But such a thing could never happen. And for this I blamed my mother. No one would trade for Sara Pomié.
“You would beg for your life back before morning,” I said sadly.
Jestine knew how stern my mother was, how sharp her tongue was, how bitterly she complained. When we heard Madame Pomié’s voice we always had a jolt of fear, unwilling to face her unflattering comments. In Madame’s eyes, nothing we did was right.
There were days when I wished I were a boy, for if I had been I might have set off to France as soon as I turned seventeen, sailing on one of the schooners that left from the docks near Adelle’s house. We had cousins who lived near Paris, and the businesses on both sides of the Atlantic helped each other: the French Pomiés shipped us fabric of all varieties, along with glassware and china, while we sent back molasses and rum and sugarcane. I ambled along the harbor, passing Fish Wharf and Cow Wharf, skipping over puddles. With every step I wished myself away to another life, one lived far from here. Adelle said that I had been on earth before. My mother didn’t like this sort of talk; people of our faith didn’t believe in past lives or spirits. But Adelle whispered that it was an honor to be able to reach over to the other side, the place where the lost and the found comingle. We had experimented with my powers. We went into the woods one night, just the two of us. Jestine was too afraid and went to bed early.
“It’s just as well,” Adelle said. “Let her stay home. Spirits can sense fear. That’s one thing you don’t possess.”
I took pride in Adelle’s estimation of me, and I tried to live up to her high opinion, even though the night was so dark and we were so deep in the hills, up near the caves where the pirates had lived.
“I want to call the pirates’ wives,” I said.
Adelle shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. You don’t call them, they come if they wish to do so.”
When I held out my hands in the pitch dark they filled with orbs of light. That meant the souls of the dead were around me. They came like moths drawn to a lantern. I felt the sting of their spirits. They whispered things I was too innocent to know about, what they had done for love, and for hate, what had happened to them at night in the arms of the men they belonged to, those they mourned and those they had wished dead.
I felt their sorrows and my heart quickened.
“Don’t be afraid,” Adelle said. “You’re the one with the power.”
I wished I were the person Adelle thought I was, but I was afraid of my own power. I suppose I was too young, and raw emotion frightened me. The idea that a woman might be willing to ruin her life for love was far beyond my understanding. I shook my hands to disperse the spirits into the air. I was afraid I had gone against my religion on this night, but Adelle told me that women of every faith have power. They just have to find it within themselves.
I painted my room a shade called haint blue. Blue kept unwanted spirits away; ghosts and demons could not cross over water, nor could they enter a room that was the color of the sea. I did not tell my mother the reason I had chosen this vivid blue, knowing she would have disapproved. She said superstition was for fools. The truth was, I sometimes regretted painting my chamber, for I often wished a spirit might travel to me from across the water and take me with him past the hedges of jasmine, over the garden wall, back to Paris. I peered out through the vines of oleander and bougainvillea, silver and purple in the dark. I could hear moths fluttering, many as big as birds, as they struck against the shutters of my room, called to the yellow light of the candle on my table. They could not get in. Whether they were spirits, I did not know. I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires.
TIME PASSED INSIDE A dream, and soon my childhood was gone. I thought of the fairy tales I’d read and how change came so suddenly. In one story, a boy too ugly to be seen is transformed by his own wits and by love. In another, a girl is given a gift that allows her to sing like a nightingale. Perhaps I was drawn to stories in which people found their true desires because I was a stranger to myself. Emotions stirred inside me, but I wasn’t certain what these feelings were. I understood that I wasn’t beautiful, and I knew that in our world, for a young woman, that mattered and often changed one’s destiny. I did the best with what I had. I brushed my long, black hair a thousand strokes a day. I begged Jestine to take a needle and pierce my ears so I could adorn myself with something prettier than my own reflection. My mother slapped my face for disobeying her command not to scar myself in this way, but she also gave me a pair of gold earrings that had belonged to her mother. “Your grandmother made me promise I would give these to a daughter,” she told me. “You may think ill of me, but I do not break my vows.”
When I looked at myself in the gilt-framed mirror in the hallway, studying my black hair and dark eyes, seeing the glint of gold, I wondered if indeed I might be the sparrow who became a swan.
The women from Blessings and Peace and Loving Deeds complimented my mother when they came for tea, and for good reason. My mother had a lovely house, one of the tall stucco mansions in town, painted pink, with patios and gardens hidden behind high walls. Much of the furniture had been ordered from France by my father, who delighted in beautiful things. Madame Pomié always presented exceptional food, the latest recipes from Paris—cooked birds in pastry, a soup made of sorrel. Adelle knew not to speak when she served the ladies ginger tea for good digestion, along with butter cookies and slices of mangoes. Most often Madame Halevy led the discussions concerning anyone whose children were ill-behaved or whose husbands had an eye for other women. Such transgressions were common knowledge, and there was little tolerance for weakness or wrongdoing.
THE WOMEN FROM THE congregation might appear delicate and ladylike, but on this island strength was a necessity. Most of these women could climb onto a roof before a storm to make certain that the shutters at every window were bolted shut, they could cook over an outdoor fire, kill chickens and wild waterfowl, do what they must should the tolerance of our people fade in yet another country. It was said that Madame Halevy gave birth to her first child alone while her husband was off to sea and was rumored to have cut the cord of life with a carving knife. She had lost two sons to yellow fever, but her daughter in America was said to be a great success and a great beauty. My mother was not as lucky. By the time I was of marriageable age everyone knew I was moody and disagreeable. I thought too highly of myself and was too choosy. I was already considered an old maid. Though I had masses of glossy hair that shone after I washed it with prickly pear juice, and almond-shaped eyes, I possessed a sharp face and a sharper tongue.
I had barely glanced at any of the boys who might have been interested in me, all of whom had gone on to marry other people’s daughters. My father had tried to arrange a marriage for me several times with little success. People said I was difficult and would bring only trouble to my husband. Truly, I was happier on my own. I enjoyed the privacy of my room, which overlooked the courtyard, especially in the season when the frangipani flowered and the garden turned pink. I had observed the lives of other young women, and marriage seemed a difficult and hazardous path. Many children were lost, often in infancy, to malaria and yellow fever and smallpox, and young mothers died giving birth or soon after. Even with the help of maids, marriage was hard labor, not a fate I looked forward to.
I chanted the prayers of my own faith, but I remained interested in the spirit world. I knew from my readings in my father’s library that our people had once believed in seers and signs. When I was alone, I studied the Book of Ezekiel and the Song of Solomon, mystical chapters filled with wonders. I knew I would be reprimanded if I were discovered reading these texts, which sang the praises of both spirit and flesh. From these readings, however, I knew our people were drawn to mysteries before we were forced to hide who we were and be most concerned with survival. Still such things were a part of us, and we remained in awe of God’s miracles. When a
storm came up my father asked the archangel Gabriel to protect us from woe. I often went outside and thought I saw this angel in the sky above us. He was made of golden light and of the breath of the earth. Sometimes he heard my father’s prayers, and sometimes he turned away from us.
Adelle was known for having the gift of sight, and local women who were with child often came to ask her if they would have a son or a daughter. She held a ring on a chain over them and told them to be silent. If the ring moved in a circle, that meant a daughter; back and forth meant a son. She once predicted I would have many children. I laughed at the notion. She was usually correct, but in my case was most certainly wrong.
“Maybe you’re confusing my fate with Jestine’s,” I suggested, for I didn’t like children, whereas Jestine’s manner with them was easy and assured.
“Everyone has her own fate,” Adelle told me. “This is yours. Trust me. Even you will fall in love.”
I refused to accept this prediction. I saw the constrained lives of the women in our community. I knew what had happened to the pirates’ wives. “Then I’ll close my door and lock it, and my fate will pass over me as the angel of death does at Passover.”
“You think love is like the angel of death?” Adelle laughed at me. “You can’t lock it out. It doesn’t even know what a door is.” She touched my head with her fingertips, as if testing for fever. “My advice for you is to accept what you don’t understand.”
1817
One night my father came to talk to me in the privacy of my room. It was summer and the sky was still light, streaked with a gold tint in the east, pink in the west. There was a vase of frangipani on the bureau. As my father drew up a chair, a hummingbird darted through the window to drink the nectar of the flowers. The tiny creature was there and gone so quickly I wondered if I had imagined him. Perhaps he was another spirit. Then I noticed a feather on the floor. I picked it up and slipped it under my pillow. Such things were said to bring luck.
Perhaps my distaste for the fate of most young women was my father’s fault. He had educated me and schooled me in the ways of the business world, and because of this I understood, long before my mother ever knew, that the family business was faltering. It had been a season of storms, never good for the island. Merchandise loaded onto ships, headed for Charleston and New York, had been lost at sea. My father had large debts, ones he couldn’t repay.
He was a busy man even in the best of times; he didn’t have time for idle conversation, and so I was honored that he’d come to speak to me in the quiet of the evening. I wore a white cotton nightdress, and my hair was plaited, then pinned up. My face was scrubbed clean. My father sat in a hard-backed wooden chair with a cane seat. He wore a charcoal gray suit, formal, with pearl buttons. He was a dignified, well-mannered man. Clearly the reason for this visit was serious, for this was the same suit of clothes he wore to his shipping office.
“We must change our business and our lives, or we’ll become one of the families the women from the congregation of Blessings and Peace take pity on, bringing us supper on Friday nights. I do not intend to have us living in a hut in the Savan,” he told me.
I leaned forward, straining to hear his every word. Until this year my father had been so successful that people came to him for advice, and he made his suggestions in a quiet, forceful voice. He had fled from an island where there was such cruelty against Africans that the enslaved people finally rose up in a riot of blood. Like his forefathers, he knew when to depart even though it meant leaving his worldly goods behind. He’d had one slave, and that had been Mr. Enrique. Mr. Enrique was the one who told my father that the time had come, the flower of the revolution was blooming, fed by rage and despair. On Saint-Domingue, all French families were advised to leave their homes, with the men to stay and band together in safe areas where they would stand ready to fight. That was not my father’s intention. Because my father was so well known and could not be seen in public without being held back to fight against the slaves, Mr. Enrique readied a boat. My mother went to the harbor with diamonds and pearls sewn into the hem of her dress, wearing a black cloak, for she was pregnant with me. Perhaps that was when I first became a burden to her. She covered her head with an embroidered shawl so she might not be noticed. There was only one way my father could have reached the shipyard. Enrique helped him to escape by hiding him in a wicker clothes hamper he carried on his shoulders as he navigated through the mobs in the street. Like the original Moses, himself a slave whose freedom was brought about when he floated through the waters of the Nile in a basket of reeds, my father was thus brought to safety. He was so grateful that he immediately turned over the keys to his house to Mr. Enrique. He knew Enrique had saved his life, and that every day forward would be a gift not only from his maker but also from this man who had risked his own life and safety for him. In turn, Mr. Enrique gave the house to his sister and accompanied my father to St. Thomas as a free man. He said that when the mobs finally heard how my parents had escaped, he would be killed for helping them, and that when people forgot he would go back home.
But they never forgot and Mr. Enrique never returned. He lived in a house beyond our garden on the other side of the tall stucco wall. He had great affection for our island and the freedom he’d been granted. Outside his doorway he’d planted a St. Thomas tree, whose yellow flowers were marked with red drops, said to be caused by drops of the saint’s blood falling on such a plant when he was martyred. The deed to the cottage was in Mr. Enrique’s name, signed by my father. Once the business was set up, Mr. Enrique worked in my father’s office as a clerk. He wore a black suit every day, which only served to show off how handsome he was. There were many women who wished to marry him, but he was a solitary person. The revolution on his island had scarred not only those who had fought in it but also those who had abandoned their homeland.
In the tax records Mr. Enrique was said to belong to Moses Pomié, but he’d been granted his freedom on the dock in Saint-Domingue, where they traded a life for a life. My father told us that our people had been slaves in the desert and because God had seen fit to set us free, none among us should ever own another man. It had been written that every man belonged to God and no one else. But did women belong to God or to the men of their family? They could not own property or businesses; only their husbands could have that honor. They must lower their eyes, behave, follow their appointed destinies. My father now told me I must trust in him and do as I was told.
“Marriage is not unlike business, and business is something you’re good at, my dear.”
He had finally arranged a marriage, as was the custom among our people. But I had never believed he would find a match for me. As soon as I heard that he had, a chill ran through me, even though he assured me he had chosen a good man, one who would treat me kindly. I must have paled, but before I could begin to mount my argument against the marriage, my father shook his head and took my hand in his.
“Understand,” he said, gently, sadly. “It has already been agreed upon.”
I knew once he gave his promise there was no breaking his word. I could feel my pulse at the base of my throat. I heard the hummingbird outside the window, the whir and beat of its wings. The man my father had chosen was wise in the ways of business but had recently had some bad turns of fortune with his ships. He had several decent ships left, and so he had come to my father, who had goods to sell but no ships on which he could transport rum and molasses to Charleston and New York. Together, they would join forces, and in this way they would both prosper. It was a partnership that would include the entire family, on this island and in Europe, as both businesses were co-owned by European relatives who had lent us money. A marriage would be a bridge between the two families, our wedding vows more binding than a legal contract.
“It’s a combining of strengths,” my father told me.
I said nothing, but I knew it was more. It was a combining of destinies.
Our congregation was so small there were only a few
young men left unmarried. I assumed I would know the groom-to-be. But he was not one of the boys I had grown up with. When my father told me the name of my betrothed, I felt the way prisoners must when the cage that holds them is slammed shut and the key in the lock is turned. My husband-to-be was Isaac Petit, a man nearly thirty years my senior, the father of three children, the last a girl not yet a year old. It was the birth of this baby that had caused his wife to pass from our world. We had all gone to her funeral. I could not see Monsieur Petit from where I sat, but I had heard his children crying.
The losses to the Petit family seemed beyond what humankind could bear. Several children had died: a daughter, one son and then another, two twin girls who passed from this world before they could be named, and finally a beloved son named Joseph. Only two sons had survived, David and Samuel, and then, twelve days after the last baby girl was born, Madame Esther Petit, who had been suffering from childbed fever, passed away. I had seen her many times in the market square, a slim, pretty woman who had prized the red flower of the flamboyant tree. For days after her passing people left vases of them outside her husband’s house.
They were all faded now, swept away.
There was a lump in my throat when I heard my fate. I thought of the map of Paris that I had memorized and my childish book of stories hidden beneath my mattress. I imagined a man I didn’t even know coming into my bed. I would rather be at the bottom of the sea, but I knew I must go forward. Perhaps someone else would have begged to be released from her father’s promise. But I had seen the ledgers, and I knew that there would be no house, no garden, no comfortable life as we knew it if the business stayed the same. This was why Adelle had seen an unexpected fate for me. I would be a mother before I ever was with a man or had given birth. My future was already waiting for me: the house of the red flowers, the motherless children who wept, the sorrowful man who had paid so little attention to his business after his wife died that he’d nearly been ruined.