Breath, Eyes, Memory

Sophie tells Atie that she has tried to contact Martine, but her letters are ignored and she hangs up the phone when she calls. Martine has not yet met Brigitte, which Atie notes is sad given that they both have no one else in the United States and “Martine’s head is not in the best condition” (103).

Sophie brings her daughter to her grandmother, informing her that Brigitte’s middle name, Ifé, is after her. Grandma Ifé remarks on how they can see generations of their family’s women “simply by looking into [her] face” (105).

At dinner, Ifé questions Atie about why she needs to go each night to Louise’s home to learn how to read. Atie defends her learning, saying that it does not come easy for her and requires a lot of hard work if she wants to learn. Ifé asks her to read something to her, so Atie reads aloud the daffodil poem that Sophie had written in her Mother’s Day card years before.

That night, Sophie sleeps in her mother’s old bed in the room next to Ifé’s. She hears Ifé mumbling in her sleep, “Lagé mwin. Leave me alone” (109)—the same words she had heard her mother say in her sleep many times. She lies with her daughter on her chest, contemplating whether she will pass on her own problems to her daughter.

The following morning, Sophie bathes, using a mix of “flesh healers” including daffodils. She considers her own body and how she still feels fat, even after giving birth five months before. Later, she sits in her room and watches her grandmother bathe. Upon seeing a large hump on her back, she considers how her own mother had lumps in her breasts and was forced to have both removed many years before.

Sophie accompanies her grandmother to the market. There, they run into Louise, who follows them and repeatedly asks if they will buy her pig. Ifé is dismissive of her, and when Sophie asks her why, she responds by saying that she doesn’t like the way Atie has acted since returning to Dame Marie. Ifé says that Atie has been distant, drinking, and spending too many nights with Louise. She feels that Atie is with her out of obligation and duty rather than love.

They also witness a coal vendor in an argument with a Tonton Macoute, who accuses him of having stepped on his shoe. As they leave the market, Sophie looks back to see the coal vendor on the ground being beaten by several Macoutes.

Later that day, when Sophie and Ifé return, Atie leaves. Sophie witnesses firsthand the animosity between the two, as Ifé warns Atie of the violence that occurred at the market, but Atie insists she must go now and leaves anyway.

Ifé asks Sophie why she is visiting and why she did not bring her husband. Sophie confides in her that she is having trouble having a physical relationship with Joseph. She tells Ifé that having sex with him is “painful,” that sex feels “evil,” and she has no desire for it (123). When Ifé asks if Sophie was “tested,” she angrily rejects the use of the word “test,” instead calling it “humiliation.”

That night, Sophie listens from bed as her grandmother tells a story to a group of boys. She tells of a little girl who meets a lark that gives her a pomegranate each day, until she agrees to give it a kiss and then she gets two. Eventually, the lark convinces the girl to go with him to a faraway land and she gets on his back. However, the lark admits that he is taking her to a king who needs to eat little girls’ hearts to survive. The girl tells the lark that she left her heart at home, and when she is taken back to get it, she flees and never returns.

Tante Atie returns, and Ifé asks her to read her something. She responds simply that she is “empty.”

Louise arrives the next morning to take Tante Atie so they can go have their names recorded on a registry to show they live in Dame Marie. Ifé cannot understand why they need to have their names recorded to prove this, as the people there see them and they themselves know where they live.

Sophie takes photos of Ifé, telling her they are for Sophie when she is older. Ifé objects, telling her that she does not understand cameras and feels as though someone could “trap somebody’s soul in there” (129). Sophie looks through photos she brought with her, including ones of Brigitte just born and her wedding day. She recalls how much time it took to recover from her breaking of her hymen, and how painful her first time having sex with Joseph was.

When Louise and Atie return, they bring a cassette from Martine. She explains on the cassette that Joseph went on tour and left Sophie at home, but that she does not answer when he calls. Joseph thought that maybe Sophie was with Martine, but Martine says she is not and has now become worried about her. She lit green candles for Sophie. Atie asks Sophie if it’s time she reconciled with her mother.

That night, Sophie listens through the wall as her grandmother plays the rest of Martine’s tape. In it, she tells Ifé that she thought she was moving past her trauma, but her nightmares continue and “it seems to be beginning all over again” (135).

Sophie joins Atie outside and asks her why she is upset and whether she misses Croix-des-Rosets. Atie replies that this place is no worse than that one, but that at least here she is doing her duty to her mother and her family. She remarks to Sophie that everything feels useless—they were taught their duty, “tested” in the night, and burned their hands learning to cook, yet still end up with nothing in the end.

Louise comes back the next morning upset that the Macoutes killed the coal vendor and stating that she needs to leave Haiti now, because anyone could be next. Sophie considers the idea of the Tonton Macoute, named after a Haitian bogeyman who took children in the night. However, these men create havoc at night and day, committing murder and rape throughout the country. Sophie considers that her own father might have been a Macoute, given how her mother was attacked and raped at gun point in a field.

It is revealed that Martine suffered for months after she was raped, having nightmares, ripping apart her sheets, and even biting off her own flesh. She was sent to work for a rich family until she had the baby, at which time she tried to die by suicide because Sophie’s birth made the trauma too “real.” As a result, Atie cared for Sophie while Martine got a visa, eventually leaving after four years.

The coal vendor’s death puts everyone, especially Ifé, on edge. She will not let Sophie take Brigitte out of the house, and she becomes upset when Atie leaves to see Louise. When Atie returns, she tells Ifé that perhaps death would be better than this life, and Ifé slaps her. However, Atie continues to leave to see Louise, and Sophie discovers that she often drinks while out with her.

The next morning, Sophie asks Atie about Louise. Atie replies that she is a “good friend,” and that when she leaves, she will “miss her like [her] own skin” (145).

As Ifé and Sophie sit outside that night, they see a light moving in the distance. Ifé informs her that a child is being born. If it is a boy, the light will stay on outside the shack and the father will stay with the child all night. If it is a girl, the cord will be cut and the mother will be left alone with the child in darkness. As her grandmother falls asleep, Sophie sees the light go out and notes that another girl has been born into the world.

Sophie decides to cook her mother’s favorite meal for supper for Tante Atie and her grandmother. She and Atie go to the market, and along the way stop to see the burial site of their ancestors. Atie explains to Sophie that their family name, Caco, is after the name of a scarlet bird. When it dies, it is so red from its blood that it looks as though it is on fire. On their way home, they pass by cane fields where men sing of a woman who leaves her house at night in a different form, leaving her skin behind at home. She returns to find that her husband had “peppered” her skin so she can no longer use it; he ends up killing her.

As Sophie cooks, she considers the idea of Haitian women and their role with their husbands, as she was taught. She remembers how virginity and a woman’s 10 fingers are important to men. Each finger serves a purpose—“Mothering. Boiling. Loving. Baking. Nursing. Frying. Healing. Washing. Ironing. Scrubbing” (151)—which makes Tante Atie remark how she wished she had two more fingers so she could have them for herself. She also considers the history of the virginity “testing,” as Ifé points out that it is happening now to a young girl named Ti Alice in their village. Sophie remembers the story that their mothers used to tell about the “testing.” A very wealthy man took a poor black girl as his wife because she was “untouched.” When they went home after their wedding, however, he tried and tried but could not make her bleed. Rather than feel ashamed that he had taken an impure wife, he cuts her between her legs to make her bleed, then hangs the sheets outside to show that she was a virgin. However, she bleeds to death, and he cries on her grave.

Sophie considers her own “testing,” and how she would “double” and remove herself from her own body to avoid the horror of it. Similarly, when she had sexual intercourse with Joseph, she would also double to avoid the painful feeling of it and the memories associated with it. When she asks her grandmother specifically about the “testing,” she explains that it is to avoid bringing disgrace to the family at the hands of their daughters. She tells Sophie that everything a mother does is for her child’s own good, even though she acknowledges how much pain it causes the female children in her family. She finally admits that her heart “weeps” for the pain past generations have caused Sophie through this ritual.

Three days later, Sophie’s mother arrives in Dame Marie. She comes in a red jumper, looking thinner than Sophie had remembered and with lighter skin. Sophie notes that they had not seen each other in almost two years.

Martine greets everyone except Sophie, and there is a short moment of awkward tension. As the daughter, Sophie is expected to greet her mother first, and Ifé demands she do so; however, she stays where she is, until Martine decides to walk to her first. Martine explains that Ifé told her to come make things right or it would “put a curse on the family” (162), so she came here to bring Sophie home. She tells Sophie that now that she is a woman with her own home, they are allowed to start over.

When Martine changes her clothes, Sophie notes that the skin on her face is much lighter than the rest of her body. Martine gives them gifts that she brought, such as diapers from Joseph for the baby and clothes and spices for her mother and sister. Martine asks Ifé to move to the city, insisting she can pay for her to have a nicer life there, but Ifé is adamant that at this stage of her life, she is ready to put her affairs in over and have the land deed notarized to be left to her family.

That night, Martine and Atie discuss their life in Haiti. They remember stories that were told to them by their parents about the stars, and Martine questions Atie on why she was never married. She insists that her father is the only man who truly loved her. Atie also notes how difficult a place Haiti is to live, where you can lose everything in a heartbeat.

Martine and Ifé return the next day from the notary. They now officially own the land, with it divided equally among Martine, Atie, Sophie, and Brigitte.

Martine expresses her wishes to be buried in Haiti when she dies. Ifé uses it as an opportunity to stress the importance of Martine and Sophie mending their relationship further, so that Sophie can carry out her wishes when Martine dies. That night, Martine comes into Sophie’s room, and reflexively Sophie “shivers” and crosses her legs but pretends to be asleep. Martine stands over both Sophie and Brigitte, watching them sleep for a long time, as Sophie sees her begin to cry harder and harder before walking out.

The next morning, Martine and Sophie talk. Sophie asks about her nightmares, and Martine says they are worse in Haiti than they had been. Sophie says that she has always assumed the nightmares are worse when Martine sees Sophie’s face—because she looks like her father who raped Martine. Martine assures her that she has always had nightmares, and despite being shocked the first time she saw Sophie’s face years before, she does not make her nightmares worse.

Sophie and Martine discuss the “testing.” Sophie admits to herself that she no longer holds any anger over it, but instead is desperate to understand so that she does not make the same mistakes. Her mother tells her that she has no good reason for it, just that her mother did it to her, so she did it to her own daughter. Martine admits that the two greatest pains in her life—the “testing” and her rape—are related. They are both forms of sexual abuse, they both caused her pain and suffering throughout her life, and when the rape happened, the “testing” stopped. Their conversation ends with Martine telling Sophie that she wants to be a true friend to her, because she “saved [her] life many times” (170).

That night, Martine and Ifé go to the village. They purchase Louise’s pig, giving her enough money to leave for the United States. Louise leaves without saying goodbye to Atie.

The night before they leave for New York, Sophie and Brigitte sleep in Atie’s room. Sophie tries to comfort Atie, and even expresses her desire to go back to when they were younger and things were better. Atie assures her that Sophie was her “child,” and that “children are the rewards of life” (173).

Martine, Sophie, and Brigitte leave for New York. As they depart, Sophie sees Atie standing under a tree, watching until it disappears into a red blur. She considers the nation and the land, and the fact that one day all the women in her family hope to meet in Guinea, the afterlife.