Summary
Part IV: Chapter 28
It is a rocky ride to the airport and there is a great deal of traffic near the city. At the reservation desk, their American passports work in their favor, and Martine bribes the ticket seller with money to change their seats next to each other.
Martine is uncomfortable on the flight and Sophie asks her if it is the cancer again, but Martine replies that it is just the discomfort from being in Haiti. Martine notes that Sophie does not seem to eat much and Sophie admits to her that she has bulimia. Martine is surprised and says they never could have wasted food when she was growing up. Sophie is indignant at being blamed, but Martine says thinking that way is very American; she is just trying to give advice. She remembers how hard it was to eat a lot in New York because she thought the food would go away.
They land in New York and take a cab to Martine’s house. Many of the messages on Martine’s machine are from Marc, and he tells her he loves her.
Sophie takes Brigitte to her old room but decides she prefers the guest bedroom with her old, squeaky bed. Brigitte likes this too. Martine asks about dinner and what Sophie will do. Sophie says it is not very simple but she will try. Martine has to go out, though, so she makes Sophie and Brigitte spaghetti.
Sophie asks about Marc and if Martine will marry him. She smiles wanly that it would be useless at this point in her life, but she is still seeing him.
After Martine is gone, Sophie calls Joseph. She leaves a message, but he calls right back. He is upset at Sophie just leaving; he thought something awful happened and he wonders what will happen if she thinks she needs to leave again. He asks what he did and she says he knows her problem. He thought the therapy was helping, but she doesn’t feel okay. He consoles her that he will wait as long as it takes, but she wonders if she will ever be fixed. He says she is not a machine and it is okay if it takes time.
Before they hang up, Joseph counsels her to make sure to take Brigitte to get a check-up and asks about Sophie and Martine’s relationship. They talk a little about the baby and finally hang up. Martine comes home. She looks a little strained and says she had to tell Marc something.
Chapter 29
In the morning at breakfast, Sophie tells her mother that she did not look happy last night. Martine admits to her daughter with shame that she is pregnant, about a month so. Sophie asks if Marc wants to marry her and Martine says of course he does, but she does not feel like she can: “I am a fat woman trying to pass for thin. A dark woman trying to pass for light. And I have no breasts. I don’t know when this cancer will come back. I am not an ideal mother” (189). She does not know what she wants to do and is very scared; the nightmares are returning. Sophie urges her to marry Marc and have the baby, but Martine says there are some things one should not repeat. Sophie thinks it could be a second chance, but Martine thinks she already had her second chance by surviving cancer. She knows she should get help, but is afraid to go to a psychiatrist; she thinks they might want to take her back to that day and if that happened she would kill herself. The nightmares make it feel like she is getting raped every night.
Sophie tells her that she made it through her, but Martine says she tried to destroy Sophie many times when she was pregnant though Sophie was a fighter. This baby is a fighter too, and every time she thinks of getting rid of it, the baby bites at her insides. Sophie suggests she talk to someone, but Martine still refuses, saying she is just one step away from the mental institution.
Sophie volunteers to stay a bit longer, but Martine resists. She again asks why she doesn’t marry Marc and Martine says you don’t marry someone to escape your head. She once woke up choking him and she knows he will tire of her and leave her. She sighs that she will have the baby but “at the expense of my sanity. They will take it out of me one day and put me away the next” (192).
Martine lends Sophie her new car for her return to Providence. Sophie kisses her mother and her stomach, calling it a beautiful baby. Martine doesn’t like the word “baby.”
As Sophie drives home, she thinks of what her mother looked like during her nightmares—curled up in a ball, hollering, trying to bite herself.
Sophie also had suicidal thoughts her first year of marriage, feeling like her mother’s nightmares had become her own. She looks at Brigitte and feels relief that Brigitte sleeps a lot; hopefully she will never have nightmares like that.
Chapter 30
Sophie greets Joseph when she arrives and he tosses Brigitte in the air gleefully. He says it is nice to see Sophie, but he is upset. He asks how her trip was and she replies that her grandmother is preparing for her journey to death and that is how it is at home. Joseph is surprised to hear her call Haiti “home.”
Later, Joseph asks Sophie if she left on impulse or had planned it. Sophie responds that they weren’t connecting physically. He says maybe she needs an aphrodisiac and she says she needs more understanding. He replies that he does understand, and that while she is reluctant to start, she seems to enjoy it later.
She tells Joseph her mother is pregnant. He is pleased, saying she will finally have a sibling, a kindred spirit. This pleases her.
Brigitte’s pediatrician checks her out and says she appears unscathed by the trip to Haiti, but to leave her behind next time.
Sophie calls her mother and Martine says in a serious tone that the baby is fighting her more and more every day. She sees her rapist everywhere. She tried to get rid of it, but they said she had to wait 24 hours. Sophie says she will come visit this weekend.
Joseph embraces Sophie and she begins to double as they have sex. She thinks about her mother and how she can console her now and take care of her. She is happy she has Martine’s approval and feels like they are both safe, both okay and the past gone.
After they are done making love, Joseph says she was very good. She says quietly that she kept her eyes closed so the tears wouldn’t slip out.
After he falls asleep, she goes into the kitchen, stuffs herself with leftovers, and then purges it all out.
Chapter 31
Sophie attends a sexual phobia group with two others. Buki is Ethiopian and a victim of genital mutilation, and Davina is Chicana and was raped by her grandfather for ten years. They meet at Davina’s house, change into long white dresses and wrap their hair, and sit on pillows surrounded by candles and incense. They pray a serenity prayer and recite their affirmations.
Buki reads a letter she wrote to her grandmother and sobs; Sophie has to finish it. They write the names of their abusers on scraps of paper and burn them. Buki blows up a green balloon and releases it into the air.
At the end of the meeting, Sophie still feels broken but “a little closer to being free. I didn’t feel guilty about burning my mother’s name anymore. I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too” (203). Sophie knows it is up to her to make sure things turn out well for Brigitte.
That night, Sophie and Joseph delight in Brigitte saying “dada.” He tells her that her therapist and her mother called.
Sophie calls Martine and asks about her situation. She says it is not good, but she is happy Sophie and her family are coming. She says maybe the child is getting used to her.
Sophie writes Tante Atie a letter. She is excited that Atie can read this herself, and imagines her doing so.
Chapter 32
Sophie’s therapist Rena is a beautiful black woman who is an initiated Santeria priestess. They meet at her house and stroll the grounds. Sophie tells her about her trip and Rena asks if she hates her mother. Sophie says no but feels a lot of pain. She admits she wants to be good to her and that she wants to forget the bad things and look at her as a new person. When Rena asks about Sophie’s confrontation with her grandmother about testing, Sophie sighs that it is hard to be mad because they only feel like they are doing what makes them a good mother.
After Sophie tells her about her mother’s pregnancy, Rena asks why she isn’t mad anymore, and Sophie explains that she feels sorry for her because the pregnancy has brought up a lot of the old memories. Rena suggests that her mother is still so haunted because she never confronted him and gave him a face and now the baby is bringing up old things.
They discuss the difficulty of sex and the feelings of abandonment that Sophie has. Sophie tells Rena Brigitte is the only one whom she thinks would never abandon her. Rena asks if Sophie saw the spot when she was in Haiti where her mother was raped and Sophie says she jogged past it. Rena suggests both she and Martine go there because “there are things you can say to the spot where it happened. I think you’ll be free once you have your confrontation” (211).
Chapter 33
Marc and Martine greet Joseph, Sophie, and Brigitte. Martine happily takes Joseph on a tour of the house and Marc talks to him about music. Sophie can tell Martine is going to try to make Joseph finally like her.
They ask about Joseph’s roots and he talks about Louisiana. Marc says they are all African, but Martine speaks of feeling like she could be southern African-American because she loves the Negro spirituals. Marc doesn’t really know what those are, but Joseph is extremely familiar and starts humming a tune. He asks if Martine has a favorite and she sings one with the repeated line of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” (215). They clap when she is done and she states that she wants that sung at her funeral.
After a lovely day, the family parts way. Martine holds Sophie tightly and she says that Caco women are very happy when they are happy, but the sadness is deep when they are sad. On the way home, Joseph sings Martine’s melody and comments that she is good people, and he knows why she didn’t like him—she didn’t want to give a gem like Sophie up.
When Sophie gets home, there are two messages from Martine. She calls back and Martine tells her she and Marc had a wonderful time. She sucks in a breath and Sophie asks if she is okay. Martine explains she has decided to take the baby out and that she is sure; it has a man’s voice and calls her a whore. She never wants to look into its face. She muses that maybe there is something left in her from the other man and she will see it.
Chapter 34
Sophie sits with Rena and lets her know how worried she is about her mother’s state of mind. She can tell Martine was only pretending to be happy, and confides in Rena that Martine is having an abortion because she hears the voices. Rena suggests she might benefit from an exorcism, but Sophie knows her mother does not want to make it more real; it has always been real to her because she has been raped every night for twenty-five years.
On the way home, Sophie drives past Davina’s house and stops in to sit privately, as the women were wont to do. When she leaves, she espies the green balloon caught in a tree; they thought it had floated up triumphantly, maybe all the way to Africa.
Chapter 35
When Sophie comes home, Joseph concernedly takes her over to the answering machine and plays a message from Marc, who sounds very upset. Sophie calls, but there is no answer. She and Joseph try all night, but nothing.
Finally, at six in the morning, Marc calls and says he is sorry. His voice is wavering. Sophie demands to talk to her mother, but he tells her she is dead. Sophie is shouting. Marc explains he woke up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom to check on Martine and she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She had stabbed herself seventeen times in the stomach with a rusty kitchen knife. She died in the ambulance, and told the ambulance people that she could not carry the baby.
Sophie is stunned, but yells at Marc that she can’t believe he was sleeping and he should have known not to give her a child because of the nightmares.
After she hangs up, she collapses into Joseph. It feels like her world is whirling around insanely. She decides she will go to Haiti and Joseph will stay with Brigitte.
Marc is waiting at the Brooklyn house. Sophie enters and sees the trail of blood and bloody sheets. She rushes into her mother’s tidy room while Marc talks to her. He explains he has used his influence to make this expeditious, and the body will be shipped to a funeral home in Dame Marie. They can see her there, and they will have a service.
Sophie says nothing. She cannot believe he notified the family with information that could kill her grandmother.
She sleeps there that night and Marc remains nearby. She lays in her mother’s bed and accuses herself of causing Martine’s death—her face, her leaving.
Marc asks her the next day to pick out something for Martine to be buried in. Even though Sophie knows it is a bold choice, she picks out a bright red suit that would make her look “like a Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them” (227). There will be no viewing, no pomp and circumstance, just a simple burial like Martine wanted.
When Marc says heaven won’t let her in like that, Sophie replies that she is going to Guinea, or be turned into a butterfly or a lark in a tree. He looks at her like she is crazy.
Sophie calls Joseph to say goodbye. She asks if Brigitte sleeps, and he says less so now.
In Port-au-Prince, Marc looks around to see how everything has changed since he left. His eyes widen at the macoutes in the marketplace. On the way home, Sophie sees Louise’s abandoned shack.
Sophie sees her grandmother on the porch and runs to her. They talk for hours. She says she knew without being told, knew Martine was pregnant. Atie clings to the porch railing. Marc introduces himself. Grandmè says she knew of him but was never told of him.
That evening, the family sings a simple wake song and brews tea. One song makes Sophie think of how “our sing makers and tale weavers had decided that we were all daughters of this land” (230).
Marc sleeps in Tante Atie’s room, Tante Atie sleeps with Grandmè, and Sophie sleeps in her mother’s bed.
The next day, they all go to claim the body. They see her and Grandmè looks shocked at her attire. The priest sprinkles holy water on the body, kisses Grandmè’s hands, and crosses himself. Atie falls to the ground and Marc helps her up. Her tears do not cease.
The body is wheeled up the hill in a cart and they follow on foot. They collect a small procession of people who know Grandmè and want to share her grief. The men from the cane fields get their shirts and follow.
The priest sings a funeral song while others rattle gourds and drums and conch shells. Grandmè throws dirt as the coffin is lowered, then Atie, and then Sophie, who throws one for her daughter as well.
Sophie cannot bear to see them shoveling the dirt so she starts running away, her dress tearing as she flees. She runs into the cane field and begins attacking the cane. She beats a stalk with her shoes and pulls and pounds it. Grandmè holds the priest back and lets Sophie continue. People watch. Grandmè calls out, “Ou libéré?” and Atie echoes her cry.
Sophie is from a place “where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place where you carry your past like the hair on your head” (234). This is a place where woman come back as butterflies. Martine is from this place, Martine who is as brave as the stars at dawn.
Grandmè walks over to Sophie and tells her this is a place where women are buried in colors like flames, where daughters are not fully women until their mothers pass. This is a place where you hear your mother telling a tale and at the end she asks “Ou libéré?” Grandmè places her fingers over Sophie’s lips and says, “Now… you will know how to answer” (234).
Analysis
Martine and Sophie and Brigitte return to New York and mother and daughter enter a new phase of their relationship. There are positive developments such as Sophie’s dealing with her issues through therapy and deeper family connections forged with Joseph and Marc, but there is still tragedy. Martine finds out she is pregnant, thinks that the baby is connected to her rape, and kills herself so she can avoid bringing the pregnancy to term. Back in Haiti, the Caco women bury Martine and Sophie achieves the sort of release in the cane fields that she needed.
The first thing to discuss is Sophie and her confrontation of her demons. The progress she’d begun by confronting her mother and grandmother is furthered by her attendance of group and individual therapy. She is able to name her mother as her abuser and feel a sense of relief at burning her name. She works through her complicated feelings towards her mother, telling Rena she does not hate her and wants a fresh start. There is no indication by the end of the novel that sex is somehow easy or pleasurable for Sophie now, and she still suffers from bulimia (the lack of control in sex with Joseph is countered by her purging of all the food she stuffs inside herself), but she is absolutely making progress. Critic Marc A. Christophe brings Brigitte into the discussion, seeing her as the only stable and happy character in the novel. Sophie recognizes this and part of her healing is to ensure that she does not perpetuate the cycle of trauma on her daughter.
Next we turn to Martine and her choice to end her pregnancy. Martine associates the child with her rapist and thinks it has a man’s voice that is tormenting her. She does not think she has motherly capabilities anymore, noting how she seems to be pretending to be everything she is not. She says she does not even have her breasts anymore and that she is unfit to be a wife and a mother. She does not want to marry Marc and does not want to have a traditional abortion; she also knows that if she has this baby, she will lose her sanity. Many critics interpret her choice to commit suicide as a powerful statement of taking control over her own body. Simone A. James Alexander sees her action as Martine “[rejecting] enforced motherhood, which stand for rejection of the use of her body as fertile ground for reproduction” and “[refusing] to reproduce… misogynist violence.” She calls the act one of courage and manipulation of Marc; she renders him powerless, forcing him to see what she did in a way that he deems “staged.”
Now we look at Sophie’s return to Haiti and how the Caco women deal with the death of Martine. Sophie chooses red for her mother to evoke Erzulie and make her mother redemptive in death. Martine is as red as the Caco bird in her death, red like a hot-blooded Jezebel who devours men. Alexander writes, “Danticat’s message is one of both bearing witness and the need to create a language, even if it consists of mimicked violence, which adequately captures and brings attention to women’s plight.” Sophie’s sartorial choice gives Martine symbolic deliverance, and Sophie attains her own when she relives her mother’s rape in the cane fields, attacks the stalks, bleeds, and screams.
Sophie’s grandmother and aunt witness this and let it continue unabated, calling out the cry women reserve for each other, “Are you free?” Christophe writes that “by confronting her fears and symbolically killing her father, the rapist, Sophie is able to reverse the order of things and change herself from a helpless victim to an agent of her own liberation.”
