The Dew Breaker: Water Child Summary & Analysis

On the first day of every month, Nadine Osnac gets a letter from her mother asking her to call her parents. This month the letter updates her on her father’s “unreliable” health and stresses how much they long to hear their daughter’s voice. Three weeks later, Nadine still hasn’t called, although she reads the letter every day while eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. In re-reading it over and over, she hopes to find a note of “sympathy,” but she cannot. Her colleague Josette comes over and greets her warmly.

Josette tells Nadine that Ms. Hinds is back from the ICU, and is so distressed that she had to be sedated. Both women work in the Ear, Nose, and Throat ward, and often encounter patients who wake up from surgery horrified by the fact that they can’t speak. Like Nadine, Josette is Haitian. She came to the US as an infant. Nadine lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Canarsie, where she keeps the TV on all day because she likes having “voices in […] her life that required neither reaction nor response.” She has given up on other activities that require a substantial amount of social interaction. 

Nadine has a voicemail from her ex-boyfriend Eric, the father of her “nearly born child.” He speaks English with a strong Haitian accent, and says only a few words of greeting before hanging up. He has been calling her every month since they broke up; every time she removes the voicemail tape and puts it on an altar she has erected to their unborn child. She now has seven tapes, but has never called him back. Tonight, she almost calls her parents, dialing most of the digits of their phone number before hanging up and bursting into tears.  

A week later Nadine gets another letter from her parents. This one is “meticulously typed.” In it, her mother thanks her for sending extra money, and tells her that her father has been to see a doctor about his inflamed prostate. She says that every Sunday they wait for Nadine’s phone call, hoping that she will return to their “beautiful routine.” The next day Nadine reads this letter at lunch, unable to eat. The other nurses have long known to leave her alone, but Josette invites her to join them for a trip into the city after work. Nadine declines and leaves the cafeteria.

Ms. Hinds, a 25-year-old patient, has been throwing things in her room. Nadine arrives to find her being held down by several nurses, including Josette. Ms. Hinds’ body is completely hairless and her arms are covered in IV marks. Nadine tells the other nurses to let go of her, saying: “Let me be alone with her.” They leave, and Nadine asks if Ms. Hinds wants anything. Ms. Hinds can’t speak, so Nadine gets her a notepad and pen. Nadine struggles to read Ms. Hinds’ handwriting, but manages to see that she has written that she can’t speak. Ms. Hinds adds that she is a teacher, and then writes: “WHY SEND ME HOME LIKE THIS?”

Nadine explains that Ms. Hinds will now get an artificial larynx and work with a speech therapist to help her speak again. Ms. Hinds writes that she feels like a basenji, a breed of dog that doesn’t bark. At home that night, Nadine calls Eric, who is probably at home resting before going to his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College. She panics as she thinks of something to say to him, but then hears through the phone that his number no longer works. She dials again and the same thing happens.

Ten years before, Nadine’s parents sold their house and moved to the edge of a slum in Port-au-Prince so that they could pay for Nadine’s nursing school. Now she sends them half of her salary every month. She is happy to financially support them in this way, but craves their emotional protection. She finally calls her parents. Her mother answers the phone and says that Nadine sounds sad. She promises that she and Nadine’s father will come to visit as soon as his health improves. On the phone they always discuss practical matters, never anything painful. Nadine’s mother asks if she has a boyfriend, urging her to find someone so she doesn’t end up “old and alone.” Nadine ends the call quickly.

The next day, Ms. Hinds, while waiting for her parents to pick her up from the hospital, changes into a dress that her mother bought her. Nadine wants to warn Ms. Hinds that the horror of having lost her voice will only intensify, but she says nothing as she knows that Ms. Hinds will soon learn this herself. Later, during Nadine’s lunch hour, Josette comes to get her to say that Ms. Hinds wants to say goodbye. Reluctantly Nadine goes to Ms. Hinds’ room, where she meets her parents, who both seem overcome with worry. Ms. Hinds’ father thanks Nadine and asks her to pass on their gratitude to the other nurses and doctors.

Ms. Hinds’s parents push her out in the wheelchair, and Nadine is left alone. She thinks about the fetus she aborted, which, if she’d carried it to term, might have been born that day. Then she thinks about her parents and Eric, and then of her own reflection in the elevator doors, which she considers “unrecognizable.”