"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"Why not?"

"It sounds-" I hesitated.

"s.e.xual?"

"Yes."

"Too s.e.xual to be linked with your mother? I think you have a Madonna image of your mother. Part of you feels that this child is a testimonial of her true s.e.xuality. It's a child she conceived willingly. Maybe even she is not able to face that."

"I just want her to be okay," I said.

"Does her lover know that she doesn't want the baby?"

"The way my mother acts, he probably think it's the best thing that's ever happened to her. I don't think she's ever really explained to him about how I was born."

"Do you think he would want her to have the baby?"

"Not if he knew what it was doing to her. I don't think so."

"And you think she's aborting right now?"

"Before I came here, I called her and she wasn't there. I called her at work and she wasn't there."

"So she's going to do this on her own. Without her lover."

"I think she'll lose her mind if she doesn't."

"I really think you should convince her to seek help."

"I can't convince her," I said. "She's always thought that she was crazy already, that she had just fooled everybody."

"It's very dangerous for her to go on like she is."

"I know."

I drove past Davina's house. She was at work, but I had my own key to our room. I went in and sat in the dark and drank some verbena tea by candlelight. The flame's shadows swayed across Erzulie's face in a way that made it seem as though she was crying.

On the way out, I saw Buki's balloon. It was in a tree, trapped between two high branches. It had deflated into a little ball the size of a green apple.

We thought it had floated into the clouds, even hoped that it had traveled to Africa, but there it was slowly dying in a tree right above my head.

Chapter 35.

Joseph was on the couch, rocking the baby, when I came home. She was sleeping in his arms, with her index and middle fingers in her mouth. Joseph took her to our room and put her down without saying a word. He came back and pulled me down on the sofa. He picked up the answering machine and played me a message from Marc.

"Sophie, je t'en prie, call me. It's about your mother."

Marc's voice was quivering, yet cold. It seemed as though he was purposely forcing himself to be casual.

I grabbed Joseph's collar, almost choking him.

"Let's not jump to any wild conclusions," he said.

"I am wondering why she is not calling me herself," I said.

"Maybe she's had a complication with the pregnancy."

"She was going to have an abortion today."

"Keep calm and dial."

The phone rang endlessly. Finally her answering machine picked up. "S'il vous plait, laissez-moi un message. Please leave me a message." Impeccable French and English, both painfully mastered, so that her voice would never betray the fact that she grew up without a father, that her mother was merely a peasant, that she was from the hills.

We sat by the phone all night, alternating between dialing and waiting.

Finally at six in the morning, Marc called.

His voice was laden with pain.

"Sophie. Je t'en prie. I am sorry."

He was sobbing.

'What is it?" I asked.

'Calme-toi. Listen to me."

'Listen to what?"

'I am sorry," he said.

'Put my mother on the phone. What did you do?"

'It's not me."

'Please, Marc. Put my mother on the phone. Where is she? Is she in the hospital?"

He was sobbing. Joseph pressed his face against mine. He was trying to listen.

"Is my mother in the hospital?"

"Non. She is rather in the morgue."

I admired the elegance in the way he said it. Now he would have to say it to my grandmother, who had lost her daughter, and to my Tante Atie, who had lost her only sister.

"Am I hearing you right?" I asked.

"She is gone."

Joseph pressed harder against me.

"What happened?" I was shouting at Marc.

"I woke up in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I wake up and she's not there, so I was not worried. Two hours pa.s.sed and I woke up again, I went to the bathroom and she was lying there."

"Lying there? Lying where? Talk faster, will you?"

"In blood. She was lying there in blood."

"Did she slip and fall?"

"It was very hard to see."

"What was very hard to see?"

"She had a mountain of sheets on the floor. She had prepared this."

"What?"

"She stabbed her stomach with an old rusty knife. I counted, and they counted again in the hospital. Seventeen times."

"Are you sure?"

"It was seventeen times."

"How could you sleep?" I shouted.

"She was still breathing when I found her," he said. "She even said something in the ambulance. She died there in the ambulance."

"What did she say in the ambulance?"

"Mwin pa kapab enk. She could not carry the baby. She said that to the ambulance people."

"How could you sleep?" I was screaming at him.

"I did the best I could," he said. "I tried to save her. Don't you know how I wanted this child?"

"Why did you give her a child? Didn't you know about the nightmares?" I asked.

"You knew better about the nightmares," he said, "but where were you?"

I crashed into Joseph's arms when I hung up the phone.

It was as if the world started whirling after that, as though I had no control over anything. Everything raced by like a speeding train and I, breathlessly, sprang after it, trying to keep up.

I grabbed my suitcase from the closet and threw a few things inside.

"I am going with you," Joseph said.

"What about Brigitte? Who will look after her? I can't take her into this."

"Let's sit down and think of some way."

I didn't have time to sit and think.

"You stay. I go. It's that simple."

He didn't insist anymore. He helped me pack my bag. We woke up the baby and he drove me to the bus station.

We held each other until the bus was about to pull out.

I gave Brigitte a kiss on the forehead.

"Mommy will bring you a treat from the market."

She began to cry as I boarded the bus. Joseph took her away quickly, not looking back.

Marc was waiting in the house in Brooklyn when I got there. Somehow I expected there to be detectives, and flashing cameras, but this was New York after all. People killed themselves every day. Besides, he was a lawyer. He knew people in power. He simply had to tell them that my mother was crazy.

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.