i
- Ma Kilman's niece, Christine, is coming to visit from the country. And guess what? The narrator compares her to "a new Helen." Uh-oh…
- The talk turns to her uncle, Statics, the politician of old who went to Florida to become a migrant worker.
- Ma Kilman tells Seven Seas that she had a letter from Statics once—he met a Cherokee woman and sent a picture of her to his wife, so that she could say she knew a "real Indian." Yikes.
- But poor Statics's luck doesn't hold, and the Cherokee's real Indian boyfriend nearly chokes him to death. Statics decides that he should dedicate himself to money instead of women.
ii
- While they are talking, Helen comes in to buy margarine.
- After she leaves, Ma Kilman says that Achille wants to give her child an African name, but Helen wants no part of it.
- Philoctete will be the godfather.
- Ma Kilman and Seven Seas discuss Philoctete's good health and yam garden.
- Plunkett becomes part of the conversation: He promised Seven Seas a pig at Christmas, and Seven Seas says that Plunkett, too, will heal in time.
- Ma affirms that they all will.
- A sea-swift flies from the windowsill.
iii
- The narrator says that he's used the sea-swift to divide his book, just as he's divided the world in half (longitudinally) for his poetry.
- The swift, we're told, stitches up the two halves of this world, bringing the islands and Africa closer together, and healing the souls of its people.