“The man is here and I does need you to behave.”
“Behave” is what men said to girls whose “spoiled” begins to embarrass them.
“I’m not—”
“You t’ink I ent know you does have feelings for Señor Rampley?”
They were so ugly, those words. Like a pus-filled boil, unsightly, festering, and Rosa felt angry with Papá for pelting her with them, especially now that every good memory seemed to be overshadowed by a cutting grief.
“You must get out from between he and Eve, and this is the only way.” Papá sighed, believing, it seemed, that his coming words would hurt him more than Rosa: “Señor Rampley will never have you. You cannot win against Eve.”
Rosa now knew this to be true. For Papá had been the window through which she had seen herself. “I never thought I could,” she whispered, though when she’d kissed Señor Rampley there had been a moment when she believed she could make him love her.
Papá drew a circle in the dirt. Fat-Gyal-Hen came to inspect it for supper crumbs. “The man s-sitting on that verandah is decent and he’s willing to take a chance on you. You’d be foolish not to accept his offer.”
Papá reached for her hand, and she remembered how Mamá had tended to that very hand after his shop and thumb had been snatched away. Rosa took her hand from his. She did not wish to feel pity for Papá when she wished to feel it only for herself.
Papá called Jeremias from the back room to join them for lunch. Jeremias appeared uneven now. Shoulders narrower than his belly, hair wider than his face. When Jeremias sat, he pulled François next to him. It seemed none of them would ever again consider the boy’s face without questioning the paternity of its features.
“We are so woefully unprepared, Mr. Benoit.” Eve took her seat next to Papá and across from Señor Rampley. She looked to Señor Rampley and smiled, and Rosa was surprised by the warmth between them.
Lamec and Papá took up their spoons first. Lamec winked at Rosa before taking his first bite, and as lunch became supper, it seemed Lamec had always been there.
“The English ent bargain for our kind,” Lamec told Papá.
Lamec told them of the special tax levied against free Negroes and coloreds for dances and public entertainment and how the coloreds were beginning to demand better. “The French can have their masquerade parties until the middle of the next morning, but not us? The English are used to controlling their coloreds. That’s the problem. We does have to be off the streets by nine t’irty, and they insult us with that bell they does ring, t’reatening to t’row us into their new prison on Frederick Street if we ent disperse quickly enough.”
Lamec was bold with his words in the way Jeremias had been before life had carved the insides out of him.
“And they findin’ new ways to take our land,” Lamec added. “Lies and trickery, so they can plant more cane and send the money to their bruddas and faddas in England.” Lamec wiped his face with a handkerchief. “But with each day, I plantin’ more of my own rows. And makin’ a decent living, whippin’ me own back and nobody else’s. We have to compete. And maybe eventually we will get them to leave this island.”
Señor Rampley cleared his throat. Rosa was surprised to see him eager to join the conversation. “The Chippewas got a way of makin’ sugar from maple trees. Finer and sweeter than your cane. Strange to me that the English would come all the way down here when all the Indians prolly want is buyers,” he said.
Lamec cocked his head. He could have been more polite, but no one could insist upon it. “So you sayin’ that if the English would simply buy sugar from the same Indians being run off their land by Englishmen posing as Americans, that they would just up and leave the West Indies? Is that what you t’ink?” Lamec pointed at Señor Rampley, then looked to Papá and said, “I see your guest is a real court jester.”
Papá looked embarrassed for Señor Rampley, then said something about Señor Rampley not yet understanding the ways of Englishmen, not yet understanding the critical importance of West Indian cane to Europe’s thriving economy. Rosa wondered, if she’d married Lamec long ago, if things might’ve been better for the Rendón family. If a marriage to Lamec might have saved them all from the grief stuck in their bellies like slick, hard zaboca pits.
“I grow what I need here,” Papá said proudly. “But I have more land I could farm.”
Lamec had energized Papá in a way Rosa hadn’t seen in some time, and she now understood that Papá had long ago seen himself in the young man.
“Yes, but you must be careful, eh. It’s all the land around St. Joseph they lookin’ to have first. And this is a choice piece a property. They’ll triple your taxes and tell you you does have only days to pay it. This is what they doin’ to us now.”
Papá said nothing to this.
“Well, this is why Papá will sign over everyt’ing to Señor Rampley after we are married,” Eve said.
Jeremias looked up from his plate then. He told François to go outside. When the boy said he’d rather not, Jeremias told him that Jesus would reward him if he did. The six of them watched the boy walk onto the verandah to look out at the road, as if hope had business there.
“Since when?” Jeremias said. “No one told me about this.”
Jeremias turned to Señor Rampley, but Lamec, not at all interested in the family rift, spoke then to Rosa. “I hear you’re quite good with horses.”
Rosa caught sight of Papá, who nodded, encouraging her to say more. “Yes, other than cooking, it is my favorite thing to do,” she said.
They laughed. And it was as if the bottled sorrow had been let out for a brief whiff of air.
“What kinda horses you does have?” Lamec said.
Rosa remembered what Papá had said. She had to make do. That there were no families without small sufferings. “My favorite is Martinique. She has Andalusian blood, round hips, good bones. She’s lovely.”
“You’ll take me to see her?”
Señor Rampley stood, his napkin still wedged between his thighs. “I’m going out now. I’m happy to show you.”
“No, you sit here with us, Señor Rampley,” Papá said. “I’d like you to c-catch up Jeremias on some t’ings.”
CREADON RAMPLEY
Isle of Trinidad
1815
“Are you well?” Eve looked me over like I was gonna topple.
“Just got up too quick.” I sat back down but what I really wanted was to run. Run, cause I could feel the beginnin of the end and I aint knowed if the end in that place was gonna be as cruel as all the other ends I come to.
The mornin they set her nephew into the ground, Rosa wasnt Rosa no more. If you coulda seent her face when she told Demas and her brother that she found em out in the fields. She told em she thought Pierre had prolly tried to stop his mother from hurtin herself and that Francine musta killed him first then tied the lil one to a tree so he wouldnt run off and die alone. The boy François told a different story, but Rosa told everyone that the shock of losin his brother and mother had confused him. If you coulda seent how that brother of hers ran to the wagon to find his wife and boy dead. How he tried to strangle the life outta Rosa. Them big hands on her skinny neck. How she just stood there, takin it til me and Demas pulled him off.
Somethin changed in Rosa. Whatever that somethin was chewed all her goddamn flesh from the inside. Demas knew she was different and still he sent that new Rosa out to the stable with that Lamec fella. But I guess I couldnt expect no different since Demas wasnt right no more neither. You see, the man I knowed Demas to be wouldnt have just gone to get his boy after learnin what went on between Francine and DeGannes. He woulda marched next door and had a word or two with DeGannes. A word about what DeGannes had done to his boy. But instead, Demas sat chewin on his back teeth, and when I asked him why, he took me out to the cacao field, kicked some loose soil around, and pulled out a pair of iron manacles, puttin em to my face, angry like I asked to see his soul.
“I made tho
usands of these over the years,” he said. “DeGannes told me they were for p-prisoners, that they were building prisons all across the Americas, that criminals needed to be restrained. And Monsieur DeGannes made arrangements for the shippin and he got me buyers for all kindsa tings I was makin.” Demas throwed down the manacles. “All I had to do was heat and hammer. I never asked why a ting so simple wasnt gettin made in a big big shop in Liverpool, why it had to be so so secret, why it was me, in the m-middle of nowhere, supplying manacles. It was easy work. Too easy. It put me on all this land, built me a fine fine house, kept me a good good woman, and my ch-chilren were all right. And then Grayson come here questionin my conscience? My conscience? What reason, I wonderin, does he have to question my conscience til I come to see that maybe them blasted chains wasnt for no prisoners. Maybe all along they was for Africans,” he said. “Africans just like me.”
Demas didnt have to say much more. I knowed the truth was somewhere tween what he knew was wrong and what he said was right. And as I watched that Lamec fella walk round the side of the house with Rosa alongside him, I knew he wouldnt know the truth of her either, cause she couldnt—none of us could—be quite who we was no more.
XIII
Isle of Trinidad
1
1815
The morning after Lamec’s visit, Rosa stashed dry goods inside the well hole that Señor Rampley and Papá had begun digging before Papá fell ill. In Port of Spain, Rosa inquired about the charge for one passenger on seaworthy ships, as well as their routes and capacity. She learned that in the coming two weeks ships would be sailing to Martinique, Guadeloupe, and even Campeche, Mexico, where supporters of King Fernando intended to send supplies and horses to fight against the guerrillas. In the late afternoon, when the sun sat high and virile, Rosa went to the cacao fields where Papá hid the family’s money to see if there would be enough, and she uncovered enough for her passage, just enough for her to begin again.
Before Rosa had made it back to the house, Jeremias came up behind her, quiet and amber-eyed. She remembered then the night she’d followed him. How she’d waited, lying beneath a pudgy-faced moon, wondering what he was doing with Monsieur. Remembered how he’d erupted from the trees and she’d looked up to see his face backlit with the lantern. And he was smiling. Happy. As if there’d been something pleasurable beyond Papá’s home, beyond the schoolhouse and working in the fields and tea on the verandah. And when he’d wrapped her bonnet ribbons around her throat and pulled until she felt the air fill up in her jaws, Rosa remembered thinking that she had wanted to ensure that her brother was safe.
“What are you planning?” he said.
“What makes you think I’m doing anything?” Rosa knew Jeremias could not be trusted, but as she spoke those words, she also felt shame for having planned to leave her home.
“I heard you were in town asking questions,” he said. “You think you can be in that black-black skin of yours and go anywhere you want?”
“You heard incorrectly.”
“You planning on leaving Trinidad? Isn’t there enough here to fill you up?”
“Enough to fill me up?” Rosa said. “What’s left, Jeremias?”
What’s left? Those words could not have been spoken without both of them thinking of all Jeremias’s losses. Rosa, for the first time since she brought home Pierre and Francine, wondered what it’d been like for Jeremias, mourning a woman and a child, both of whom he loved but neither of whom belonged to him. She spied her brother now, his gaze resting on the dark timber of the drying house where Papá went at nights to inspect and rake the cacao beans, where Papá covered them if the rain clouds hovered or uncovered them if the sun promised to shine the next morning. Rosa watched as Jeremias looked upon the chalky trunks of the cacao trees, their earthen pots dense with dried thick-faced leaves, nests for their bright fruits, alongside the wooden handles of their enemies, the cacao knives, upright like flagpoles.
“I need you to help me,” he said. “I need to claim this land. Monsieur says—”
“You’ve seen Monsieur DeGannes?”
“Of course. He is my closest ally. I could not—”
“He is no friend of yours.” Rosa tried to remember why she had felt the need to protect DeGannes, but now all the reasons that had then been so clear were muddled. “And this land is not yours. You only want to ensure no one else has it.”
“I’ll have it, you can work it, and you will never have to marry that illiterate farmer.”
“Eve and Creadon Rampley should have it. That is what Papá wishes.”
“Papá is not the man you think he is.” Jeremias picked up a cacao knife, turning the long handle over, its blade shaped like a spade’s, kept sharp by Papá’s grindstone. Rosa was certain Jeremias had never before wielded a spade, certain that he didn’t know how much it took for Papá to keep that land, how much it took for Papá to keep that crop, keep that house, keep that family. Rosa was certain Jeremias did not know how the soil they stood upon had Papá’s blood deep deep inside its veins.
“Nothing he’s done is bad enough to deserve what you’re planning.”
“You don’t think so?” Jeremias glared at Rosa as if she were a foolish girl. “You think Papá could have acquired this house and this land by making only nails and axes?”
Jeremias seemed to have always known. Always known what he then told Rosa about their father. Of Papá’s dealings with DeGannes, of supporting the institution Papá professed to hate; how Papá’s innocence was not plausible, had never been plausible.
“This is not true.” Rosa said these words because she felt they were necessary to say, for herself and for her Papá, but she was certain Jeremias, who’d relayed it all with particulars and fine subtleties, had not spoken an untrue word. “Papá is not that kinda man.”
And to this, Jeremias said nothing. Which pained Rosa more than she expected, for it felt as if Jeremias knew to let her stew in her doubts, knew she would question everything she’d ever known of Papá; she would contemplate each word Papá had spoken, reconsider every decision he’d made, disbelieve a man whose words were once certain for Rosa.
“You mean to take his land?” Rosa said, still stunned by the arrogance of the endeavor.
“With your help.”
“Because you think he’s not deserving of better? Who are you to judge Papá, Jeremias?”
“I am not judging him. He did what was best for his family at the time. And now this is what is best for his family. He cannot see this as yet, but he will.” Jeremias spoke as if he’d never been more certain of anything.
“You only wish for my help so you’ll have someone to blame if things go wrong.”
“Yes, it’s true. Because we all know Papá would never dare turn on his darling Rosa.”
Papá came then, with his shirt opened a bit past his neck. Rosa noted the skin on his chest, striped with age and wear, the curly hairs a bright silver. “You have no work to do?” Papá looked toward Rosa as if worried for her, then offered her the smile he’d once saved only for her.
Jeremias smiled too at Papá, then said to him, “We were just now planning what work to do next.”
CREADON RAMPLEY
Isle of Trinidad
1815
The man rode in from the back of the stable but Demas had me set down my weapon. The Cordoza man, built small, made his way toward us like he had cannons for balls. His skin was rough like prunes, and his eyes was fiery when he spoke to Demas, askin him if his daughter and son was close by.
“Would you like for me to call them here, Señor?”
“No, quite the opposite,” Cordoza said.
The Cordoza man looked at me like to ask Demas if it was all right to speak open with me there, then started speakin in English thinkin I aint understood it. He told Demas that Jeremias had come to see him and said that both he and the black-black daughter believed Demas was now simple. “Your children say youve not been well since your fit, and that in order to do
what is best for you, they want to strike a deal with me.”
“A deal?”
Demas had been makin a set of bells for the new church. Padre José asked this favor of Demas for havin turned a blind eye to his wife and grandson not bein laid to rest in a proper cemetery like English laws demanded. Demas had worked on the molds each night since the funeral. Now, the Cordoza man rested his hands on em, lookin like he was tryna figure out what kinda money them bells was bringin Demas.
“Your son wished for me to accompany him down to George Street and Marine Square, into the office of the contador. He said he could have his sister there to attest to your ill health. They wished for me to support them in their efforts to have the land transferred into the name of your boy, your rightful heir, then to have the governor transfer ownership from Jeremias to me. They said they trusted me to sign it back over …” Cordoza paused nice and long, and I swear I seent a lil grin on his face fore he said, “… after you are dead.”
Demas didnt give him much to delight in. He said, “I will come and visit soon, Señor.” They shook hands then Demas added, “And will be sure to bring someting that shows my appreciation for your friendship.”
Cordoza smiled big, mounted his horse, and set back out cross the fields.
Demas pointed at the bubblin crucible, the fire ragin in it and said to me, “Take care you dont get hurt.”
The pit fire was lit for two days. Hens plucked, split, marinated. Breadfruit was salted. Carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers diced. Coconuts cracked, emptied, shredded, pulped, juiced, chopped. Butter churned. Corn kettled. Peas soaked. The mornin fore my wedding, we aint sit for breakfast. Eve holed herself up in the back room to finish her dress. A dress that always needed more this, more that. We was gonna have to fend for ourselves at breakfast, she said.
Book of the Little Axe Page 30
