Breath, Eyes, Memory: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

When the plane touches down in New York, the flight attendant shakes Sophie and the boy next to her awake, then leads them off the plane and into the airport to collect their luggage. She brings them through some glass doors, where lots of people are waiting with balloons and flowers for their loved ones. A woman rushes forward, crying, and embraces the little boy, sobbing about how “they’ve killed [her] brother.” Martine approaches and scoops Sophie up in her arms. She sets Sophie down and hands the flight attendant some money, thanking her for bringing Sophie to New York. Though Sophie tries to wave goodbye to the attendant, she has already turned her back on them.

Martine is overjoyed to see Sophie. She can’t stop looking at her or touching her, and begs Sophie to speak just so she can hear her voice. Sophie, however, is cold, tired, and nearly-catatonic. Martine tells Sophie that they’re going to head home, where Sophie can sleep. After helping Sophie into her peeling, dented old car and waiting for the engine to warm up for several minutes, Martine begins driving the two of them towards home.

During the long car ride, Martine asks Sophie questions about life in Haiti and about Tante Atie. She asks if Tante Atie ever went to night school, like she once said she wanted to, but Sophie says she never went. Martine laments that as girls, she and Tante Atie used to imagine themselves growing up to become the first female doctors from their whole village. As Martine pulls off the highway and into a dingy Brooklyn neighborhood where boys are throwing bottles at one another in the street, Sophie becomes apprehensive, but continues answering her mother’s questions about Croix-des-Rosets. She listens while her mother explains that once, Tante Atie was betrothed to Monsieur Augustin, until the “fickle” man left her for another woman.

As Martine and Sophie enter Martine’s graffiti-covered apartment building, they step over a homeless man. In spite of the bleak surroundings, Martine is cheerful and continues talking to Sophie about how Sophie is going to work hard in America and make something of herself. If she can do so, Martine says, the entire family will have succeeded—Sophie can be the one to “raise [their] heads.”

Inside the apartment, decorated mostly in bright-red hues, Sophie looks through Martine’s nursing books while Martine readies Sophie’s room. When Martine comes back out, she is holding a large doll, and tells Sophie that the two of them will show Sophie to her room. The room is wallpapered in blue, and there are water stains on the ceiling. Nevertheless, when Martine asks Sophie if she likes the room, she says she does. Martine plays with the doll’s hair, and explains the doll has been a “friend” to Martine in Sophie’s absence—but now that Sophie is here, she doesn’t need it anymore.

Martine draws Sophie close and explains that Sophie will never be alone—Martine is always just a few feet away now, and will sleep in the living room while Sophie takes the bedroom. She asks if Sophie wants to eat, talk, or play, but Sophie says she simply wants to go to bed. Martine starts unbuttoning Sophie’s dress, but Sophie insists on doing it herself. Martine sees the Mother’s Day card poking out of Sophie’s dress and takes it. She reads the poem inside and asks if it’s for her—Sophie replies that Tante Atie told her to give to Martine. Martine says she once loved daffodils as a girl, but hasn’t seen any in New York. Sophie says there are still plenty of daffodils back in Haiti.

Sophie has trouble falling asleep. In the middle of the night, she hears her mother screaming “as though someone [is] trying to kill her.” Sophie runs into the living room to find her mother thrashing alone on the sheets of the sofa bed, clearly in the middle of a night terror. Sophie shakes her mother awake, and Martine explains that sometimes she has “horrible visions” in her sleep. Sophie climbs into bed with Martine and comforts her until she falls asleep. Once Martine is asleep again, Sophie gets out of bed to go to the bathroom. In the mirror, she hardly recognizes her own face, which seems to have changed and aged in just one day.