Breath, Eyes, Memory

As she tested me, to distract me, she told me, “The Marasas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person, duplicated in two. […] What vail lovers they were, those Marasas. Admiring one another for being so much alike… When you love someone, you want him to be closer to you than your Marasa. Closer than your shadow. […] You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before. You and I we could be like Marasas. You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand? There are secrets you cannot keep.”

The story goes that there was once a woman who walked around with blood constantly spurting out of her unbroken skin. This went on for twelve long years. […] Finally, the woman got tired and said she was going to see Erzulie. […] After her consultation, it became apparent to the woman what she would have to do. If she wanted to stop bleeding, she would have to give up her right to be a human being. She could choose what to be, a plant or an animal, but she could no longer be a woman. […]

“Make me a butterfly,” she told Erzulie.

“Your husband? Is he a good man?”

“He is a very good man, but I have no desire. I feel like it is an evil thing to do.”

“Your mother? Did she ever test you?”

“You can call it that.”

“That is what we have always called it.”

“I call it humiliation,” I said. “I hate my body. I am ashamed to show it to anybody, including my husband. Sometimes I feel like I should be off somewhere by myself. That is why I am here.”

I had spent two days in the hospital in Providence and four weeks with stitches between my legs. Joseph could never understand why I had done something so horrible to myself. I could not explain to him that it was like breaking manacles, an act of freedom.

“The new lady,” [Eliab] said, “does she belong to you?”

“Sometimes I claim her,” I said, “sometimes I do not.”

After Joseph and I got married, all through the first year I had suicidal thoughts. Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat wondering if my mother’s anxiety was somehow hereditary or if it was something that I had “caught” from living with her. Her nightmares had somehow become my own. […] I looked back at my daughter, who was sleeping peacefully. […] The fact that she could sleep meant that she had no nightmares, and maybe, would never become a frightened insomniac like my mother and me.

“My grandmother was preparing her funeral,” I said. “It’s a thing at home.” […]

“You called it home?” [Joseph] said. “Haiti.”

“What else would I call it?”

“You have never called it that since we’ve been together. Home has always been your mother’s house, that you could never go back to.”