Why Are the Characters Arguing?
[Sophie, the narrator, is talking with Tante Atie.
The first line is spoken by Tante Atie.]
"Do you know why I always wished I could read?" Her teary eyes gazed directly into mine. "I don’t know why." I tried to answer as politely as I could. "It was always my dream to read," she said, "so I could read that old Bible under my pillow and find the answers to everything right there between those pages. What do you think that old Bible would have us do right now, about this moment?" "I don’t know," I said.
"How can you not know?" she asked. "You try to tell me there is all wisdom in reading but at a time like this you disappoint me." "You lied!" I shouted. She grabbed both my ears and twisted them until they burned. I stomped my feet and walked away. As I rushed to bed, I began to take off my clothes so quickly that I almost tore them off my body. The smell of lemon perfume stung my nose as I pulled the sheet over my head. "I did not lie," she said, "I kept a secret, which is different. I wanted to tell you. I needed time to reconcile myself, to accept it. It was very sudden, just a cassette from Martine saying, I want my daughter, and then as fast as you can put two fingers together to snap, she sends me a plane ticket with a date on it. I am not even certain that she is doing this properly. Alls he tells me is that she arranged it with a woman who works on the airplane."
"Was I ever going to know?" I asked. "I was going to put you to sleep, put you in a suitcase, and send you to her. One day you would wake up there and you would feel like your whole life here with me was a dream." She tried to force out a laugh, but it didn’t make it past her throat.
Edwidge Danticat, from Breath, Eyes, Memory (1998)
Why is the narrator so upset?
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