PREDICATE 3 (2013)
TIME AND MEMORY
laughed and slapped the little boy’s bottom, which made him stop his spasms. Then he explained, my father, that sometimes In the first year, babies remembered their births with their bodies and had to repeat it many times before they could forget. When they did this, you were to help them recollect the whole thing, especially their coming out, by tapping them on the bottom as had been done to them after their birth. (258) Although this novel certainly offers the promise of healing through narrative, Danticat’s work shows that the cost of healing through the witness of narrative should not be lightly dismissed. With each new telling the victim, like the baby in Amabelle’s story, (re)experiences the violence that has gone before, and travels again the passage from their old life to the new. However, unlike the baby who physically remembers the process of birth, victims of trauma mentally relive their experiences each time they share their suffering. In the passage quoted above, Danticat suggests that not all death ends with the annihilation of spirit and body. Instead, the profound violation of self, caused by trauma, is another type of “death.” Amabelle’s journey is one of death and rebirth as she shares her story with those will listen; however, her struggle to witness her own trauma demonstrates that promise of narrative may always be, in some ways, a false promise. Soon after Amabelle and her fellow refugee Yves return to Haiti, Yves’ mother tells Amabelle, “‘I know your story.’” Amabelle wonders, “which story of mine did she know? Which story was she told?” (227). At this point in the narrative, Amabelle has only been in Haiti for a brief time, unaware of the narrative of events sweeping through the capital and the version of her suffering that Yves shared with his mother. Yves’ mother denies Amabelle the healing of narrative when she appropriates Amabelle’s narrative, casting her into the passive role. Amabelle has been “witnessed,” her subjectivity violated as she becomes interpolated as a figure to be acted upon, a reiteration of the violence she has already
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