“Pets are a foolish expense” was his initial comment.
“Sometimes being foolish is the right thing to do. Look at us.”
“You’re never foolish. I know that much.”
“Not even when it comes to Paris?”
“The business cannot be run from Paris, Rachel, though I wish that it could be. Do you think I haven’t thought a thousand times of leaving this place behind? I have terrible memories here. But I have to think of the children, and children expect to be fed and clothed.”
“And you would be leaving Esther if you went back to Paris.”
Whereas other men went to taverns in the evenings, I knew my husband went to the cemetery. Rosalie and I could both tell because there would be red mud on his shoes and red flowers in the pockets of his jacket.
“I couldn’t leave,” he admitted.
I went to sit on his lap. He was a kind man, and although I couldn’t change his mind about Paris, when it came to the household I knew how to get what I wanted. “Be ready to be surprised.”
“You always surprise me.”
Because Isaac disliked dogs, he was somewhat relieved when I took him out to the barn.
“Voilà,” I said. “Jean-François.”
Isaac laughed, despite how tired he was. “Let me guess—he’s a French donkey.”
“Exactly. So we had no choice but to take him in.”
Isaac stroked my hair. He was grateful that I was good to his children and humored them. “The boys talked you into this.”
“Would Esther have let them keep him?”
“Esther would have been terrified of him. But she would have been glad you kept him.”
I DID NOT HEAR my husband laugh again for some time. The storm was terrible for everyone, and nearly ruined us. Every workingman on our island found himself thwarted. Desolation was everywhere: roofs collapsed, houses were washed away, mudslides ruined roads and streets. The island was ravaged by destruction, and we suffered the fate of those who depended on the sea. Trading ships carrying merchandise to Charleston, including those belonging to our family, had sunk. It was a financial disaster, and Isaac spent weeks in the office, sleeping there and taking his meals at his desk, doing his best to salvage the business. Three months had passed since I’d been ill in the garden, but our bad fortune kept me from telling my husband of my condition. He didn’t need more worry.
At least we still had a home. Other people were not as fortunate. Roads were impassable, and part of the shoreline had disappeared. Boats could be found on hillsides, swept there by the rising tide, broken apart so that their wooden hulls whitened and became skeletons left in among the vines. There were bodies of creatures, dogs and rats and iguanas, along the streets. Parrots in the trees drowned from turning their faces toward the sky; when they fell their feathers scattered in the mud.
I worried for Adelle’s house, so close to the harbor. Neither Adelle nor Jestine now worked in my parents’ home. They avoided me as well. As soon as crews had chopped up fallen trees and hauled them away, I left the children with Rosalie and made my way to their house with a satchel of food and clothes. There was a huge flood between the town and the docks, impassable. I paid a man to take me across in his canoe. Clouds reflected in the water. Everything was calm now, and the sky was an indigo color. When people in Paris thought of paradise, surely they imagined this.
The boatman dropped me off. I waded through knee-deep water until I reached Adelle’s cottage. There was a starfish on the road. It was a good thing the house had been built on stilts, and that the stilts were pounded into rock, otherwise the house would have likely floated away to the other side of the world.
Adelle came onto the porch. She took the necessities I’d brought her, then hugged me close. “I’m grateful, but you shouldn’t have come here,” she said. The roads were dangerous, not only because of the flooding. There were looters and bands of wild dogs, all of them hungry. Adelle said that Jestine had been unwell and had taken to her bed. During the storm they had both said their last prayers as seawater rushed in through the windows. At the worst of the flooding they’d tied themselves to the cast-iron stove in the kitchen, which was the heaviest thing in the house. There was still sand on the floor, and the blue paint was pale with salt. Adelle swore that a flatfish had swum through the window, right into a cooking pot, which was God’s way of seeing that they had enough to eat through the storm. They were Christians and believed in a merciful maker who would watch over them.
I told Adelle I’d come despite the floods because I missed them both. And because I had a secret. I wanted Adelle and Jestine to be the first to know.
“It’s no secret, Rachel. I told you your fate before you got married. I saw that man and his children and all the other children that you’d have. Now you tell me my fate in return. Is your mother going to have me come back to her house?”
I suppose my mother had bad-mouthed Adelle and she could not get other work. I didn’t mention that a hired woman was now serving dinner there. I was still confused over the matter. I asked Adelle what had happened between her and Madame Pomié, and she simply said, “We had words.”
“What kind of words?”
“What kind do you think? Would your mother say anything nice to me? She didn’t want me or Jestine in the house.”
Just that morning my mother had ordered one of the hired men who worked in the yard to cut down the rose tree Adelle favored, but fortunately Mr. Enrique had taken it to his house before any damage was done.
“I’ll speak to my mother,” I promised. “You’ll see. You’ll be back and nothing will change.”
But Adelle didn’t agree. “Everything changes. Look at you. Look at Jestine.”
I went into the bedroom and saw Jestine in her bed. She wore a white nightdress, and her arms were bare. It was afternoon and hot and murky, the way it is after a storm, with air that smelled like the tide. I lay down beside her, and she opened her eyes. As girls we had done everything together. At least that hadn’t changed. What had happened to me had happened to her as well. I could tell from the sleepy look in her eyes, the rise in her belly. I was happy about it. Our children would be friends, although they couldn’t be the cousins that they truly were. This child to come was the reason Aaron was being sent to Paris.
“We should have run away when we had the chance,” Jestine said. “If you hadn’t gotten married we could have gone and been there waiting for Aaron, but you had to go and fall in love with those children. I could tell after your first visit to his house that we would never get out of here.”
I felt stung by her remarks. I promised that nothing would be different. I swore it on my blood. I bit my own arm and let it bleed onto the sheet. We watched as the blood formed the shape of a bird. We would still go to France, I insisted. We would leave after the children were born, despite the fact that I was a married woman. I’d lately been reading about the history of Paris, and now I told these stories to Jestine, how the streets were built over tunnels that were a thousand years old, how the Île de la Cité had been shored up by ancient ramparts to ensure that the island would never float away, no matter what floods might come. I told her Perrault’s story of a girl who was in love with a beast and knew he had a true heart.
“Not that one,” Jestine said.
I also recited from an old French recipe book on Esther Petit’s bookshelf that I read as if it were a storybook. I’d memorized the instructions for making chestnut pastries. I recited the recipe to Jestine now, even though neither one of us had ever seen chestnuts or tasted them.
That night when I told my husband we were to have a child, he was so grateful he gave thanks to God, but in my prayers I gave thanks that there would always be ships in the harbor, there to carry us away. That night I made the pastry in the first Madame Petit’s cookbook, even though I had neither chestnuts nor almond paste. I used what I had in the kitchen, molasses and papaya, and though it was not what the recipe called for, the results were delici
ous all the same.
MY MOTHER READIED AARON’S wardrobe the following week. It was a major undertaking, and of course I agreed to assist her, but I insisted Adelle return to help us with the laundry and packing. “Does my father know you let her go?” I asked.
“She’s not here. He’s not blind. So he must know.”
“But you told him some story. That she left because she was unhappy.”
“Keep out of it,” my mother said.
“I’m not afraid to tell him the truth,” I told her. “He despises a liar.”
It was a horrible moment between us.
“You think you are so special to have Moses Pomié’s love,” my mother said.
“But I do have it,” I said. “Can you say the same?”
“I’ll take Adelle back. But not Jestine,” my mother said. Clearly she knew a romance had gone on. “Not until Aaron is gone.”
Adelle came back the following day. She was quieter than usual. After a while, she and my mother took up a conversation as if nothing had happened. But it had.
The next evening, as he was preparing to go, my cousin was checking through one of the trunks he would take with him when he found a packet of lavender tucked under his freshly pressed suit. He held it up, puzzled. When he asked me what it was, I shrugged, even though I knew better. I said, “It makes your clothes smell fresh even after a long voyage.” He tossed it away, saying it made him sneeze. I’m sure he had no idea what the herb was meant to do. Adelle had told me that lavender could keep a man bound to the woman who loved him. When she found the packet on the bureau later that day, she shook her head.
“I will never set eyes on that boy again.”
“He might come back.”
“Even if he comes back, I’ll never look at him.”
I WENT TO THE harbor with my parents on the day my cousin left. My mother wept as I’d never seen her do before. When Aaron came to me to say his good-byes, I threw my arm around him so I could lean close and no one would overhear. “It’s your child she’s having,” I said.
He showed no surprise, only kissed me three times, as was the custom. I then understood that he already knew, and that he was not strong enough to give up his life and start anew. I wished this was a fairy tale and we could exchange places there on the dock, and I could be the one to leave that day. I would take nothing with me, only a map of Paris and a heavy black coat. Perhaps a cat would help me make my way and find treasure once I reached the shore of my newly claimed country. I closed my eyes and wished that when I opened them again I would find myself boarding the ship, and Aaron would stay and live in the house on stilts and we both could have the lives we were meant to have.
But when I opened my eyes he was gone and only I remained.
THAT NIGHT, I WAS even more restless than usual. I opened the windows in my bedroom. Isaac shivered as he dreamed. It was the season when the air sparked with heat in the afternoons but became damp and chill at night. I still had the same dream I’d had as a girl, and if I fell asleep the dream would come for me. There was a man in Paris who was waiting for me. He would listen to my stories, about a woman who was a turtle, and a bird that flew halfway around the world for love, and the original people that had come here from the bright side of the moon, only to be trapped, as I was. It was not fair to my husband and children, but the truth was, I still yearned for another life.
In this house the walls were not painted haint blue and spirits couldn’t be kept out. That was why on certain nights when I couldn’t sleep I spied the first Madame Petit in the chair in a shadowy nook that I always avoided. Rosalie said it had been my predecessor’s chair. Madame Petit had often sat there before her death, rocking the baby. She had come from Paris and could never tolerate the heat. She would break out in a rash beneath the heavy fabric of the painted silk and brocade dresses she’d brought with her from France. Rosalie said she would cry when the gnats bit her, as her skin was sensitive, and she was forced to stay out of the sun, for she turned red and peeled. She had a fear of donkeys and parrots and refused to go into the countryside. She didn’t like to go any farther than the front gate. Still, she had enough strength to refuse to die until her daughter had her naming day. She had loved her husband, and now I was beside him. Each night before I went to bed, I promised I would treat her children like my own. I explained that I did not love her husband, though I cared for him deeply, and that he still belonged to her. Love was out of the question for me. She needn’t have any fear that I would ever take her place.
Perhaps she was watching over me during my pregnancy. As my time grew near I found I could sleep the moment I lay down in bed. Sometimes I barely had to close my eyes. I slept for hours, through the night and well into the morning, so deeply Rosalie had to shake me awake. I saw Esther Petit standing at the foot of the bed when Adelle and Jestine helped me to deliver my first child. I told her if she helped me survive this birth, I would honor her for the rest of my life. I didn’t listen to people when they told me not to name my first son after a child Madame Esther Petit had lost. I went ahead and named him Joseph.
I knew who to thank for all that I had.
CHAPTER THREE
A Cold Wind
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS
1823
RACHEL POMIÉ PETIT
In six years I added to Esther’s three children with three of my own, first Joseph, then Rebecca Emma, then, a year later, Abigail Delphine. After each birth I continued the tradition of visiting the first Madame Petit to show my gratitude, leaving flowering branches on her grave. In return she gave me her blessing and allowed me to live the life that should have been hers. It was not a life in Paris, but it was one that was happily cluttered with children. Because of this, time was like a river, and I was a fish in that river, moving so quickly that the world outside my household was a blur.
Jestine often walked with me to the old Jewish cemetery when I went to pay my respects to the Petit and Pomié families. But she refused to go any farther than the gates. She was afraid of spirits, so I went on alone, and she stayed outside the gate with her daughter, Lyddie, who was four, the same age as my Joseph. I didn’t tell Jestine, but sometimes I was aware of a tug when a spirit would latch on to my skirt as I turned to leave the cemetery. I felt it, a pull on my clothing, a hand around my ankle. I had great sympathy for these women snatched away by death before they’d held their children in their arms, but not so much that I intended to stay beside them. I recited the mourning prayer and they vanished, back to where they belonged.
When I left the cemetery I brushed the leaves from my hair. The fallen leaves were a sign that a ghost had been walking in the branches of the trees above me. Jestine noticed, and it proved her point. “You think those who’ve passed on are content to leave this world? They’ll wrap themselves around you and live off your breath,” she told me.
“I hold my breath when I’m in there,” I assured her.
“No you don’t!” She laughed at me. “I see you talking to your husband’s wife, telling her news of her children.”
I always left my children home with Rosalie, but I loved having Jestine’s daughter along. Lyddie was an extremely beautiful child, perhaps even more beautiful than her mother, with silver-gray eyes and hair that had strands of gold running through the curls. When no one else could hear, she called me Aunt Rachel.
A new synagogue had been built with plaster covering the wooden beams and joists, for fires were common and Synagogue Hill wasn’t immune to disaster. Children of our faith were taught in the new building. Lyddie went to the Moravian School, open and free for all children of color, including the children of slaves. The Moravians were some of the earliest Protestants, their faith begun by a Catholic priest named Jan Hus in the fourteenth century. Forced to leave Moravia and Bohemia by their Catholic emperor, they, like the Jews, needed to practice their beliefs underground, or flee. They arrived on the island in 1732, and soon built their church. In the new world they focused on the educa
tion of the masses, and their missionaries began the school for slaves, carrying a single mission in their teachings: In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things love.
I had sat in Lyddie’s classroom to make certain the education was worthwhile and was astonished by the excellence of the teachers from Denmark and even more so, by the work of the teachers from America, many of them resettled Mennonites. They insisted their students sit in neat rows; each had a new pen to write with and fresh paper. Although many local people spoke Dutch Creole, the school decided most lessons would be in English. Lyddie’s reading of Danish and English was far better than my own children’s, her letters more beautifully shaped than my own, and her reading of French was impeccable. I occasionally dictated letters to my cousin in France for her to write down for practice. Not that he ever replied. He had disappeared from our lives, and we heard rumors about his life in Paris. Many women had fallen in love with him, and he had a wide social circle, but the family had had enough of his antics and was considering cutting him out of the business. Lyddie had no idea who Aaron Rodrigues was, which was just as well. People judge a girl’s worth in many ways, but one must hope they do not include any judgment of the deeds of her father.
When Lyddie was born, the rift between my mother and Adelle became too deep to repair, and despite my threats, my mother let her go.
“That’s fine,” Adelle said to me. “I would not wish to work with her even if I were starving.”