Which of us set off the latest skirmishes? Waiting for the final selection fed the hostility between us. Our hesitant complicity rapidly crumbled away under the weight of tight-lipped comments and suspicious glances. A muted battle began, all the more unnerving as it was hidden under civil appearances so as not to provoke the wrath of the Brooklyn aunt. A dress inadvertently stained, a door banging a shoulder a little too hard-unfortunate accidents followed by hasty apologies. Beatrice took note of our new attitude with an astonished, disappointed look. She who’d never had a child, never known the pangs of hunger that wake you up at dawn and don’t give a damn about the beauty of the rising sun. She who had always lived in the banal security of her job as a government employee, with her grandaunt’s support for those needs people call superfluous, but which give life some color. With the ability to go far away if ever poverty drew too near 15 rue Paultre. To take off for Brooklyn and live with the great-aunt, work like her with Italian Jews or plain Jews, or work somewhere else. Beatrice who had probably never desired someone hard enough to trample on her fears and hold on only to the intimate smell, elusive and fleeting, of skin between her fingers. Hold on to it at any cost, for otherwise everything is pointless. And see it disappear in time nonetheless. Despite all my attempts to hold on to memories, all I had now was this baby, so much like her father and the other little girl, just as vulnerable as she was. Which one of them would reap the benefits of the aunt’s hospitality?
“I’ll always be there to help,” Beatrice would declare tersely when the tension reached a climax in the house, making the walls seem as thick as a tomb. “My aunt can’t adopt both of them. She’s not young anymore, but the other little girl will stay here with me, if you like. Don’t worry, they’ll both be taken care of.”
I could see my hopes and frustrations reflected in the other one’s hunched shoulders. Our anxiety broke the silence. Even Beatrice couldn’t escape from it. The two little girls were becoming individuals who were still largely indistinguishable, but who each had her own fate. The one who’d stay here in our country and the other who would go live with the Brooklyn aunt in her big four-bedroom apartment. Oh, not right away of course, but in a few months or perhaps a year. All the papers had to be in order and the aunt had to reduce the number of hours she worked for her Jewish-Italian bosses, to get her early retirement and do all that was needed to take care of the child. Just as soon as the lawyer filled out the adoption request form, the administrative process would begin. And already, when she pressed the girls to her chest, Beatrice would whisper into the ear of one or the other of them with a misty look in her eyes: “Well, sweetie, are you the one who’s going to leave me? So it’ll be you, my little sweetheart?” And she would shower both of them with kisses.
Sometimes I could feel the other mother’s despair overwhelm her, and her moist eyes would make me even angrier. Apparently, she didn’t understand that when you’re used to getting hit, one part of you hangs onto the leather of the strap and you absolutely must not flinch when it grazes your skin. On the contrary, you get your back up, you brace yourself and you wait for what’s coming, with your arms ready to pick up the broken pieces. And yet sometimes, in a flash, I could see the same dry, desperate determination in her eyes, which too often looked faded. Under her fragile appearances, was she, too, hiding rage strong enough to turn life upside down and give her little girl a chance?
And then one day Beatrice announced that in accordance with the aunt’s orders, she had scheduled an appointment with the lawyer to begin the proceedings. That TB was going to inform us of her decision very soon. As she saw us jerk in alarm, Beatrice quickly added that she didn’t know what the decision was. She would learn which of the little girls would be adopted at the same time we did. I managed to keep a poker face but I could feel my heart beating as if it wanted to jump from my chest and howl out its helplessness. The other could no longer hide her panic. Her fragility irritated me more and more. I would have liked her to be tough and unshakable like me-a formidable enemy, not a doll, easily smashed. Sometimes she would lean on the table as if she couldn’t bear life any longer, with her baby on her hip. We often carried our little ones that way, like a bump on our side that wriggled and gurgled from time to time.
When the little girls’ glances met, I wondered whether each one thought she saw her own reflection turning toward her. Of course, we could tell them apart, the other mother and I. I’d pick mine up and right away I could feel her little arms and legs clenching my body in total abandon, and in spite of myself I would lose some of my cynicism. How could I resist those tiny fingers clinging to my hair?
“Actually, you two resemble each other too,” Beatrice declared. “That’s why the little girls look like twins. My brother liked that type of woman. Ethereal, and a bit distant, taciturn. Both orphaned at an early age. Both frail, and mysterious,” she added with a knowing smile. As if we reminded her of a character in those romance novels she was always devouring. It’s true that we looked a bit alike, the other mother and I. We were the same age, both of us slender women with distant gazes. But I had discovered real differences very quickly. Through the other one’s dull eyes, I could see the trembling of a woman asking for friendship. Physically, too, she would sway from time to time like a rootless plant shrinking under the heat of the sun. Sometimes Beatrice would give her a worried look. “I’ll take you to the doctor if this keeps up.” Egalitarian to the very end, she wanted to include me in the consultation. Or maybe it was one of the great-aunt’s criteria. A medical evaluation of the two mothers before the definitive choice.
We were informed of the decision two days before the other mother had her first heart attack, four days before her death. As if her organism refused to assimilate the magnitude of the new situation. The announcement that the great-aunt would pay for the funeral quieted the discontented grumbling of the parents of the deceased far more than the verdict of the doctor who had hurriedly been called in. The young woman’s heart had collapsed. From New York, TB demanded an autopsy, furious at the fate that had interfered with her plans. But the family-cousins and an old uncle who seemed greedy and self-serving-were against it. No way they were going to cut apart their relative’s body. All they needed was a few thousand extra gourdes to do what had to be done.
The money was quickly paid, and an old woman came in with her panoply of leaves and bottles blackened by years of use. She shut herself up with the body to ward off any illintentioned attempt to get hold of the corpse after burial. The guilty party or parties would be punished. With the old mambo’s expertise, it would not be possible to turn their cousin into a zombie. The rumors of evil actions went on for a few days and then went to feed the store of tales to be told.
The great-aunt was more indignant than ever at the country that once again proved how little it could be trusted. Young or old, people were dying like flies. But God moves in mysterious ways. For this death-so unfortunate and unexpected- confirmed her decision: more than ever, the little orphan needed all the help she could get. As for Beatrice, she repeated to all the visitors that before the other mother died, her aunt had a dream in which Aramis whispered which one of the two little girls to adopt. The Salnave family had always boasted of very strong spiritual connections with deceased relatives.