“If he is, you don’t want to know. You’ll just break your heart all over again for a creature that should be wild anyway.”
Still I whistled and called out his name. All of the donkeys glanced up at us. Jestine started laughing. “See!” she said. “If he’s among them he’s no different than they are now. You did yourself and him a favor when you set him free.”
But I saw the eyes of one of the donkeys set on me, and I knew. It was Jean-François. The pet I’d walked into the hills late one night that had tried to follow me home.
Jestine saw the look on my face. “Now you’re going to cry,” she declared.
“Unlikely,” I answered.
I turned away so she wouldn’t see my tears. In my arms, my baby was fretting. Jestine looped an arm around my waist.
“You have a soft heart,” she said. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”
We both laughed then. No one knew me the way she did, not even Frédéric. Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times. I went ahead and let myself cry, then pulled myself together.
The light was yellow now, hotter. We went on to the herb man’s house. Our route brought us past the waterfall that fell into a pool where tiny blue fish slipped through the shallows. I wished we could strip off our clothing and immerse ourselves in the cool water, but we continued on, past tangles of vines, some with thorns, some without. There was a hush here, and Jacobo was quiet, I think for the first time in his two weeks of life. We walked on, through the coils of greenery, light-footed, almost as if we were girls once more. There were ruins, a manor house from a hundred years earlier, crumbling into stone dust, and stalks of sugarcane grew wild. At last we reached the clearing where the herb man had his hut. Someone was living here, that much was certain. There were embers in a little fire pit, and some pots and pans scattered about. Jestine didn’t know I had once come here myself to thank the herb man. She didn’t know I had kissed him. She started to go into the house, but I said I would do it this time. I wasn’t afraid. If anyone was to pay for a cure for my baby, it should be me.
“Do you want me to ask for something for you, too?” I said before I went in.
Jestine’s expression shifted, and I saw her grief. “Ask him to get me back everything I lost. See if he can do that for me.”
I rapped on the door and was told to come inside. The baby was fussing, but only a little. I had to get used to the dark. I spied the herb man in his chair. He looked so old, as if he was already in another world.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
He shrugged. It didn’t matter. “Is that the problem?” He nodded at my baby.
“He doesn’t sleep or eat.”
I brought Jacobo closer so that he could be examined. The herb man opened the blanket and studied the baby’s form. My son threw his arms up and cried with a deep voice.
“He’s strong,” the herb man said. “He has no fever. He just has other things on his mind.”
“What other things?” I couldn’t imagine what a baby might be thinking of other than sleep and milk and the warmth of his mother’s arms.
“He sees what you can’t see.” The baby had quieted and was staring into the herb man’s eyes. “Maybe he sees my death. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees how I’ll go out and lie in the grass and blink and be gone. I’ll travel right up to the stars and look down at him. Or maybe he just sees the shadows on the wall.”
The herbalist signaled for me to wrap up my baby. As I did he slowly got up and brought forth a bottle of a brown liquid made of soursop and powdered herbs. He gave me a bundle of soursop tree leaves to rub over the baby’s blankets. The herb man was so old he could barely walk. I wondered how he fed himself, and I thought perhaps I should leave fruit and bread every week. He came to take the baby from my arms.
“He’ll sleep with one drop of this every night. Then he’ll get used to sleeping. He will look forward to it. But it won’t change who he is or how he sees.”
The herb man gave the baby a drop of the mixture to drink from his finger. My son made a face, but he closed his eyes.
“Whenever you do this let him hear your voice. Then he will know you will always be there for him. Speak now,” he told me.
I was so taken aback, I began to tell the first story that came to me, the one that had always terrified Aaron. Surely it was wrong to speak of werewolves in the presence of an infant, but I did. I murmured of how the old Danish families had to pay a price for their cruelty, how when the moon was full they felt their bodies would become covered with hair and their claws would come in. By the time I was done, my child was asleep.
“He likes stories with teeth,” the herbalist said happily. “Another sign of his strength.”
It was then I noticed the pearls around the herbalist’s neck, the ones my mother had sewn into the hem of her skirt when my parents fled Saint-Domingue, the ones my grandmother had brought when she escaped from Spain. Jestine had paid for Frédéric’s life with them.
The herb man caught me staring. “You like these?” he said, holding up the pearls. “I’m making sure the bad luck in them wears off.”
I took out a gold coin and put it on the table. It was too much for a sleep cure and we both knew it. I explained that I wanted the pearls back.
“Someone needs them,” I said. “She wants to get back what she lost.”
“You give them to her, you’ll give her your luck, too,” the old man said. “Are you sure about that?”
I said I was. I owed it to her.
He took off the strand of pearls and gave them to me. They were so hot they burned my hand. I was about to put another gold coin on the table, but the herb man stopped me.
“What good will that do me where I’m going?” he said. “I like something more than coins.”
So I kissed him, as I’d done before.
We were halfway down the hill when I handed Jestine the pearls. There were already clouds of mosquitoes hovering over the waterfall when we passed by. “You should have what was meant to be yours,” I told my friend. Jestine gave me a look, then she slipped the pearls around her throat and kissed me. I gave her my luck, and was happy to do so.
As we continued on the road I held my child close so he would hear the sound of my voice, as the herbalist had bade me to do. I told him the story of the turtle woman who couldn’t decide whether or not to be human, and of the fish who had the face of a horse, and of a donkey who had the name of a French boy and came running home to supper whenever he was called. By the time we reached our street my baby was slumbering, as if he’d never had any difficulty.
1831
On the night before one year ended and another began there was a special celebration on our island, when the tired, old year was swept away, a time when wrongs were forgotten and hope was restored. It was a rowdy party that included the entire city, and what was done on that night was overlooked, left unjudged. You could kiss a stranger on the street, drink all night, engage in a fistfight, gamble, run wild, and still be absolved of any wrongdoing. Sometimes I thought it was the only night when some people on our island possessed the ability to forgive in our unfair world. People of color and Europeans, the poor and the rich, some descended from royalty and others from slaves, flooded the streets to dance. Already many people of color were free on our island, and soon they would be granted the rights of citizenship and be welcomed into the Burghers’ Association so they could set up business, just as Jews would soon be granted the rights to marry non-Jews, though few would do so and dare face the congregation’s wrath.
On this one night, however, everyone was equal on the street. Some wore masks, so they would not be recognized by their mothers or wives or by neighbors who might reveal any trespasses committed and create a scandal. The celebration began at four in the afternoon and went on all night; even the slaves were free to do as they pleased, dancing and forming into bands of musicians, with
many playing the drums called Gumbe. In our community only men were allowed to attend this party, but I had never listened to rules. I hadn’t even told Frédéric where I was going. I had kissed him good-bye and left him to read over the ledgers. Rosalie promised to stay with the children until midnight, then she was leaving to be with Mr. Enrique. I wore the green dress Jestine had sewn for me when I thought I would wear black for the rest of my life. I braided my hair, took off my rings, found a mask hidden in a bureau. My husband trusted me and asked no questions, which made me love him all the more. I would create still another scandal if anyone knew that I went alone through the city, doing as I pleased. I put my children to bed and went down the stairs in the dark.
There was Jestine, waiting for me. We both slipped on our masks made of feathers so we could not be recognized. Jestine was wearing my mother’s pearls, the ones I’d bargained for with my good fortune. There were always men who chased after my friend, for even masked she was clearly the most beautiful woman in the crowd. She paid no attention. Perhaps we had indeed changed places and she no longer believed in love. She had one person in mind, her child, and that left no room for anyone else. People thought we were sisters and addressed us as such, and we laughed and drank rum at a stand on the street.
“I’m the pretty sister, but you’re the one who gets what she wants,” Jestine said.
It was true. I had ten children and a man I loved. No matter what my problems were, and how my own people shunned me, I was blessed by the many riches of my life.
“The whole world starts again in a few hours. You’re supposed to have hope tonight,” I told Jestine.
“I do. I hope that the red-haired woman dies a terrible death.”
Such things should not be said aloud, but I understood, and I joined her in this wish. We raised our glasses and drank to the Frenchwoman’s death. I had no qualms about doing so.
We wandered through the drunken crowd, past Glass Bottle Alley and Ding Alley, all places we weren’t supposed to be. We went to a food stand, bought cups of guava berry rum, cheered the musicians, walked through town, hand in hand. We were out till the stars began to disappear from the sky.
HOURS LATER THE FIRE started. A fight had begun, and a kerosene lantern had been kicked over. In moments, wooden buildings went up like straw. I was in bed with my husband when we heard what we thought was one of the children screaming. But it was the wind that had picked up and the cry of fire as one building after the other caught. Frédéric was out of bed in an instant. He pulled on trousers and a shirt. I loved to see his broad shoulders and muscular arms when he was dressing. I wished he would stay beside me, and leave the fire to others, but he wasn’t a person who would recoil from the possibility of harm to himself.
“Start pouring water around the house,” he told me. “Don’t leave the hill.”
I felt panicked when he went out. I called his name but he was gone. I didn’t care about anyone but him. There was a heaviness inside me, as if my life had left me. I went to the window to look for him, but he had turned the corner, and had taken the steps down the hill, already on his way to the synagogue, where a bucket brigade had begun to wet down buildings. Every effort was made, with the men working even harder when the breezes came up, soaking every wall and roof. I woke Rosalie, and we did the same with our home and store, with the help of the older children. The air was thick with sparks and smoke, but we worked away, our clothes drenched. I thought of Jestine alone at the harbor, pouring buckets of seawater on her porch and along the perimeter of her house. By then, flocks of birds were overhead in the dark sky, fleeing the smoke, taking wing on a course that led past Jestine’s house, out to sea. The pelican who had always nested on our roof, who I’d believed carried Adelle’s spirit, left that night when sparks fell into its nest. I felt an emptiness without that bird above me, there like one of the stars that rose above us in the sky.
The fire raged for two days, during which time we stayed close to home—wetting down the street and garden with bucket after bucket. Our rain barrel ran dry, and I had to send the boys dashing to the harbor to fill buckets with salt water. I counted the minutes until they were back home, safe from the flames. Cinders stung our clothes and eyes. Birds that had waited too long fell from the sky, bodies smashed on the road, their feathers drifting through puddles. I climbed out onto the roof and the children handed me buckets of green seawater to pour over the eaves. There was no birdsong, no chatter on the street, no ships’ horns, only something that sounded like a cry. For two days we barely ate or slept. Frédéric had not returned. I felt I had lost half of myself, more than half, actually, for I was nothing without him. Many people had been killed or wounded in the fires, and over a thousand buildings had burned to the ground. I mourned for our city, but there was only one person I waited for at the gate, my heart knotted with fear. My hair was loose, thick with ash; my hands had blistered from lugging pails of water with handles so hot from the fires they had burned marks into my palms.
When my husband at last came home he was black with soot. I didn’t care, but went to embrace him. I felt my heart had been returned to me. I wept but did not let him see me do so. I had to let him be himself, a young, hopeful man. I could not burden him with the depth of my love and how afraid I was when I thought I might lose him. I stepped away so that he might wash the fire off him.
He stripped off his clothes and stood in the garden while he poured buckets of water over himself. Soon enough, the ground was black. Even after he’d washed, when he came to bed he smelled of smoke. “No one spoke to me,” he told me. “They let me help, but when it was over, and everything had burned down, they turned from me. Not a single man from the congregation greeted me by name.”
I heard the hurt and confusion in his voice, and I thought that whatever happened, whether our marriage was ever considered legal or whether we were forever outside the law, I would never trust anyone in our community. An outcast was an outcast, even when the tide turned. I would always be the woman who was a sinner. I could turn men into pillars of salt, enchant them to do my bidding, make them beg to come into my bed. My green-edged bitterness was running through my blood. Yet, despite my hatred for those men who had turned their backs on Frédéric, I was able to love my husband completely. He was such a beautiful man, both his physical self and the soul that he carried. That night in our bed he lay beside me with ashes still threaded through his dark hair, his long arms twisted around me.
The city was in ruins, with smoke rising from burned houses, and we were two people who had been scorned, but in truth I felt more fortunate than most, despite having handed over my measure of luck to Jestine. I thanked the women whose spirits walked in the trees above my head when I visited the cemetery. In the morning, when I looked into our garden, branches of our apple tree lay strewn upon the stones of the patio, the leaves burned off. But the bark was still green. This tree from France had survived both sea voyages and hurricanes. It had been transplanted whenever our family had to flee, the last time dug up with my own hands when I stole it from the garden of my parents’ house. I did not think fire would be the end of it, although from that time onward, it gave fruit only once a year, more bitter than ever, but delicious when steeped in a mixture of equal parts molasses and rum.
WHEN MY FOURTH SON with Frédéric was born, I named him Aaron Gustave, hoping my choice would cleanse that name, but it was likely a mistake. Jestine refused to look at the baby, and later, when she relented, she called him Gus, which was the name of a goat that had belonged to one of our neighbors. Even I had to laugh at that.
I now had eleven children, for I considered my stepchildren my own, though they were now grown. I still worried for Félix, the one who was in my womb when I stood on the Reverend’s doorstep. He was fragile, quick to take a chill, very quiet with shining dark eyes. And then in the following year I lost a baby who was even more fragile, a boy who arrived far too soon, when I was by myself in the garden. I had a stab of pain, then crouched down,
as the pirates’ wives must have done, alone and unaided. He arrived dead before he came to life, and so he could not be named or protected from Lilith. I felt robbed and told no one of my loss. It was only Frédéric and myself at the funeral, which we could not have in the synagogue. There was a single gravedigger whom we hired, a man not of our faith. We went at dusk, that blue empty time. I laid the child to rest beside my father, who I hoped would watch over him in the world to come, if such a thing existed. I did not weep, although my husband sobbed. When he knelt and cried out to God, I felt my bitterness burn inside me. We released the gravedigger and took up a shovel ourselves and buried our child together. Now our boy with no name would be among the spirits.
IN THE YEAR OF 1833, the elders of our congregation agreed that our marriage was legal and wrote our union down in their book. It was there, for everyone to see. We were officially husband and wife. I am not certain what changed, but perhaps we had been more of a scandal as outsiders than we would be as members of the synagogue. Frédéric immediately began to go to services, but I declined. I waited for him in the garden on Saturdays, and we would sit together then and he would say a prayer for me, and for our children, and our household.
I did not expect God’s forgiveness, for I had done as I pleased. Nor did I expect luck, for I had given mine away. I had done so in the hope that Jestine would be granted good fortune, but she was still in her house by the sea, still in mourning. I had written several letters to Aaron, but had received no reply. I tried to make him understand the grief his actions had caused, and begged him to consider allowing Lyddie to return. There was no response, until late one day Frédéric came to our rooms. It was the busy season, so I was surprised to see that he had left the store while Rosalie and I were preparing the Friday night dinner. My husband brought me into the garden, where we could have some privacy. He looked worried, and so many thoughts went through my head that I felt a wash of relief when he gave me an envelope from France. When he’d gone to the post office, the letter had been waiting.