Krik? Krak! Read Online Free PDF Page B

day, an old woman stopped by my house in Ville Rose on her way to Port-au-Prince. She came in the middle of the night, wearing the same white dress that the women usually wore on their trips to dip their hands in the river.
    "Sister," the old woman said from the doorway. "I have come for you."
    "I don't know you," I said.
    "You do know me," she said. "My name is Jacqueline. I have been to the river with you."
    I had been by the river with many people. I remembered a Jacqueline who went on the trips with us, but I was not sure this was the same woman. If she were really from the river, she would know. She would know all the things that my mother had said to the sun as we sat with our hands dipped in the water, questioning each other, making up codes and disciplines by which we could always know who the other daughters of the river were.
    "Who are you?" I asked her.
    "I am a child of that place," she answered. "I come from that long trail of blood."
    "Where are you going?"
    "I am walking into the dawn."
    "Who are you?"
    "I am the first daughter of the first star."
    "Where do you drink when you're thirsty?"
    "I drink the tears from the Madonna's eyes."
    'And if not there?"
    "I drink the dew."
    "And if you can't find dew?"
    "I drink from the rain before it falls."
    "If you can t drink there?"
    "I drink from the turtle's hide."
    "How did you find your way to me?"
    "By the light of the mermaid's comb."
    "Where does your mother come from?"
    "Thunderbolts, lightning, and all things that soar."
    "Who are you?"
    "I am the flame and the spark by which my mother lived."
    "Where do you come from?"
    "I come from the puddle of that river."
    "Speak to me."
    "You hear my mother who speaks through me. She is the shadow that follows my shadow. The flame at the tip of my candle. The ripple in the stream where I wash my face. Yes. I will eat my tongue if ever I whisper that name, the name of that place across the river that took my mother from me."
    I knew then that she had been with us, for she knew all the answers to the questions I asked.
    "I think you do know who I am," she said, staring deeply into the pupils of my eyes. "I know who you are. You are Josephine. And your mother knew how to make the Madonna cry."
    I let Jacqueline into the house. I offered her a seat in the rocking chair, gave her a piece of hard bread and a cup of cold coffee.
    "Sister, I do not want to be the one to tell you," she said, "but your mother is dead. If she is not dead now, then she will be when we get to Port-au-Prince. Her blood calls to me from the ground. Will you go with me to see her? Let us go to see her."
    We took a mule for most of the trip. Jacqueline was not strong enough to make the whole journey on foot. I brought the Madonna with me, and Jacqueline took a small bundle with some black rags in it.
    When we got to the city, we went directly to the prison gates. Jacqueline whispered Manman s name to a guard and waited for a response.
    "She will be ready for burning this afternoon," the guard said.
    My blood froze inside me. I lowered my head as the news sank in.
    "Surely, it is not that much a surprise," Jacqueline said, stroking my shoulder. She had become rejuvenated, as though strengthened by the correctness of her prediction.
    "We only want to visit her cell," Jacqueline said to the guard. "We hope to take her personal things away."
    The guard seemed too tired to argue, or perhaps he saw in Jacqueline's face traces of some long-dead female relative whom he had not done enough to please while she was still alive.
    He took us to the cell where my mother had spent the last year. Jacqueline entered first, and then I fol-lowed. The room felt damp, the clay breaking into small muddy chunks under our feet.
    I inhaled deeply to keep my lungs from aching. Jacqueline said nothing as she carefully walked around the women who sat like statues in different corners of the cell. There were six of them. They kept their arms close to their bodies, like angels hiding