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Because we were unmarried, my son’s name wasn’t written into the Book of Life, which charted every birth, marriage, and death in our community. That meant he did not exist within God’s sight, and should he die, he could not be buried in our cemetery. Eight days after our son’s birth, Monsieur DeLeon brought over a man whose duty it was to circumcise boys of our faith. The ceremony was performed after dusk, when no one was aware that this man was in my house. Rosalie cleaned off the kitchen table, and put down a clean white linen, and even when there was blood the child did not cry.

Since no one at the synagogue would list him in the official records, I was forced to see to it myself. The old man who was the caretaker let me in because I behaved as though I belonged. I told him I’d been sent to tidy up and brought a broom along to convince him. A woman who knows what she wants, Adelle always told me, is likely to receive it. I was sure of myself, at least on the outside. I nodded and passed through the synagogue’s gates without the least bit of trouble. The caretaker bowed and called me Madame. I didn’t correct him or let him know that most people in the congregation would have referred to me as a whore. I thought I spied a heron in the garden, or perhaps it was a woman sitting in the dappled shade where there was a small stone fountain.

It was exactly two o’clock, the hottest hour of the day, when most people went home to drowse in their parlors or bedchambers, and the stores and cafés were shuttered. My youngest children were being cared for by Rosalie, which allowed me the freedom to ensure that my newborn would be known to God. I found the most recent book and wrote in the date of Joseph Félix Pizzarro’s birth, with myself and Frédéric listed as his parents. My script was careful and legible, so that no one would refute my son’s rights to be a member of our community. When I put away the book, I discovered that the files could indeed do with tidying, though I had no intention of doing so.

Funnels of dust rose into the air. Many of the papers piled up were decades old, the ink faded on those that had been exposed to the sunlight. My father had taught me how to read documents and ledgers, but these files were completely disorganized. In the Books of Life, records had been charted one on top of the other, in spidery scrawls set down by a series of secretaries and assistants, all of whom had invented their own puzzling systems of notation. Perhaps it was fate, or perhaps it was God’s will, that I should stumble upon my cousin Aaron’s birth record. The date set down was three years after my own birth. I’d always been told Aaron’s parents had been lost at sea, and that they were distant relatives, but this document showed otherwise. He’d had an unmarried mother, a member of our congregation. The symbol for this was an
X.
I scanned through the files, and this symbol occurred many times. I wondered how many women had lost their children due to a single letter. Aaron’s father had been marked down as unknown.
Inconnu.
Aaron’s mother’s name had been inked out, making her unknown as well. I could not read the original print even when I held the paper to the light. My mother had been listed as the official guardian, and the baby’s surname, Rodrigues, was one of her family names long before they had fled Spain and Portugal.

There was no way to know if the woman who’d given Aaron life had surrendered him of her own accord, or if he’d been taken from her. Most likely she’d had little choice in the matter; perhaps she’d eased her mind by imagining that a wind had carried him away so that he might be sheltered in a treetop, watched over by parrots until my mother came for him, delighted to claim the son she’d always wanted. What Aaron had told me in the garden long ago had been true. Our mother would never have allowed him to marry Jestine.

ONE AFTERNOON MADAME HALEVY
was waiting for me when I left our store. It had been months since she and Madame Jobart had tried to persuade me to allow them to find me a suitable match, another husband I didn’t want or love. I was sure I wouldn’t be interested in whatever Madame Halevy had to say now. I did my best to disappear, hurrying away. But she followed as if she were a much younger woman, despite her cane.

“I haven’t given up on you,” she called.

“Please do.” I went on, but Madame Halevy surprised me by keeping pace. I had no choice but to stop and face her.

“Your mother loved you no matter what you think,” she said. “You don’t know all the circumstances.”

My mother had always said there was no finer woman in St. Thomas than Madame Halevy, but she seemed like a snake to me, coiled and waiting. She wanted to convince me to think as she did. “Thank you for that information,” I said wryly. “Had you not told me I never would have known.”

“Sara Pomié was a compassionate woman. She wanted the best for our people. And for you.” Madame Halevy took my arm. We stood in the shadows. I felt mesmerized somehow; a sparrow to her snake. “If she saw what you were doing now, she would be horrified. Unmarried and living with that man. Searching the office of the Reverend.” She threw me a look. “Did you think you’d find God in those files?”

So she had been spying on me after all. I pulled away from her. “I also knew my mother,” I said. “Nothing I did was right in her eyes. If the goal of my life was to please her, I would have already failed a dozen times over.”

“You were a difficult baby, now you’re a difficult woman,” Madame Halevy chided. “You cried all night, I remember it well. Your mother used to call me to her so she could get a few hours of sleep. Believe me, her husband wasn’t there.”

“Do not discuss my father,” I said.

“I know you from the beginning, so let me tell you in no uncertain terms that this scandal you’re creating affects us all. There are quiet sins and ones that echo for everyone. This situation is larger than your petty needs. People look at Jews with hatred and mistrust, and if we’re fighting with each other it gives them all the more reason to despise us. We have to live with no stain upon us.”

“Is that why the Book of Life is changed when it suits the congregation? To make certain that the facts fit our beliefs?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You saw changes?”

“Names inked out. People erased.”

Madame Halevy was blunt. “We have to protect ourselves.”

“Tell this to the Reverend,” I suggested. “I’m sure he’ll agree with you. Better still, tell it to his first wife. She died in childbirth and he was married again within a year to the girl of his choice. My first husband did the same when he married me to save his business, and I never questioned why my life was worth so much less than his.”

“Rachel.” Madame Halevy stopped me. “Do you think this scandal won’t come back to haunt you?”

I wasn’t afraid of ghosts and I told her so. I’d been haunted before, and had lived to tell the tale. I thanked her politely and excused myself. I could feel her watching me as I walked away, but I didn’t care. Perhaps Madame had good intentions, but intentions were not enough. I’d thrown my fate away once, and I would never again allow other people’s opinions rule my life. As a girl I’d done what was necessary, but I was a girl no longer.

Adelle had promised I would have another husband.

This time I would choose who that would be.

WHEN FRÉDÉRIC COULD GET
no further with the Reverend, I insisted upon going with him to plead our case. My weapons were bitterness and a righteous attitude. Frédéric was still a young man, with a young man’s certainty that right would win out, whereas I knew we must fight for what we wanted. The weather was wet, with a storm brewing out to sea. It was a bad omen, and sure enough the Reverend’s wife refused to let us in the door. Women were to stay at home, especially sinners such as myself. She let us stand in the rain as it began to pour down upon us.

The Reverend’s wife did not look at me but instead stared at the ground. There were red ants, the kind you don’t want to come across barefoot. The Reverend’s wife was shaking. “You need to leave or the authorities will be called.” Her face was flushed and she stumbled over her words. Clearly she’d been told what to say to us.

I was a woman with eight children, the daughter of Moses Pomié, the proprietress of the largest store on the island, a lifelong resident of Charlotte Amalie, a full member of the congregation, yet I stood there drenched, as though I were a beggar woman. Frédéric took my arm. Unlike me, he had a kind, forgiving heart, and he did not wish to insult anyone. “There’s no point in us being here. Let’s not degrade ourselves any longer.”

But I refused to leave. If anyone told me no, my back went up. I grew claws and teeth. I’d had so many arguments with my mother as a girl I was well trained in such things. I stepped closer to the Reverend’s wife. There was barely any space between us. A heat came off me, as if I were boiling inside. She backed away.

“We have a right to speak to your husband,” I told her.

Her name, I knew, was Sara, my mother’s name. She was younger than I, though her husband was nearly fifty. His first wife had died in childbirth, as the first Madame Petit had, and of the same cause, childbed fever. In her case, however, the baby had died as well. There should have been a bond between us because of the similarities of our histories, but there was not. And so I called upon the ghost of the Reverend’s first wife along with the ghost of the first Madame Petit to stand beside me. I would bring flowers to their graves. I would say a prayer in their names and light a candle every night if they would give me the strength to stand up for myself.

The Reverend’s wife told me there was nothing she could do for me, then shut the door. But I now had the two wives from the world beyond ours standing beside me, good, obedient women who had given up their lives doing as other people saw fit. I could feel their energy, the life force that had been stolen from them. Perhaps some of my courage came from them. I began to rap on the heavy door, then to pound on it. I didn’t care if my hands bled. Let them. I was ready to fight. When I began to shout and cry out, Frédéric couldn’t stop me, though he tried his best, fearing I would bring the Danish authorities upon us.

At last the Reverend came to the door. We told him it was love that had drawn us together, and that such a thing was a gift from God. He shook his head and said ours was a destroying sort of love.

I felt a dark tangle of humiliation, the bitterness growing inside me.

“See what you’ve done,” Frédéric said to the Reverend. “She’ll be made ill by this.”

“What I’ve done?” The Reverend showed little sympathy for me. “You weren’t much more than a boy and she preyed upon you. I don’t blame you for any of this. I blame her.”

The Reverend glared at me as if I were a foul sorceress, eyeing my clothes, now drenched and clinging to me. My black hair was uncombed, my boots slick with mud. I held up the hem of my skirts to keep them dry with no success. I likely appeared to be a witch, with a witch’s desires.

“Do not speak about her in that manner,” Frédéric said sternly. “Our people are brothers and sisters, not enemies.”

“You are indeed like brother and sister. That is the point.” The Reverend’s voice was raised. “Do you not understand? You are relatives and therefore cannot wed. It is against our morals and our laws. If you continue, nothing good can come of this.”

“But it has already,” Frédéric said.

He meant our love and our child. The door was slammed shut, and we walked away, the rain pouring down, as it did in our dreams. I had a chill. Perhaps I had made a terrible error and had dragged the person I loved most in the world into hell. I looked at Frédéric. As if he could read my innermost thoughts he said, “I regret nothing.”

Nor did I.

When we arrived home I was still shivering. Rosalie heated water and I bathed in the tub. I was reminded of that horrible woman Elise who had come from France to steal Jestine’s child. I slipped beneath the water, as Elise had done, and studied the ceiling until I came up sputtering. I hated rules, and law, and morals that were twisted into whatever people wished them to be. I didn’t step out of the tub until the water was tepid. By then I had come up with a plan. My father always said that I thought like a man, and perhaps there was some truth in that comment. I did not relish the role of sitting idly by with my needlework and baking, seeing to the children while the world made decisions all around me.

I went to my desk to draw up my proposal to present to Frédéric.

We would go over the Reverend’s head and petition the Grand Rabbi in Denmark for the legal right to wed.

Such things were not done. We would insult both the Reverend and our entire community. We would make them look powerless and small in the eyes of the Grand Rabbi in Denmark, but this island was small, that was the truth, and the people around us were nothing more than tiny figures when viewed from above. We had no other choice. Surely God would see that, and would bless our endeavors. I had a flicker of belief inside me.

Frédéric wrote the letter and read it aloud. I approved the sentiments within. The flicker grew brighter. I began to pray, silently, in the garden. Perhaps we had not been forsaken, and if we could address God more directly, he might hear us. We went over the letter several times that week, examining each word until at last it was done. Frédéric took it to the post office, and I waited outside, my cloak covering me, though the air was warm. Sending our letter was not unlike creating a bomb that could explode at any time, anywhere.