Colour of Dawn Read Free Page B

her lower arms to warm up her blood.
    The sky is pink-hued mother-of-pearl, but the night’s mood still freezes us to our bones.
    Sitting at Mother’s feet, I drink my coffee in silence. I think of Fignolé.Where could he possibly have spent the night? Why did he hide that gun behind the cupboard? Why? I think of Luckson. Of the jeans I’ll put on this morning. I study my toe nails, my fingernails. My nail varnish, salmon-coloured, is beginning to flake off.

FIVE
    I begin my shift at seven o’clock as usual. On arrival, I carry out the same routine tasks, to distance myself from the pain that I always see in the sick who line both sides of the large communal ward as I walk down it.
    Gabriel had trouble waking this morning and going over his lessons for school. No doubt there were other images playing out behind his eyelids.There was nothing to be done about it; my fear that night must have crept in between the folds and furrows of his sleep. However, when he woke I was ruthless with the whip. God knows why! A malicious spirit took pleasure in whispering like burning coals: ‘The whip never did any harm to a little Negro boy or girl. The whip never did any harm…’ And I hit him. And I hit her… ‘Fignolé can say whatever grand words he likes about suffering and injustice, but Ti Louze should consider herself lucky that we’ve taken her away from her peasant life.’ And I hit, and I hit. ‘A life where she would be dead by now from eating roots and drinking the stagnant water of the ponds.’ I hit them until my arm ached, until I was exhausted.
    Now I regret using the whip. I regret that I can’t undo what I did. This violence was all I had to distance myself as far as I could from my fear. This violence that leaves me with the taste of mud and ash in my mouth. Because of the whip Gabriel appeared not to recognise me – me, his mother – when I made him kiss me as he left the house. It was not until he disappeared at the end of the road that I could resign myself to taking my eyes off him.
    Gabriel devours me in silence and he doesn’t know it. No-one knows. Gabriel was the beginning of my sleepless nights, my desolate mornings. Gabriel was the beginning of my solitude. A child is the beginning of solitude for all women… But enough of these grand sentiments. This is the turning-point where I, Angélique Méracin, await Joyeuse, my sister Joyeuse, so free, so free…
    Walking down the road, I greeted neighbours as I passed: ‘Hello, Madame Jacques, Maître Fortuné. Hello Boss Dieuseul, Willio. Hello Wiston, Jean-Baptiste, Altodir, Théolène, all of you.’
    Madame Jacques’ shop stocks everything we could want in this every-man-for-himself neighbourhood: sugar, which she pours into little paper bags, needles and thread, Palma Christi oil and honey that leave the shelves sticky, antibiotics, products for straightening the hair, lightening the skin, school notebooks and rice, supplied by food for the poor but sold to us by Madame Jacques. Just like she makes us pay for the telephone calls we receive or make on the filthy, malodorous receiver on her counter. Madame Jacques keeps notes beneath her voluminous bosom and impassively deals out strong words to recalcitrant customers, surrounded by the sticky flight of the flies.
    Jean-Baptiste was wearing a jacket too narrow for his broad shoulders. He has had a job for a while at the Customs office. He is blessed with luck – the men of the Prophet-President, boss of the Démunis party, don’t employ but recruit. Jean-Baptiste imposes the same regime on this collection of houses, like a boss. On Théolène, Altodir and Louidon who, sitting on this pavement, watch the passers-by from sunrise to sunset, picking their teeth, scratching their ears, whistling at girls and laughing as they rub their knees. Slapping their thighs. Opening and closing their legs. Boss