Jeremias never suspected that his nine-year-old sister would trail him into the night.
“I’m happiest with Monsieur DeGannes,” he said now.
“Happy?” Papá would have said it in this way—accusatory, judgmental. To diminish Jeremias with that irrational one-worded question made Rosa feel accomplished.
“Monsieur DeGannes is a learned man. He understands the heart of an intellectual.”
“Eh-eh, then he could never understand your heart because you are not an intellectual.”
“Hush up.”
Rosa felt the heat from his skin radiate down and across to her.
“We talk literature and politics—you know that the French voted to end slavery? That there was a slave revolt in Saint-Domingue five years past? Why don’t we know such things? Monsieur says the swift end put to the Jacobin-led government might lead to free men becoming slaves. We live in unsteady times, and people like Papá are under a cloak of ignorance and darkness.”
Rosa didn’t understand one word of what Jeremias had said and was not certain he did either. She happily imagined Jeremias in the morning, his belly quivering, weeping before Papá, trying to explain why he’d been so very disobedient. But now it was well past Rosa’s bedtime and she was tired, too tired for Jeremias and DeGannes’s big ideas about “Jacobin” people who had no bearing on her life, and even if she had understood, still she could think of little else beyond the bonnet strings that had burned the skin beneath her chin.
As Rosa began to walk away, Jeremias snatched her arm, with a grip she felt deep beneath her young flesh. “What if Papá took away the horses from you, told you you could never again dirty your hands in the soil?”
What Jeremias was asking her to contemplate was not possible, not even imaginable. It was an absurd scenario, so Rosa did not consider it as much as she considered what to tell Papá of this night. All of it? Almost all of it? His absconding, his drunkenness, his violence. What if someone had seen Jeremias creeping home through the fields? That was the scenario Jeremias should have been considering. To some on that Spanish-held island, a Negro like Papá, even a well-regarded, landowning Negro, was still a mucama or, worse, a slave. One error in judgment, one moral lapse by any one of them, risked all Papá had built. Jeremias knew this.
Yet Rosa wished for her bed, and more, she wished for Jeremias to let her loose. She agreed to keep his secret. “But you’ll hurt all of us if you keep this up,” she said.
2
Jeremias sat before the table, neck loose, eyes befogged, eating jiggly peppered eggs from the spoon Mamá held before him. “We should take him to see someone.” Mamá flipped her hand over and back again upon his forehead, reaching for a fever that would never be found. “Every morning he’s sick. And you know my dreams—empty fishing nets for three weeks. It’s not a good sign, Demas.”
“He’s just lazy.” Papá spoke without glancing up from his plate.
“You mustn’t speak of the boy so. He’s sitting right here.”
“You does want me to call him lazy when he ent here? I have other words for them times.” Papá looked to Rosa with that glimmer in his eye, for the joke seemed to be theirs.
Mamá moved aside Jeremias’s plate and held him by the waist. “Come, chile, let me help you into the room.”
“What room? My room?” Papá set down his spoon, half full of the sweet potato that Eve, Rosa’s older sister, had pestled for his breakfast. “If the boy is sick, set him outside. Let the fresh air take him, nah.”
“He’s sweating from fever, Demas.”
“All the more reason not to have him in my room.”
“Notre chambre!” Mamá said.
In the Rendón home, the predominant language was Spanish. They spoke French too, of course, and Papá, for business, spoke English, but Spanish was the language they all shared and the language Papá knew best. He spoke it with a uniquely African lilt that Mamá openly disfavored. More than once, Mamá said that Papá’s manner of speaking was an unfortunate remnant from Papá’s people, who had crossed the Atlantic at the bottom of a slave ship. To Papá’s great irritation, Mamá often hurried to correct him when he spoke, for Mamá preferred her Spanish the way she preferred her Martiniquais French—with no sign of “African bastardization.” As such, when Demas Rendón wished to pick a fight with his wife, he flooded their house with a coarse, thunderous, African-tinged medley of colloquial Spanish and her beloved French.
“You know how much work is piling up at the blacksmith shop? In the afternoons, after I does put in a long day alone, Jeremias is lookin’ quite fine, assez bien. But in the mornin’, he’s close to death. Pourquoi, Myra?”
Mamá, only half listening, returned to the front room to fold the pallet where Jeremias slept now that Eve had become a woman. She sniffed it, wrinkled her nose as if the odor was surprising somehow, and rolled it into a corner. Rosa watched Papá’s eyes trace Mamá’s deep-bend curves, her loose ringlets of hair, as if they were roadblocks to sincere anger. By most accounts, Mamá was a lovely woman, though if you were looking to find fault (and most everyone did), it would be with her height. She was taller than Papá, who was a tall man, by an inch, maybe two, and no tall woman could be a “fair lady” even in the opinion of the un-fair.
“What work is he doing, Demas? Half the time you send him home from the shop so you can finish whatever it is you don’t wish any of us to see.”
Papá’s brows collapsed in the space above the bridge of his nose. “What gibberish you speakin’ there, Myra?”
“Oh, don’t pretend I’m imagining this.”
“Speak! Speak your mind since you does have so much to say.”
Mamá poured more hot water into Papá’s mug. “Shh … never mind … the boy needs rest.”
Papá brought the spoon to his mouth but set it down before it reached his lips. It was as if he found the sweet potatoes suddenly too much like sweet potato. Papá’s skin, already the color of moist aged wood, deepened and his face seemed to flatten into sharp corners. “Rosa works like a man. And I does leave for the shop most mornings before the sun comes up, not because I does have some great secret, Myra, but because I have too much to do and that boy doesn’t wanta do hard work!” Papá rose from his chair. “You better make sure he gets up from my bed today and finishes his chores.”
Mamá watched Papá tug at his braces as he passed the side window, the skin on his hands glazed from decades of burnings. Her expression could not be mistaken for love. She removed his tin mug from the head of the table, placing it inside the dry rinse bowl, and it seemed only then that she remembered it had been Jeremias’s job to fetch the day’s water. That she would be without enough for the cleaning and cooking.
“‘Rosa works like a man,’” Mamá said, mocking Papá. “And to think it is he who insists that you do so! Insists that I let you shirk your duties as a young woman and let you blacken more in the sun, and then he pretends it is my doing?” Mamá looked to Rosa now, her eyes examining her in the way Rosa knew would lead to some critique. “Rosa, don’t let your father make you think that the work to be done outside this house is more important than the work to be done inside this house.”
“Oui, Mamá.”
Mamá reached into her apron pocket and removed from it a wooden clothes peg. “Your nose is looking a bit broad again. Put this on and go and help your Papá.” Mamá set the peg into Rosa’s palm and closed her fingers about it, as if to secure its safekeeping. “Voilà.”
Rosa knew if she peeled away Mamá’s words to expose the layer beneath them, the sentiment might become gummy like sap and stick to her in a way that would make it her own. So she skimmed only the surface, accepting the differences between herself and Mamá, Jeremias, and Eve, acknowledging that their skin rang yellow and hers brown, their limbs plump and hers gangly. She knew all too well that the peg wouldn’t transform her face and knew better that if it could, Mamá would find only more deficiencies.
But Rosa fastened
the peg, squeezing her nostrils into a line so that she could no longer smell the morning air. Unable to find her boots, she hurried past the stable, feeling the tickle of the tall java grasses on her calves and the grit of the earth, soft as berry jelly, lodging itself between the web of her toes. She searched for some time before she found Papá at their newest plot of cacao, nestled beneath a row of old banana trees. The pods bore the colors of a tropical-fruit rainbow and gave off a scent of bitter so fragrant, Rosa wished to taste it. Papá, on his knees, measured taproot growth and tested the structure of the soil with the flats of his fingertips. When finally he looked up, he observed her in the same manner he had considered the beans.
“Take that chupid t’ing from your face!” He stood and snatched the peg from her nose. “You need that? Your face is fine. You does like my face?”
“Sí.” She rubbed her nose. The mucous unsticking itself made noise in her ears.
“Your face is my face. Is this face not good enough for you?” Papá pointed to his high cheekbones, the very white whites of his eyes, the thinning hair across a high burnished forehead. Rosa thought her Papá handsome. But Rosa wished to be pretty.
With the morning breeze dank on their cheeks, they made their way to the stable to see about the horses. Other than his wife and children, Papá was most proud of the horses he’d raised, bred, bettered. The line of mustangs he shared with Monsieur DeGannes extended thousands of years. They were kind and competitive, with stamina and immense beauty. Papá harnessed the mare Espina, while Rosa slipped on Jeremias’s boots and began prepping the stalls. Most days Papá would rope and lead the horses to the clearing to graze, leaving Rosa with plenty of time to muck and clean tacks before he returned on foot. But that day Papá extended his hand toward her. “Hold me properly,” he said, pulling her up onto Espina by both arms.
Rosa understood her father best when they rode. As they trotted, she sensed how he lightened his weight so as not to tire Espina, noticed the manner in which he stroked the mare’s neck. The way her father loved struck at the core of anyone or anything fortunate enough to be loved by him. He was not diplomatic, never spared truth, but Rosa knew that every task Papá performed lay in service to others.
That day Maravilloso pulled ahead of Espina. The mare flattened her ears to express her outrage and Rosa laughed. Maravilloso was most handsome, moderately muscled with a broad chest of fair depth, paired with a long stride and an exceptional mind that often favored its own opinions. He found a spot beneath the cloudy green shade of a clump of Spanish cedars. While Espina stood off alone, the three others—Iker, the young colt Santiago, and Josefina—idled beside Maravilloso, their lips in motion, their bicolored manes swishing in the warm morning’s breeze.
“He has a t’ing for Rosa.” Papá laughed as if the thought were delicious. “A real show-off you is, Maravilloso.”
Later, in the warm flush of midmorning, Papá and Rosa mucked out the box stalls, replaced the bedding, scrubbed the pails. Rosa was not afraid of work. Papá often said so. Mamá often said the opposite. She was a natural farmer, a talented handler, and, in these ways, an outlier among the Rendón children. Eve and Jeremias often complained about the intensity of the midday heat, about the land too vast, too unruly, about the horses too wild, both of them hoping Papá would permit them to drown themselves in letters and numbers. But for Rosa, there was no existence without that land.
Or at least this was what Rosa believed until the time came when she could not believe this anymore.
3
Eve was the first to notice the dust clouding the road. Demas Rendón had taught his children that when there was an unrecognizable approach, they were to gather and arm.
Mamá instructed Rosa to keep an eye on the covered wagon, a type rarely seen outside rainy season, and urged Eve to ring the bell that hung just over Papá’s cane rocking chair. When Mamá returned to the verandah with Jeremias, Rosa and Eve stood ready with weapons drawn, their linen bonnets tilted, the wagon progressing faster than expected.
“Can you tell who’s there?”
The haze about the wagon was uncertain of clearing, and Rosa knew if the wagon drew any closer, trouble would be harder to dissuade. She was the next best shot after Papá and Jeremias, so when Rosa aimed a hundred feet ahead of the wagon, spooking its horses for a loss of fifty yards, it was intended only to be a warning.
Jeremias snatched the musket from her.
“It’s Byron,” Papá said, climbing the stone staircase to join them.
“And Cousin Philippe is with him,” Eve added.
Papá met the men at the palm trees. Rosa watched her uncle and father greet each other with a nod. Words had long been inadequate between them. Rosa had often ached to know her uncles and cousins, to know a familial love beyond Mamá, Papá, Eve, and Jeremias, but she knew, long before she understood that that love could not be, that to love them would be to unlove Papá.
Mamá greeted Tío Byron as he and Papá led the wagon to the mouth of the walking path. “Mon frère,” she said, and Papá grimaced. He’d told Mamá that he felt it rude when she spoke French with others in his presence. Mamá had cheupsed long and hard, the saliva at her back teeth working to create a hissing sound, before telling Papá she thought it rude that he thought to say it was rude.
“Bonjour.” Tío Byron held his sister’s face, the grip resolved but gentle. It was an unexpected gesture, for the siblings had been at odds since soon after they’d arrived to Trinidad from Martinique at the end of 1783. For boat passage and a sixteen-acre plot of land, the three brothers, their wives, and Myra, their one sister, all free mulattoes, had sworn allegiance to the Spanish Crown, to Pope Pius VI, and to one another. Let the brothers tell it, and Demas Rendón had come between this last and most important alliance.
“You’ll have some tea?” Mamá said.
“Non, it’s too hot. But gimme some sorrel. Nobody makes it like you does make it, Myra.” Tío Byron, a man of considerable girth, sweating almost wastefully, examined Papá’s rocker, outfitted with a feather cushion. He seemed to wish for a seat that Papá did not offer, so instead he remained standing, complimenting Eve, the spitting image of Mamá, on her beauty and remarking on what a big girl Rosa had become. “You nearly got me on le bec,” he said to Rosa, pointing to his flushed nose.
“Sí, but if I wished for the nose I would have had it.” Rosa responded in Spanish.
Papá smirked, and Mamá swatted Rosa’s bamsee.
“Get inside, all of you,” Mamá said to the children.
Tío Byron fanned himself with his hat, his creamy skin glistening like damp dough, his thinned hair lying flat with sweat. “I t’ink it’s best if Jeremias sets himself right here,” he said.
Jeremias’s eyes, casting about as if in surprise, were pink-rimmed still. His unbrushed hair reminded Rosa of an untamable mountain ridge. He returned the musket to Rosa and watched as Eve pulled Rosa into the house, seeming to know that his sisters would crouch beneath the windowsill, that they would not miss anything of what was to come.
Papá sat upon his rocker, as if only willing to be a spectator, while more French-spoken pleasantries were exchanged: how healthy Myra looked, how the house kept up even without maidservants, how the grasses grew so green, so very green. Papá chewed a piece of dry salted bark until Tío Byron turned to Jeremias, his oldest nephew: “I understand you’ve been spending quite a lot of time at the DeGannes property.”
From Rosa’s vantage point, Papá showed no sign of irritation save he removed the bark from his mouth and set it into his shirt pocket.
“Together, you read books, talk learned man’s t’ings, isn’t that so? And sometimes it’s not just you and DeGannes sitting at le grand table,” Tío Byron continued, “sometimes you have a guest. Oui?”
Papá stood now, and Rosa swore she could see the rod in Papá’s back, straight and hard. “Say what you sayin’, Byron. I must get to the shop to prep the furnace.”
“Oh, the island
certainly can’t do without your services, Demas.”
Rosa and Eve ducked again below the sill. Tío Byron did something Rosa thought sounded like scraping the soles of his boots upon the verandah, though she could not be certain. She remembered when Mamá told her how Tío Byron, in Martinique, had earned money playing the fiddle on the verandah for guests of the monsieur who owned the land where they worked. “Your tio earned enough to keep us fed when we arrived here.” Mamá had spoken of Tío Byron with such admiration that Rosa had asked if she too could learn to play the fiddle. Mamá told her fiddles were only for boys. Rosa remembered wondering how it was that boys had become so fragile that everything seemed to be set aside for them.
“Myra, when am I gettin’ that cup of sorrel? A man needs to quench his thirst. I ridin’ here since dawn,” Tío Byron said.
Mamá leaned across the threshold to catch Eve only then rising to her feet. “Dépêchez-vous,” she whispered.
Rosa, peeking again, saw Tío Byron turn to Jeremias once more. “Sometimes you come all the way to my home and you does pick up Francine so you and she can spend time with DeGannes. Isn’t that so?”
Jeremias, with his right shoulder to the window, latched his thumbs about his braces. “I ran into her in town and she saw me carrying a book I’d borrowed from Monsieur. I told her how much I was learnin’. She begged me to bring her along to introduce her to him.”
“And sometimes you and she talk about your futures. Isn’t that so?”
Book of the Little Axe Page 5