Breath, Eyes, Memory

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of rape, sexual abuse, self-harm, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and suicide.

A couple days before Mother’s Day, Sophie Caco returns home from school carrying a Mother’s Day card with a daffodil inside. She plans to give it to her aunt (Tante) Atie as she does every year. Sophie thinks of her aunt as her mother, since her birth mother has lived in New York since Sophie was a baby. However, Atie refuses the card, telling her that she needs to give it to her mother this year. When Atie will not even look at the card or hear its words, Sophie angrily removes the daffodil and crushes it into the earth. Sophie reflects on how Atie must feel sad around Mother’s Day, as she has no children of her own.

When Sophie’s aunt asks her how school was, Sophie says that she enjoys it all except for reading class. During reading, all the children’s parents come in to read except for Sophie’s. Sophie does not understand why Tante Atie doesn’t come, and Atie explains that she is old now, and her time for school has passed. She spent all of her childhood working in the sugar cane fields where she saw people die regularly from sunstroke—including Sophie’s grandfather.