42 pages • 1 hour read
Edwidge DanticatA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Amabelle repeats Sebastien’s name over and over again, invoking his memory. She imagines him caring for her beneath the waterfall where they first made love.
Amabelle crosses secretly back over the border and into the Dominican Republic, paying someone to hide her in their Jeep. When she gets back to the Dominican Republic, she barely recognizes the place she once lived. After going to several incorrect addresses, she finds the place where Señora Valencia now lives. After some trouble being let in, she enters a beautiful, polished home filled with pictures of Rosalinda growing up. At first, Señora Valencia does not recognize Amabelle, saying that she was told by many that Amabelle was dead. Amabelle reveals enough intimate details about herself to convince her, and Señora Valencia then explains that she hid several Haitians during the massacre, always wishing they could have been Amabelle. They discuss Señor Pico’s role in the massacre, which Señora Valencia writes off as him simply doing his duty. Señora Valencia then helps Amabelle find a nearby waterfall, but it’s never made clear if this is the waterfall she went to with Sebastien. Amabelle then tells Señora Valencia she has to leave. Señora Valencia begs her to stay the night or come back but Amabelle will promise neither. On the way back, the driver tries to strike up conversation with Amabelle but she just wants him to let her out at the river. She takes off her clothes and climbs in; the only witness to this act is a man who has been deemed mentally insane.
The last two chapters consist of Amabelle trying to find closure. She looks everywhere in her past for answers: in her memories of her parents, in her memories of Sebastien, in Señora Valencia’s home, at (perhaps) the waterfall where she made love to Sebastien, and while she does get some new information—such as Sebastien most likely would not have been killed if she had not asked him to go with her, as well as that that Señora Valencia and Señor Pico have grown very far apart—she does not find what she is looking for. Reminded by Señora Valencia that she always loved the water as a child, Amabelle goes to one more place from her past looking for answers: the river that killed her parents. Danticat ends Amabelle’s journey on an ambiguous note, with the character “looking for the dawn” (310).
By Edwidge Danticat