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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

C
HARLOTTE
A
MALIE
, S
T
. T
HOMAS

1823

RACHEL POMIÉ PETIT

I
n 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 education 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.”

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.