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Once I’d moved into my mother’s house, I attended services on Saturday mornings and sat among the women with my mother and her good friend Madame Halevy. “You haven’t been here for quite some time,” Madame Halevy remarked. Nothing went unnoticed by her sharp eye.

“I was mourning my husband,” I said.

“As I once mourned mine. But I didn’t forsake my God.”

We stared at each other, then I said, “I’m sure he will take that into consideration when you die.”

“Which will be a very long time from now,” Madame Halevy assured me.

I turned from both of them. Their lives had been built around our faith and our congregation, but I went to the synagogue only because I was expected to do so. When prayers were spoken, I didn’t ask God for anything, nor did I beg for mercy. My life had returned to the one I’d had as a girl, only now I had six children depending on me. I was more trapped than ever. During the months that we waited for Isaac’s relative to arrive and claim his property, I worked beside Rosalie at mealtime and in the laundry. There was a space between us now that I was aware of her situation, and we did not speak as freely as we had when we lived in my husband’s house. There was endless work to be done, and I often was too tired to eat. Sometimes in the evening I sat in the garden and thought of my dreams and how they were further away now than they’d been when I wrote my stories in a notebook. I’d packed away my notebook. I was a disbeliever now. All the books in my father’s library had been sold. I had managed to save a single volume. Perrault. But of late I hadn’t the heart to read those stories and imagine cold, black nights in Paris and paths that might lead through the woods outside the city where the old châteaus could be found. My oldest daughter, Hannah, often came to sit with me, as if she could sense my despair. She was nine years old but wise beyond her years. She had always helped me take care of the younger children, who were a little troupe, always together. Although she was not my daughter by blood, she understood me and she slipped her hand into mine when she took note of my despair. I stroked her hair and was glad she had an open heart and was nothing like me. She asked me for a story, for I had often read to her from my notebook, but I said I didn’t believe in such things anymore.

“You do,” Hannah insisted.

I went searching for my notebook. It was in the kitchen, stored with Madame Petit’s cookbooks. From then on I kept it in my bedchamber. I never lost sight of it again. I wrote in the evenings, and whenever I could I went to speak to the women in the market.
Tell me a story,
I would say to them, as if I were a child again, and they would sit beside me, near the crates of chicken or the piles of fish, and describe the wonders of our world.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOONS
I visited the cemetery. On most days it was so hot steam rose from the puddles after the rain. A simple walk and I was soaking wet. At the gate, I slipped off my dress and wore my white muslin petticoat. I wanted to be the girl I used to be, to go backward in time so I might sit in the mountains and watch for parrots and believe my whole life was ahead of me. I brought branches of flamboyant flowers to place on the graves of Isaac and Esther, and the bees drifted above me, rumbling through the air. Esther’s ghost had never again visited me; she must have been satisfied to have her husband back in her arms. Beside their graves there were ground doves nesting in the weave of oleander, calling to each other. Perhaps they were in love, as Esther and Isaac had been. Although I’d never loved my husband, I missed him. My milk was still in from the baby before the one I now carried. Perhaps I should have been more modest, but I didn’t care, I was too hot to wear anything more than my petticoat. Sometimes I wondered what I did care about. Rosalie was the one who went to my children when they cried at night. Their cries were so distant when I was asleep that I barely recognized them. I thought perhaps I was becoming more like my mother than I’d ever imagined I could be. Cold and far away. I missed the three people who had died, and I thought perhaps I myself would be better off dead. I lay down on the soft earth of the cemetery and imagined what it might be like, even though I knew such thoughts weren’t good for the baby I carried. Perhaps inside me he was crying, too.

People began to notice me in the place of the dead, there in my white undergarments, lying on my back and studying the leaves and the treetops where ghosts walked. The old men who came to pray in their black hats and prayer shawls ran away when they spied me. They covered their eyes and asked God to protect them.

My mother soon heard the rumors about me. She called me to her. “People are starting to talk about you.” She had developed a cough. Ever since the death of my father she had seemed weaker, but only in her physical aspect. Her tongue was still just as sharp. “They think you’re going mad, or that you’re possessed. You think you’re the only one to know grief? You think I didn’t lose more than my share? Cry all you want at night when you’re alone in bed,” my mother advised, “but compose yourself when you go out.”

Other than my undergarments, the only clothing I’d worn since the funeral was the black dress Jestine had sewn for me. It was filthy. When I finally gave my mourning dress to the day woman who came to help us with the wash, the water in the tub turned black; burrs and sticks rose to the surface, for they’d stuck to the hem of my garment.

Rosalie cried when we left our house. She had good reason to do so. My mother was horrible to live with and ordered her around so that she had double the work, as well as the children to look after. Rosalie had begun to spend time out behind our house, where Mr. Enrique lived. She was younger than he by twenty years, nearly the same difference as that between me and my husband. Still he seemed like a young man whenever Rosalie came around. As for her, she sang to herself even when we did the laundry together. I knew love when I saw it, from the flattering white dress she wore, to the cakes she baked for him, to the sound of their laughter as they sat together outside his cottage. One night I waited for her, to see if I was correct. I was there when she came into the courtyard. She was aglow, singing a song I didn’t recognize in a language I didn’t know.

I admired Mr. Enrique, the man who had saved my father’s life. I’d given him all of my father’s clothes and personal belongings before my mother could stop me. He was a solitary man, but he didn’t always spend his time alone. I warned Rosalie that she was not the first woman to want him and that he didn’t seem to want a wife.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m the best,” Rosalie assured me. I suppose this is what love can do to a woman, bring her into a garden at night, convinced she somehow can affect fate’s plan with her desire. Love like this was a mystery to me. I didn’t understand how people allowed sheer emotion to get the better of them. You couldn’t see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny.

MY SON CAME WHEN
the weather changed, during the storms. The day began with blue light but ended with rain and wind. I shivered in my bed. When I was sure it was the baby’s time, I begged Rosalie to get Jestine. My friend arrived quickly. She and my mother did not look at each other or speak. It was the first time they had contact since Aaron was sent to Paris. But there were no arguments, for it was business on this night, the work of bringing a child to life. My mother didn’t dare to keep Jestine from our house. As she herself had never helped in a birth, I suppose she was grateful to have a more experienced woman there. When the hard pains came, my mother left my chamber. She said a verse from Isaiah as she departed, to keep Lilith away, granting the screech owl demon peace if she would stay away. At least she’d said a prayer for me, which was more than I had expected from her.

It took four hours to bring the last of Isaac’s sons into the world. I swallowed my screams and my agony, but my bitterness grew. I felt it taking root in me, right beside my child. A seed that was growing greener. I bit my lips until they bled and tried to fly out of my body to escape the agony of birth. When I thought I might die, I screamed out for Isaac’s first wife to take me with her. Just when I was ready to go to her, the baby arrived. He was small, but he howled like a wolf as soon as he was born, the sign of a strong constitution. Jestine wrapped him in a clean blanket and murmured a prayer under her breath, the one her mother used to say when we were ill or in need, in a language spoken in a world so far away Jestine didn’t understand the meaning of the words. All the same, we both knew it was a plea for long life in this cruel and beautiful world.

It was a relief to give birth to this child, and I was grateful for the sleep I could now have. I thought perhaps my mother would now drop her antagonism toward Jestine, and show her the gratitude she deserved for bringing her new grandchild into the world. But I heard them talking out in the garden while I was dozing one afternoon, and my mother was not offering words of thanks. Their voices were rising and falling, and some of the words carried the sting of bees. Beside me, the last child I would have with Isaac was sleeping deeply, his breath even. I left him curled up and went to the open window.

“I don’t want you here again,” my mother said to Jestine. “I could have you arrested if I wished.”

Jestine laughed. “For what?”

“Thievery.”

“I was the one who was robbed! My daughter was taken by that witch, your daughter-in-law.”

“You were the first to steal from me,” Madame Pomié cried.

“What did I steal?” Jestine said. And then she was silent. She knew. There were tears streaking my mother’s face. Aaron.

My mother shoved a strand of pearls into Jestine’s hands. They were the ones she had sewn into the hem of her dress when she’d fled Saint-Domingue. “Take them. They’re yours as long as I never see you again.”

“Of course.” Jestine looped the pearls around her throat. “I’ll take the payment for your sins. But that doesn’t change anything, Madame. We both lost our children because of you.”

ONCE THE BABY WAS
settled I began to go to the office. I had already discussed the situation with Mr. Enrique. I thought we could see to it that the business remained in our hands, and keep the family from France at a distance. My father had taught me most of what I needed to know, and Mr. Enrique would see to the rest. We worked well together, and I quickly understood that the business was on shaky ground. Once more we were victims of the weather. In the seasons of storms we had lost both ships and merchandise. Mr. Enrique’s suggestion was that we sell what was left of the shipping business, the province of my husband, and return to sales, my father’s original endeavor and his best asset, the store. “Let other people run the bigger risk and earn the bigger profit. The store will provide steady income. It’s safer for a woman alone with a family to care for.”

I thought he was wise, and let him draw up the figures. Then I presented the plan to my mother. The very idea of sitting down with her made the rash that had disappeared once my baby was born rise again across my skin. Still, like it or not, it had to be done. My mother and I were the family now, the two of us, and perhaps we could agree upon a plan that would help us maintain some say over all the property that had once belonged to my father.

We met in my father’s study. Surrounded by his empty shelves, I felt my grief over his loss all over again. I thought of the night he came to tell me I would be married, and the satisfaction I’d felt in rescuing our family from disaster. But my husband was clearly drawn to bad fortune, as Adelle had warned. Tragedy had followed him. When he combined his business with ours, instead of strengthening both, he’d brought it all down, unwise in ways of commerce and of the dangers of the weather. The pride I’d once felt for saving my father’s business by agreeing to wed Isaac was a false pride. The marriage had been for nothing. But perhaps now I could truly rescue us when I presented my mother with a plan that would make the business smaller but more reliable. She glanced at the ledgers and figures, then waved her hand, impatient. “You don’t think the business will be entrusted to you and Enrique, do you?”

“We work well together. So yes. It makes sense.”

My mother’s expression was sour. “You could never accept the fact that you were a woman and nothing more. I knew that when I was carrying you. You would cause trouble.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, even though I wasn’t sorry at all. I was glad to have caused her trouble.

My mother stood up, away from the desk. The meeting was over. “Your husband’s family is sending his nephew from Paris. What happens next will be his decision.”

I stood as well. I didn’t think she could tell I was shaking. I wouldn’t have wanted her to know. “You prefer a man you don’t know to your own daughter?”

“It is the legal system that prefers such things, not I,” my mother reminded me. “I did not inherit anything, and neither will you. But you think you’re above rules, and you can do as you please. Be sure that’s not what you teach your children.”