Because of my mother, no woman from our community would hire Adelle, and in the end she was forced to take in sailors’ laundry, a job far beneath her. My mother had no idea that my father sent Adelle a monthly check or that I gave her a portion of my own household funds. Isaac never asked me why I did this, nor did he question me when I went to visit Adelle every day when she fell ill. It happened suddenly. One day she simply grew weak, as if under a spell. I went to see her, bringing my baby, Delphine, along. Adelle taught her to clap her hands and how to wave good-bye. When Adelle could no longer eat anything solid, I made her a soft fongee porridge, the same recipe she used to fix for Jestine and me when we were girls. I fed her until the day she waved me away. “Give it to the baby,” she said.
Adelle’s illness made breathing difficult. The day when she could no longer rise from the bed without being lifted came. Jestine sent Lyddie to fetch me because Adelle had had a dream about me. I went down to the harbor, my throat and chest aching. I was afraid of what Adelle might tell me. I hoped she didn’t blame me for how cruel my mother had been, or how badly my cousin had treated Jestine. I sat on her bed. I’d left my children at home. Adelle had me lean close so no one would overhear. As it turned out she wanted to tell me more of my future. “He won’t be your only husband,” she said of Monsieur Petit. She sounded like a bird, distant, breathy. “If you find happiness, take it. You won’t find it again. But you’ll know him as soon as you see him.”
There were so many questions I should have asked. I never even knew who Adelle’s parents were and how she had come to be on St. Thomas or what her African name had been. I had written down so many stories, but I’d never asked Adelle for hers. I should have asked if Jestine’s father was a man I knew. At the end Adelle could no longer speak and it was too late. Each evening I sat beside the bed and read to her from my old notebook, stories of the stars in the sky, how God had placed them in a path between him and us so we could always find our way to him. How a pelican had then scattered those stars above us so we could lie in our beds at night and be comforted resting beneath the path to God. How a bird had traveled halfway across the world for love.
Adelle took my hand the last time I was there. She ran a finger inside my palm. Her fingers were long and thin, and she wore a gold ring. Perhaps someone who loved her had given it to her, or perhaps she had bought the ring for herself. She would never tell. This was as close as anyone from our different worlds dared to be, for fear the past would destroy what we had. Still, the past was close, outside the door. Adelle’s touch felt like the skin and bones of a bird, weightless. I shivered because I knew this was her good-bye to me.
Jestine came then, and I watched Lyddie with my own children for the next day and night. And then it happened and we lost her. I saw Jestine standing in my yard alone and I knew. I hoped Adelle’s spirit would be above us in the sky to watch over us.
THE NEXT MORNING MY father called me into the library. Mr. Enrique had brought him the sad news, and my father hadn’t slept. My mother was out visiting Madame Halevy, so my father and I were free to talk. I thought perhaps he had planned it that way. He asked that I place a rose from our tree at Adelle’s grave. He had been sending provisions from our store to her house twice a week, and had done so ever since my mother had let her go. Now he would send the funeral dinner as well. I kissed him and thought him the most generous man in the world. We embraced each other and shed tears for Adelle, then my father stalked away. He didn’t want me to know what he felt, but I heard him sobbing in the garden. If I am not mistaken, my mother, walking up from the street, heard it as well.
I went to the African churchyard for the burial. I stood outside the fence made of sticks and wire and ached for Jestine. She wore a borrowed black dress and stood with her little girl by her side, holding hands. The cemetery was different than ours. There were wooden crosses carved with angels, shells set in intricate patterns, potted vines of purple blooms. Some people were Christians; some practiced the old religions of their homelands. I knew most everyone at the service, including Mr. Enrique, who had continued on as the clerk in the office with my husband, teaching him the business. I had only recently discovered that although my father had long ago granted him his freedom, Mr. Enrique was still listed in the official records as a slave. I suppose I didn’t want to know these things, especially when it came to my father. I wanted to believe the world was different than it was. But there was just so much a grown woman could pretend. There was more than one world on our island, and boundaries that could not be overstepped. On the day of the funeral, I knew it was not my place to mourn with Adelle’s family and friends, although when Jestine exited the churchyard, she came to kiss me.
The ground was littered with fallen leaves, so many I couldn’t see the earth. That does not often happen on our island. It was as if the trees were crying. It was the coldest day anyone could remember, and butterflies froze and fell to earth. There was a shimmer of blue and white on the ground. I stood and wept, and even my tears were cold. I still have the marks from that day, though they have turned to freckles. I saw someone beyond the fence. I thought at first it was a ghost, perhaps Madame Petit, but it wasn’t. I was stunned to see my mother. When she signaled to me, I went to stand beside her. She was wearing a scarf knotted over her head, perhaps so she would not be recognized as the woman who had dismissed Adelle, though surely everyone knew. My mother and I did not embrace.
The service had ended, and my mother was staring down the road at the funeral procession. Women held up straw and paper umbrellas, not against the sun or rain but to ward off the falling leaves. Jestine followed last, her daughter by her side.
“That’s the child?” my mother said.
All the neighbors would now gather in Adelle’s house and eat the meal my father had sent over as they remembered her life. Lyddie was holding her mother’s hand. She had on a blue dress with smocking Jestine had sewn by hand. It was Adelle’s favorite color, the color of protection and of faith, haint blue. I’d paid for the fabric and pearl buttons, and why shouldn’t I?
I saw that my mother had taken note of the rose on Adelle’s grave.
“Why do you ask about the child now?” I said to my mother. “She’s nearly five years old.”
My mother nodded grimly. “Maybe you’ll understand when you have to protect your own family.”
“What do you think I do every day?” I had six of them after all and was not yet thirty. I dreamed of storms and boats at sea and of my children drowning. I often sat in the nursery until daybreak, and Rosalie would laugh when she found me there. “You think you can protect them with your presence?” she’d said often enough. I did not answer, but if I had, I would have said, “Perhaps.”
“I hope you don’t visit her. If you do it will encourage her to think that life is different than it is,” my mother told me.
“Jestine is well aware of what life is like,” I responded coldly.
“Not Jestine.” My mother was still gazing down the road. She seemed older to me on this day, her features sharper, her eyes hooded. “I’m talking about the girl.”
I didn’t have to listen to my mother anymore. I had done enough to please both her and my father. I’d given them my marriage and my fate. I presumed my father was at work on this day, even though Adelle had been a part of our household for so many years. At that moment I felt detached from both of my parents.
“Did you ever care about anyone but yourself?” I blurted to my mother. “No wonder my father locks himself away.”
My mother gasped as if I’d struck her. “You’re my daughter! I don’t expect you to speak to me that way!”
I lowered my eyes and apologized. “Please forgive me.” I should have honored her, and I knew that in some way I would pay for this sin of disrespect.
When I walked home a pelican followed above me. Maybe it was the bird Adelle had become, a spirit now freed. I closed my eyes and wished that she would appear in her earthly form and instruct me
as she had throughout my life. I was the one who did not love my husband. I was embarrassed, because he was a good man. I had whispered a single question to Adelle before she passed on. What is life without love? That was when she took my hand in her own, though she was as frail and weightless as a bird. She made a circle within my palm. I knew what she was telling me. A life like that was worth nothing at all.
She had told me that Isaac would not be the only man in my life. I had begun to look for that other man. I felt like a witch, like a demon. I didn’t want the spirit of my predecessor to know I was willing to betray her husband. But I couldn’t resist. I gazed into the face of every man who passed by, searching for the one I was meant for.
I lived every day for my children and remained a dutiful wife. But every night I thought about my other life, the one that had yet to begin.
I WAS SO BUSY with my children I did not see my father aging. Mr. Enrique was the one who came to tell me he had died, suddenly and peacefully, in his own bed. It seemed impossible that two people I loved would die one after the other. Adelle had always told me that bad luck comes in threes. I felt a chill to imagine there was one more death in store for us.
When my mother sent for me, I put on my wedding dress, which Jestine and I had dyed blue, and went to her. It was traditional for the burial society to sit with the deceased overnight, to bathe him one last time and cover him with white linen. In the past they would have protected him from evil spirits as well, though no one believed in such things nowadays. Now it was so that the family could have some rest and peace. My mother insisted that my father be brought to the library. She became so overwrought that she had to be given smelling salts when his body was carried into the room he had so loved. I had never seen my mother quite like this, so vulnerable, her sorrow stamped on her face, her clothes wrinkled, hair uncombed. I went alone to sit beside my father. He seemed smaller in death than he had in life. The air in the room was different, still and quiet the way it was before a storm arrived. My father was wearing his nightshirt. That alone brought me to tears. The man who had commanded our family and demanded respect would never have allowed anyone to see him this way. His eyes were closed, but I half expected them to fly open so that he could order me to leave. They did not. He was gone from us. I could spy his knees, knobs of bone. His thin legs veined blue. There was a knock at the door. My mother had collected herself and had returned with a washbasin of soap and water. I had never seen her look as distraught. She had wanted his love, and had failed to have it for her own.
“Are you sure you can do this?” I asked.
“How can I be sure of anything now?” She nodded. “You see to his feet.” She would take care of the rest.
I took a damp cloth and washed my father’s feet. The water was cold. I looked up to see that my mother was crying as she bathed my father. We covered him with a sheet of fine white linen, then sat together without bothering to light a candle.
“I can’t believe he’s no longer in the world,” my mother said. Her hands were in her lap and she stared straight ahead. “Now everything will change.”
It was true. Some people hold a family together, and for us that person was Moses Pomié.
There were lengthening shadows in the room. The air had grown heavy and damp. I saw a trickle of water on the stucco wall, as if the house were crying. I held out my hands, as I’d done as a child. I prayed for the flicker of my father’s spirit to appear, but it didn’t happen. A spirit has to want to come to you. It is his choice. My father was gone, and my mother and I were in the dark, with nothing more to say to one another.
OUR TRADITION INSISTED THE dead must be buried before two days had passed. My cousin Aaron was called back to St. Thomas, though it wouldn’t be possible for him to attend the funeral; it would be months before he arrived to go over business dealings and honor the dead. My father’s oldest colleagues and their sons carried the coffin to the cemetery. My husband assisted as well, for he was the head of our household now. Monsieur DeLeon, my father’s dearest friend, helped my mother walk to the grave site. Her cold wailing went through the streets, sharp and hard, from the center of a heart I hadn’t known she had. She threw herself upon the grave and had to be lifted off before the men of the congregation could offer the mourning prayer. There were parrots in the trees, bits of red and green. Mr. Enrique stood at the rear of the gathering, wearing a black suit and a black hat. There was no one Moses Pomié had trusted more, for he would not have been alive if not for this man who had carried him to the harbor in a basket made of reeds.
The men of the congregation lowered the casket into the ground, and then took turns covering my father with shovelfuls of fresh earth. I waited until everyone was gone. Once they were through the cemetery gates, I called to Mr. Enrique and handed him the shovel so that he might have his turn. He spaded earth onto the casket for some time and then, sweating through his coat, returned the shovel to me. Women were not supposed to help in this burial ritual, but I did so anyway. In so many ways I was my father’s son, therefore I acted as one now as he left our world behind.
I IMAGINED AARON RODRIGUES would be a stranger when he returned. He no longer worked for the family in France, and we rarely heard from him, although my mother addressed monthly letters to him. I assumed there were checks inside those envelopes. But as it turned out I knew him as soon as I saw him among the disembarking passengers. He was much the same, handsome and carefree. The difference was, he’d brought home a wife, a French girl named Elise, a young woman with lovely features who seemed timid, a pretty little mouse. She hesitated on the dock before being guided toward my mother to be introduced. Aaron hadn’t bothered to let anyone know he’d been married. He’d clearly cut himself off from home, if that’s what he still considered this island. I dreaded having to tell Jestine, who had been overjoyed to hear of his homecoming.
“My dear aunt,” Aaron said, greeting my mother tenderly before bringing Elise to meet her. “I could not have had a better woman to care for me and raise me,” he told his wife. “I have always considered Madame Pomié to be my mother.”
Elise had red-gold hair, and her pale complexion was flushed with the heat. The crossing had clearly been difficult for her, for she seemed unsteady on land. She wore a dress that reminded me of those I’d found in a cabinet in my own house, frocks brought from Paris by the first Madame Petit, too heavy for the climate, but beautiful all the same. Elise’s dress was a rose-hued silk, and there were silver threads in the smocking. She wore a cameo necklace on a plaited gold chain. After she greeted my mother, we were introduced. I didn’t know what to think of her, especially when instead of greeting me with a proper hello she leaned close to whisper, asking if she might bathe immediately. Clearly unused to the rough conditions aboard the ship, she had been thinking of nothing else for days. She seemed to view me as a housemaid.
“I’m filthy,” she announced, clearly embarrassed by her condition. She had a lovely voice, huskier than I’d expected. She smelled of cologne.
“You look perfect,” Aaron told her.
“Looks are one thing.” Elise grimaced. “I’m far from perfect.” She turned to me, perhaps thinking she had found a sister of sorts, as we were nearly the same age. “Please. I would sell my soul for some soap and water.”
Elise and I walked together as Aaron and my mother trailed behind. My mother was tender toward him in a way that I found frustrating. I heard her ask why he hadn’t written more regularly, and then she laughed as he teased, insisting that his handwriting had always been dreadful. Besides, he said in a low voice, he had turned his attentions to finding a wife who would please her, and it was Elise’s wealthy family he worked for now. Just then a lizard ran across our path. It was a small green iguana, but Elise panicked at the sight of it, stumbling and grabbing on to my arm.
“It’s only a baby,” I told her. “It couldn’t hurt you, but you could step on it easily.”
I gave Aaron’s wife a day, perhaps two, before she was
demanding to go home to Paris. I had seen such women from Europe, dressed in their exquisite clothes, their manners polished, organza ribbons in their hair. Soon enough they would be happy to give up their gorgeous clothes for lighter muslin shifts; their perfect upswept hair would be in tangles. They’d stand on the wharves looking out over the cruel ocean that had brought them here, wishing themselves home once more.
“Whatever that creature is, it’s vile.” Elise was young, and had no experience other than her life in France. She freely admitted she was spoiled, from a wealthy family that gave in to her every desire. I gazed over at Aaron, wondering if that had been the attraction. Elise was already put off by our island; she wondered aloud if there might be lions in the forests here.
I laughed. “No. This isn’t Africa. The most you will see is a dog. Or a donkey. Perhaps a mongoose.”
“What’s that?” she wanted to know.
“A creature with a taste for parrots and bats. They don’t bother people.”
Elise eyed the hills with suspicion, the tumbling vines, the purple flowers, the clusters of tamarind with their seedpods hanging down like bats wrapped inside their leathery wings. “There must be snakes,” she declared of the wild land beyond town. “I dread them,” she confided.
There were snakes, it was true, as well as bats and rats, but I glossed over that. I certainly said nothing of the local tales of werewolves. “We have nothing that will harm you.”
The heat was weighing down on us as we continued toward home. Soon enough Elise began to falter. She squinted in the harsh light and announced that she had a headache. Before I could offer my assistance, she collapsed on the road.
Aaron ran to her, motioning to me crudely. “Couldn’t you help her?” he snapped, as though blaming me for his wife’s delicate nature.
“Help her what? Walk? I assumed she could do that by herself.”
He glared at me for mocking his wife while he lifted her, then clasped her in his arms. He had to carry her the rest of the way. “I’m so sorry, dear husband,” I heard her whisper to him. She hid her face against his coat, and he did his best to cheer her. He called her his darling and his delight and vowed she was as light as a feather. But I could tell from his expression, he wasn’t pleased. I could not believe he had chosen this woman, so very different from Jestine.
The Marriage of Opposites Page 8
