1451693591 (30 page)

“Married properly in the synagogue?” Madame Halevy asked.

“That is her wish,” I said.

“What your parents did tore apart the community. We are too few, and we as a people have suffered at the hands of too many to fight among ourselves like chickens.”

I remembered something Jestine had told me. “My mother used to kill chickens on Fridays when she was a girl. She said she enjoyed it.”

Madame Halevy laughed grimly. “I’m not surprised. Enough for today. I will take your sister’s wish into consideration.”

“What about Jestine’s daughter?” She seemed to have forgotten her promise to tell me the story.

“Tell your mother I accept her apology. I invite her and your father for dinner next Friday night. Hannah can come with them. We’ll all go to services first. Come back after that happens and I’ll tell you the story.”

In order to hear the end of the story I had to accomplish a task I thought might be impossible. I had to convince people who hadn’t spoken to each other in over ten years to take up polite conversation across the dinner table. It felt like a Herculean undertaking. I thought about my father praying in the garden, alone. He was a good man, and sometimes he went past the synagogue at night and prayed at the doorstep. I wondered if my mother had placed some sort of spell on him that bound him to her. If I ever pledged myself to a woman she would need to have a kind and open heart and understand there was another way of seeing the world beyond the rules we had been taught.

I stopped in the kitchen on my way out of Madame’s house. The maid was still there, preparing dinner. She had made loaves of cassava bread that smelled heavenly. Her name was Helena James, she told me, and now that I seemed to be a fixture in the house, we should know one another. We shook hands solemnly. We were the only two people Madame had in her home. She went to services, and to meetings of the Sisterhood, but she liked to be alone in her house. However, Mrs. James told me that her employer looked forward to my visits. Madame had lost two children to fevers, and a third had left for Charleston and was rarely heard from. Her daughter had an entire family in America whom Madame Halevy had never met. I stayed for a while and sketched Mrs. James as she diced vegetables and fruit with a sharp paring knife. Mrs. James favored mangoes because they brought good health. She informed me that a person could live on mangoes alone and that the pirates used to do exactly that for months on end. Mrs. James was not a great cook, far from it, but her cassava bread was a miracle. I would be happy to have her bread for every meal. I enjoyed her unruffled manner, and the fact that she liked to talk. When I idly brought up Jestine, not imagining I would have any more information from the maid than I’d had from Madame Halevy, Mrs. James shook her head sadly. “I don’t talk about bad luck. Best forgotten about.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” I said.

Mrs. James laughed and said, “You’re too young to know what you believe.” She looked to make sure that we were indeed alone in the kitchen and wouldn’t be overheard. “Abduction,” Mrs. James whispered to me then. It sounded like a religious act. I thought it was perhaps a practice at the church or one of the African meetinghouses. I rolled that word around inside my head all that day. When I next went to Mr. Lieber’s to drop by so it would appear I was studying, he was napping. I took the opportunity to look through his library. I found the word in a small leather-bound dictionary.
Capture. Abducción. Enlèvement
. It was as Jestine had told me. Her daughter had been stolen.

Hannah had to direct me on how best to renew relations between our mother and her old enemy. I went to speak to my parents after dinner. They were sitting in the parlor on a settee, close to each other, deep in conversation. My mother had her hand inside my father’s sleeve. It was as if she was a vine encircling his arm beneath the white linen. It was an oddly intimate gesture, one that made me uncomfortable for reasons I didn’t understand. From the doorway they looked like the lovers I sometimes spied by the harbor who were so intent on each other they seemed to have forgotten there was a world outside themselves. I saw a smile on my mother’s face that surprised me. As soon as I stumbled near, she looked up. The smile quickly disappeared.

“Don’t you announce yourself?” she said to me. “You move the way thieves do.”

“I have an invitation,” I declared. “Friday night dinner at Madame Halevy’s.”

My voice sounded unsure, perhaps because of my mother’s darkening expression.

“Did I hear you correctly?” she asked.

“After services,” I said. “The two of you, and Hannah.”

“We’re not welcome at services,” my mother said. “And who asked you to interfere?”

“You’ll be welcome,” I said, enjoying the power of knowing more than my mother.

“Fine.” My father seemed pleased. “We accept. We’ll come to dinner. After services.”

ON THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY
my sister took an hour to dress. I could hear conversation blooming down the hall as Rosalie helped her get ready. They laughed and talked about hats and shoes. My parents seemed nervous. In fact, they’d been quiet all that day, exchanging glances. I heard my father say, “What more can they do to us? Perhaps the time has come to move forward.”

“That time came and went,” my mother responded.

I wondered if whatever had happened in the synagogue was the seed of her bitterness. The shadows around her appeared green, lengthening along the mosaic floor as the hour grew later and the time for her to return to the congregation approached. For an instant I saw her as she must have been when she was young and unsure of herself. Her familiar features shifted and seemed vulnerable and unformed. I had the sense I was looking straight through time. Later I studied myself in a dim, silvered mirror. I didn’t like to think I resembled her, but our eyes were the same. Dark and filled with defiance.

I went to the synagogue for the first time that night. I had never walked inside before, only peeked in, and now I was stunned by how beautiful it was. A sort of hush stirred within me, and I thought about God abiding in a place, listening to the prayers that were sent to him. I wore a black suit and white shirt borrowed from one of my brothers. Everything was too big, so my father nodded for me to tuck in the tails of the shirt. “I hope you learned your Hebrew,” he joked.

I hadn’t, and I was forced to mumble along when prayers were said. My father and I stood with the men, while Hannah and my mother remained with the women. I caught a glimpse of Madame Halevy. She wore a lace shawl and a plum-colored dress. She raised her eyes to me, and a message flickered across her face. I had done well to bring my parents here, and she was pleased. My mother narrowed her eyes and gazed at me, and I quickly looked away from the women. I stared straight ahead to the altar in the center of the room. Despite my mother’s questioning look, I felt oddly pleased to have assisted Madame Halevy.

When we left, people stared at us. A few men came to my father and shook his hand. With their greeting, my family was accepted back into the congregation. My mother held her tongue and merely nodded to the women who had ignored her for so long.

I hadn’t been invited to join the adults for dinner; instead I sat in the kitchen with Helena James. Mrs. James had made a chicken dumpling stew, the wonderful cassava bread, and the terrible mango pastry. “Madame’s favorite,” she said. She told me she had been working for Madame Halevy for almost fifty years. She had helped her raise her children and they’d all loved mango pastry. “Just like you,” she said.

I ate everything on my plate, of course.

I could hear voices rise and fall in the dining room. I waited for an argument, and my mother’s sharp tone of anger, but heard nothing. I must have fallen asleep with my head on the kitchen table. All at once it was late; my parents were leaving and Hannah was embraced by Madame Halevy, who called her a most charming guest.

That evening was the end of our shunning as the cloud cast over my family evaporated into mist. After that time no one mentioned the scandal and the years when no one would speak to us. I believe that after that night, letters were sent to the King’s court and to the Rabbi in Denmark, withdrawing any complaint against my parents. Customers now spoke with us as if we were part of their family. Every once in a while my mother looked at me, as if trying to figure me out. How had I accomplished this fragile peace after so many years of war between her and everyone else of our faith? She pursed her lips, and seemed to wonder who I was. But that was nothing new, and I went my own way. I had several friends at school now, boys who had to work in the fields after classes or fished alongside their brothers. I went out on skiffs with them sometimes, but they called me lazy because I wanted to sketch them as they worked rather than join in the fishing. My closest friends were Peter and Elijah, two brothers, one older than I was and one a year younger. In order to join in I learned how to fish, and how to clean the catch. I got to know the water and saw its many layers, the sea creatures floating below us, pale gold and red fish, moss-green seaweed, shells that glowed like opals, fire, stars dropped into the sea. I began to look at working people in a different way, and took to sketching them as they labored.

In a matter of weeks Hannah had her proposal and my father began to attend services at the synagogue regularly in the mornings and on Friday nights. The family went to services every Friday night as well. I often skipped out and took the opportunity I was afforded of having these nights to myself. I went to the harbor to sketch and even made some money when sailors wanted their portraits made. In the evenings my father still said his prayers in our garden, privately and alone. I could hear his blessings rise up through my window. He was still in his thirties then, still a young man, serious, interested in the world around us. He liked to talk to working people and appreciated them, as I did. When we walked together he would ask questions about the simplest things, for he hadn’t grown up on this island and every bird and flower interested him, as they interested me. I felt closer to him as I grew older, and I think he felt close to me. He often spoke to me as if I were a friend as well as a son. He said that when he came to this island he had been bewitched. He laughed when he said this, but he still seemed mystified by the turns his life had taken. I told him then of my interest in sketching and painting. When I said color was everything, he nodded, agreeing. He remembered his first glimpse of the turquoise sea, the red hillsides, the flocks of brilliant birds. Once we took a vine of bougainvillea and removed every bloom, twisting them carefully and laying them out upon the ground to study the varying shades of scarlet and pink. On another night, as we walked along the wharves to check on a shipment to the store, he told me that he and my mother often had the same dream. I could see that this was part of the enchantment he’d spoken of.

I CONTINUED TO BRING
Madame Halevy her groceries, still waiting for the story she’d promised to tell, but somehow always managed to avoid. Sometimes I would run into Marianna on the street. She would laugh when she saw me carrying the sacks of flour and bags of vegetables. “You’re going to the mean old lady’s house? Why do you do this? You’re not her servant.”

I couldn’t explain. Perhaps I’d simply gotten used to going to Madame’s huge stucco house. It was in disrepair, as she had no sons to shore up the walls and roof, and no money for servants other than Mrs. James. Still, I went. I appreciated the way the shadows drifted across her garden, falling through illuminated bands of yellow light, and admired her home, the old dishes on her table, the peonies she raised in her garden, apricot and pink, some as big as plates. I found the tilt of Mrs. James’s head pleasing as she chopped up onions and mint, and perhaps more than anything I liked the way Madame Halevy and Mrs. James admired my abilities; both old ladies applauded when I could fix even the simplest thing. Many times I took up a hammer and nails and did the best I could to repair the shutters or the porch.

During one of my visits I found a small portrait of a girl on a shelf. A blue-eyed child I assumed was the daughter who lived in Charleston. For some reason, I knew not to ask about her. I’d come to understand that Madame Halevy would tell me her stories in her own time.

One day she surprised me. Instead of waiting for my visit, Madame came to me. When I left work, she was waiting outside the store. In the full sunlight I saw how ancient she was. Surely more than ninety years on earth. I saw, too, how frail she was. I could nearly spy her heart beating with the strain of having walked uphill to the store. Mr. Enrique carted out a metal chair for her, since she was clearly exhausted.

“I would have brought you your groceries,” I told her. It was noon, and the heat of the day was upon us.

Madame Halevy gave me some money and asked me to purchase molasses and sugar. A few other things: some mint, some nuts. Not much. She wanted Helena James to make a special cake for the next time I visited.

“Walk me home,” she said when I had finished her shopping and returned with her purchases. We went slowly and in silence, but soon she began to talk. “The worst that can happen is that you lose a child. My younger son was about your age when I lost him from yellow fever. He was twelve.”

I was happy that she thought I was older than I was.

“My other boy was fourteen. I lost him the next season. I covered every window. I wouldn’t let him go outside, but somehow the fever followed him into his room.” She lowered her voice. “It was fate,” she said. “I couldn’t fight it.”

“And your daughter?” I said.

“She’s alive,” Madame said. “That’s all one can ask for.”

And yet all the while I’d known her she had not received a single letter from Charleston. Though I posted the ones she wrote to her daughter, there had been no reply. Several times I’d had the urge to tear open one of the letters Madame Halevy wrote and see what she had to say to her daughter in America, but I didn’t have the heart to do so.

“Your grandmother lost a baby boy,” she told me now. “You can’t know what that does to a person. He was born and died in the same day. I know because I was there. I was her friend and I watched her cry. It brought her some solace to take in a baby who had been abandoned. She raised him and loved him as her own. Your grandmother did everything for him. She could not have done more. Unfortunately, the ending was not as anyone would have wished. You want to think the best of your child, so you look the other way when you see failures. Maybe it was because she spoiled him. He squandered vast sums from the business. Part of it was bad judgment. I believe he gambled. Do you ever go to see the cockfights?”