‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’

IN A previous lesson when we ‘talked’ about Martine’s favourite negro spiritual, we did not reflect on the fact that she wished it to be sung at her funeral. Have you ever heard this song? It can be mournful, dirge-like. No wonder her son-in-law livens it up by singing it to a jazz beat as he and his wife and daughter travel home. Her attitude to death is certainly different from her mother’s. Do you think that her expressed wish is a premonition of her death?

It is not surprising that she decides to have an abortion, for she is having a very difficult time. Things have got so bad that she even ‘hears’ the foetus talking to her. She feels that part of the rapist may still be in her and will affect the baby, especially since she thinks it is a boy, and so she is existing in torment. Her mental and emotional turmoil include the fear that the child she is carrying is fighting her. It does appear that Martine loses touch with reality, a condition that she has been fearing, before she has the abortion. That night, while Marc sleeps, she bleeds out in the bathroom and her death is the inevitable result.

Sophie is naturally very distraught over her mother’s death. During the day of the abortion, she had been fearful and uneasy and had immediately jumped to the conclusion that something was wrong for Marc to have called. What is remarkable is the fact that she blames him. He loved her mother, wanted to marry her, moved into her house where she had used him as a buffer between herself and the recurring nightmares, seemed to have been willing to accept a child and yet she later makes up her mind never to speak to him again.

I would like you to think of a possible reason for her bitterness towards him. It is Marc who makes all the arrangements to have the body released and transported to Haiti, where the funeral takes place. Marc returns to his homeland for the first time since he had migrated and is curious about the way his country is at this point. In an act of understanding and defiance, Sophie dresses her mother’s body in red. In an

outburst of grief, she leaves the grave side and takes out her pain on a cane plant.

We must acknowledge the grief of Manman, Tante Atie, and Marc, too. The community also shows sympathy for the family by joining them in their walk to the burial site and at the grave side. The family had not had a big get-together on the night before, but that did not prevent the community from taking that walk of mourning and goodbye with them. It demonstrates the spirit of unity and understanding that characterises many villages and districts.

WOMEN IN HISTORY

As promised, we need to consider the women who play major roles in this story. We have four generations of Caco women. Yes, I am including Brigitte, who represents hope and the very real possibility of “better”. These women have known hardship and struggle, yet have somehow managed to survive.

Grandma had long buried her husband, but she remains faithful to his memory. How do we know this? You can answer. She lived on her own for several years while Tante Atie took care of Sophie and must have managed quite well. When Sophie visits from the US, she finds out that her grandmother is a physically strong woman though she has a physical deformity. She walks to the market, does her shopping with sharp skills, shares her food and water with the boys who visit her, and entertains them with stories.

Mentally, she is also well grounded. She is able to recognise the value in putting the names of her family members on the land paper (title) so that there would be no problems with ownership after she dies and makes sure to deal with this when Martine comes home for that brief stay. She sees the danger, especially to Sophie, when they are in the ‘market’ place and the Ton Ton Macoute arrive. Reacting quickly, she gets them moving away. Manman has questions concerning the friendship between her daughter, Tante Atie, and Louise. She believes that there is something wrong, for which she, as mother, would be punished. With frankness, she makes her disapproval clear and is the catalyst for their separation.

It is clear that Grandma loves her family. If we watch her interaction with them, we see this and that she believes in the bonds of family. The relationship between herself and Tante Atie is strained because she does not like how Tante is behaving and also because she is convinced that Tante is staying with her for the wrong reason. Her concern for her is, however, evident. She almost bows under the weight of Martine’s death but is bouyed by the thought of her freedom in death.

Tante Atie has faced her share of problems and remained standing. Whatever the relationship she had shared with Monsieur Augustin, it did not last but had brought her pain. She had had to accept the fact that she had not been seen as good enough to be a wife. It was probably this painful realisation that had led to her friendship with Louise. Atie was a good aunt and had brought up Sophie with love and care. She tried also to be fair to her sister and Sophie when she sent her to her mother without reference to the fact that it was she whom Sophie knew as caregiver. Please pay attention to the fact that even as she is getting ready for the separation, she is doing what she can for the child. It is with fondness that she speaks of her sister.

There is ambition in Tante Atie, for in her maturing years, she learns to read and write. Her memory is good, for when she could, she wrote down the words on the Mother’s Day card that Sophie had tried to give her before she left for the United States. Perhaps she would have been happier elsewhere, but her strong sense of duty keeps her with her mother.

Breath, Eyes, Memory is permeated with sadness and pain, much of it because of Martine. Her life was an unhappy one. As a girl, she, like her sister and mother, experienced financial hardship. They lived in a very rural area under fairly primitive conditions. She suffered from the traditional ‘testing’ and then suffered an abominable rape. She was scarred and traumatised by this incident until her death. One could say that that was what caused her death. Yet beaten down and broken, she survived for many years.

Martine, having been given the opportunity to migrate to the US, took good care of her mother, her sister, and her child. She worked hard – two jobs – to accomplish this. She paid for her sister to live and take care of Sophie away from home. She supported her mother financially and even built a house for her. She regularly sent money home and communicated with her family through cassettes. It could not have been easy! The car she drove was old and not in a good condition, and she lived in a rundown area, but she took and maintained responsibility for those at home in Haiti. One can only speculate that if her father had lived, and if she had not been brutally damaged, her dreams and those of her sister, too, may have been realised.

Martine had perfected the art of ‘doubling’, the ability to remove oneself from painful reality. How else could she have had a romantic friendship with Marc for so long and of such a quality that he wished to marry her? She did what was necessary to remake herself and to survive while she quietly suffered. She loves her family and she loves Marc. Unfortunately, she perpetuates the old-time method of trying to keep Sophie pure and brings about a break between them. In trying to protect her from making a mistake with Joseph, she drives her to him. That underlying strength in the Caco women is in play when she travels to Haiti to retrieve her daughter and granddaughter and makes the first steps to the recociliation demanded by Manman.

Although she is in a good relationship with Marc, her second pregnancy arouses the fear and trauma of the first, from which she has never recovered. This is what leads to her decision to terminate the pregnancy and, sadly, to her death.

We meet Sophie as a child living with her aunt. She knows her mother only through a voice on cassette tapes. She is smart and picks up that her aunt is interested in the Augustins. She reciprocates the love she receives from her aunt. When she learns that she has to join her mother abroad, she is angry because she does not want to leave Tante Atie. On arrival in the US, Sophie is not impressed by her mother’s appearance, her car, or the area in which she lives. Her mother does try to make her feel welcome

Continued from, 18 mother’s nightmare, she is struck by certain oddities.

Sophie faces prejudice at school and is forced to make adjustments. Her mother continues to work two jobs, so she is often alone for hours at home. In her loneliness she is drawn not just to the music being played next door but to the musician as well. This man is just a little younger than her mother. Soon they are spending time together as a platonic relationship develops at first. Sophie is pained by her mother’s action when she continues the tradition of ensuring her daughter’s innocence by examining her private part. Eventually, unable to bear the testing, Sophie painfully removes her hymen. When Martine mistakenly believes that Sophie has an intimate relationship with Joseph, the musician, she throws her out.

Joseph, to whom she turns, welcomes her. They marry quickly, having moved to Providence which we recall she had expected to be good place. Although her husband is patient and caring, marital intimacy is painful for Sophie and she resorts to ‘doubling’, just as she had done when her mother used to examine her body. After they have a child, Sophie takes their daugher to Haiti where they are lovingly welcomed by her family. Here, she adapts to living simply without any pretension. When her mother arrives, she willingly accepts the olive branch that she extends and we should realize that had she been able, she would have taken the first step to close the breach between them. Mother and daughter begin then and, until the end, to grow closer. Sophie begins to understand her mother’s suffering and grieves at her passing. She is doing what is necessary to improve her sexual health and so cement her marriage and make herself a good mother. As a Caco woman she, too, is strong.

Examine Louise’s behaviour and you will find something positive to say about her. You be positive about yourself and your work too. God bless! Beryl Clarke is an independent contributor. Send comments to kerry-ann.hepburn@gleanerjm.com.