“If you ever have a child of your own,” my father’s wife said, “at least you can tell your child that you saw your father, even like this.” 

How would I describe this to my own child if I ever had one? How would I tell it to my mother, who thought that nothing having to do with my father was in the present, that everything involving him was in the past, in the old days?

• Danticat p. 15

I find Danticat’s use of time as a means of connection and severance particularly interesting. In some instances, time connects the past with the present. Nadia’s father returns to Haiti to help rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, while her mother decides to stay in the United States. Nadia’s arrival in Miami was just a bit too late for her to reach her father in time, preventing her from reconnecting with her Haitian heritage. Her student criticizes Camus’ disregard for lifespan. Her father feels it was “too late” to reach out to Nadia by the time he learned of her existence (by which time she was a teenager). And most notably, Nadia reconnects with her Haitian heritage (the old days) when participating in a funeral ceremony. 

While the atmosphere throughout the story is quite gloomy, Danticat’s use of time seems to impart a hopeful and celebratory theme. Even though we never speak with Nadia’s father, and even though his existence can only be verified by those who have met him, there’s a sense of immortalization from passing down Haitian traditions. Nadia doesn’t need to describe her father to her future child, but needs only pass down the Haitian heritage he worked so hard to preserve. Tradition is something that seems to transcend time and distance, connecting people around the world and across eras. It is in this manner that the deaths of people before us become forever immortalized in our hearts and minds, which quite frankly, is best symbolized by the final two paragraphs of the story: Nina Simone’s sorrow-filled voice slowly transitioning to a joyous and upbeat rhythm–carrying the nobility of a king and the strength of an entire village.