by Tatjana Soli
Instead: “The flowers are big, big as your outspread hand.”
“Oh,” Claire said, pleased.
Marie hated her those moments, felt cold inside, like seducing a man one didn’t love. “Oh, Agatha, you’re just wanting to be charmed, aren’t you?”
“‘Agatha’? Why are you calling me that?”
Marie frowned, not about to tell her that renaming took away one’s soul. “Don’t you remember, doudou? The patron saint of breasts? I’m giving you her powers.”
“I don’t like it.”
“They only mention Rhys’s marriages in the biographies. They don’t tell how she abandoned her children. No one wants to hear the less than pretty details. What if my great-grandmother lost her husband when she was still a young wife? Very hush-hush. And she goes to hide on the other side of the island? What if she is killed? The baby left alone to be raised by distant family. Doesn’t make a very good story, does it?”
“No.” Claire seemed disappointed. The bitter of the world too much for her.
“The biographies don’t tell that she was a selfish woman, that she never looked back, never thought of her baby girl again. That she wasn’t mother material. They want to make her all romantic-seeming. Poor, dreaming Agatha. In love with a ghost.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“What if my grandmother married a black man, and my father married a black woman. Only a small bit of Rhys blood left. But in your eyes, I’m all her.”
Marie could tell Claire didn’t like these answers. And just like that, the truth urge went stillborn. Marie would not disappoint again. The habit of story was stronger in her. She was used to begging for her supper this way.
“But you have your great-grandmother’s eyes. And the same set of the mouth,” Claire said. Stubborn, like a child. “I looked at her pictures.”
“I wish I had her money, too.”
Claire laughed, both of them relieved.
* * *
They were sweeping up the ash from the fires off the back patio when a fireman in yellow gear walked around the side of the house, startling them. He looked like the man on the moon, squeaking rubber with each step, arms angled forty-five degrees out from the bulky trunk of body. For a moment, all three froze at the unexpected sight of each other.
“Excuse me,” he said finally. “We’re checking fire hazard at all the area homes.”
Marie wore a crocheted tank top, bare underneath. His eyes hovered at her bulging middle, not daring to look up, not trying to look away.
“We weren’t hoping for visitors,” she said.
“The place looks boarded up from the road,” he said. “Abandoned.”
Claire coughed, and he slowly moved his glance from Marie’s stomach to Claire’s face.
“We were worried about looters,” she said. “We belong here.”
“Incendiary. You have a lot of burned trees that need to be removed.”
“That’s true.”
He kept staring at Claire as if she might be in need of rescue. She did look pale and sweat-soaked in the harsh light. “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you okay?”
“I have cancer.” Claire was thinking that was now a lie; the cancer now an excuse. She was cured.
“Oh, I’m sorry—” His reddish skin turned a dark brick shade.
“That was a good one,” Marie said. “Real smooth.”
“It’s my job,” he mumbled.
“Agatha and I are just fine,” Marie said, watching Claire flinch just the smallest bit, as if she had been pinched in secret. “Snug as bugs in a rug.”
“No offense taken, Officer,” Claire said. “My name is—”
“Baumsarg it says here. Agatha?”
“No!”
“Can we offer you a glass of water,” Marie interrupted as she pulled a T-shirt over her head.
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“A crew will clear the trees next week,” Claire said.
He nodded and pulled out a notebook. “I’ll mark that down so no one bothers you again. Lots of fire danger this year. Can’t be too careful.”
“The smoke was bothering me. Me and my baby.” Marie stroked the small bulge of belly. She gave that up to keep Claire quiet.
“A baby? You’re pregnant?” Claire said.
He scratched away on his notepad, retreating even further into his officialdom. “Well, I’ve marked you down. Good luck to you both. Stay safe.”
* * *
After he was gone, Claire sat on the diving board, giggling. “He thinks we are in need of rescue.”
“It’s hot.”
“A baby! So many plans to make.”
Marie sat on the diving board and took Claire’s hand in her own, pecked the bony back of it with a kiss. “I don’t like them snooping.”
“My secretive Minna. I need my drink. Now we need to bring all the old baby stuff from the attic—cribs, bassinets.”
Marie obliged and went into the kitchen, making up the tonic that Claire was now convinced brought her health. In truth, it was no more than the spice shelf at the local supermarket—ginger, cilantro, basil, mint—steeped like tea. Then Marie added cinnamon and star anise and ground-up aspirin. Claire drank it down as if it were elixir, hungrily and with such ardor that Marie herself almost believed there might be something healing in it. The mind is an ever-hoping thing, leaning toward faith like a plant toward the sun.
* * *
“Tell me more about your family.”
Marie sighed and for a reluctant moment she considered it. “My mother used to take me to town, to Ravine Froide, every Saturday, for coconut ice.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“Sometimes we went to Massacre.”
Claire’s face lit up. “I know it! Massacre. That’s where Rochester and Antoinette stopped on their way to the honeymoon house.”
Marie shrugged. Claire spoke about imagined events taking place over a hundred years ago, things that took place only in an author’s head. A made-up love and a made-up madness. Marie could not understand Claire’s childlike preoccupation with make-believe. On the island, it was different—dread reality outstripped any kind of fantasy. One couldn’t afford to dream of anything except escape.
“I don’t remember that part of the book,” Marie said. “It must have been only a small part.”
“I pictured it so clearly.” Claire jumped up with more energy than she’d shown in weeks and rifled through the living room till she found her book, sway-backed on the chair. “Here it is.” She frowned, squinting. “Get my glasses.”
Since the chemo, she had become more forgetful and impatient when she misplaced things, so Marie solved the problem by buying multiple pairs of reading glasses at the drugstore. They were scattered all around the house, tending to migrate into a pile on Claire’s bedroom nightstand, from where Marie then redistributed them. Marie hesitated when she found a pair placed on the pine cabinet in the entry hall. Was it a sly signal from Claire? But, no, she was oblivious, and when she had the glasses on her nose, her face relaxed, and her voice grew strong and confident as she read the words: “‘I looked at the sad leaning coconut palms, the fishing boats drawn up on the shingly beach, the uneven row of white washed huts, and asked the name of the village.’”
Claire frowned and flipped the page. “Here’s more: ‘The rain fell more heavily, huge drops sounded like hail on the leaves of the tree, and the sea crept stealthily forwards and backwards.’”
She kept flipping pages.
“That’s not much,” Marie said. “Could be describing anywhere.”
“Here: ‘Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.’”
Claire slapped the book shut, satisfied. “I know that place better than places I’ve actually been.”
“Yeah?”
“Like t
he facts you’ve told me about yourself. They don’t explain the Minna I see in front of me.”
“Those last words were Rochester’s. He hated it there. She didn’t feel that way about her island. But to her—no matter how ugly, how haunted, it is home. We find something to love in it because it is what we have. She saw kind faces—Caro’s, for instance, in the village—where he saw only ignorance and sin.”
“I thought you forgot that part?”
“You never forget. That book is in me. It’s just buried.”
Claire nodded, somber. “Don loves you.”
Marie shook her head. “He has no idea who I am. You only love what you understand.”
“Then explain yourself to us.”
“You. I know your pain. Not just the boy, or the girls, or Forster, but your own failure.” Marie, now gentle, caressed Claire’s head, put her lips against Claire’s ear. “That day I touched the tree, it told me. We understand each other, don’t we, Agatha?”
* * *
The time of the fires marked the end of the radiation treatments. Claire more exhausted now than ever before, eyes like a bed of ashes. Marie had counted on the time of the treatments to be enough, that she would be bored like a stray dog, ready for the adventure of the road again. But as the time came and went, she had grown soft, used to the deep sofas and china cups, beds with sheets the dull white of bleached bone. She resented that she would soon be expected to move on.
She felt a deep feeling for Claire, but did not recognize it was love. Comfortable, she knew she didn’t want to go back into the Uncertainty, could not imagine going back to the Troubles. She started to think she was whom she pretended to be. That was why she kept calling Jean-Alexi—to be reminded she was nothing.
While Claire slept, she called him to come. Although she knew what he was, she missed him. Couldn’t he change again? Change back into the boy in her father’s abandoned house, the one who serenaded her with crickets? They were the same, after all.
* * *
A month after the radiation, waiting for Jean-Alexi to show up any day, Claire began to have enough energy to run the farm again. Marie had to hurry and dull it. She built Claire up to drinking two “elixirs” a day. It would not do to have Claire full strength when he finally arrived. Back in Florida, Marie had discovered the uses of Valium. Claire floated through her days, lost in her own dreamworld.
“Where’s the dining-room table?” she asked, her eyes faraway.
“Remember, we discussed the rooms were too crowded?”
“Oh, yes,” Claire said, trying not to appear forgetful or suspicious.
The next day while she lay in a drugged sleep, the same people who bought the bombé chest and armoire came out with a truck and wrote Marie out a bigger check for the antique farmhouse table in the kitchen, a set of cherrywood rocking chairs, plus the big silver samovar that always needed polishing. Even while they were driving away, Marie stood in the driveway thinking there was again as much to take out of that stuffed house: barrister bookcases, sleigh beds, mahogany library tables.
* * *
With the house emptier, Marie was tempted to take up cleaning again because at last she could see what was left. Like her childhood home it was bare, but as Maman said, as clean as God’s own house.
With money sitting in a safe-deposit box, Marie felt safe for the first time since she had left the island, but how to make that last? Claire, when not asleep, stared into space and asked her relentless questions, and Marie spun out fairy tales in answer. When the girls called, Marie held up the receiver to Claire’s ear, but she lost attention quickly, and Marie made excuses, making a note to herself to lower the dosing. Claire agreed that the house felt roomier with the furniture “stored.” Time growing shorter, Marie grew more bold, went into Claire’s closet, tried on her clothes, but Claire was not like Linda in Florida; she had always been a woman without vanities, and there was nothing to Marie’s taste.
* * *
She sat on Claire’s bed and watched her sleep. She was the first person Marie had loved since her mother. She would be sad when this time was over. Tears formed in her eyes.
Claire was lethargic, her breaths sweeping shallow like a bird’s, and she whimpered in fear that the cancer had come back. Why else feel so strange?
But Marie could only dose Claire’s mind; her body fought on with a vegetable vigor. She did not recognize these were the growing pains of health. But Marie saw the change. Undeniable as the turning of the winter solstice—even one day later, the darkness was less, and beyond the physical darkness, one felt in one’s bones that light was gaining in the world, conquering. Looking at Claire, one clearly saw that her life was returning—her color was pink instead of sheet white, her gauntness caused by hunger, not lurking death. Her skin had a fuzz of peach, the chick fluff on her scalp enough to make them both laugh. Marie had nursed her baby back to life, and she was proud as a mother and terrified as a mother—a matter of time before she was no longer needed. What came after? Why didn’t she deserve a home?
* * *
Claire got too weak, hardly wanting to leave her bed to relieve herself, and they were scheduled to visit the doctor in a few days, so Marie lessened the dose in the elixirs, and Claire walked around the house like a plucked bird, humming. Marie felt drunk with power like a tiny god. This smallest reprieve, and she had never seen Claire so happy. Joy is a thing that can be delivered in small slivers.
* * *
“Having the house empty helps me think,” Claire said. “Maybe I should redecorate. Start all over. Or travel? Maybe go see Lucy in Santa Fe? What do you think?”
“You should rest,” Marie said.
“How about some of your chicken and rice. I could eat a horse. I could eat a whale.” She giggled at her health, unsure if what she felt inside was real.
The night Jean-Alexi arrived, Marie put triple the dose in Claire’s elixir. She vomited, and her blood pressure dropped extremely low. Marie had to measure it twice to make sure she’d read it right. She was scared, frightened she had gone too far.
Claire cried Marie’s name in the night, and she went to her.
“Climb in bed and keep me warm.” Tears ran down her face, but they were healthy, glistening tears.
“Here I am, doudou.”
“I dreamed I was dying.”
“We’re all going to die someday, che.”
“You know what I mean,” Claire said, her eyes accusing, and Marie thought her secret was found out.
“Recurrence,” Claire hissed, accusing, as if the word held all the pain of the world inside it.
“Don’t talk like that.” Marie wiped Claire’s tears with her fingertip, put it inside her mouth. “It’s just a bad dream. Let me tell you what I see. I see you healthy in the future.”
“I get so scared.” Claire whimpering like a child, and Marie could not help the revulsion that lay sour in her throat. She lifted Claire off her arm and chest, and when she grabbed at Marie’s shirt, she thumped her cheek with her middle finger, a hard pluck off the thumb that shocked Claire into silence.
“That’s enough. I need to sleep, too.”
“Please,” Claire moaned. “Don’t leave.”
“Selfish, selfish, Agatha. Only thinking about yourself while the world is burning.”
Marie walked to the door, looked back at the dumb pleading of Claire’s face, like an animal kicked for no reason. Almost enough to turn around and give in and coddle her, because Marie did love her. But this was the way of the world; Claire better learn it. It sickened Marie to see such innocence in such old eyes. Why should Marie take pity when no pity had been taken on her?
She slapped off the light and shut the door. As she went downstairs to warm herself a cup of milk with rum, she heard the muffled sounds of Claire’s sobs. Later, Marie went back to her room. Claire was deep in sleep, her forehead furrowed and sweaty as an infant’s. Marie slid into the bed, and Claire rolled against her and sighed.
* * *
Marie poured cornmeal on the living-room floor to form the vévé for Papa Legba, opening communication with the spirit world. Was the vodou real? Yes and no. Marie knew as little about it as the man in the moon, only what she had stolen from spying on Maman, yet it had become more real to her than time spent in church. Why? Claire and she pretended for each other that it was real, that both felt its power, and that made it so. Wasn’t that what was meant by faith?
It is complicated to be a survivor. Sometimes you have to pretend in magic. You have to find a way to bury the dead.
Maybe the vodou had worked on her as well. After Jean-Alexi came, she realized too late she had changed.
Part Four
Chapter 1
Minna came to Claire’s room, folding away fresh laundry in drawers for the first time in months. “You met Jean-Alexi, nuh?”
“You decided to do laundry?” Claire nodded. “He’s the father?”
Minna looked down at the bulge of her stomach as if in surprise. “Oh, no. No.”
“Why is he here then?”
“Our new foreman. He was a very good farmer before on Dominica. He won’t cheat us. He can be trusted.”
Claire thought about this changeable thing, trust. How she had squandered it so freely on a stranger who was more a figment of her imagination than a real self. But as she looked into Minna’s face, she knew that the woundedness was real; Claire simply did not know the source or the outcome of the hurt she was hiding. This girl was made up of motivations Claire had no way of guessing. Paranoia? All she could feel was a longing to go back to the way they had been before the man’s arrival because she sensed he would change everything.
She did not mention that the barn, supposedly packed full with the furniture from the house, including Raisi’s armoire, had been half-empty.
That night Minna set the table for three. But only the two women sat down in the usual candlelit semidarkness. After waiting for a long time, Minna, skittish, finally gave the signal that they could eat. She had been waiting for an appearance by the man that did not materialize. Clearly she wasn’t in charge. Dinner was the usual hodgepodge of food—smoked sausage and the wheel of cheese, refried beans and rice, oranges.