He helps her finish sentences, nudges her to let her know if she has repeated something a few times. But maybe one day he will grow tired of this and put her in a home, where strangers will have to take care of her.
When Jude was born, Victor bought her a doll so that she could practice taking care of their grandson. Bathing the doll, then dressing it before bed, makes her feel calm, helps her sleep more soundly. But this, like her illness, is still a secret between her husband and her, a secret that they may not be able to keep much longer. How do you become a good mother? Jeanne wants to ask someone, anyone. Her mother refuses to have tests done and get a definitive diagnosis, and her father is fine with that.
Her father offers the first toast at the christening lunch. James hands Jeanne a champagne glass, which she has trouble balancing while holding their son. After the toast, James asks if he can get Jeanne and her mother a plate of food. Carole nods, then quickly changes her mind. Jude is looking up at her now, his baby eyes fixed on her wrinkled and weary-looking face.
Jeanne, on the other hand, feels as though a deep and sour hole were burrowing through her body, an abyss that is always demanding to be filled. Everything is always presented to her as a suggestion or a recommendation. Even there, he never loses his temper. Her mother, on the other hand, has been lashing out lately, though afterward she seems unable to remember doing it.
She has always been a quiet woman. Jeanne often wonders if her mother was happier in Haiti. She doubts it.
Jeanne has no right to be sad, her mother has often told her. Only Carole has the right to be sad, because she has seen and heard terrible things.
He is more interested than anybody Jeanne knows in the pleasure of joy, or the joy of pleasure, however you want to put it. Between fares, he sat in the parking lot at Miami International Airport, discussing Haitian politics with his cabdriver friends. Jeanne never wanted to be a housewife like her mother, but here she is now, stuck at home with her son. He naps regularly. He is just there. James decides to offer a toast of his own.
Why does he want to think of her as brave? He had nearly died, the doctor told her, because of her stubborn insistence on a natural birth. The pregnancy had also been easy.
The pain was intense, pulsating, throbbing, but bearable, even after the twenty-fifth hour. First babies can put you through the wringer, the nurses kept telling her, but the second one will be easier. She bought her daughter a corset and a few yards of white muslin, which she sewed into a bando for Jeanne to wrap around her belly. Jeanne became larger, in fact, because she refused to drink the fennel and aniseed infusions that both Carole and Grace brewed for her.
And she refused to breastfeed, which would not only have melted her extra fat but would also have made her feel less sad. When Jeanne and Paul were babies, no other woman was around to help. Her husband did the best he could. He went out and got her the leaves and made her the teas.
He gave her the baths himself. She would have felt even more lost and purposeless without them. She wanted them both to have everything they desired.
Her secret income made him admire her even more. He would happily walk around with holes in his cheap shoes. Where would the family be if Carole had stayed sad when she arrived in this country?
Sometimes you just have to shake the devil off you, whatever that devil is. As soon as she put her feet in the water, she glanced up and saw her mother watching her from the terrace.
Her mother looked bewildered, as though she had no idea where she was. Jeanne was in the middle of a phone call with James. She ended the call quickly and ran upstairs, and by the time she reached the apartment her mother was standing by the door.
She pushed the door shut, grabbed Jeanne by the shoulders, and slammed her into it. Jeanne wanted to call an ambulance, or at least her father, but she was in shock and her mother seemed fine the rest of the day. Jeanne avoided her as much as she could, let her watch a talk show she liked, and made sure that she was not left alone with Jude. The next day, her mother showed up after James had gone to work and began shouting at her in Creole.
Start living for your child. Those incidents have made Jeanne afraid both of and for her mother. She agreed to go through with the christening in the hope that it might help.
Maybe her mother was only pretending to be losing her mind in order to get her way. Sitting next to James on their living-room sofa, with Jude in her arms, Carole appears calmer than she has all week. Paul is sitting on the other side of her, and the three of them seem to be talking about Jude, or about children in general.
Jeanne wonders how her brother could fail to notice that their mother is deteriorating. Paul has never paid much attention to practical things. He spent most of their childhood reading books that even the adults they knew had never heard of, obscure novels and anthropological studies, the biographies of famous theologians and saints. He was always more concerned about the next world than he was about this one. On the eve of the 20th anniversary, the fleet of heroes who carried out the largest water evacuation in history was honored.
Water cannons were used to pay tribute to the mariners who answered the call, rescuing more than , people who were trapped in Lower Manhattan, taking them safely across the harbor. Meanwhile, the Tribute in Light will be lit again Saturday after sunset, piercing the sky until darkness turns to dawn. CBS2 Videos. Giants New York Giants. Jets New York Jets. Yanks New York Yankees. I did not receive any counseling, nor do I remember talking to family about the possibility—or necessity—of deferring school.
I struggled enormously. Within months I was on academic probation and, at the end of my fourth semester, ultimately expelled. My mother found the expulsion letter, hidden in my bedroom, and did something she had never really done before. She drew a firm, unyielding boundary, with clear expectations and consequences: I was to get back into school. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot.
I met with the Academic Dean, explained that Craig had died, and promised to be more focused. To my disbelief, he said no. He said to come back in a year if I was still serious. I spent that time working three jobs and found my resolve to return to college growing stronger by the day.
I was admitted again, assuming I kept up my end of the bargain.
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