Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak!

(Extract)

[1]She was very pretty. Bright shiny hair and dark brown skin like mahogany cocoa. Her lips were wide and purple, like those African dolls you see in tourist store windows, but could never afford to buy.

[2]I thought she was a gift from Heaven when I saw her on the dusty curb, wrapped in a small pink blanket, a few inches from a sewer as open as a hungry child’s yawn. She was like Baby Moses in the Bible stories they read to us at the Baptist Literary Class. Or Baby Jesus, who was born in a barn and died on a cross, with nobody’s lips to kiss before he went. She was just like that. Her still round face. Her eyes closed as though she was dreaming of a far other place.

[3]Her hands were bony, and there were veins so close to the surface that it looked like you could rupture her skin if you touched her too hard. She probably belonged to someone, but the street had no one in it. There was no one there to claim her.

[4]At first I was afraid to touch her. Lest I might disturb the early-morning sun rays, streaming across her forehead. She might have been some kind of wanga, a charm sent to trap me. My enemies were many and crafty. The girls who slept with my husband while I was still grieving over my miscarriages. They might have sent that vision of loveliness to blind me so that I would never find my way back to the place that I yanked out my head when I got on that broken down minibus and left my village months ago.