Breath, Eyes, Memory

by

Edwidge Danticat

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Breath, Eyes, Memory: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
By morning, Tante Atie still hasn’t come home. Granmè Ifé is worried, and Sophie and Brigitte go outside with her to sit on the porch and wait for Tante Atie’s return. Eventually, Tante Atie and Louise come walking up the road. Louise goes into the yard, fetches the pig she gave as a gift, and walks away with it. Granmè Ifé explains that she told Tante Atie that if Louise did not come claim the pig, she’d kill it. Sophie offers to buy the pig, but Tante Atie warns her that any money Louise gets will bring her closer to taking a boat to Miami.
Tante Atie is clearly afraid that if Louise gets the money she needs, she will leave immediately. In expressing this vulnerability to Granmè Ifé, she’s unwittingly—and unknowingly—hastening Louise’s departure, since Granmè Ifé will likely go to drastic measures to separate Atie and Louise given her disapproval of their relationship.
Themes
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Tante Atie, whose calf has been bothering her, procures from her bag a jar of leeches. She applies them to her calf, and they suck the blood out of the lump on her leg. The outdated ritual makes Sophie dizzy and nauseous.
Sophie is disconnected from the old ways of her culture, and this instance serves as a reminder of how “American” she’s become. Although she once dreaded leaving Haiti and struggled to acclimate to living in New York, it’s clear that the U.S. is now her home.
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Sophie offers to make dinner that night, and Tante Atie tells Sophie she’ll take her to a smaller market where there’s less chance of violence. On the way, the women stop at a cemetery, where Tante Atie points out the graves of their ancestors. She explains that their family name, Caco, is taken from the name of a scarlet-colored bird whose feathers look like fire. At the market, Tante Atie’s inspiring story is contrasted by a dark one Sophie overhears about a woman who takes off her skin at night to fly away from home—but returns one night to find that her husband has peppered it so that she cannot put it back on. Eventually, the husband kills her.
Though Tante Atie tells one story which demonstrates the bravery, resilience, and fire of the Caco women, a competing story reminds Sophie of how women and girls are seen as things to be preyed upon in Haitian society more largely. Every story Sophie can remember is about some calamity or violence being inflicted upon or threatened against a young woman, making it clear that the oppression and trauma she and the women in her family have experienced is systemic to the culture.
Themes
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Sophie cooks a large dinner, surprised by how her instincts take over and allow her to make the dish from memory. Granmè Ifé and Tante Atie both compliment Sophie on the delicious meal. After dinner, Tante Atie goes off to her lesson with Louise, and Granmè Ifé says she can hear footsteps on the road. She says the footsteps belong to a young woman who has been out with her boyfriend—she is on her way home to be tested by her mother. The words chill Sophie to the bone.
Granmè Ifé talks casually about the ritual of virginity testing—but for Sophie, testing was (and is) the biggest trauma of her life, and any mention of it perturbs and destabilizes her.
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Sophie thinks about the “virginity cult” of Haitian mothers’ obsession with keeping their daughters pure. She remembers that her mother always listened to the sound of her urine hitting the toilet bowl—if it was too loud, it would mean Sophie had been “deflowered.” Sophie thinks of a story she once heard about a rich man who married a poor black girl, choosing her over prettier girls due to her virtue. He bought white sheets and a white nightgown for their wedding night so that he could display them the morning after—but during sex, the girl did not bleed. In order to maintain his pride, the man cut the girl between her legs—but the girl could not stop bleeding, and died. The man paraded her blood-soaked sheets during her funeral procession.
Again, Sophie recounts a violent, traumatic folktale about a woman’s virginity being leveraged against her. The fact that the girl in the story doesn’t bleed during sex hearkens back to Sophie’s own destruction of her “virginity” by mutilating her vagina with the pestle, highlighting that though virginity is in many ways a false concept used to control women, whole aspects of Sophie’s culture are constructed around its preservation.
Themes
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Sophie thinks back on her memories of being tested, and how she learned to “double” while her mother tested her—she fled her body, focusing on pleasant memories or dreams. Even after the testing ended, Sophie found herself continuing to double during sex with Joseph.
Sophie’s “doubling” is a defense mechanism that also recalls her mother’s speech about the Marasas. Doubling, or dissociating, is both a vain evil and a lifesaving mechanism for Sophie.
Themes
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On the porch, Sophie confronts Granmè Ifé about the process of testing, and her grandmother explains that a daughter’s purity is her mother’s responsibility—a daughter’s disgrace ruins the whole family. Sophie asks why Granmè Ifé tested her daughters even though they hated it, and she says it was her duty. Sophie tells her grandmother that the testing is “the most horrible thing that ever happened” to her. Her grandmother tells her to have “patience”—soon Sophie’s struggles with her husband will go away.
Even though Sophie is open with her grandmother about how being subjected to virginity testing has derailed her life, Granmè Ifé tries to maintain that it is not that big a deal, and that all women must learn to get used to it as a simple fact of life. Her blasé attitude toward testing highlights how traumatic acts of abuse can be perpetuated through an entire family line if each successive generation is willing to downplay their own mistreatment.
Themes
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Sophie brings Brigitte inside to put her to bed, and Granmè Ifé follows her. She tells Sophie that as a mother, she must understand that a mother does everything she does for a child’s own good, and must “liberate” herself from the pain her mother caused her. Moments later, though, Granmè Ifé confesses that her heart “weeps like a river” for the pain that generations of testing have caused Sophie.
In this passage, Granmè Ifé reverses the position she took just moments earlier and admits that she is aware of the pain that she, and all the women who came before her, have caused for the young women and daughters in their family. It’s clear, then, that her casual acceptance of testing is a coping mechanism she has learned to adopt over the years, likely to mask the trauma to which she herself was subjected.
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Quotes