Tante Atie tried to ignore the question.
'Was it a gift?' insisted Madame Augustin. 'It is not the child's birthday again, is it? She was just twelve, no less than two months ago.'
I wondered why Tante Atie had not showed me the big package. Usually, my mother would send us two cassettes with our regular money allowance. One cassette would be for me and Tante Atie, the other for my grandmother. Usually, Tante Atie and I would listen to our cassette together. Maybe she was saving it for later.
I tried to listen without looking directly at the women's faces. That would have been disrespectful, as bad as speaking without being spoken to.
'How is Martine doing over there?' asked Stephane, the albino's wife. She was a sequins piece worker, who made herself hats from leftover factory sequins. That night she was wearing a gold bonnet that make her look like a star had landed on her head.
'My sister is fine, thank you,' Tante Atie finally answered.
Madame Augustin took a sip of her tea and looked over at me. She gave me a reprimanding look that said: Why aren't you playing with the other children? I quickly lowered my eyes, pretending to be studying some random pebbles on the ground.
'I would wager that it is very nice over there in New York,' Madame Augustin said.
'I suppose it could be,' said Tante Atie.
'Why have you never gone?' asked Madame Augustin.
'Perhaps it is not yet the time,' said Tante Atie.
'Perhaps it is,' corrected Madame Augustin.
She leaned over Tante Atie's shoulder and whispered in a not so low voice, 'When are you going to tell us, Atie, when the car comes to take you to the airplane?'
'Is Martine sending for you?' asked the albino's wife.
Suddenly, all the women began to buzz with questions.
'When are you leaving?'
'Can it really be as sudden as that?'
'Will you marry there?'
'Will you remember us?'
'I am not going anywhere,' Tante Atie interrupted.
'I have it on good information that it was a plane ticket that you received the other day,' said Madame Augustin. 'If you are not going, then who was the plane ticket for?'
All their eyes fell on me at the same time.
'Is the mother sending for the child?' asked the albino's wife.
'I saw the delivery,' said Madame Augustin.
'Then she is sending for the child,' they concluded.
Suddenly a large hand was patting my shoulder.
'This is very good news,' said the accompanying voice. 'It is the best thing that is ever going to happen to you.'
I could not eat the bowl of food that Tante Atie laid in front of me. I only kept wishing that everyone would disappear so I could go back home.
The night very slowly slipped into the early hours of the – morning. Soon everyone began to drift towards their homes. On Saturdays there was the house to clean and water to fetch from long distances and the clothes to wash and iron for the Mother's Day Mass.
After everyone was gone, Monsieur Augustin walked Tante Atie and me home. When we got to our door he moved closer to Tante Atie as though he wanted to whisper something in her ear. She looked up at him and smiled, then quickly covered her lips with her fingers, as though she suddenly remembered her missing teeth and did not want him to see them.
He turned around to look across the street. His wife was carrying some of the pots back inside the house. He squeezed Tante Atie's hand and pressed his cheek against hers.
'It is good news, Atie,' he said. 'Neither you nor Sophie should be sad. A child belongs with her mother, and a mother with her child.'
His wife was now sitting on the steps in front of their bougainvillea, waiting for him.
'I did not think you would tell your wife before I had a chance to tell the child,' said Tante Atie to Monsieur Augustin.
'You must be brave,' he said. 'It is some very wonderful news for this child.'
The night had grown a bit cool, but we both stood and watched as Monsieur Augustin crossed the street, took the pails from his wife's hand and bent down to kiss her forehead. He put his arms around her and closed the front door behind them.
'When you tell someone something and you call it a secret, they should know not to tell others,' Tante Atie mumbled to herself.
She kept her eyes on the Augustin's house. The main light in their bedroom was lit. Their bodies were silhouetted on the ruffled curtains blowing in the night breeze. Monsieur Augustin sat in a rocking chair by the window. His wife sat on his lap as she unlaced her long braid of black hair. Monsieur Augustin brushed the hair draped like a silk blanket down Madame Augustin s back. When he was done, Monsieur Augustin got up to undress. Then slowly, Madame Augustin took off her day clothes and slipped into a long-sleeved night gown. Their laughter rose in the night as they began a tickling fight. The light flickered off and they tumbled into bed.
Tante Atie kept looking at the window even after all signs of the Augustins had faded into the night.
A tear rolled down her cheek as she unbolted the door to go inside. I immediately started walking towards our bedroom. She raced after me and tried to catch up. When she did, she pressed her hand down on my shoulder and tried to turn my body around, to face her.
'Do you know why I always wished I could read?'
Her teary eyes gazed directly into mine.
'I don't know why.' I tried to answer as politely as I could.
'It was always my dream to read,' she said, 'so I could read that old Bible under my pillow and find the answers to everything right there between those pages. What do you think that old Bible would have us do right now, about this moment?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'How can you not know?' she asked. 'You try to tell me there is all wisdom in reading but at a time like this you disappoint me.'
'You lied!' I shouted.
She grabbed both my ears and twisted them until they burned.
I stomped my feet and walked away. As I rushed to bed, I began to take off my clothes so quickly that I almost tore them off my body.
The smell of lemon perfume stung my nose as I pulled the sheet over my head.
'I did not lie,' she said, 'I kept a secret, which is different. I wanted to tell you. I needed time to reconcile myself, to accept it. It was very sudden, just a cassette from Martine saying, 'I want my daughter,' and then as fast as you can put two fingers together to snap, she sends me a plane ticket with a date on it. I am not even certain that she is doing this properly. All she tells me is that she arranged it with a woman who works on the airplane.'
'Was I ever going to know?' I asked.
'I was going to put you to sleep, put you in a suitcase, and send you to her. One day you would wake up there and you would feel like your whole life here with me was a dream.' She tried to force a laugh, but it didn't make it past her throat. 'I had this plan, you see. I thought it was a good plan. I was going to tell you this, that in one week you would be going to see your mother. As far as you would know, it would just be a visit. I felt it in my heart and took it on Monsieur Augustin's advice that, once you got there, you would love it so much that you would beg your mother to let you stay. You have heard with your own two ears what everyone has said. We have no right to be sad.'
I sunk deeper and deeper into the bed and lost my body in the darkness, in the folds of the sheets.
