The Dew Breaker

This first story introduces the dew breaker, his wife, and his daughter Ka. The part is narrated in the first person, through Ka’s perspective. Ka has traveled to Miami, Florida, with her father. Ka is a sculptor and has been invited to Miami to sell a sculpture to Gabrielle Fonteneau, a Haitian American television star who collects art. Ka is well aware that while her sculpture might be quite good, Fonteneau was persuaded to buy the sculpture by a mutual Haitian American friend. Nonetheless, Fonteneau remarks that the sculpture, titled Father, reminds her of her own father.

Unfortunately for Ka, she wakes up on the morning of her visit to Fonteneau to find that her father is missing from their hotel, along with the sculpture. Panicked, she calls the police. While waiting for her father, Ka briefly describes the sculpture: It is made of a piece of mahogany with many superficial cracks, which Ka left in the final product because they represent scars.

Eventually Ka’s father returns, but without the sculpture. He takes her to a lake where he threw the sculpture into the water. Once there, he begins a discussion about her name. According to the Egyptians, “A ka is the double of the body […] the body’s companion through life and after life. It guides the body through the kingdom of the dead” (17). For Ka’s father, this means she is also his “good angel” (or ti bon anj in Creole). He explains that her sculpture prompted in him a desire to die and be buried alongside it, taking it to the afterlife with him like an ancient Egyptian.

Ka wonders if this bizarre explanation means her father is dying, but he reveals that he feels unworthy of her artistic offering to him. He insists that he is like one of the statues in the ancient Egyptian exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, where he took Ka as a child—in other words, he is part of the past. Specifically, Ka’s father reveals that he is not the victim of the oppressive Haitian regime that dominated the island during his life there. In fact, he was a cog in the machine of this regime. Ka’s father explains he “was the hunter, he was not the prey” (20). Ka wonders if his explanation will reveal why her father and mother live in such isolation from other Haitians in America, why they have never taken her back to Haiti, why they never speak of its past, and why her mother is so devoted to religion.

Ka’s father’s revelation does indeed help answer these questions. He was never imprisoned in Haiti, as he previously told her, but was a torturer. The large, ugly scar on his face was inflicted by one of his prisoners and that, as revenge, he shot and killed this prisoner. He informed Ka’s mother of these facts, but only after Ka was born.

This ends the talk, and they return to the hotel. Ka calls her mother and goes over the revelation with her. Ka’s mother says her father wanted to confess for a long time. She also tells Ka that she believes she and Ka were the reasons why Ka’s father stopped committing evil acts; they offered him the chance of redemption.

Despite her shock and the loss of her sculpture, Ka and her father drive from the hotel to meet with Gabrielle Fonteneau. Fonteneau’s parents are at her house, and when her father asks Ka’s father what province in Haiti he is from, he lies. Ka has noticed this habit of naming different home provinces before, but she previously thought that this was because he had lived many different places. Ka is also affected by the Fonteneaus’ explanation that they return to Haiti every year to maintain contact with their home country, while Ka has never been there and her father and mother have not returned in 37 years.

When Gabrielle discovers that Ka’s father destroyed the work of art, she abruptly terminates the meeting. Ka is crestfallen, of course, but she is more concerned with her father’s confession than the loss of her sculpture. On their way out, Ka sees her father self-consciously rubbing his facial scar. She wonders if his last victim, who gave him the scar, imagined the future encounters with strangers Ka’s father would have, in which he would be hyper aware of the scar and compelled to lie about its origin. Gabrielle’s father gives Ka’s father a bag of lemongrass from their garden, which Ka’s father says he will take home to her mother to use for tea.

As the story closes, Ka considers that to her father, moving to a strange country might very well have been quite welcome. She realizes that his interest in ancient Egyptians has to do with an interest in how they created indelible markers of the past. At the same time, he hopes to live free of such markers and to remain unknown to the world as he truly is. She even considers that she and her mother serve as masks that prevent him from having to confront himself.