Breath, Eyes, Memory: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

As Sophie Caco walks home from school one Friday, she admires the Mother’s Day card she has made for her Tante Atie. It is small and made of cardboard, but Sophie has dangled a flattened dry daffodil from its edge. As Sophie approaches the house, she puts the card into her pocket and greets Tante Atie, who is embroidering on the porch of their home. When Tante Atie asks Sophie how school was, Sophie says she wishes Tante Atie would come to the reading classes the school hosts for parents. Tante Atie insists she doesn’t want to learn how to read—“The young,” she says, “should learn from the old.”

Once, Tante Atie says, she wanted to go to school, she says, but that time has passed—all that is important now, she believes, is that Sophie doesn’t have to work in the sugar cane fields, where Tante Atie and Sophie’s mother, Martine, and Tante Atie “practically lived when they were children.” Sophie thinks of the horrible stories about the fields Tante Atie has told her over the years—including the one about how Sophie’s grandfather died of heatstroke in the middle of a workday.

Sophie and Tante Atie spot the albino lottery man, Chabin, coming up the road. He asks the two of them if they’re planning on playing. Though Tante Atie plays the lottery every week, she never wins—nonetheless, she pays Chabin to play the number 31—Martine’s age—twice.

After Chabin walks away, Sophie watches a group of children across the street playing in a pile of leaves in the yard of Madame and Monsieur Augustin’s house. Tante Atie scoffs at the children, stating that they should be raking the leaves instead in order to make their mothers proud—especially with Mother’s Day just around the corner, on Sunday. Sophie asks if the upcoming holiday makes Tante Atie sad—Tante Atie replies only that Sophie is “wise beyond [her] years, just like [her] mother.”

Sophie, who has been planning on sneaking the card for Tante Atie under her pillow, instead pulls the card from her pocket and gives it to her aunt. Tante Atie doesn’t look inside the card, insisting that Sophie must send it to Martine. Sophie, however, only knows her mother from a picture that sits on top of the night table on Tante Atie’s side of the bed. Dismayed to find that Tante Atie doesn’t want the card, Sophie tears the daffodil off of it and puts it into her pocket. While Tante Atie goes inside to prepare a dessert for a potluck that evening, Sophie sits on the porch and sulks, watching the children across the street playing with leaves and daffodils. 

That night, on the way to the potluck, Sophie apologizes for upsetting Tante Atie with the card. Tante Atie replies that Sophie has never upset her—which is why “this whole thing is going to be so hard.” Sophie asks Tante Atie what she means, but Tante Atie will not respond. Together, they head to the potluck at the Augustins’ house across the street. 

As Madame Augustin passes out tea to her guests, she asks Tante Atie how Martine is doing, and remarks that she saw Tante Atie receive a big package in the mail the other day. Madame Augustin asks if the package was a gift for Sophie, but observes that it was just Sophie’s 12th birthday two months ago. Sophie becomes suspicious, curious why Tante Atie wouldn’t have shown her a big package. Usually, all that Martine sends from New York are cassette tapes, which Sophie and Tante Atie listen to together. Madame Augustin continues prying, asking if perhaps Tante Atie is preparing for a journey to New York. Tante Atie insists she isn’t leaving.

At last, Madame Augustin says she has already gotten “good information” that Tante Atie received a plane ticket in the mail. Another neighbor asks if Martine has sent for Sophie. Madame Augustin congratulates Sophie, telling her that going to New York will be “the best thing that is ever going to happen” in her life. Sophie sulks for the remainder of the party. After everyone else has left, Monsieur Augustin, Sophie’s teacher, walks her and Tante Atie home. At their door, Monsieur Augustin squeezes Tante Atie’s hand and kisses her cheek, congratulating her on the good news and reminding her that “a child belongs with her mother.”

As Monsieur Augustin returns home, Tante Atie watches closely through their lit windows as Monsieur and Madame Augustin undress and ready for bed, laughing and talking as they do. Tante Atie begins crying, then turns and ushers Sophie inside their own home. Inside, Tante Atie tries to apologize to the furious Sophie, explaining that Martine arranged the plane ticket through backchannels with no prior notice. Tante Atie urges Sophie to be excited about going to New York—even though she herself is sobbing. After the two of them climb into their shared bed and Tante Atie cries herself to sleep, Sophie sneaks the Mother’s Day card from her clothes and tucks it under Tante Atie’s pillow.