My Rhetorical response to "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" by: Edwidge Danticat

Arturo Boykin, English 1101

  

   In the realistic fiction story,  “Between the Pool and Gardenias” (New York: Vintage 1996), author Edwidge Danticat describes an attachment between an infant child and a woman that has been desperately trying to have a child. The author portrayed the Country Maid as a woman who had lost several children to miscarriage and stated how she imagined all of her children  would look if her body could tolerate the developments of pregnancy. The author’s main purpose of this story is to give the reader a vivid view of the blinding love for a child, from a woman who is unable to conceive herself, giving the reader the sense of sympathy in order to explain the connection between the maid and the dead infant. The author’s intended audience was for women, specifically those who have difficulty having children, and women who want children.

     My assessment of this story was that it was very sad and depressing and a bit confusing at times. I felt as if the author was trying to portray a woman who had a great longing to experience motherhood.  So the way she felt and the love she had to share was so tremendous that when she finally did have a child to direct that love towards, she became so lost in her own wanting of a child so badly, that she was in denial of the child actually being alive. 

     I felt as if the story could have been a bit more descriptive and should have included more details to describe her and her husband. Throughout the whole story neither her nor his names were revealed. I also wish that the author would have given a better description of the number of miscarriages she had. I also felt that the story was a bit confusing on who her husband really was, or if it was also a part of her denial. She described on how she left her husband after all of the miscarriages by stating, “The girls who slept with my husband while I was still grieving my miscarriages. They might have sent that vision of loveliness to blind me, so that I might never find my way back to that place that I totally plucked  from my life when I got on that broken down mini-bus, and left my village two weeks ago (p.74). Then she retorted later in the story by stating, “ I was a virgin when I married him. He made me feel proper. Next thing I know, it’s ten years with him. I’m old like hell at twenty-seven and he’s got ten babies with ten different women. I just had to run.” (p. 74). She then switched subjects rapidly explaining her husband to the infant, to her dreams of the house she cleaned to being all hers, to making love to a sweaty Dominican. She went on to explain to the infant that she loved the man at one point because he was nice to her and made her feel proper, that she was a virgin when she met him, and that she was with him for ten years. (p. 74 par 8) She further explained to the infant that she pretended it was all hers, the terrace with that view of their private beach and the holiday ships cruising in the distance to the pool that the sweaty Dominican man cleaned three times a week. She  pretended that it all belonged to them, the man, Rose, and her. (p. 74, par 10). With the first reading of the story, it had me wondering if her whole life was a dream or a form of denial she put in her head to suppress all of the miscarriages that she had experienced. From the infant that she nurtured and  mothered for four days that was actually dead ,to the reason of the pool man grabbing her, and calling her “Cannibal”. She still felt as if it was all an act of love and caring by saying, “He only kept his hands on me because he was afraid I would escape. ” She said this while envisioning the dead infant crying and carrying on as if the infant were still alive. (p 76) She also went on to state, “We made a pretty picture standing there. Rose, me, and him. Between the pool and gardenias, waiting on the law.” (p 76) The story in a whole was decent, but became confusing and leaves the reader with some foreign language, interpretations, and expressions that the average person or a person of  non-Haitian decent wouldn’t understand. Such conversations include, “I go already. I call the poste on you. The gendermes. The police. They coming.” (p 76) and also, “She’s probably  a mambo.” (p 74) I felt as if the author needed to explain the character better, to give a better understanding of her views and mental state of mind. The short story was appropriate for the intended subject of the author but lacked the necessary clarity and comprehension needed in order to make this a smooth read.