Brother, I'm Dying

In Chapter 7, Danticat recounts the story of Marie Micheline, Uncle Joseph’s adopted daughter, a lovely young woman whom Edwidge and her cousin Liline idolize. Through a parallel with Tante Denise (both Denise and Marie became pregnant while unmarried), the author indicates that in a broken-down society where men and women rarely grow up to understand their own individual value as people, such stories are not rare. The significant difference is that Denise was in love with Joseph and they welcomed their son, Maxo, whereas the father of Marie’s child, from the neighboring Pradel family, refuses to acknowledge the child or their affair. This situation forces Marie to marry a dangerous and deranged man, a member of the paramilitary organization, who manages to separate her from her family and almost kills her in the process. Again, in a chaotic society, this is not rare; it is only Joseph’s determination to retrieve Marie and her daughter that saves Marie’s life. The episode further exemplifies Uncle Joseph’s strength of character and his impeccable morals combined with human kindness.

Edwidge sees her parents again when she is seven years old—“some strange figures” (76), she recalls in Chapter 8. She has trouble connecting with her father, who has “mostly been a feeling for me, powerful yet vague, without a real face, a real body” (76), a “happy” man whom she barely remembers. Danticat utilizes the epithet happy to emphasize the difference between her father, who has been living in the US, and the men Edwidge is used to seeing in Haiti. Indeed, even though her father struggles in the US and works various jobs, always on the brink of poverty, he is living in a peaceful, well-organized country, with his wife and two new children.

While Danticat makes it clear that her father is “an actor playing the part of someone who wished he wasn’t a factory worker or a taxi driver” (80), when he calls New York “a place where only the brave survive” (81), she is still aware of the fact that his life in the US is much more serene. This life is worlds away from Edwidge’s experiences as a child in Haiti, or even her uncle’s life as an adult. In contrast, Edwidge’s brother, Bob, reacts emotionally towards their mother, even though he was only two years old when she left, and Danticat records the strange difference in reaction: “whatever was drawing him to her —yearning, pain, curiosity—was keeping me away from him” (77).

In Chapter 9, the author emphasizes the turmoil in 11-year-old Edwidge as she prepares to leave Haiti for the US. The suspicion of tuberculosis that keeps the children in the country for six more months almost seems like a reprieve, as Edwidge feels that in leaving Uncle Joseph and Tante Denise she will be abandoning her real parents for a family she has “never really been part of” (93). Danticat juxtaposes the children’s visit to the hospital to the early scene of her father’s visit to the doctor. The “small windowless waiting room” reminds us of the drab and depressing waiting room in New York (86), indicating that for the patient every waiting room in every hospital is the same, colored as it is by the fear of illness and risk of disease.

The day of departure from Haiti is a traumatic event for Edwidge and her uncle. The author complicates the scene by offering three different accounts of her behavior, which three “middle-aged Haitian flight attendants” have shared with her (96), each claiming to be the one to have met Edwidge and her brother at the airport. The three scenarios are vastly different: “Their faulty recollections have wiped out whatever certainty I’ve had, if ever, about that day” (96). This statement indicates the fragile nature of memory and shows how we tend to infuse our recollections with emotional context acquired over time.

Chapter 10 describes Edwidge’s first impression of life in New York. The way she mistakes the fire escape for a balcony presents a vignette of her foreign way of thinking, influenced by the warm climate and casual freedom of movement in Haiti. Furthermore, the concept of the fire escape is something Edwidge does not grasp because she has never lived in a tenement building, and especially not as high as the sixth floor. She feels confused and is overwhelmed with the newness of everything, especially her family and her two younger brothers. When Karl, her youngest brother, rushes to hug her, she finds this a little troubling: Hugs were never “really part of my daily interactions even with the people I loved most, but I let my hands fall on his shoulders and stroked his back” (101). As the oldest child, she finds it harder to adapt—her brother Bob has the advantage of being at a younger, more impressionable age and the fact that their two siblings are also boys, with whom he can easily bond—but Karl’s hug warms her because "it “felt like love” (101).

Used to the hand-me-down nature of everyday things in Haiti, Edwidge marvels at her new bed and the new, scented sheets. The author uses these details to contrast the way of life in riot-torn, poverty-stricken Haiti and the American way, which offers a degree of dignity even to the poorest of the working class. Her father presenting her with a typewriter indicates her future vocation and gives meaning to Edwidge’s new life in the US. Still, after typing a letter to Uncle Joseph and not receiving a reply, she wonders fearfully, “Were Bob and I no longer special to him?” (107). Soon, however, her real father will begin to assume his rightful place in Edwidge’s affections, although she will forever remain closely connected to her uncle.