The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe

by Timothy Williams

  No mention of Desterres.

  “Please, Maman.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your dress.”

  “It’s creased.”

  Béatrice had gone home for the weekend and Anne Marie refused to be bullied by her daughter, so with a theatrical sigh, Létitia had set up the ironing board, plugged in the steam iron and began to iron the dress. “What’s the point of having a maid if she can’t iron clothes properly?” To get pressure on the fabric, she had to stand on a footstool. She made a clicking sound of disapproval with her lips.

  “It’s not for you to criticize Béatrice. She has enough on her plate with you two. And don’t tisk. It’s ill-mannered, Lélé. I’ve already told you that.”

  “Yes, Maman,” Létitia replied diplomatically and sighed softly.

  The television link-up with Paris was later than usual.

  Anne Marie sat in the armchair. Fabrice came in from his bedroom, the Walkman clipped to his belt. He wanted to watch Ushuaïa.

  They had quarreled in the car and Anne Marie had even shouted. She had told him about her conversation with Siobud. Like his sister, he had made a clicking sound of disapproval and then laughed.

  “Not a laughing matter, Fabrice.”

  “Siobud’s pathetic,” he had said, dismissing the matter.

  “The clown of the class?”

  Worse still, Trousseau had taken Fabrice’s side. Now between Anne Marie and her son there reigned an uneasy truce.

  Fabrice sat down cross-legged at her feet. He had broad shoulders and was fast turning into a man, with a man’s body, although he did not yet need to shave. She could feel the reassuring warmth of his body against her leg. He was still hot from his exposure to the sun and his hair smelled of the sea.

  The clown of the class?

  “What time do we have to be at church, Lélé?”

  “I bet Patricia wears a necklace.”

  “Patricia Petit?”

  “Oh, Maman,” Létitia replied with mock exasperation. “You know Patricia Petit’s an Adventist. She doesn’t go to church.”

  “Patricia who?”

  Létitia placed her hand theatrically on her hip. “I’m talking about Patricia Ganot. You know her. Her father works for Air France and he spoils her and she can go to Miami whenever she wants.” She lowered her voice, for greater effect. “You know she came to school with nail polish?”

  “And what did the mistress say?”

  “Sister Marie didn’t say anything because she’s as blind as a bat, but I don’t think it’s right, do you, Maman? It’s not right for little girls to wear nail polish.”

  Fabrice spoke without taking his eyes from the television. “You wear lipstick.”

  “No I don’t,” his sister replied hotly.

  “Is that true, Lélé?”

  Létitia asked innocently, “What, Maman?”

  “You wear lipstick?”

  “Maman, you know what Fabrice is like.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “He loves to make trouble.” She had returned to her ironing and was concentrating.

  “Please answer my question, Lélé.”

  “What question?”

  “Do you wear lipstick?”

  Another sigh. “Only once, Maman.”

  “My lipstick? Lélé, I’ve already told you not to go into my bedroom. You are not to rummage in my drawers. You’re still a little girl and I don’t want you wearing makeup. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “Don’t answer back.”

  “Patricia wears lipstick.”

  “You are not Patricia. You are Létitia Jeanne Laveaud. You’re my little girl and you’re not yet ten years old. As long as you live under this roof,” Anne Marie said, and she could hear her father in her own words, “and as long as you eat at my table, you’ll do as you are told and you shall not wear lipstick. Do I make myself clear?”

  “But Maman …”

  Anne Marie glared. “Mademoiselle Laveaud, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Létitia said, hanging her head, but as soon as she thought her mother had turned away, she made a silent snarl of antipathy in the direction of her brother, then stuck out the pink triangle of her tongue.

  “If you want to paint your face up because you want to act or you want to play with your girlfriends here in the house, I don’t mind—but you mustn’t use my cosmetics. I pay a lot of money for that makeup. We can go to the Prisunic on Wednesday and I’ll get you some children’s makeup. But you won’t go out of the house with it on.”

  Létitia was now quietly smiling to herself, as if she had just recalled a private joke.

  “You mustn’t play with my things, Lélé. Try to understand. You mustn’t play with my clothes or with my shoes or with my makeup. It’s very important—because I must always look my best for work.”

  Létitia set the iron down on the board, having decided to change the subject. “Maman, why do you always put on that strong perfume when you know you’re going to the hospital?”

  “After church tomorrow, we’re going to see Tatie Lucette at the hospital.”

  Létitia crossed her arms in disapproval. “I don’t want to go.”

  “You’re her favorite.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her. They just said so on television.”

  “When you were in hospital, Lucette came and saw you and she brought you a present every day.”

  “She’s fat.”

  “You can’t be nice to her just because she’s fat?”

  “She likes kissing me and cuddling me.”

  “I like kissing and cuddling you. You’re my favorite mongoose—even though you’re spoiled and you run rings around everybody and you wear my shoes and you wear my lipstick and you tell fibs.”

  “I don’t.”

  “If you’re not careful your nose will grow.”

  “It already has,” Fabrice observed wryly.

  “And if you’re not careful this very minute, you’re going to burn that dress. Lélé, look, look!” Anne Marie hurriedly pulled herself from the armchair and took hold of the iron. “Goodness, child, you’ve set the thermostat for cotton.” Anne Marie barged her daughter off the stool. Squirting the white dress with a fine spray of water, she hurriedly ironed out the remaining creases. “Ten years old and you can’t tell the difference between cotton and nylon.”

  “All because you don’t want to help me,” Létitia said in an aggrieved tone. “And I’m still only nine.”

  It amused Anne Marie to let her daughter think she had not seen through Létitia’s stratagem. Any trick in the book to get Maman to iron the difficult parts.

  Then the phone rang and Létitia ran to take the receiver off the wall.

  Anne Marie glanced at the Kelton. “Who phones at this time of night?”

  Létitia held the telephone to her ear and frowned.

  “Who is it, Lélé?”

  “It’s your friend.”

  “What does he want?”

  Létitia held out the phone in silence.

  “Time you were in bed, Létitia Jeanne Laveaud,” Anne Marie said, turning off the iron with one hand, and taking the receiver in the other. “Is that you, Luc?”

  “Anne Marie?” The line was poor.

  “Stay here.” Fabrice was suddenly standing beside her, his tanned fingers pulling at her sleeve. “Don’t go out tonight, Maman.”

  The fear of abandonment in his eyes reminded Anne Marie of his father.

  69

  Sermon

  The priest gave his sermon, speaking into a microphone that rose like a steel tulip before him in the pulpit. He spoke slowly, carefully pronouncing each word, as if addressing a class of dull theologians. Anne Marie was not listening. She stood between her children, near the back of the church, close to one of the iron pillars.

  The church had been quickly restored and renovated in the few months since the hurricane. It was now full of flowers, slan
ting light, people and the smell of incense. Candles flickered in the small lady’s chapel. Near the front of the church, there were several wheelchairs.

  The priest droned on and the oblong loudspeakers, perched on the pillars, repeated his words. Anne Marie held her daughter’s hand.

  Létitia’s hand was small and the fingers were sticky. She was wearing neutral nail polish. Anne Marie had put her foot down about the makeup and had insisted her daughter remove the rouge before setting off for church.

  Her anger was largely pretense. Anne Marie did not find Létitia’s love of makeup strange or even precocious. As a child, Anne Marie herself had always enjoyed dressing up, putting on exotic clothes from Maman’s wardrobe that smelled of mothballs. With her sister, she had produced plays—normally romantic adaptations of Cinderella. Papa had delighted in the amateur dramatics provided the plot was fairly straightforward and the histrionics did not go on too long.

  The priest—a bishop from Cayenne—was talking about tolerance.

  Anne Marie tried to concentrate but her attention began to wander. She thought about her life, about the mother she had scarcely known, about her children. She thought about the phone call from Luc. She had noted the look of disapproval on her daughter’s face as Létitia handed her the receiver. The same look of disapproval—wrinkled nose, lips rounded and open to reveal her teeth—that Létitia had made when Fabrice had started to tell tales.

  (Létitia had nothing to be afraid of. Anne Marie had no intention of allowing Luc to enter her life. It was not that Anne Marie did not like him, or indeed the fact that he was already married.)

  In Africa, the bishop was saying, Jesus was presented as a black man. But Jesus was every color, because He was the Son of God. Since man was made in the image of God, the bishop said, we could assume that God was an Asian, was an African, was a European.

  Anne Marie glanced to where Fabrice sat quietly on the mahogany pew beside her. Perhaps with his mixture of race—West Indian father and Jewish grandfather—he was a true representative of God on Earth.

  Smiling at the thought, Anne Marie looked about her, at the old ladies in their glacé straw hats, the men sweating in suits and ties. Here assembled in St. Peter and St. Paul was the bourgeoisie of Pointe-à-Pitre—or at least, that bourgeoisie that still went to church.

  Pointe-à-Pitre.

  It was here, she realized, here in this provincial, tropical city on the edge of the mangrove, that Anne Marie had taken root. She was like a plant, she told herself, and her children were the branches. They were branches of mixed parentage—and it was here, in this French city 6,750 kilometers from Paris, this city with its strange mixture of African and European, that they belonged.

  “In the name of the Father,” the bishop said and crossed himself. With retarded synchronization, the congregation repeated his words, bowing their heads and crossing themselves.

  Anne Marie’s children belonged here, and no matter how much she liked Luc, he was European. He could never understand her children. They were her children and to get any more involved with him would be a betrayal. It would be a refusal to recognize their identity, it would be a betrayal of the people and of the island that Anne Marie had grown to love.

  She lowered her head and slowly crossed herself.

  Létitia tugged at her elbow. “Afterwards, we can go for McDonald’s.”

  Anne Marie made a silent prayer. For the dead, for family and friends. Then a few minutes later, Judge Laveaud and her children stepped out into the sunshine, Létitia resplendent in her white frock, Fabrice in black T-shirt (Def Leopard) and Reeboks.

  St. Peter and St. Paul stood silently in their sunlit niches; beside them, the four evangelists. On the far side of the square, the flower vendors were doing brisk business. Not wanting to talk to anybody (her ex-husband’s parents lived in the nearby rue Alsace-Lorraine), Anne Marie took her children by the hand and headed toward the rue Nozières.

  “What a pleasant surprise!”

  He must have been sitting at the front, near the altar. He was wearing a pale lightweight suit and beige shoes with matching socks. His hands were placed on the handles of a wheelchair. He looked admiringly at Anne Marie. “I didn’t know you came to St. Pierre and St. Paul.”

  A West Indian woman was sitting in the wheelchair. She sat to one side, trying unsuccessfully to adopt the fetal position. Despite the heat, she was covered with a blanket. Red shoes with bows like those worn by Minnie Mouse stuck out from beneath the blanket at an improbable, oblique angle.

  “My daughter’s preparing her Confirmation, Monsieur Lafitte.”

  Létitia stepped forward and demurely held out her hand. Lafitte bent forward and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I believe you’ve already met my son, Fabrice.”

  They shook hands. “A long time ago, madame le juge. He has now grown into a fine young man.”

  “Who doesn’t take his studies at school very seriously, I’m afraid.”

  “With the intelligence of his mother,” Lafitte said, “I’m sure he has excellent marks.”

  The congregation was slowly disappearing into the cars parked along the neighboring streets. It was nearly midday and the faithful were in a hurry to get out of the sun, to get out of their Sunday best before heading off to the beach or to the hills.

  Anne Marie took her children by the elbow. “Monsieur Lafitte, it’s been nice.”

  The policeman smiled, his breath tinged with beer. “You’ve never met my wife, have you?” He placed his hand on the shoulder of the chairbound woman.

  There was no smile of acknowledgment in the immobile face. There was no movement of the bulging eyes. Just a hand that trembled.

  “Madame Lafitte.”

  70

  Fast food

  The McDonald’s was in the main street of Pointe-à-Pitre, and with its beige, synthetic décor, it reminded her of an ageing computer. The building had in fact just been renovated.

  Anne Marie hated hamburgers, but today she was spoiling her children in return for their having agreed to accompany her to the hospital.

  (She had read somewhere that junk food was one of the solutions to anorexia. Children who did not want to eat could often be persuaded to wolf down a Big Mac, French fries and a giant Coke. Anne Marie would have preferred anorexia. She wondered whether Papa would shudder at the gastronomic suicide or whether he would be delighted to see his grandchildren eating with such gusto.)

  They sat by the window on the first floor. Anne Marie had ordered a cane juice. The smell of grease alone was sufficient to spoil her appetite. Létitia and Fabrice ate noisily. There were still traces of rouge on Létitia’s cheeks, although Anne Marie had carefully purged her daughter’s face of makeup.

  Rouge or ketchup?

  Létitia had poured ketchup onto the hamburger and now it ran from the sides of the bun onto her fingers. Fabrice pretended to eat with more delicacy, but his taste and appetite were identical to his sister’s.

  “You promise me you will make an effort, Fabrice?”

  “Siobud doesn’t understand anything, Maman.”

  “That’s not for you to say.”

  “The old bore spends his time giving us vocabulary.”

  “He’s your teacher and you must listen to him.”

  “Siobud says I speak with an American accent but I’m only repeating what I hear on CNN and BET. Lots of words he doesn’t understand.”

  “Of course he understands.”

  “When I put my hand up, Siobud ignores me.”

  “Fabrice, you go to school to learn.”

  “The other teachers don’t complain about me.”

  “That’s not what he said. The math teacher—”

  “Math is difficult, Maman. In math, I know I need to learn. And the math teacher is nice. He made all the fuss when the headmaster slapped Alexandre.”

  “Who’s Alexandre?”

  “The béké in my class.”

  “The headmaster slapped a whi
te pupil?”

  “The headmaster hits everyone, Maman—particularly the girls.” Fabrice shrugged. “Siobud is a pain in the ass.”

  “Mind your language in front of your sister.”

  “My sister’s not a pain in the ass?” Fabrice gave her a disarming smile. “She’s Miss Pain 1990.”

  While her brother’s attention was elsewhere, Létitia took some of his fried potatoes.

  “Siobud spends his time talking about slavery and he thinks he is cool but the guy’s racist and he doesn’t like me because I can speak good English and for him I’m a white. He made us watch a Spike Lee film over four lessons and I told him I was part Jewish and that Jews are like everybody else and that his film was crap. He got angry and said Portuguese Jews invented the triangular slave trade. He likes to pretend he’s a musician but Siobud’s never heard of zydeco. He knows nothing about American music.”

  “What’s zydeco?”

  “A kind of music, Maman,” her son said, taking a couple of French fries from Létitia’s basket.

  “Don’t,” Létitia said, slapping him with ketchupped fingers. “And anyway, Fabrice’s got a girlfriend and that’s why he doesn’t like his English teacher, because the English teacher has favorites.”

  “You’ve got a girlfriend, Fabrice?” Anne Marie asked, setting the juice down on the plastic tabletop.

  Fabrice started to blush. He turned toward his little sister. “You should mind your own business, Mademoiselle Sait-tout. Mind your own business or I can tell Maman what you said to Béatrice about Luc.”

  “Fabrice, your girlfriend’s in your class?”

  He ignored the question by lowering his head and raising the remains of his hamburger.

  “What’s her name?”

  “The other teachers don’t complain about me.”

  “She’s in your class?”

  “Except Néron,” Fabrice acquiesced, “and he’s an old fart who reads the racing results when he should be teaching.”

  “Don’t talk like that in front of your sister.”

  “Néron wears the same shirt to school for three days.”

  “You’ve really got a girlfriend, Fabrice?”