Krik? Krak!

by Edwidge Danticat

  "Believe me, Mrs. Azile, I will deliver your first grand-child," Mrs. Ruiz told her as she was leaving.

  "I am sorry about your son," I said to Mrs. Ruiz.

  "Now why would you want to bring up a thing like that?" Mrs. Ruiz asked.

  "Carmen, next time you come I will give you some of my bone soup," Ma said as Mrs. Ruiz left.

  Ma gave me a harsh look as though I had stepped out of line in offering my belated condolences to Mrs. Ruiz.

  "There are things that don't always need to be said," Ma told me.

  Caroline packed her gifts before going to bed that night. The boxes were nearly full now.

  We heard a knock on the door of our room as we changed for bed. It was Ma in her nightgown holding a gift-wrapped package in her hand. She glanced at Caroline's boxes in the corner, quickly handing Caro-line the present.

  "It is very sweet of you to get me something," Caro-line said, kissing Ma on the cheek to say thank you.

  "It's very nothing," Ma said, "very nothing at all."

  Ma turned her face away as Caroline lifted the present out of the box. It was a black and gold silk teddy with a plunging neckline.

  'At the store," Ma said, "I told them your age and how you would be having this type of a shower. A girl there said that this would make a good gift for such things. I hope it will be of use."

  "I like it very much," Caroline said, replacing it in the box.

  After Caroline went to bed, I went to Ma's room for one of our chats. I slipped under the covers next to her, the way Caroline and I had come to her and Papa when our dreams had frightened us.

  "That was nice, the teddy you got for Caroline," I said. "But it doesn't seem much like your taste."

  "I can't live in this country twenty-five years and not have some of it rub off on me," she said. "When will I have to buy you one of those dishonorable things?"

  "When you find me a man."

  "They can't be that hard to find," she said. "Look, your sister found one, and some people might think it would be harder for her. He is a retard, but that's okay."

  "He's not a retard, Ma. She found a man with a good heart."

  "Maybe."

  "You like him, Ma. I know deep inside you do."

  'After Caroline was born, your father and me, we were so afraid of this."

  "Of what?"

  "Of what is happening."

  "And what is that?"

  "Maybe she jumps at it because she thinks he is being noble. Maybe she thinks he is doing her a favor. Maybe she thinks he is the only man who will ever come along to marry her."

  "Maybe he loves her," I said.

  "Love cannot make horses fly," she said. "Caroline should not marry a man if that man wants to be noble by marrying Caroline."

  "We don't know that, Ma."

  "The heart is like a stone," she said. "We never know what it is in the middle.

  "Only some hearts are like that," I said.

  "That is where we make mistakes," she said. 'All hearts are stone until we melt, and then they turn back to stone again."

  "Did you feel that way when Papa married that woman?" I asked.

  "My heart has a store of painful marks," she said, "and that is one of them."

  Ma got up from the bed and walked over to the closet with all her suitcases. She pulled out an old brown leather bag filled with tiny holes where the closet mice had nibbled at it over the years.

  She laid the bag on her bed, taking out many of the items that she had first put in it years ago when she left Haiti to come to the United States to be reunited with my father.

  She had cassettes and letters written by my father, his words crunched between the lines of aging sheets of ruled loose-leaf paper. In the letters he wrote from America to her while she was still in Haiti, he never talked to her about love. He asked about practical things; he asked about me and told her how much money he was sending her and how much was designated for what.

  My mother also had the letters that she wrote back to him, telling him how much she loved him and how she hoped that they would be together soon.

  That night Ma and I sat in her room with all those things around us. Things that we could neither throw away nor keep in plain sight.

  Caroline seemed distant the night before her wedding. Ma made her a stew with spinach, yams, potatoes, and dumplings. Ma did not eat any of the stew, concentrating instead on a green salad, fishing beneath the lettuce leaves as though there was gold hidden on the plate.

  After dinner, we sat around the kitchen radio listening to a music program on the Brooklyn Haitian station.

  Ma's lips were moving almost unconsciously as she mouthed the words to an old sorrowful bolero. Ma was putting the final touches on her own gown for the wedding.

  "Did you check your dress?" she asked Caroline.

  "I know it fits," Caroline said.

  "When was the last time you tried it on?"

  "Yesterday."

  'And you didn't let us see it on you? I could make some adjustments."

  "It fits, Ma. Believe me."

  "Go and put it on now," Ma said.

  "Maybe later."

  "Later will be tomorrow," Ma said.

  "I will try it on for you before I go to sleep," Caroline promised.

  Ma gave Caroline some ginger tea, adding two large spoonfuls of brown sugar to the cup.

  "You can learn a few things from the sugarcane," Ma said to Caroline. "Remember that in your marriage."

  "I didn't think I would ever fall in love with anybody, much less have them marry me," Caroline said, her fingernails tickling the back of Ma's neck.

  "Tell me, how do these outside-of-church weddings work?" Ma asked.

  "Ma, I told you my reasons for getting married this way," Caroline said. "Eric and I don't want to spend all the money we have on one silly night that everybody else will enjoy except us. We would rather do it this way. We have all our papers ready. Eric has a friend who is a judge. He will perform the ceremony for us in his office."

  "So much like America," Ma said, shaking her head. "Everything mechanical. When you were young, every time someone asked you what you wanted to do when you were all grown up, you said you wanted to marry Pélé. What's happened to that dream?"

  "Pélé who?" Caroline grimaced.

  "On the eve of your wedding day, you denounce him, but you wanted to marry him, the Brazilian soccer player, you always said when you were young that you wanted to marry him."

  I was the one who wanted to marry Pélé. When I was a little girl, my entire notion of love was to marry the soccer star. I would confess it to Papa every time we watched a game together on television.

  In our living room, the music was dying down as the radio station announced two A.M. Ma kept her head down as she added a few last stitches to her dress for the wedding.

  "When you are pregnant," Ma said to Caroline, "give your body whatever it wants. You don't want your child to have port-wine marks from your cravings."

  Caroline went to our room and came back wearing her wedding dress and a false arm.

  Ma's eyes wandered between the bare knees poking beneath the dress and the device attached to Caroline's forearm.

  "I went out today and got myself a wedding present," Caroline said. It was a robotic arm with two shoulder straps that controlled the motion of the plastic fingers.

  "Lately, I've been having this shooting pain in my stub and it feels like my arm is hurting," Caroline said.

  "It does not look very real," Ma said.

  "That's not the point, Ma!" Caroline snapped.

  "I don't understand," Ma said.

  "I often feel a shooting pain at the end of my left arm, always as though it was cut from me yesterday. The doc-tor said I have phantom pain."

  "What? The pain of ghosts?"

  "Phantom limb pain," Caroline explained, "a kind of pain that people feel after they've had their arms or legs amputated. The doctor thought this would make it go away."

&n
bsp; "But your arm was never cut from you," Ma said. "Did you tell him that it was God who made you this way?"

  "With all the pressure lately, with the wedding, he says that it's only natural that I should feel amputated."

  "In that case, we all have phantom pain," Ma said.

  When she woke up on her wedding day, Caroline looked drowsy and frazzled, as if she had aged several years since the last time we saw her. She said nothing to us in the kitchen as she swallowed two aspirins with a gulp of water.

  "Do you want me to make you some soup?" Ma asked.

  Caroline said nothing, letting her body drift down into Ma's arms as though she were an invalid. I helped her into a chair at the kitchen table. Ma went into the hall closet and pulled out some old leaves that she had been saving. She stuffed the leaves into a pot of water until the water overflowed.

  Caroline was sitting so still that Ma raised her index finger under her nose to make sure she was breathing.

  "What do you feel?" Ma asked.

  "I am tired," Caroline said. "I want to sleep. Can I go back to bed?"

  "The bed won't be yours for much longer," Ma said. 'As soon as you leave, we will take out your bed. From this day on, you will be sleeping with your husband, away from here."

  "What's the matter?" I asked Caroline.

  "I don't know," she said. "I just woke up feeling like I don't want to get married. All this pain, all this pain in my arm makes it seem so impossible somehow."

  "You're just nervous," I said.

  "Don't worry," Ma said. "I was the same on the morning of my wedding. I fell into a stupor, frightened of all the possibilities. We will give you a bath and then you lay down for a bit and you will rise as promised and get married."

  The house smelled like a forest as the leaves boiled on the stove. Ma filled the bathtub with water and then dumped the boiled leaves inside.

  We undressed Caroline and guided her to the tub, helping her raise her legs to get in.

  "Just sink your whole body," Ma said, when Caroline was in the tub.

  Caroline pushed her head against the side of the tub and lay there as her legs paddled playfully towards the water's surface.

  Ma's eyes were fierce with purpose as she tried to stir Caroline out of her stupor.

  'At last a sign," she joked. "She is my daughter after all. This is just the way I was on the day of my wedding."

  Caroline groaned as Ma ran the leaves over her skin.

  "Woman is angel," Ma said to Caroline. "You must confess, this is like pleasure."

  Caroline sank deeper into the tub as she listened to Ma's voice.

  "Some angels climb to heaven backwards," Caroline said. "I want to stay with us, Ma."

  "You take your vows in sickness and in health," Ma said. "You decide to try sickness first? That is not very smart."

  "You said this happened to you too, Ma?" Caroline asked.

  "It did," Ma said. "My limbs all went dead on my wedding day. I vomited all over my wedding dress on the way to the church."

  "I am glad I bought a cheap dress then," Caroline said, laughing. "How did you stop vomiting?"

  "My honeymoon."

  "You weren't afraid of that?"

  "Heavens no," Ma said, scrubbing Caroline's back with a handful of leaves. "For that I couldn't wait."

  Caroline leaned back in the water and closed her eyes.

  "I am eager to be a guest in your house," Ma said to Caroline.

  "I will cook all your favorite things," Caroline said.

  "As long as your husband is not the cook, I will eat okay."

  "Do you think I'll make a good wife, Ma?"

  "Even though you are an island girl with one kind of season in your blood, you will make a wife for all sea-sons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter."

  Caroline got up from the tub and walked alone to Ma's bedroom.

  The phone rang and Ma picked it up. It was Eric.

  "I don't understand it, honey," Caroline said, already sounding more lucid. "I just felt really blah! I know. I know, but for now, Ma's taking care of me."

  Ma made her hair into tiny braids, and over them she put on a wig with a shoulder-length bob. Ma and I checked ourselves in the mirror. She in her pink dress and me in my green suit, the two of us looking like a giant patchwork quilt.

  "How long do I have now?" Caroline asked.

  'An hour," I said.

  "Eric is meeting us there," Caroline said, "since it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."

  "If the groom is not supposed to see the bride, how do they get married?" Ma asked.

  "They're not supposed to see each other until the ceremony," Caroline said.

  Caroline dressed quickly. Her hair was slicked back in a small bun, and after much persuasion, Ma got her to wear a pair of white stockings to cover her jutting knees.

  The robotic arm was not as noticeable as the first time we had seen it. She had bought a pair of long white gloves to wear over the plastic arm and her other arm. Ma put some blush on the apple of Caroline's cheeks and then applied some rice powder to her face. Caroline sat stiffly on the edge of her bed as Ma glued fake eye-lashes to her eyelids.

  I took advantage of our last few minutes together to snap some instant Polaroid memories. Caroline wrapped her arms tightly around Ma as they posed for the pictures.

  "Ma, you look so sweet," Caroline said.

  We took a cab to the courthouse. I made Ma and Caroline pose for more pictures on the steps. It was as though we were going to a graduation ceremony.

  The judge's secretary took us to a conference room while her boss finished an important telephone call. Eric was already there, waiting. As soon as we walked in, Eric rushed over to give Caroline a hug. He began stroking her mechanical arm as though it were a fascinating new toy.

  "Lovely," he said.

  "It's just for the day," Caroline said.

  "It suits you fine," he said.

  Caroline looked much better. The rouge and rice powder had given her face a silky brown-sugar finish.

  Ma sat stiffly in one of the cushioned chairs with her purse in her lap, her body closed in on itself like a cage.

  "Judge Perez will be right with you," the secretary said.

  Judge Perez bounced in cheerfully after her. He had a veil of thinning brown hair and a goatee framing his lips.

  "I'm sorry the bride and groom had to wait," he said giving Eric a hug. "I couldn't get off the phone."

  "Do you two know what you're getting into?" he said, playfully tapping Eric's arm.

  Eric gave a coy smile. He wanted to move on with the ceremony. Caroline's lips were trembling with a mixture of fear and bashfulness.

  "It's really a simple thing," Judge Perez said. "It's like a visit to get your vaccination. Believe me when I tell you it's very short and painless."

  He walked to a coat rack in the corner, took a black robe from it, and put it on.

  "Come forward, you two," he said, moving to the side of the room. "The others can stand anywhere you like."

  Ma and I crowded behind the two of them. Eric had no family here. They were either in another state or in the Bahamas.

  "No best man?" Ma whispered.

  "I'm not traditional," Eric said.

  "That wasn't meant to be heard," Ma said, almost as an apology.

  "It's all right," Eric said.

  "Dearly beloved," Judge Perez began. "We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony."

  Caroline's face, as I had known it, slowly began to fade, piece by piece, before my eyes. Another woman was setting in, a married woman, someone who was no longer my little sister.

  "I, Caroline Azile, take this man to be my lawful wedded husband."

  I couldn't help but feel as though she was divorcing us, trading in her old allegiances for a new one.

  It was over before we knew it. Eric grabbed Caroline and kissed her as soon as the judge said, "Her lips are yours."

  "Th
ey were mine before, too," Eric said, kissing Caroline another time.

  After the kiss, they stood there, wondering what to do next. Caroline looked down at her ringer, admiring her wedding band. Ma took a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to the judge. He moved her hand away, but she kept insisting. I reached over and took the money from Ma's hand.

  "I want to take the bride and groom out for a nice lunch," I said.

  "Our plane leaves for Nassau at five," Eric said.

  "We'd really like that, right, Ma?" I said. "Lunch with the bride and groom."

  Ma didn't move. She understood the extent to which we were unimportant now.

  "I feel much better," Caroline said.

  "Congratulations, Sister," I said. "We're going to take you out to eat."

  "I want to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to take some pictures," Caroline said.

  'All set," Eric said. "I have a photographer meeting us there."

  Ma said, "How come you never told me you were leaving tonight? How come you never tell me nothing."

  "You knew she wasn't going back to sleep at the house with us," I said to Ma.

  "I am not talking to you," Ma said, taking her anger out on me.

  "I am going to stop by the house to pick up my suit-case," Caroline said.

  We had lunch at Le Bistro, a Haitian Restaurant on Flat-bush Avenue. It was the middle of the afternoon, so we had the whole place to ourselves. Ma sat next to me, not saying a word. Caroline didn't eat very much either. She drank nothing but sugared water while keeping her eyes on Ma.

  "There's someone out there for everyone," Eric said, standing up with a champagne glass in the middle of the empty restaurant. "Even some destined bachelors get married. I am a very lucky person."

  Caroline clapped. Ma and I raised our glasses for his toast. He and Caroline laughed together with an ease that Ma and I couldn't feel.

  "Say something for your sister," Ma said in my ear.

  I stood up and held my glass in her direction.

  "A few years ago, our parents made this journey," I said. "This is a stop on the journey where my sister leaves us. We will miss her greatly, but she will never be gone from us."