"While you wait for your people, would you like something to drink?" asked the driver.

"I could drink an ocean," I said.

"If Mademoiselle over there is selling an ocean, I will surely buy it for you."

The female street vendors called to one another as they came down the road. When one merchant dropped her heavy basket, another called out of concern, "Ou libere?" Are you free from your heavy load?

The woman with the load would answer yes, if she had unloaded her freight without hurting herself.

I sat in the shade of a crimson flamboyant tree, at the turn of the forked road. Brigitte quickly tightened her lips around the bottle of milk that I gave her. She sucked the warm liquid as though she hadn't been fed for days.

A few Tonton Macoutes climbed into the van and settled in the empty seats to eat their lunch. The steaming banana leaves and calabash bowls were in sharp contrast to their denim militia uniforms. They laughed loudly as they threw pieces of grilled meat and small biscuits at each other.

"I have a pig to sell you," whispered a voice behind me.

I was startled. My body plunged forward. I tightened my grip on Brigitte and nearly pushed the bottle down her throat. Brigitte began to cry, spitting the milk out of her mouth.

"Do you have all your senses?" I shouted at the woman.

Her face was hidden behind the flamboyant's drooping branches.

I raised Brigitte over my shoulder and tapped her back to burp her.

"Pardon. Pardon," Louise said, walking out from behind the tree. "I did not mean to scare you."

The driver was sitting at the stand, in her place, collecting coins and popping the caps off before handing foaming bottles to her customers.

I rocked Brigitte until she quieted down.

"I have a pig," Louise said, sitting on the rusty gra.s.s patch next to me.

The tree bark sc.r.a.ped my back as I tried to slide upright.

"Will you look at my pig?" she insisted. "I look at you, I see one who loves all G.o.d's creatures."

"I have no use for a pig," I said.

"It's a piyay, a steal, for five hundred gourdes."

"I don't need one." I said, shaking my head. "Please, have you seen my Tante Atie?"

"I know you. I do," she said.

"You know Atie too."

"For sure, I know Atie. We are like milk and coffee, lips and tongue. We are two fingers on the same hand. Two eyes on the same head."

"Do you know where she is? She was supposed to meet me here. I sent her a ca.s.sette from America."

"How is there?" Her eyes were glowing. "Is it like they say? Large? Grand? Are there really pennies on the streets and lots of maids' jobs? Mwin rele Louise."

"I know who you are."

"My mother was Man Grace."

"I know," I said.

"Gone, my mother is dead now," she said. "She is in Guinea ahead of me. Now I know you too. You are Sophie. Atie can never make herself stop talking about you. I am teaching Atie her letters now and all she can write in her book is your name."

"I hope she will recognize me when she sees me."

"Folks like Atie know their people the moment they lay eyes on them."

"I have changed a lot since the baby. I bet she has changed too."

"Atie? That old maid, change?"

"You are friends, you say?"

"We are both alone in the world, since my mother died."

"What could be keeping Tante Atie," I wondered out loud.

"The wind will bring her soon. It will. Can I ask you a question?"

"What is it?"

"What do you do in America, Sophie? What is your profession?"

"I am dactylo," I said.

"Ki sa?" sa?"

"A secretary." secretary."

"You make money?"

"I haven't worked since I had the baby."

"Had enough for this journey, non?"

"I didn't plan on this journey."

I laid Brigitte on my lap. Her cheeks swayed back and forth like flesh balloons.

"I want to go to America," Louise said. "I am taking a boat."

"It is very dangerous by boat."

"I have heard everything. It has been a long time since our people walked to Africa, they say. The sea, it has no doors. They say the sharks from here to there, they can eat only Haitian flesh. That is all they know how to eat."

"Why would you want to make the trip if you've heard all that?"

"Spilled water is better than a broken jar. All I need is five hundred gourdes."

"I know the other side. Thousands of people wash up on the sh.o.r.es. They put it on television, in newspapers."

"People here too. We pray for them and bury them. Stop. Let us stop talking, so sad. It is bad luck in front of a baby. How old is your baby?"

She reached over and tickled Brigitte's forehead.

"Twenty weeks."

"The birthing? What it feel like?"

"Like pa.s.sing watermelons."

"Wou." She cringed. "You look very meg, bony. Not like women here who eat to fill a hole after their babies come out. When you were pregnant, you didn't eat corn so the baby could be yellow?"

"I never thought of that."

"You should have eaten honey so her hair would be soft."

"I will remember that."

"The next time, maybe?"

"Maybe."

"Your daughter? What is her name?"

"Brigitte Ife Woods."

"Woods? It is not a Haitian name."

"No, non. Her father, he is American."

She called the boy with the kite over and squeezed a penny between his muddy fingers. With a few whispers in the child's ear, she sent him dashing down the road.

She rushed across to her stand and came back with a bottle of papaya cola.

My whole body felt cooler as the liquid slipped down my throat.

"I know you will pay me later," she said.

Tante Atie was standing at the crossroads, with a very wide grin on her pudgy face. She had not changed at all. She walked with her hands supporting her back, as if it hurt her. A panama hat tightly covered her head. On her shoulder was a palmetto sewing basket, flapping against her wide b.u.t.tocks.

"She must have been on the way," Louise said.

"Mim mwoin!" I shouted to Tante Atie. I'm over here!

Tante Atie raced towards us. She had to look at me closely to see the girl she had put on the plane. It seemed so very long ago. The years had changed me.

"You are already chewing off my niece's ear," she said, tapping Louise's behind. "Always trying to give away your soul."

Louise sprang back to her stand.

"I would throw myself around you," my aunt said. "I would, just like a blanket, but I don't want to flatten the baby."

I handed Brigitte to her, as I raised myself from the ground.

"Who would have imagined it?" she said. "The precious one has your manman's black face. She looks more like Martine's child than yours."

Chapter 14.

Leaves were still piling up on the creeks along the road.

A tall girl pa.s.sed us with a calabash balancing on her head.

I carried a small suitcase, mostly filled with Brigitte's things. Brigitte napped as Tante Atie carried her in her arms.

The women we met on the road called Tante Atie Madame, even though she had never married.

"I cannot see this child coming out of you," Tante Atie said, rocking Brigitte in her arms.

"Sometimes, I cannot see it myself."

"Makes me think back to when you were this small and I had you in my arms. Feels the same too. Like I am holding something very valuable. Do you sometimes think she is going to break in your hands?"

"She is a true Caco woman; she is very strong."

A woman was sitting by the road stringing factory sequins together, while her daughter braided her hair.

"Louise tells me you've learned your letters," I said to Tante Atie.

"She must think I want that shouted from the hills."

"I was very happy to hear it."

"I alway felt, I did, that I knew words in my head. I did not know them on paper. Now once every so often, I put some nice words down. Louise, she calls them poems."