The Sugar Planter's Daughter

by Sharon Maas

  ‘Well?’ she said after a pause. ‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me? You know I’ve always wanted a son! Aren’t you happy for me?’

  ‘Happy? Happy? You expect me to be happy? What is it about you, Yoyo, that makes you love hurting your sister so much? What devil lives inside you?’

  I turned and stormed away, sick to my stomach. But Yoyo ran behind me, grabbed my arm.

  ‘Mama, Mama no! It’s not – not what you think!’

  I swung round. ‘Don’t tell me this is Clarence’s child because I won’t believe you!’ I cried. ‘And it’s not something you’ll be able to hide, is it! How far along are you?’

  ‘The – the doctor says three months. But’

  ‘Well, there we have it. Three months. You couldn’t get your husband into your bed so you get your brother-in-law to father a child. What a despicable thing, Yoyo! And don’t tell me that wasn’t your intention – if it were a mistake you’d be horrified, not joyful!’

  I turned to walk away again, but she pulled me back.

  ‘Mama, please just listen. You’re adding two and two and getting five. I can explain it all but you have to listen! You see – you see…’ She paused, as if struggling for words.

  ‘I see nothing!’

  ‘You see, Clarence and I – well, I always wanted children but it’s hardly possible if your husband rejects your bed! Clarence is incapable of – of relations with me. Just with me! He seems to have no problems with other women, as we all know!’

  She grimaced. It can’t be easy for a woman like Yoyo, a woman every other man seemed to covet, to be rejected by her own husband, and to see him, at the same time, running after every young skirt on the plantation. Clarence is such a bastard! But we are stuck with him by the terms of the contract; he is de facto master of the plantation, even if Yoyo runs it herself.

  ‘I’m too strong for him,’ she continued. ‘It puts him off. He prefers docile women. Well, he knows I want, I need, children and since he can’t give them to me he agreed that I should be free to find another – shall we say – seed donor.’

  She made another face. The subject was obviously distasteful to her, and no wonder. What woman likes to speak of these private matters, and especially to her own mother!

  ‘And he agreed to pretend to be the father, give his name to the child and so on, so that it would all be perfectly respectable.’

  ‘But why George, of all men? Your own brother-in-law! It will be so obvious! The child will be dark and the world will know – but mostly, Winnie and George will know. It’s a slap in their faces!’

  ‘I told you, Mama, the child is not George’s! Why would I choose a darkie as father? Of course not! There was – someone else. I have a – companion in Georgetown. I have kept it very discreet – only Margaret knows. She arranged it, in fact. I go to town once a month to meet him, during my fertile phase. There is such a phase, you know, and a clever woman can time these things perfectly. Haven’t you noticed that I run off to town for a few days each month? Well, it’s for that. For baby-making. Just for that.’

  ‘But then I understand even less why you should run after George, entrap him. What a risk! What if it turns out to be his baby, after all – it will be so obvious!’

  ‘I told you – it’s out of the question. For a start, if you remember, I stayed in town a week longer than usual that time. So I was past my fertile phase. And secondly, um, well, you see, George didn’t finish. He didn’t – well, you know. We were – interrupted. As well you know.’

  She smiled then, as if to make a joke of it. I would have no such thing.

  ‘But it was a risk you willingly took. And it’s not as if you could pass George’s child off as Clarence’s. If it did turn out to be George’s the world would know immediately.’

  ‘Well. It won’t happen. And you know, a few of George’s boys are so fair you can’t even tell!’

  That’s true: Humphrey, the eldest, is very light-skinned – but he has dark, very curly hair. The fourth son, Charles, though, is so fair he could very well have been fathered by a white man. It is certainly remarkable what nature will do with a man’s seed!

  34

  Winnie

  Losing that baby broke something within me. It broke my fruitless obsession with having a daughter. It humbled me. I was able to stand back and see how totally I had poured myself into that one desire, making it the focal point of my whole life. How wrong that was! It blinded me to so much. To the five boys I already had, and their needs – yes, I had taken care of them, physically, as best I could, but there was something missing in that care, something essential. And it had blinded me to my husband, who had become basically a means to an end: a little girl.

  My little girl’s death rocked me to the foundations of my being. That Winnie, who thought day and night of that one goal: well, she cracked open. The initial devastation was complete. It destroyed me as nothing else could, leaving me ravaged as a country after a war, blind and deaf to those who cared for me and wanted to rescue me. I refused to see George; I rejected Mama’s ministrations. To tell the truth, at the back of it all I was terrified. I knew very well what could happen. I had seen with my own eyes what the death of a longed-for baby can do to a mother. It had thrown Mama into a deep dark pit and torn her from her living children, and much as I was lost among the ruins of my self, somewhere within me was a spark of sanity, a little flame that warned me against following in her footsteps. And that’s when Yoyo came and sat at my hospital bed, and refused to go until I heard her out.

  In effect it was Yoyo who saved me from myself – or rather, the truth of Yoyo’s story. When the old Winnie cracked open, a new Winnie was there, waiting in the wings. I saw then that I was composed of layers of self. That new Winnie was ready to forgive, to return to the children she had instead of wallowing in sorrow for the one she had lost. My grief would remain with me, but I could not allow it to overtake my life and destroy my family. With Mama’s story as a lesson to me, I awoke from ruination to face a new day and a new life.

  First of all, I had a marriage to save. In my obsession with Gabriella Rose I had neglected George – not just physically, but emotionally; and that, perhaps, had made him susceptible to Yoyo’s charms. His regret, his guilt, was complete – how could I not forgive him? But had George himself not played a part in my neglect of him? George had tried to be the perfect husband and in doing so lost himself – that is, lost the vital spark in himself that had first drawn me to him and fanned my own love. He had become smaller in my eyes and in my heart. Without that charismatic force George was just a doting husband with no spirit of his own.

  We needed to start again, from scratch; rebuild our marriage and our family, not from the debris of the present tragedy but from the memory of what we once had. We discussed this far into the night, and in the morning we overslept and, had not the babies woken me with their screams of hunger, George would have been late for work and the older boys late for school.

  But we woke up smiling. Everything was new. We had made new decisions and new plans. My obsession with a daughter had disappeared overnight. Yes, we might have more children, but we would love and accept whatever came our way. We would build a house. George would return to his banjo and his calling as a speaker. Yoyo and I would be friends again. With Yoyo and George it was a different story, and that rift would take longer to close, but I would not try to force things. Our broken family would find healing. All would be well. The sun would shine brightly upon us. I was the inveterate optimist and I had faith. Faith in myself, faith in God. We went to church again that Sunday, and took all the boys. We were blessed, and would move forward as a family.

  All went well for three months. Then Mama appeared on our doorstep one evening and announced that she had news for us. We all went into the gallery and sat down. Mama didn’t look well. She had started to age; the rings beneath her eyes were puffy and her face had a distinct pallor that showed through the tan. Was she ill? I asked.

&nbs
p; ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m not ill. I’m worried.’ I reached out and took her hand. George appeared with a tray on which were balanced three glasses of lime juice. He set it down on the little table and handed Mama a glass. She took it and nipped at it.

  ‘What’s the matter, then, Mama?’

  ‘George, do sit down. This is about you. Maybe about you. Yoyo is pregnant.’

  I felt it then. The cold shadow of fear; fear that the good life we were rebuilding for ourselves was about to break apart once again, the destruction this time complete. In fact, George and I had spoken of this very possibility. George had shyly told me it was not possible. Now Mama was telling me the opposite.

  ‘It’s not possible!’ he said right away, now.

  ‘How do you know it’s George’s?’ I said. ‘She’s married; surely that’s enough explanation! Why don’t you think it’s Clarence’s child?’

  ‘Winnie, you’re so naïve! If it were so easy for Yoyo to have children the normal way, with her husband, don’t you think it would have happened long ago? Years ago? You know how much she longs for children.’

  Yes, I did know. Even before she married Clarence, Yoyo had told me of the dynasty she intended to found. She had wanted sons, many of them, two or three at least, and a few daughters to break up the male monotony. She had had it all planned – but then, nothing. I had of course never asked why she remained childless, though it had seemed strange to me, knowing how in control of her life she generally was. What Yoyo wanted, Yoyo got, by hook or by crook.

  In the twinkling of an eye the edifice of goodwill between myself and Yoyo crumbled. Suspicion and jealousy reared their ugly heads. But then again, if she had seduced George only to get pregnant – why him? Why a black man, who would give her a child she could not pass off as her husband’s?

  I looked at George. ‘You said it wasn’t possible, George! You assured me it couldn’t happen!’

  George had frozen. He simply sat there staring at Mama as if he hadn’t quite grasped the words she’d spoken, hadn’t heard my outcry. So I repeated it.

  ‘George! You said it was not possible! You said…’

  I was crying by now, and that seemed to bring him back to earth.

  ‘It wasn’t – I didn’t’

  ‘I don’t want to hear the details. I’m just – I’m just…’

  I was just crying. Bent double in my chair and weeping. In that moment it all came back to me: my grief over my lost child; my jealousy of Yoyo; my anger at George. All mixed into one huge ball of despair. It hadn’t disappeared. It had all just lingered beneath the surface, waiting for a trigger so it could leap back into view.

  Mama’s hand was on my back, her voice in my ear.

  ‘Shush, dear. I’m sorry. I put it too dramatically. It’s not certain that the child is George’s. Yoyo is certain it isn’t, in fact. There’s another contender for a father, aside from Clarence. George is actually unlikely to be the father, according to Yoyo. Let’s just hope she’s right.’

  ‘I’m not. I can’t be,’ George kept muttering. He knelt before me, put his arms round me, but I shook him off.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Winnie darling’

  ‘George, leave me with her. It’s best you stay out of this. I’ll take care of her.’

  ‘All right.’

  I sensed rather than heard George’s retreat. I felt sick to my stomach. I had heard Mama’s explanation but the words had only flickered through my mind. To me, the possibility that George could be the baby’s father made him in fact the baby’s father, and that idea sickened me to the stomach. That there should be a living breathing consequence to George’s infidelity! That his stupidity and weakness should emerge from Yoyo’s body as wriggling, screaming evidence of his dalliance… it was too much to digest. I didn’t care whether or not it was true. It was possible – even if George said it wasn’t – and that made it something I could believe. How would I cope? What if the child looked like George? What if – what if it was a girl?

  Mama continued to hold me and comfort me, but it was all rather futile. I was lost in an emotional breakdown that rivalled the one I’d only just recovered from. I heard Mama’s words as from a distance. She now seemed determined to convince me that the child was definitely not George’s. She told me of Yoyo’s prolonged attempts to have a child, her extramarital arrangement – with Clarence’s approval – and her monthly visits to Georgetown for exactly that purpose.

  ‘Yoyo leaves nothing to chance. You know that, Winnie! She even has a chart – her doctor has explained to her the body’s rhythm and she knows exactly on what days she is fertile. She was with George afterwards. She definitely was pregnant already. There’s nothing to worry about. Yoyo has it all planned out. She would never risk having a baby from George – it would be far too obvious, and she always intended to pass it off as Clarence’s child. She told me this in confidence. I’m not even supposed to tell you. She wants to have a white child, Winnie. It will be the heir she has longed for, if it’s a boy. She can’t risk having a coloured baby. People would talk. The child would grow up in scandal, the butt of jokes. It would be a catastrophe! Yoyo knew exactly what she was doing, Winnie. She’s happy about the child – would she be happy if she were not absolutely certain it could pass as Clarence’s? No. She would be nervous in that case, and she isn’t. She’s sure. You can’t let this come between you and George. You were doing so well! You were so strong – forgiving him. He’s making such an effort. I’m so sorry, Winnie. It’s all my fault. I was untactful, overdramatic, announcing it like that. Come on, dear. All will be fine.’

  On and on she rambled. I listened with only one ear, lost as I was in the ocean of grief washing over me. I let her talk, never responding; only crying. Drowning in my tears, allowing Mama’s words to go in one ear and out the other.

  Eventually, Mama grew tired of me. Suddenly she seized my shoulders and jolted me, so that my head flung back and my eyes opened wide, startled. She shook me, once, twice, so that my head wobbled.

  ‘Winnie, snap out of it. That’s enough. All you’re doing now is wallowing in self-pity, indulging yourself with all this emotional nonsense. Wake up, daughter! Pull yourself together! I told you there’s hardly a chance at all that George is the father – why don’t you listen? Oh! I could slap you!’

  And she did! She slapped me hard on the right cheek and then on the left, and that is what woke me out of my stupor.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, and placed my hands on my stinging cheeks.

  ‘Yes, oh, indeed! Now, girl, stop being a baby yourself. Get up and go and find George. Tell him exactly what I told you. That poor boy is probably just as worried as you but he doesn’t allow himself the luxury of a breakdown. Go and support him. That’s what wives and husbands do for each other. That’s marriage. Just go. I’m sick and tired of you.’

  Mama’s words worked like a bucket of cold water on fighting dogs. They brought me right back to my senses, and to reality. I saw that she was right. Mama, no-nonsense Mama, had once more worked her magic. I sniffed, and she produced a handkerchief. I wiped my eyes and my cheeks and said thank you.

  Then I rose to my feet and went off in search of George.

  35

  Ruth

  It was, perhaps, the happiest period in Yoyo’s life since my return to BG. She was good at pregnancy; some women bloom, and she was one of them. Her skin glowed, her hair gleamed, her eyes shone; but most of all, she smiled. Yoyo’s smile, when it was genuine, could light up a room. And I believed that at last she had truly found peace. Kind to everyone, and never cross – This, I thought to myself, this is the real Yoyo.

  Though I could not approve of the way she had chosen to accomplish motherhood, I had to concede that under the circumstances it was perhaps the only way, and as long as Clarence agreed, then why not? After all, Clarence had his own share of extramarital flings, though obviously he could not keep the offspring from those for himself. The mother, after all, has priori
ty – one of the few advantages a woman has in this lopsided world, in which everything else is heavily weighted in favour of men.

  Yoyo’s serenity helped to banish my last doubts as to the paternity of the child. Yoyo had, she let me know bit by bit over time, planned this down to the last detail – down to the colour of the potential father’s eyes, his height, his hair. Her friend Margaret – and, it seemed, Margaret’s husband – had played a major role in selecting the victim, approaching him, cautiously suggesting the role he was required to play. The successful candidate was a man called Richard – I never learned his surname – who worked as a minor clerk at Bookers Shipping and who, as required, bore the requisite shallow resemblance to Clarence. He was single, modest and discreet, a few years younger than Yoyo, and more than willing to fulfil the duties required of him. Which man wouldn’t – Yoyo was a beauty, a woman who turned heads. With her handed to him on a platter, Richard complied admirably.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Just over a year,’ said Yoyo. ‘He’s my second attempt. The first one – well, the less said of him, the better.’

  ‘And it’s taken you this long to get pregnant?’ This was my last little remnant of worry raising its suspicious head. But Yoyo shook her head.

  ‘Sadly, no. I’ve been expecting before. Twice before. Both times I had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Oh! Maybe you got that from me – I had three miscarriages before Edward John’s birth.’

  ‘Really? Then it must be that. That’s why I waited before I announced this pregnancy. I was so afraid I’d lose this baby, too. And look at me now!’