The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  “Yes—for you.” The juice from the orange dribbled down her chin.

  I stopped under the shade of a manchineel tree.

  “For him to love you,” she said.

  I heard Mimi laugh. I looked toward the wagon. The two horses were asleep on their feet. “You prayed for your father to love me?”

  Hortense looked confused. “Was that bad?”

  “Stay,” I told Mimi, hoisting Hortense up onto the wagon seat, taking care (without success) not to soil my skirts on the muddy wagon wheels. “We’re fine back here,” I added, handing two oranges forward, one for Mimi and one for Morin.

  The road leading out of Trois-Ilets was as rough as I remembered it, the wagon almost overturning. Before long, we came to my family’s cane-fields, black with ash. In the distance, a field yet to be burned, still in chaos from the harvest, and beyond that, newly planted coffee trees.

  “All of this belongs to my family,” I told Hortense.

  “It’s burned.” She stood on my lap to look.

  “They do that after the harvest, to scare away bugs and snakes.”

  “Snakes!”

  At the river we had to get down. The horses refused to put hoof to the old wooden bridge. They had to be coaxed and in the end whipped, but finally they made a bolt for it, cantering across in a lather of fear, the wagon clattering behind them.

  We climbed back in. I noticed a gang of field-slaves in big straw hats labouring in a field—replanting likely. “Do you recognize anyone?” I asked Mimi.

  “I can’t see that far.” Mimi threw an orange peel into the canebrake. “Turn left up ahead,” she told Morin, adjusting her skirt. “By the cabbage-palms.” She turned to me and grinned.

  The horses slowed, beginning their ascent up the gentle slope. The road was more overgrown than I remembered it, the moss hanging heavy from the trees, reminding me of dreams. As we passed the kitchen gardens, several of the Negro women waved.

  “They aren’t wearing tops.” Hortense pressed her hands over her eyes.

  “It’s hot working in the sun.” My own clothes were already damp, the heat was so intense. As we neared the homestead it began to rain, a soft, cooling shower more like a mist. I fussed over Hortense, cleaning her face, attempting to push her unruly hair under her new hat.

  “It that it?” she asked, pushing her hat back off her head. I turned as we pulled up in front of the old stone building—the sucrerie my family called home. I nodded wordlessly, climbing down, looking upon the graceless structure with a stranger’s critical eyes. The massive stone chimney seemed to tower above us, ominous and dark from the rain. One corner of the verandah roof had given slightly.

  Where were Mother and Father? I searched for some sign in the windows, but they had all been shuttered against the midday sun.

  It was Da Gertrude who came first to greet us, running down the path from the crushing hut screaming, “They’re here! They’re here!” Her big arms circling like a windmill, her big lower lip quivering, catching first Mimi and then me in a hug so hard it forced the air right out of me. She twirled me in her hands, admiring my Parisian finery. “Lord, girl, look at you now, a lady! But you’re too thin!” She was weeping now, uttering cries in the African tongue, a musical clicking sound. She had aged in the nine years I had been away, her face etched with lines like crevasses in an ancient hillside. But her eyes were bright, her spirit as clear as my heart remembered. In her arms I felt myself a girl again.

  And then, magically it seemed, we were surrounded by all the household slaves, by the familiar faces of my youth, crying out in the cooling mist. One after another they took us in their arms, did joyful little dances all about us. “Oh, look at you both, so elegant! Look! Even the little girl is in ribbons! So precious in her little hat!” Sylvester was there, elderly now, as comical as ever, his pipe extinguished by the rain. My heart was full to bursting with the love I felt around me. I had been starving for them all and hadn’t known it.

  Embarrassed by the choking emotion that had welled up in me, I searched in my velvet bag for a handkerchief. “And this is Hortense,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “Oh, and when she smiles!” Da Gertrude pulled a section of cane stalk out of her pocket. “Have you ever sucked on a sugarcane?”

  Hortense regarded the stalk suspiciously, looked at me for approval.

  I kissed her dirty cheek. “Chew it. It’s like a comfit.”

  With a rush of wind, the gentle mist turned to pelting drops of rain. I ran with Hortense for the shelter of the verandah, Da Gertrude chasing after.

  “Mother? Father?” I lowered Hortense to the ground. I was puzzled by their absence.

  “Your father’s not well.” Da Gertrude pushed open the heavy door to the refinery. She’d taken Hortense’s hand, wooed my girl with her big-hearted magic. I followed, stepped inside.

  The floor of the boiling room was littered with cane stalks. I was struck by the familiar scent of sugar syrup, the sound of buzzing flies. I saw the stairs that descended into the basement—to the room where I had been punished. Had that really happened?

  I heard voices up above. I headed up the rickety wooden stairs. It was dark in the foyer. “Mother?”

  She appeared before me, as stern as I remembered her, but for her eyes, which were etched with something different, I knew not what. She was wearing a brown muslin gown of a simple design and a white fluted cap.

  “Look at you.” She took my hands in hers. She stood back and appraised me. “You’re thin, Rose.”

  “And you.” She was so much older than I remembered her, older than I’d ever imagined her being.

  “Only you look like a lady of fashion.”

  Her hands felt rough, dry. “Have you seen Hortense?” I asked.

  “The child?”

  We both turned at the sound of Hortense’s giggle. Da Gertrude came striding in, my girl on her shoulders. Hortense was grinning, one hand covering Da Gertrude’s left eye, the other still clutching the sugarcane stalk. “I used to carry you this way, Rose,” Da Gertrude said. “Remember?”

  I smiled, reaching up to take Hortense. I cradled her in my arms, turned to Mother. “My girl,” I said.

  Mother reached out a finger, stroked the smooth skin on Hortense’s arm. Hortense was suddenly still, sucking on the cane stalk. “She’s lovely.” Mother’s eyes were glistening. “She takes after her father, doesn’t she.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not a man!” Hortense said.

  I let her down. “She’s big for her age,” I said, “healthy—quite bright. And active,” I sighed, watching Hortense spinning circles on the slippery wooden floor.

  “Having a child in the house will be good for us,” Mother said. “We are all of us too old here.”

  I heard a voice boom from the parlour: “This must be Yeyette’s girl!” It was Father, addressing Hortense no doubt, who had spun into the other room.

  “No,” I heard Hortense answer. “Who is Yeyette?”

  “You don’t know!”

  I followed Mother into the parlour. There was Father, leaning on a tasselled cane, addressing Hortense. He was wearing a patched hunting jacket over a night-dress. At his feet snuffled one of the pugs, now whitearound the muzzle and quite thin. Grandmother Sannois had died almost three years ago, the other pug the year after.

  “She’s not Yeyette any more,” Mother said.

  “She’s a woman now.”

  “Father!” I kissed him on both cheeks, taking care not to bump his cane. He looked so weak—so fragile. “You look wonderful,” I said.

  Father looked down at Hortense. “Now you would never do such a thing, would you? Tell an ugly old man that he looked wonderful. The wonder is I’m still alive.” He paused for a moment, studied my face. “My—but you have become so very, very lovely.” He turned to my mother. “Claire—who would have thought that that scrappy, plump, dirty-faced little thing would ever have turned into this!” He swung one hand wide, too wide, for he b
egan to lose his balance.

  Quickly Mother was at his side, one arm around his back, her shoulder braced under his arm. Father started to cough. “You’re too flamboyant, Joseph,” she said, pounding his back with her fist.

  Da Gertrude appeared with a tray. “Some juice—and sugar cakes,” she announced. “But I bet you don’t like sugar cakes,” she said to Hortense.

  “Yessss.” Hortense swung her skirts. “Yes I do!”

  Mother nodded toward the hall. “Manette’s in her room, Rose.”

  “Go,” Father said, waving me away. “She’s been waiting.”

  “Rose, she is—” Mother didn’t finish her sentence.

  I traced my way through the dark rooms, thick with the scent of sugar syrup, the musky faint scent of mould, the sound of flies buzzing at every window. At the end of the narrow passage was the door to Manette’s room. I stood for a moment before opening it. I remembered standing before this same door, listening to the sound of Manette weeping. Now, there was only silence.

  It was dark in the room. One shutter had been closed. Manette was lying on top of the bedclothes in a stained white muslin shift, her long dark hair dishevelled, wet tendrils curling around her neck. A plump Negro girl I didn’t recognize was sitting at the foot of her bed, fanning her lazily with a palm-tree leaf.

  I approached the bed slowly. I tried to put on a brave face, but tears broke free as soon as I caught my sister’s eyes. I pretended my tears weretears of joy—but they were not. Oh, my little Manette, how she has wizened and aged, an old crone in a young woman’s body.

  Manette spoke slowly, pushing the words from her with some effort. “Rose.…” She stopped. She took my hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  I laid my head on her hollow belly. Already I knew there was no hope.

  In which storms rage

  August 17, 1788.

  As the Carib chief approached, the slaves went running. He stood in the laneway in his loose shirt made of old flour sacks, his long hair blowing in the wind. Mother stood to greet him.

  It was a windy morning, without mosquitoes. The leaves of the gum tree fluttered onto the ground.

  I could overhear little, understand nothing. He spoke to Mother in his language, an ancient tongue beyond my understanding, and my mother answered him in kind, slowly and with some effort. He turned and left, the back of his shirt stained with sweat.

  I went down to the verandah.

  “There’s a storm coming.” Mother stood looking out toward Morne Croc-Souris.

  “Does he always come?”

  “Once before he came.” She turned toward the sucrerie. “Before the big storm.”

  The big storm. Seventeen-sixty-six. I was only three at the time, yet even now, when a wind rises, a sick feeling comes over me. All through my childhood, I’d heard stories of the wind that had blown our house away, the rain that drowned an entire town, the wave that swallowed a hundred ships whole, not even a shoe washed up on the shore.

  “We must see to the shutters,” Mother said.

  The morning hours turned frantic. The field-gang was called in, thehouse-slaves alerted, the children in the garden crew located, the animals put back in their stalls.

  After the midday meal, the air thickened. The wind howled. A wood bucket on the verandah clattered across the stones. Drops of rain splashed hard against the shutters. A chicken screeched, caught in the rising gale.

  We descended into the stone basement, the air heavy with the odour of rotting potatoes. I was sickened for a moment entering that dark room—the room in which I had been kept as a girl, the room of my imprisonment. The bed was still there. The three-legged table was gone. I reached up to make sure the shutters were tightly fastened.

  Sylvester carried Manette down the narrow steps, let her down gently on the bed. She looked around dreamily. Mother put the pug dog down and arranged the bedclothes over her. Mimi and I sat on a straw mat, our backs against the rough stone wall. Da Gertrude squeezed in beside me, trying to hold on to Hortense, who nevertheless wiggled free to chase a lizard. Father squatted by the door drinking pétépié from a bottle, his cane by his side.

  Everyone was crowding in, the house-slaves and their children in with us, the slave-master and the field slaves in the other basement room.

  A blast of wind rattled the window. The slaves in the other room began to chant.

  “I want to go in there,” Hortense said.

  “What happened to the lizard?”

  “He lost his tail and ran away. I want to find Max.”

  “See if Max can come in here.” I wanted Hortense near me.

  “You’re letting Hortense go in there?” Mother had her Bible open on her lap. The chanting in the other room had grown louder. Someone had started beating on a drum. “I wish they’d stop,” she sighed, closing her eyes.

  “She’s gone to find a friend. She’ll be back.”

  Mother started to say something but then there was a terrible roaring sound. The roof beam above us cracked. Mother clutched her cross.

  I looked over at Da Gertrude. Her upper lip was beaded with sweat. I thought of the dark nights I had trembled in her arms, suckled her milk, slept in her bed. When I was an infant she’d protected me from the ants that had infested our island, swarming the hills and valleys, consumingeverything in their path. She’d held me during every storm, singing prayers to the howling winds. I took her hand.

  “So now it is you who comforts me,” she said.

  We emerged at dawn, squinting against the sun, faint from terror and constant prayer. Four chickens were perched in an uprooted orange tree. Deep cracks had been etched in the earth, like a network of snakes. Everywhere a thick carpet of torn trees and bushes—even the giant kapok tree had fallen, crashing across a river now raging with debris. The devastation was everywhere, pink and pure in the early morning light.

  Hortense began to cry. “My cricket cage!”

  “Hush,” I said. We had survived.

  Later.

  We spent all this day picking through splinters. The slave huts have been destroyed. There has been considerable damage to the stables and the crushing hut as well. The stone kitchen shack only suffered two broken windows and a deluge of water. Two horses, nine cows and a goat are missing. The sow was badly injured and had to be slaughtered, so weak she did not even squeal.

  August 19.

  We’ve received word from Fort-Royal. The roof of Uncle Tascher’s house was blown off and the furniture ruined. But no one hurt, thank God.

  September 14.

  Mail—at last.

  July 16, 1788—Fontainebleau

  Darling!

  Two weeks after you set sail we had a dreadful hailstorm—in July, the hottest month of the year! Imagine. Really, we begin to think France is being visited by a destroying angel.* The ice stones were so big they killed birds and ripped the branches off the oak trees in the Luxembourg gardens. My servants are blaming the priests, for ineffective influence.

  My darling pixie of a granddaughter Émilie, quite tall for seven, continues to thrive. I had Eugène over the other day as well—the two are a charm for the vapours.

  A million kisses, your loving Aunt Fanny

  July 18, 1788—Fontainebleau

  Dear Rose,

  We’ve been busy attending to finance and health. It is maddening how much time these two matters consume. Fortunately, with respect to health at least, I am beginning to make progress. A doctor suggested I take purgatives and clysters, followed by Peruvian bark. I am following his program with excellent results. I am enclosing three ounces of this bark at a cost often livres, which I will add to your father’s account. I urge you to get Joseph (and your sister?) to take it. As well, restrain him from consuming milk foods and salt meat—not to mention spirits.

  The situation here worsens.… there was a dreadful ice storm which destroyed the crops, just when everyone had been praying for grain. No doubt this is God’s punishment for the riots in Paris. My
chambermaid’s brother vows he saw King Henry IV’s statue bleeding.

  Do not neglect to say your prayers—morning and night—as well as your hours. Have you talked to your father regarding the accounts? We anxiously await news.

  Your loving Aunt Désirée

  July 5, 1788—Paris

  Dear Rose,

  A quick note (I have a meeting to attend)—I have decided to enter the realm of politics. It is a labour I do willingly; my country needs me.

  Your husband, Alexandre Beauharnais

  Note—Eugène is well.

  Sunday

  Chère Maman,

  Ice came out of the sky. Are you coming home yet?

  A thousand kisses, Eugène

  January 29, 1789.

  A talk with Mother, regarding the accounts. She is reluctant to bring in anyone from outside.

  “What can be the harm?” I insisted. Father wasn’t able, Mother was unwilling and I had no experience, much less knowledge.

  “Our only problem is your father’s debts,” she said. “His vice.”

  But at last she relented. She has agreed to allow me to consult with Monsieur de Couvray, an accountant of merit in Fort-Royal.

  Monday, February 16.

  I have been reviewing the accounts in preparation for my trip to Fort-Royal. There are a number of mysteries. Father was blustery at first, refusing to respond to my questions, accusing me of ignorance. Gently, I persisted, pointing out discrepancies. At last he broke down. Much of the money had gone to cover gambling debts—but not all. Some covered mistakes he had made managing the plantation. It was the blunders he was ashamed to admit, not the gambling losses—the “debts of honour” he insists are a result of courage, not weakness. “It takes strength to play deep,” he said, “to risk one’s fortune on the turn of a card.” (I refrained from pointing out that it had not been his fortune he’d put at risk.)