The Dew Breaker: The Funeral Singer Summary & Analysis

Rézia owns a Haitian restaurant on the Upper West Side called Ambiance Créole. She is in a classroom, reading aloud from a manual. Mariselle gets up and states her name. Freda wishes she could sing to introduce herself. Given the chance, she would sing “Brother Timonie,” a song she learned from her father, who was a fisherman. Freda explains to the class that she doesn’t have a job yet; at 22 years old, she’s been “expelled” from Haiti, which is why she is taking the class. The teacher tells the class that if they work hard, they will earn their GEDs in no time, which to Freda sounds like a ridiculous promise.

Rézia nicknames the teacher “Flat Tit,” Mariselle “Mother Mary,” and Freda “the baby funeral singer,” because Freda used to be “one of the few professional funeral singers of [her] generation.” Freda grew up in Léogâne. Her mother used to tell her that her father was watching them from heaven while eating coconut with God. She said that he made clouds out of coconut meat. Freda used to wear black clothes so she would fit in with the mourners at the funerals, but now she wears bright colors and a red headband. Réziza suggests that she, Mariselle, and Freda go to Ambiance Créole after class, reasoning that because they are the only Haitians, they might be able to study better together.  

At the restaurant, the women drink wine or rum. Freda was the first to tell the others about her life, saying that she was once asked to sing at the presidential palace. Before Freda’s father was arrested, the president of Haiti would drive through Freda’s town on New Year’s Eve and throw money out of his window. He would then hand out essential supplies like rice or cooking oil in an effort to win the people’s “loyalty forever.”

After several weeks on the course, Freda, Mariselle, and Rézia cook a meal together, each taking care of a different dish. Mariselle came to the US because her husband painted an unflattering portrait of the president and was shot leaving the gallery where it was hung. Freda’s mother told her to leave after she turned down the invitation to sing at the national palace. Freda’s father had been arrested and tortured by the regime and, following this ordeal, presumably killed himself. Rézia, meanwhile, grew up with her aunt, who ran a brothel. One night, a man in uniform raped her. On her deathbed, her aunt explained that the man had threatened to imprison her if she didn’t give him access to Rézia.

Mariselle brings Haitian newspapers for the women to read. She finds the name of a childhood friend among a list of people being taken to be interrogated at the army barracks in Port-au-Prince. Rézia is the only one of the three women to pass her practice test. Later, they get drunk and stay late at the restaurant. Marisella asks Freda how someone becomes a funeral singer, and Freda explains that her first public performance was at her father’s funeral. She sang “Brother Timonie,” and from that very moment became a funeral singer. Rézia insists that they stop discussing sad things.

Mariselle mentions that she met Jackie Kennedy when she visited Haiti. She observes that despite all the tragedy in her life, she is a beautiful woman, commenting, “She made sadness beautiful.” When Jackie visited, her first husband had already been dead for ten years. Her second husband, a Greek billionaire, was friends with Baby Doc. Mariselle’s husband painted a portrait of her. When Freda was a little girl, she would crowd the pages of her notebook with tiny figures. These scared her mother, who bought her a rag doll to comfort her. After Freda’s father died, she would twist the rag doll’s neck at night, and kept drawing the little figures “to keep [her] company in case [her] mother disappeared.”

Freda is not particularly religious, but she agrees to light candles and pray to Saint Jude, the patron of lost causes, with Mariselle and Rézia in order to help them pass their exam. They also pray for Haiti, though Mariselle notes Haiti isn’t “a lost cause yet […] because it made us.” Rézia asks why Freda turned down the invite to sing at the national palace, and Freda replies that she would never sing for “the type of people who’d killed" her father.

The women take the test, though don’t know yet if they’ve passed. Mariselle has gotten a job at a gallery, and will sell her husband’s paintings there. Freda announces that she’s going back to Haiti to join a militia, and the others burst into laughter. Rézia asks who will sing at Freda’s funeral if she dies. Mariselle suggests that Freda sing her own funeral song right there. Freda sings “Brother Timonie,” and the others join in. They keep singing, and toast to the pain of the past and the uncertainty of the future.