back to his seat with his face in his hands.
After the service, the mourners packed into cars and buses and followed the hearse through the winding streets leading past the old cathedral, toward the cemetery. I was in the car immediately behind the hearse and watched as some people stopped and looked in, nodding and waving their condolences at my uncle and father, who were sitting up front with the driver. Nearing the giant wrought-iron gates of the cemetery, we got out of the cars and, as is the custom, lined up in several rows to walk the last mile to the gravesite.
I was walking next to my father and uncle when three shots rang out in quick succession. The mourners scattered in a nervous stampede, leaving us in the middle of the suddenly empty street. The flurry of people disappearing around street corners and down alleys seemed hazy and unclear. My heart was beating fast, a pool of sweat gathering on my face. Was this how Marie Micheline felt before she died?
My father’s fingernails were digging into my forearm.
“Edwidge!” he called out, alarmed.
“Papa,” I said, trying hard to focus on his worried face.
“You look like you’re about to faint,” he said.
My uncle had drifted away toward a group of church ushers who were trying to gather our mourners together again. The trouble was over, the ushers were calling out. The storm had passed. We could proceed.
Suddenly people began to emerge, from behind parked cars, store galleries, alleys, porches. Our procession was slowly moving again, where only my uncle, my father, the hearse and I had stood.
Later we’d learn that the gunshots had been the result of an attack on a cemetery guard by members of a neighborhood gang. The guard had fired three shots in the air to scare them off. But as we finally headed for the gravesite, I will never forget hearing Leone shout, “Denise, se mwen, sister, what is this, a twenty-one-gun salute? You’re not in the military, Denise. You’re not a policeman. Why is there shooting at your funeral?”
Brother, I Leave You with a Heavy Heart
In late August 2004, Uncle Joseph came to New York for a summer visit. At eighty-one years old, and without Tante Denise to keep him company, he wanted a respite from the increasing number of protests in Bel Air. Uncle Joseph’s trip also coincided with my father’s first hospitalization since his diagnosis.
I was nearing the end of my first trimester and though I had no morning sickness, I felt fatigued and on some hot Miami mornings found myself weeping uncontrollably when I woke up alone in bed after my husband had left for work. Suddenly being separated from others felt like a much more drastic form of isolation, a sentence of banishment for not being near my dying father. So when Bob called to tell me that Papa was in the hospital, I leaped out of bed and boarded the next plane to New York.
Karl picked me up. (And even that felt odd, for it was my father who always did the picking up from airports.) My mother and Uncle Joseph were in the backseat of Karl’s car. I could see that Uncle Joseph had lost a few pounds since Tante Denise’s funeral-mostly from eating less, he said, now that his wife was gone-yet he looked sporty and fit. Like my mother’s, his face also betrayed a hint of fear, which I immediately recognized: it was about my father.
“So how’s the patient?” I asked, trying to ease the obvious gravity of the moment.
“You’ll see for yourself,” Karl said, his face unreadable in profile. “We’re taking you to him now.”
Could it have happened so quickly? I wondered. Only a few weeks after my father’s diagnosis was I being ushered to his bedside to say good-bye?
“What does the doctor say?” I asked.
“Not much,” Karl answered. “He’s getting IVs. He’s also getting respiratory treatment, but they’re not going to keep him there long. The doctor’s already told us that.”
It astounded me how quickly it was possible to give up on someone as sick as my father. Before my father’s illness, I’d thought that the sicker a person was, the harder doctors would try to save him. Not so, it seemed.
When we got to the hospital, I watched my uncle sprint down the long corridor toward my father’s room. Although he had high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate, the only obvious signs of his being eighty-one were his bifocals and the way his body tilted slightly toward one side. He was wearing his usual dark suit and tie and carrying an oversized Bible that he kept tucked under his armpit.
Before we entered my father’s room, my mother, whose hands were burdened with a bag filled with food-packed Tupperware, waited for us to be all grouped together. Her eyes filling up with tears, she said, “If you look sad, you’ll make him sadder. So please, look hopeful.” And then just as though magic dust had been sprinkled into her weary and reddened eyes, her face brightened with a hopeful grin.
My father’s bed was next to the window, giving him a clear view of the parking lot below. But his eyes remained fixed on a television set bolted on the opposite wall.
He wasn’t expecting me. Lowering his oxygen mask, he wrapped both his arms around me when I leaned over to say hello.
His body was even smaller than the last time I’d seen him, yet his face looked round and full from the prednisone. He also appeared relaxed, calm, as though relishing the brief respite the hospital allowed him from having to cope with his illness on his own. There, at least, he could turn it over to the doctors and nurses to manage for a while.
“How’s Fedo?” he asked.
“Good,” I said.
“Married life?”
He slid his finger over my blouse, checking to see how much the baby had grown. I was still not showing. I simply looked like I had put on a few pounds.
Turning to my uncle, my father winked. I hadn’t had a chance to tell my uncle I was pregnant. His phone in Bel Air wasn’t working. I probably should have told him sooner, written him a
