Everything Inside

by Edwidge Danticat

  “I’m digging Illuminations,” she’d said.

  “I’m a Baudelaire man myself,” he said. Then they’d both looked over at me twirling the salad spinner, and before I could feel too excluded, they’d changed the subject to something like which dressing would be best.

  “Take care of yourself, Lucy,” Dr. Asher said as he walked out of our room with some of Neah’s things in the duffel bag.

  “I will,” I said.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” he added.

  * * *

  —

  That same night, I was nearly asleep when I heard the door crack open. I sat up on my bed, alarmed that it might be someone breaking in. It was Neah. She was standing in the doorway with a halo of light from the hallway encircling her. She was still in the same clothes she’d been wearing that morning.

  She closed the door, and as she walked toward her bed in the dark, I heard her pulling a bag behind her. She turned on her desk lamp, and I blinked, forcing my eyes to adjust to its glare.

  I said, “Né.”

  She said, “Hey.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m staying,” she said, not exactly sounding thrilled about it.

  She walked over to her dresser and picked up her shower caddy, then pulled a towel and one of those wide white T-shirts she slept in from the top drawer of her dresser.

  “You changed your mind?” I asked.

  “I did,” she said.

  I wondered if it was me or her father who’d convinced her to come back.

  “Josette wouldn’t let me stay unless I finished the semester,” she said.

  Her father had probably talked to Josette.

  “I’m still going to volunteer there,” she said, before walking out of the room.

  She was in the shower for what seemed like a longer time than usual. I listened for signs of her in the hall and followed the thump of footsteps walking to and from the rooms to the showers and kitchen area until she returned. She was wearing the oversize T-shirt when she came back. Without saying anything, she put the shower caddy, her clothes, and her towel on top of her dresser. She then turned off her desk light and slipped into bed.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I said, hoping she would not fall asleep too quickly.

  “I’m too easily swayed by stories,” she said, her voice already fading into the dark.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. This sounded like something her father might have told her to convince her to come back to school.

  “I am too easily swayed by every story I hear, or see, or witness, especially the tragic ones,” she said. “I think this is going to be the story of my life. I’m going to be the girl who is too easily swayed by other people’s stories.”

  “I think you’re going to be the girl who helps other people,” I said. “A Mother Teresa type.”

  “I hear she slept on rags on the floor of some Ritz-Carlton sometimes,” she said.

  “And then she went out and tried to save the world,” I said.

  “And what kind of girl are you?” she asked.

  I didn’t have to think too much about this. I already knew. I am the girl—the woman—who is always going to be looking for stability, a safe harbor. I am never going to forget that I can easily lose everything I have, including my life, in one instant. But this is not what I told her. I told her that I was going to be the kind of friend she could always count on, the kind of friend who might even go on a Leve trip with her.

  She said nothing, and I realized that she had fallen asleep. I heard the hum of the light snoring that signaled her deepest sleep. Though it had sometimes annoyed me, I was happy to hear it again.

  When the snore was at its peak and I knew it would take a freight train to wake her, I turned on my desk lamp and walked over to her side of the room. She was lying on her back, which is probably what led to her snoring in the first place. Her shirt was so large and so loose that it was easy to lower the neckline without touching her skin.

  I moved the fabric down toward her small breasts, and there it was, on her breastbone, two quarter-sized hot-air balloons without the baskets, one balloon indigo blue, and the other bloodred, two versions of the colors of the Haitian flag. Underneath the balloons, where the baskets would have been, and written in cursive, in red ink, were the words JE EST UN AUTRE. This is what she’d been writing her paper on before leaving for Haiti. Rimbaud’s “I is another.”

  Because my parents were working a new harvest route in Mississippi and would not have much time off for Thanksgiving while Neah was in Haiti, I stayed on campus, ate a Thanksgiving meal with the foreign students in the dining hall, and read about Tainos for my first-year seminar class.

  The Tainos believed themselves to have originally been cave people who would turn into stone when touched by sunlight. They knew the risk when they stepped into the light, but they did it anyway in order to create a new world, a world that continues to exist, because we are still here. I thought that the next time we were chatting while half-asleep, I might tell Neah that story. In the meantime, while she was still asleep, I lowered my right wrist to the crevice between her breasts and let it rest there for a moment. And briefly, very briefly, my pain and hers embraced.

  Sunrise, Sunset

  1

  It comes on again on her grandson’s christening day. A lost moment, a blank spot, one that Carole does not know how to measure. She is there one second, then she is not. She knows exactly where she is, then she does not. Her older church friends tell similar stories about their surgeries, how they count backward from ten with an oxygen mask over their faces, then wake up before reaching one, only to find that hours, and sometimes even days, have gone by. She feels as though she were experiencing the same thing.

  Her son-in-law, James, a dreadlocked high-school math teacher, is holding her grandson, Jude, who has inherited her daughter’s globe-shaped head, penny-colored skin, and long fingers, which he wraps around Carole’s chin whenever she holds him. Jude is a lively giggler. His whole body shakes when he laughs. Carole often stares at him for hours, hoping that his chubby face will bring back memories of her own children at that age, memories that are quickly slipping away.

  Her daughter, Jeanne, is still about sixty pounds overweight on Jude’s christening day, seven months after his birth. Jeanne is so miserable about this—and who knows what else—that she spends most days in her bedroom, hiding. Since her daughter is stuck in a state of mental fragility, Carole welcomes the opportunity to join Jude’s other grandmother, Grace, in watching their grandson as often as she’s asked. Carole likes to entertain Jude with whatever children’s songs and peekaboo games she can still remember, including one she calls Solèy Leve, Solèy Kouche—Sunrise, Sunset—which she used to play with her children. She drapes a black sheet over her grandson’s playpen and pronounces it sunset, then takes the sheet off and calls it sunrise. Her grandson does not seem to mind when she gets confused and reverses the order. He doesn’t know the difference anyway.

  Sometimes Carole forgets who Grace is and mistakes her for the nanny. She does, however, remember that Grace disapproved of her son’s marrying Jeanne, whom she believed was beneath him. That censure now seems justified by Jeanne’s failures as a mother.

  Jeanne, Carole thinks, has never known real tragedy. Growing up in a country ruled by a merciless dictator, Carole watched her neighbors being dragged out of their houses by the dictator’s denim-uniformed henchmen. One of her aunts was beaten almost to death for throwing herself in front of her husband as he was being arrested. Carole’s father left the country for Cuba when she was twelve and never returned. Her mother’s only means of survival was cleaning the houses of people who were barely able to pay her.

  Carole’s best friend lived next door, in another tin-roofed room, rented separately from the same landlord. During the night, wh
ile her mother slept, Carole often heard her friend being screamed at by her own mother, who seemed to hate her for being alive. Carole tried so hard to protect her US-born children from these stories that they are now incapable of overcoming any kind of sadness. Not so much her son, Paul, who is a minister, but Jeanne, whom she named after her childhood friend. Her daughter’s psyche is so feeble that anything can rattle her. Doesn’t she realize that the life she is living is an accident of fortune? Doesn’t she know that she is an exception in this world, where it is normal to be unhappy, to be hungry, to work nonstop and earn next to nothing, and to suffer the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes?

  The morning of her grandson’s christening, Carole is wearing a long-sleeved white lace dress that she can’t recall putting on. She has combed her hair back in a tight bun that now hurts a little. Earlier in the week, she watched from the terrace of her daughter’s third-floor apartment as Jeanne dipped her feet in the condo’s kidney-shaped communal pool. She’d walked out onto the terrace to look at the water, the unusual cobalt-blue color it becomes in late afternoon and the slow ripple of its surface, even when untouched by a breeze or bodies.

  “I won’t christen him!” Jeanne was shouting on the phone. “That’s her thing, not ours.”

  “We’re up soon,” James says, snapping Carole out of her reverie. He is using the tone of voice with which he speaks to Jude. It’s clear that this is not the first time he’s told her this. Her daughter is looking neither at her nor at the congregation full of Carole’s friends. She’s not even looking at Jude, who has been dressed, most likely by James, in a plain white romper. Jeanne stares at the floor as others take turns holding Jude and keeping him quiet in the church: first Grace, then Carole’s husband, Victor; then James’s younger sister, Zoe, who is the godmother; then James’s best friend, Marcos, the godfather.

  Carole keeps reminding herself that her daughter is still young. Only thirty-two. Jeanne was once a satisfied young woman, a guidance counselor at the school where James teaches. (When James and Jeanne first started dating, their friends called them J.J.; then Jude was born, and the three of them became Triple J.)

  “She used to like children, right?” Carole sometimes asks Victor. “Before she had her son?”

  When Jude’s name is called from the pulpit by his uncle Paul, James motions for them to approach the altar. Paul, dressed in a long white ministerial robe, steps down from the pulpit and, while Jude is still in his father’s arms, traces a cross on his forehead with scented oil. The oil bothers Jude’s eyes, and he wails. Undeterred, Paul takes Jude and begins praying so loudly that he shocks Jude into silence. After the prayer, he hands Jude back to his mother. Jeanne kisses her son’s oil-soaked forehead, and her eyes balloon with tears.

  Carole knows that her daughter is not enjoying any of this, but Carole has found comfort in such rituals, and she believes that her grandson will not be protected against the world’s evils—including his mother’s lack of interest in him—until this one is performed.

  Later, at the post-christening lunch at her daughter’s apartment, Carole spots James and Jeanne walking out of their bedroom. Jude is in Jeanne’s arms. They have changed the boy out of his plain romper into an even-plainer sleeveless onesie. Jeanne stops in the doorway and raises a bib over Jude’s face and murmurs, “Sunset.” Then she lowers the bib and squeals, “Sunrise!”

  Watching her daughter play this game with the baby, Carole feels as though she herself were going through the motions, raising and lowering the bib. Not at this very moment but at some point in the hazy past. It’s as if Jeanne has become Carole, and James has become her once-dapper and lanky husband, Victor, who now walks with a cane that he is always tapping against the ground.

  All is not lost, Carole thinks. Her daughter has learned a few things from her, after all. Then it returns again, that all-too-familiar sensation of herself waning. What if she never recognizes anyone again? What if she forgets her husband? What if she stops remembering what it’s like to love him, a feeling that has changed so much over the years, in ways that her daughter’s love for her own husband seems also to be changing, even though James, like Victor, is patient. She’s never seen him shout at or scold Jeanne. He doesn’t even tell her to get out of bed or pay more attention to their child. He tells Carole and his own mother that Jeanne just needs time. But how long will this kind of tolerance last? How long can anyone bear to live with someone whose mind wanders off to a place where their love no longer exists?

  Carole’s husband is the only one who knows how far along she is. He is constantly subjected to her sudden mood changes, her bursts of anger followed by total stillness. He has tried for years to help her hide her symptoms, or lessen them with puzzles and other educational games, with coconut oil and omega-3 supplements, which she takes with special juices and teas. He is always turning off appliances, finding keys she’s stored in unusual places like the oven or the freezer. He helps her finish sentences, nudges her to let her know if she has repeated something a few times. But one day he will grow tired of this and put her in a home, where strangers will have to take care of her.

  When Jude was born, Victor bought her a doll so that she could practice taking care of their grandson. It’s a brown boy doll with a round face and tight peppercorn curls, like Jude’s. When she puts the doll in the bath, its hair clings to its scalp, just like Jude’s. Bathing the doll, then dressing it before bed, makes her feel calm, helps her sleep more soundly. But this, like her illness, is still a secret between her husband and her, a secret that they may not be able to keep much longer.

  2

  How do you become a good mother? Jeanne wants to ask someone, anyone. She wishes she’d been brave enough to ask her mother before her dementia, or whatever it is that she is suffering from, set in. Her mother refuses to have tests done and get a definitive diagnosis, and her father is fine with that.

  “You don’t poke around for something you don’t want to find,” he’s told Jeanne a few times.

  Her father offers the first toast at the christening lunch. “To Jude, who brought us together today,” he says in Creole, then in English.

  James hands Jeanne a Champagne glass, which she has trouble balancing while holding their son. Her mother puts her own glass down and reaches over and takes Jude from Jeanne’s arms.

  “I’ll toast with him,” Carole says, and Jeanne fears her mother may actually believe that Jude’s body is a Champagne glass. She is afraid these days to let her mother hold her son, to leave them alone together, but since she and James are close by and Jude isn’t fussing or fidgeting, she does not protest.

  After the toast, James asks if he can get Jeanne and her mother a plate of food. Carole nods, then quickly changes her mind. “Maybe later,” she says. Jude is looking up at her now, his baby eyes fixed on her wrinkled and weary-looking face.

  Carole isn’t eating much these days. Jeanne, on the other hand, feels as though a deep and sour hole were burrowing through her body, an abyss that is always demanding to be filled. James doesn’t insist on anything, including that she get out of bed when she’s spent several days and nights just lying there. It’s not his style. Throughout their courtship and marriage, he’s never pressured her to do anything. Everything is always presented to her as a suggestion or a recommendation. It’s as if he were constantly practicing being patient for the rowdy kids he teaches at school. Even there, he never loses his temper. Her mother, on the other hand, has been lashing out lately, though afterward she seems unable to remember doing it. She has always been a quiet woman. She is certainly kinder than James’s mother, who wouldn’t have given Jeanne or Carole the time of day if it weren’t for James.

  Jeanne often wonders if her mother was happier in Haiti. She doubts it. Jeanne has no right to be sad, her mother has often told her. Only Carole has the right to be sad, because she has seen and heard te
rrible things. Jeanne’s father’s approach to life is different. He is more interested than anybody Jeanne knows in the pleasure of joy, or the joy of pleasure, however you want to put it. It’s as if he had sworn to enjoy every second of his life—to wear the best clothes he can afford, to eat the best food, to go to dances where his favorite Haitian bands are playing.

  Victor drove a city bus for most of Jeanne’s childhood, then when he got older he switched to driving a taxicab. Between fares, he sat in the parking lot at Miami International Airport, discussing Haitian politics with his cabdriver friends. Perhaps her mother wouldn’t be losing her mind if she’d worked outside their home. Church committees and family were her life’s work, a luxury they’d been able to afford because Victor worked double shifts and took extra weekend jobs. Carole could have worked, if she’d wanted to, as a lunch lady in a school cafeteria or as an elder companion or a nanny, like many of her church friends.

  Jeanne never wanted to be a housewife like her mother, but here she is now, stuck at home with her son. She doesn’t leave the house much anymore, except for her son’s doctor’s appointments. Most of the time, she’s afraid to leave her bed, afraid even to hold her son, for fear that she might drop him or hug him too tightly and smother him. Then the fatigue sets in, an exhaustion so forceful it doesn’t even allow her to sleep. Motherhood is a kind of foggy bubble she can’t step out of long enough to wrap her arms around her child. Oddly enough, he’s an easy child. He’s been sleeping through the night since the day they brought him home. He naps regularly. He isn’t colicky or difficult. He is just there.

  James decides to offer a toast of his own. He taps his Champagne glass with a spoon to catch everyone’s attention.

  “I want to make a toast to my wife, not only for being a phenomenal wife and mother but for bravely bringing Jude into our lives,” he says.