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Jestine screamed at me as I untied her. “You let them take her!”

“No,” I said, but she wasn’t listening to me. I broke all of my fingernails, frantic, because she was crying.

“Hurry! I have to follow them.”

I knew the rowboat had left, the ship had boarded, but I stepped away once she was free and watched her run down the hill. I never knew a person to run so fast, to disappear the way ghosts do, out of our line of vision. I heard that everyone fled the dock when she got there. That people could hear her crying for miles.

No one saw Jestine for several weeks afterward. She refused to answer her door, not to me and not to anyone else. I left baskets of food, but they went untouched. I sat on the stairs until evening, but she refused to come out. My husband did everything he could. He wrote to his family in France and explained the situation. A solicitor was hired, but in the end there was little anyone could do. The laws gave Aaron Rodrigues the right to his own daughter, especially once she was on French soil. My husband went on to find a second solicitor, one who was not above paying people off to get around the law; he took the high fee Isaac sent, but though he was well connected, he could not undo what had been done. I dreamed sometimes of Lyddie on that ship, en route to Paris. In my dreams she looked toward our island. A pelican followed her until she was halfway across the Atlantic, a place that was too cold and too far to reach, even for those who loved her best.

Elise wrote me a single letter months after she’d returned to Paris. It was now summer. We hadn’t heard anything of my cousin or Lyddie, therefore I was shocked to find the envelope on my table. Elise had beautiful handwriting, and the ink she used was a shade of blue so dark it was almost purple. I thought about reading the letter. I held the brass letter opener and debated. But in the end I didn’t feel the message was meant for me. I brought the letter to Jestine. She had avoided me all this time, and my loneliness was like a stone in my shoe. When I knocked on the door Jestine didn’t look pleased to see me, but she let me in. I knew she put blame onto me, for I had befriended the witch from Paris. That much was true, and I regretted it every day. The house felt empty when I came inside. The windows were shuttered even though it was a beautiful day. The sea was green.

“What is this supposed to be?” she said when I held out the letter.

“Something from Paris.” The envelope felt hot in my hands, as if it had breath and life. “Would you rather I burned it?”

She gestured for me to hand over the letter. Then she went into her bedroom.

Whether or not she read what Elise wrote I will never know. Perhaps she cursed its author, perhaps she gave thanks for what little news she had of her daughter. When she came back the letter was folded in half. Together, we burned it in a bowl Adelle had once used to make elixirs, including the one that had saved my life. The sparks flew up. As they did I made a wish, and this one came true. From then on Jestine answered the door when I came to call. One day she was sitting in my garden, and I knew that she had forgiven me for having Aaron as my cousin and the witch from France as his wife, even though nothing was ever the same after that.

CHAPTER FOUR

If You Leave

C
HARLOTTE
A
MALIE
, S
T
. T
HOMAS

1824

RACHEL POMIÉ PETIT

W
hen I thought of the last moments of my husband’s life, the sudden stab of pain he must have felt in his heart, the speed with which he slumped over his desk on a hot afternoon, the lemon-colored sunlight falling across his shoulders, I wondered if he cried out for me, or if he had called to Esther, his beloved first wife. I hope she was standing there waiting for him, her arms outstretched to hold him, and that his spirit lifted itself out of his body with joy. On the night my husband died I came home from the office alone with his spectacles and his watch. I got into our bed and waited for the spirit of the first Madame Petit to lie down beside me and mourn with me, but she was gone. She had been there for only one reason, to watch over her husband. Now he belonged to her in the world beyond ours.

His was the third death, and the one that changed my life more than any other. Isaac was only fifty, and his death came as a complete surprise. I was just twenty-nine, too young to be a widow. I went to Jestine and asked her to make me a black dress, for I would have to wear black for the next year. She knew I didn’t love Isaac, but he was my husband all the same, the father of my children. She understood my fear. I was still young and I was responsible for six children, all of whom had experienced loss.

The day of my husband’s funeral was hot, the kind of weather that made people faint. It was a blur to me, and I was glad when it was over. At last dusk had fallen and the children were asleep. David, Samuel, Hannah, Joseph, Emma, and the youngest, always called by her French name, Delphine. Rosalie dozed in a chair in the nursery. I still hadn’t told her that tomorrow we would be forced to leave. We could no longer afford this big house, and it would eventually be sold. In the past months the business had been failing, and it was possible that we might have to close the store, our last real asset. I dreaded Rosalie’s reaction. She had lived at this address longer than I had, and was already here working for Isaac when the first Madame Petit arrived from France, limp from the heat, her freckled face flushed with exhaustion, her luggage so heavy four men had to carry her trunks from the dock. Madame’s dresses from France were still in the cabinet. I intended to sell them with the household goods, though it caused me pain to do so.

On the last evening I would ever spend in my husband’s house, I felt a struggle within me. I was free, unmarried, but I was also trapped. This was the moment when I’d always imagined I could begin a new life; now I wasn’t so sure. The green shutters at the windows were open, and the breeze came spilling through the house. The cool stone corridors were empty, for the mahogany furniture Rosalie oiled every other week would soon be sold at auction and had already been collected in a horse-drawn cart. Adelle had cautioned me before I married that the Petit family would know only tragedy, but she’d never warned me how much I would love my children, both those I gave birth to and those I had inherited, or how that love would imprison me. In the fading light it was still so stifling that sparks of heat rose into the pockets of darkness. As I walked across the courtyard I noticed that parrots came to the stone fountain to drink. Though it was good luck to see them, especially in your own garden, this would not be my garden anymore. At the funeral, people had held wet handkerchiefs to their overheated foreheads. I’d had the sense that I was in a dream as it was happening, and that in my true life I was in my bed in Paris, under cold linen sheets pressed with lavender water, and that the rain was pouring down on the slate roof as I slept. Surely, it was only in my dreams that I was a widow with too many children and that I did not shed a tear as others wept around me.

I returned to the cemetery after the children had been comforted and had their supper, this time alone, so that I might leave branches of the flamboyant tree on Esther’s grave. Her grave and Isaac’s were next to each other.
HUSBAND
and
WIFE
had been written on her headstone in Hebrew, and there had always been a space for him. The branches I’d brought were only sticks, but the fragrance of the wood was sweet. I wandered through the paths, looking for spirits and finding only still, heavy air. On my way out of the cemetery I heard the gravedigger say the flowers had bloomed all at once, as if they were growing on the hillside in the season when everything turns red. I turned and saw it was true. That was how I knew my gift had been received.

IT IS FOOLISH TO
cry over things you cannot change, yet on my last night in the Petit house I did exactly that as I looped a rope around the donkey’s neck to lead him from the barn my husband and sons had built for him. The donkeys on the island may have been nasty things, but not this one. This one trusted me, and that is why I wept. I was not trustworthy. Later I would tell the children that Jean-François ran away and vow I could not hold him back. I had told them this once before, on the first day he came to us, but the donkey had returned of his own accord. This time I intended to bring him far into the mountains. He wouldn’t find his way back now. We could no longer afford to feed him, and there wouldn’t be a stable once we moved into town.

There were clouds of mosquitoes at this hour, so I slipped a white shawl over my head. The fevers here were deadly: yellow fever, malaria, illnesses few survived. I had reason to live, six of them. On nights like these I always made sure there was netting over the children’s beds. They would cry tomorrow when they went out to the stable, even the oldest, David, who was nearly a man. He was as tall as his father had been, and he would turn his back to me so I wouldn’t see his tears, but he would miss Jean-François as much as anyone.

After Isaac’s death, I’d gathered the frightened children and assured them that it was God’s will to release men from pain. Their father was gone from this world, but he would always be with them. That was what love did, it kept a person close. We covered the mirrors and tacked black fabric over the windows.

I had thought I would have to get rid of the donkey by myself, but when I stepped into the yard, Jestine was waiting for me. She had forgiven me, but there was a distance we hadn’t known before, caused by Lyddie’s absence. As girls we had imagined we were one spirit divided into two forms. Now, we kept things from each other, especially when it came to sorrow. We never spoke Jestine’s daughter’s name aloud. The word brought too much grief. The air was spicy with the scent of the bay trees as we walked together, leading poor Jean-François along. Bats hung from the branches like black leaves. As girls we had always come to this mountainside to make plans for what we would do when we were women. We used to think women our age were growing old, yet on nights such as this I felt the same as I had when we were sixteen.

“You should have gotten rid of him the first night,” Jestine said of Jean-François, who balked as he was led away from home. “Now you’re crying like he’s your baby.”

“You take him,” I suggested. We still liked to argue like sisters. “He’ll follow you as well as me. You could put up a barn beside your house.”

“And feed him what? Oh, no. I can’t have a pet. He should have stayed wild. You should never have spoiled him.”

Before long, Jestine and I had walked so far the moon was hidden. We were both deep in thought. We thought of the men we loved and the men we didn’t. Though we didn’t speak, our breathing was in the same rhythm. We let the donkey go on the dark road. He stood where he was, confused. Then he came up to me and nudged me. I did not shed a tear at my husband’s funeral, though he was a good and decent man, but now I wept openly, sobbing, and I could not stop. Jestine slapped the donkey on his rear to force him to trot away. Still he looked back. He did not want to leave me. Who would give him bread soaked with milk as a treat? Who would brush the dust from his coat? I didn’t believe I could love anyone, and yet I was in tears. I was as alone as that poor motherless creature.

Then and there I thought of all the things a woman could do to escape her life: She could walk into the water and see nothing but blue, hear nothing but the rising tide. She could leap into a ravine where the parrots were hidden in the leaves. She could climb onto a boat in the harbor, cover herself with a muslin tarp, eat limes until her journey was over. Jestine and I could make our way to France. I could leave my children until I was able to send for them; surely they would receive the blessings of our congregation, even though I had little to do with the Sisterhood. I could buy the tickets, pack a suitcase, wait for Jestine outside her house. But there on the dark road, I felt a kick inside of me, the spark of life. I had kept to myself what I knew to be true. There was a baby to come. I had known for some time, but I’d told no one, not even my husband. I had already decided to name him Isaac in honor of his father, the man I could not bring myself to love. The baby had been inside me for six months, but I wore bigger clothes and ate less.

Waiting for the third loss, I hadn’t known who would live and who would die. Sorrow always comes in that number, and I had feared the child I carried might be taken. But instead it was Isaac. Tonight I told Jestine about the baby. She hugged me and said all children were gifts from God, therefore God must believe I could carry this burden, even though I was alone. I remembered what Adelle had told me, that I would love someone one day. But that day was not yesterday and it wasn’t today. It was the red season, when the twisting roads were covered with petals, as if a woman had cried blood suddenly, without warning, after her heart had been broken.

WE MOVED IN WITH
my mother. I wore black on that day and kept my eyes lowered. This was the last place I wanted to be, but I was a widow with six children and one still to come. I needed to practice logic and thrift. Most of our belongings had already been sold to pay off Isaac’s debts. Women were entitled to no earthly goods in this world, and when the will was finally read in the parlor of my mother’s house, I was passed over for a male relation in France. No one had heard of him before, no one had met him, but Isaac’s family in France now owned most of the estate, including my father’s store and house. We would be allowed to live off our smaller portion. A stranger would decide all of our fates. Our situation did not surprise me. I was more shocked when the will was read to discover that Rosalie was not a maid but a slave, something my husband had kept from me. Perhaps he was embarrassed, as he should have been. He was a kind man, but he believed in the social order, and his views were not mine. My father had freed Mr. Enrique before they reached this island. I begged Rosalie’s forgiveness when I discovered the situation, yet again there was nothing I could do. Because I was a woman, I had no legal right. I could not change what had been written into the law.