Cordoza went on to say that once the English extinguished this current path with the Africans, which had already roused the abolitionists to the brink of war, they planned next to import “servants” from the East Indies. “Hindustans,” he said. “They’ll tell the coolies that here in Trinidad their caste will mean nothing, that after a few years of light labor, they will have land and even a new name if they desire, and this, the landowners hope, will quiet the abolitionists and open all the free labor any Englishman could need for years, since, of course, there’ll be no written agreement with those Hindustan illiterates.”
Cordoza then told Papá that what he would say next was not a prediction but a fact: “The English have been here six years. They are readying themselves, looking for well-placed, well-established land to set up more plantations for sugar. Your property, Demas, is on a very short and distinguished list.”
Papá would return home and tell Mamá that he no longer knew what to believe, no longer knew whom to trust in this new life of theirs.
2
“He’s arriving at two and still you’re not dressed?”
Rosa had not wished to be found. She was in the stable, wearing Jeremias’s old trousers, preparing her horse, for she had planned not to return home until evening. The young man they expected that afternoon was Madame Bernadette’s nephew, and Rosa had no interest in meeting him.
In the preceding weeks there had been a flurry of communication between Madame Bernadette and Rosa’s parents. Madame Bernadette had told Mamá and Papá that her nephew would have been far more keen if he were coming to meet Eve but said, “Rosa will do for now.” In anticipation of the meeting, the nephew had asked a schoolteacher from his village to write, on his behalf, two letters of introduction: one to Demas and the other to Rosa, telling of his interests—fishing, carpentry, farming—and wishing to hear more of hers. Rosa never read the letter. “Chupidness,” she called it. So Mamá and Eve responded in her stead. They wrote of Rosa’s industriousness, of her brilliance with the horses, of her desire always to learn.
“Nutting of her beauty?” she’d overheard Papá asking Mamá.
“It’s best if we do not build her up too much,” Mamá had said. “I know Bernadette has given the boy an earful. He needs a wife who can work hard. That’s what Rosa can offer him.”
“She is pretty. You know this, sí?”
Rosa knew Mamá did not see her in this way. As she listened to her parents, she could not recall a moment when her mother regarded her face as though to admire it rather than critique it. “Demas, I know how the world sees Rosa. It will do her no good to be told she is lovely here and to be shocked when people do not respond to her in the same way they respond to girls like Eve. Not being prepared for the cruelty of the world can crush a child.”
Can crush a child. Had crushed a child.
“Madame Bernadette said he is a prompt young man.” Papá pretended now not to take note of Rosa’s displeasure. This was what he would do until just after lunchtime, when Rosa would make it so he could not do so any longer. “Your Mamá will die of embarrassment if you don’t put on a proper dress.” Papá’s trousers were pressed, and the vest he wore was fashioned out of something familiar that Rosa could not then place. “Your mudda is expecting you to help with lunch. No man will wish to marry you if you can’t prove you’s a good cook.”
Rosa remembered Jeremias saying once that he believed he was born in the wrong era, too late along the spectrum of human development to take pleasure in the things he loved most. But as Rosa reflected upon his words, she could not imagine an era when she would not have suffered the same fate or worse. She sometimes felt she’d been born not at the wrong time so much as in the wrong body or with the wrong mind for her body.
“Listen to yourself, eh? I have only sixteen years. I have no interest in this at all.” Rosa unlaced the saddle and Papá removed it from Maravilloso.
“And what about your mudda?” Papá said.
Rosa knew what Papá was doing. Mamá had been fighting some or another ailment nearly every day since the English arrived. She was not a frail woman, but she seemed to carry the collective weight of the family’s strain. She had been Papá’s consoler and strategist, had been persistent in her assurances to Eve that they would marry her well and had gone as far as to issue a call to all the gentlewomen she knew on Eve’s behalf; she worried always about Jeremias, how he would make do with so little, all while watching the country to which she’d chosen to immigrate become less and less worthy of the risk she’d taken. The strain of living in Trinidad, Mamá had said, was sometimes too much to bear. The English were growing more fearful of being outnumbered by the same Africans they were illegally importing, and the continual enforcement of arcane Spanish laws bordered on the absurd. And so the thought of Rosa marrying, the thought of a proper wedding to plan, of more grandchildren, had not only lifted Mamá’s spirits but also lifted the veil that had befallen their home. Was Rosa willing to undo that sweet bit of goodness?
“T’ings change, Rosa, and I know this is hard for you to understand, but your brudda was right … we could lose everyt’ing. It is not fair, but this is the way it is, until it is not.”
None of this was supposed to happen. Jeremias swore to Eve that Papá would not be permitted to sell the land. He told Eve he had discussed it all with Monsieur DeGannes, who had assured him that Papá could not bypass both English and Spanish primogeniture laws. But Jeremias did not know that Papá had already conferred with men who also knew about such laws. Men who’d told Papá about something called “common recovery” under English law.
“Ay, the English find a way around everyt’ing,” Papá had said.
Unbeknownst to Jeremias, Papá could ask a good friend to bring a suit against him in court. The good friend would claim he had a right to Papá’s land. The court would request that Papá bring a vouchee—someone who would swear the land title belonged to Papá—but when required to come before a judge, Papá and his vouchee would purposely miss the appointment and the good friend would win the case by default. This would cause the land to revert to “fee simple,” thereby removing all of Jeremias’s rights. The good friend would accept a few sterling for his troubles and simply deed the land back to whomever Papá wished to have it deeded.
“A man has the right to do as he wishes with his own land,” Papá had told Mamá.
Now Papá hung the saddle on the rack. “Go inside and get ready,” he told Rosa. “If this works out, maybe we can keep Maravilloso.”
Rosa saw this sham probability for what it was. In the weeks prior, Papá had begun declaring that Maravilloso would need to be sold. The drought had once again ruined some of the cacao crop and money was short. Rosa’s pleas not to sell Maravilloso had fallen on deaf ears, so why should now be different?
The young man arrived promptly with his uncle, Madame Bernadette’s eldest brother. The uncle was a hunched man with eyes milky like pearls. He called out before opening the gate. “Rendón! We come!”
Papá met them at the palms while Rosa watched from the window, the insides of her belly swimming. Papá seemed certain that once he married off Rosa to the boy and deeded the land to him, that Monsieur Benoit, who had been allying himself well with the landholding Englishmen, would pay off anyone who attempted to take the land from his son, even if he was a bastard. It was an arrangement Papá believed would please everyone, except, of course, Rosa.
As Papá escorted the two men inside, Rosa heard the uncle mention the peculiar sidelong glances he’d been receiving from the newly arrived Englishmen and the additional questioning by constables. Papá told him that after they got through talking about Rosa and the boy, they’d discuss “all dem Englishmen’s nasty ways.”
Then Papá brought the men to stand before the table, which was well appointed with a white lace cloth and a red bougainvillea centerpiece. Eve had set the table for five before leaving. Most Sundays Eve attended noon Mass, but with the church under repair,
she was instead sent to lunch with a friend, for it was presumed she would have been a great distraction. Before she departed, however, Eve had fixed Rosa’s hair into a ball that sat like a tight floating fist and had helped Mamá prepare coconut pone. Eve had also grated fresh ginger into the top of a jar that held eight servings of ginger beer, peeled potatoes, sliced carrots, collected figs, chopped onions, and cleaned the fish. The only thing left for Rosa to do was to add water, salt, a dash of pepper sauce, and drop the fish into the pot at precisely the right time to avoid its overcooking. And, oh yes, of course, Eve told Rosa that she would also be required to smile.
“Take the apron away from your clothes,” Mamá whispered, patting down the flyaway strands of Rosa’s hair.
Rosa shoved the apron beneath the table as Mamá took the old man’s hand, greeting him as if they were long-ago friends. Mamá brought the young man to stand before Rosa, rolling her R, introducing him as Lamec, her French accent perfect for the name’s rigid ending.
Lamec bowed, his eyes surveying Rosa’s as if to seek her approval. Rosa was surprised by this, surprised he had not grimaced or sneered. She suspected that the allure of the land and the sweet neighs of her ponies in the stable made him look kindlier upon her.
“Pleasure,” she said, curtseying, as Mamá had required her to do.
Lamec had soft-looking hands (not exactly farmer’s hands) and threadthin lips and smelled of bastille soap. He was not an ugly boy, though he looked nothing as Rosa expected. His aunt was a heavy woman with a red-tinted face bookended by dimples. He, on the other hand, was wiry, his complexion like tea with half milk, and one could not be certain when taking in his features if his father was, indeed, a full Frenchman, for Lamec had a strong, wide nose—a nose Rosa knew would not have been good enough for Mamá if he were meeting Eve.
“Sit, sit, s’il vous plait.” Mamá showed Lamec to his seat at the table. Rosa’s seat. And offered him a cup of ginger beer and a few slices of ripe mango, while Rosa went to the back of the house to tend to the soup.
Rosa hated fish broth. No one had asked what she wanted for lunch. If they had, fish broth wouldn’t have been it. She hated the too-large potatoes, how long it took the carrots to cool in her spoon; she hated green figs and the fish eyes that every other Rendón sucked with fervor. She hated that hot soup could be served on the muggiest day of the year and hated that this boy-man, Lamec, was in her house, in her chair, making ready to eat soup he believed she’d cooked especially for him.
“La-mec,” she said, mocking her mother’s French accent.
Rosa opened two full jars of Mamá’s homemade pepper sauce—a spoonful of which made grown men wager on who would perspire most—and poured the contents of both jars into the pot, hitting the containers on their bottoms to be certain it was all added.
As she brought in the bowls atop a large wooden tray, Rosa overheard her father preparing their guests for a most spectacular meal. Lamec rose to help her. Mamá looked on, impressed at the young man’s act of benevolence. Rosa could only think what a boar Lamec would be when he overtook their land and took up permanent residence in her chair, pining to sniff Eve’s undergarments and bossing Mamá as though he actually owned the blasted place.
Rosa doled out the broth, placing spoons next to each bowl, and poured more ginger beer for Lamec and his toothless uncle. (No wonder Madame Bernadette had told them to prepare soup!) Rosa took Eve’s seat across from Lamec, and he watched her as she sat, watched her as she sipped from her cup, watched her as she listened to Papá who would not stop speaking of the tour of the property they would take after lunch, of how critical Rosa had been to the maintenance of the land, of how much Rosa knew of horses. And Rosa was certain Papá would have continued except Mamá reminded Papá then that the soup before them was growing cold.
“Oh, sí! A comer, coma, por favor!” Papá said.
Rosa sipped from the cup again and glanced at Lamec over its rim. He sniffed the contents of the bowl, his eyes narrowing before taking up his spoon. But it was Lamec’s pearly-eyed uncle who slurped first. “Oui, it is—” the old man began to speak, but his words were cut by a violent cough.
Mamá, Papá, and Lamec reached for the cups of ginger beer that offered little relief. Mamá cusped her throat with one hand and patted the old man’s back with the other, but it was Papá and Lamec who jumped to their feet when the old man began to clutch his chest.
Rosa ran for water. Her hands trembled as she searched for the pail. What had she done? She brought the bucket to the table, dumped out the cups of ginger beer onto the floor, then poured water for the old man, whose pearl eyes had burst into red spiders. He tried to catch air between gulps, but his breathing grew more rapid and the cough more determined. Mamá and Papá were bejeweled with sweat, their tongues hanging for relief, their eyes awash in fear and shame.
Lamec knelt before his uncle, urging him to “drink up, drink up,” telling him all would be well. The young man’s own eyes rained tears. He seemed to be a kind boy who, Rosa now believed, had only wanted to please his family by coming to that house to meet her.
It took nearly a half hour before the old man was well enough to stand. Papá steadied him at the elbow as they walked toward the wagon. Mamá whispered a most heartfelt apology with her hand to her bosom, swearing that nothing like that would ever happen again.
Lamec steadied his uncle on the seat before dismounting to face Rosa. “I am sorry this was not what you hoped it would be.” Rosa did not wish to meet his eyes. “But you could have said so,” he said.
Rosa was certain they both knew this to be an untruth. But to say that a girl’s words mattered was far easier than to examine why they did not.
Mamá took to her bed immediately upon their departure. And Rosa would not see her for a week. Papá waited a fortnight for Rosa to tell him that it had been an amateur culinary mistake. When she did not, he found another way to make her feel regret.
“The horse must go,” he said.
An Englishman arrived a week after Papá advertised the sale. The man was tall and pudgy with a crabby mustache and he wished to negotiate.
“Sorry, sir, my father is out on a job at the mill,” Rosa said.
The man climbed down off a striking buckskin mare and drew his pipe from his breast pocket, pushing down the tobacco into the bowl, as if he intended to smoke it, but did not. “Rendón? Is that a Spaniard’s name?”
“Yessir, it is.”
“But you speak English quite well?”
“My father knew—knows how, sir, so when you—when the English—come, I set about learning it.”
“That’s very industrious.” The man held the pipe away from his mouth and stretched his neck to see past the right side of the house. “I do find this land quite nice.”
“My father’s price for the horse is one hundred, sir. We have two gentlemen coming tomorrow to look at him.”
It seemed he whistled as an expression of both surprise and doubt. “Tell me, how did your father come to this number?”
“Sir, you haven’t as yet seen the horse.”
“’Tis not necessary to know the number’s quite high.”
“The going rate for a stallion like we have is two hundred, sir.”
“Who said?”
“The men who are coming tomorrow to buy, sir.” Rosa looked over her shoulder as if to suggest she had other obligations. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I must get back to the stable. I’ll tell Papá you called.”
“Now don’t you be burstin’ out angry,” the man said. “I’d like to see him.”
“Papá?”
“The horse.”
Rosa looked toward the house, wondering if Eve or Mamá was aware they had a visitor. The stable had always been a place Papá would permit only certain men. But now, much had changed. Each day they were shorter on food. The goods they had once sold to merchants from Portugal, Spain, France, were now required to be sold only to London merchants, for the English had blocked al
l foreign trade. Under the Navigation Act, Papá had called it, there was no profit to be made and no bargains to be had. He had laughed a melancholy laugh and said they “were trapped between England and the English.”
“You can bring your mare to the back and tie her up there, if you wish,” Rosa said, perusing the man’s horse again. “She’s very pretty, sir.”
“And old and in heat, which makes her insufferable!”
Rosa noticed the thick discharge sliding down the mare’s hind leg. It was a healthy bit. “Yes, she seems quite a handful. And looks tired.”
The stable had been hand hewn by Papá with wood pegs, mortise and tenon joinery. It was built to house six horses in six spacious stalls. It contained a well-organized tack room and a loft overhead for hay storage. Few in Trinidad had a stable like this. The man whistled again as he took in the extent of it.
“Every horse we’ve sold—and we rarely sell our horses—has been of the finest on this island, sir, and probably in South America too.”
Rosa opened and closed the gate of Maravilloso’s stall, going inside to speak to him, shifting to the Spanish she hoped the Englishman would not understand. She told Maravilloso he would soon be leaving their home. She had wished to delay it, for she loved Maravilloso, but now Rosa knew her only power lay in choosing where his new home would be.
“Is this him?” The man said this as though unimpressed. But Rosa observed the Englishman’s eyes as they followed Maravilloso’s long and tapered backside, his marvelous leg conformation and balanced silhouette, the dark blood chestnut of his coat. Each time someone new was introduced to Maravilloso, Rosa saw the horse with fresh eyes. And he was stunning.
“One hundred is a bargain, sir,” she said.
The man chuckled, perhaps at her boldness, perhaps at the undeniability. “Why, I didn’t expect him to be this,” he said.
Rosa could see the man’s appreciation for what he beheld. The man had a pleasant, almost rascally way about him and looked to be the sort who would not take up the whip easily. She questioned him about where in England he hailed; whether he was married, had children; how he’d come to know horses; whether his father was a horseman, or perhaps his grandfather; what he knew about the line of his own mare. He indulged her, answered well, though not always perfectly. He wasn’t a man of considerable means but was already well connected on the island. “Sir, how much do you have?”
Book of the Little Axe Page 17