K.C. delivered a note of apology in his own writing. Mrs. Stites had probably made him do it, but the fact that he’d consented seemed an apology enough. Everly understood why he might not want his mother doting over a child who wasn’t even related to them. When the Lederers hired Willy as their new houseboy, Everly started making excuses so she could stay home and follow Willy around on Saturdays, instead of pretending to be a model child for Mrs. Stites.
Every afternoon, Marjorie Lederer had Willy clean the dust from the outside of the house with a garden hose, clean the dust from the windows with crushed newspapers and vinegar, and wash the Studebaker. But the dust always settled again on everything by the next morning. It churned twenty-four hours a day from the nickel plant chimneys, sounding like a giant waterfall. Dust hung in the air, and on overcast days it smudged the bottoms of the clouds a dirty red. At night it hovered low and mixed with the fog that crept in off the bay. Cars would come up the road where the Lederers lived, blurry in the thick fog, headlights making two lit cones.
The town was a pinkish red, and the jungle beyond it was green. Everly’s father was color-blind, and said he saw red as green and the reverse. He claimed he couldn’t tell the difference between the two colors. Everly found this hard to believe, although she didn’t think he was lying. He’d get dressed and come in the kitchen and she and her sisters would make a game of telling him he had to change because his clothes were unmatched. What color, Everly would ask him, is the dust from the plant? “Red!” Duffy would shout. “I don’t know what color it is,” her father would answer. Everly tried to picture colorlessness and only came up with gray.
“You got to get the television box, Mr. Lederer,” Willy had said.
“The RCA. Or get the Du Mont, it’s the biggest. No one here going to have a Du Mont. You going to be the first, Mr. Lederer. The only one.”
Willy was right about the television. No one else had a Du Mont. The Lederers were the second people in Nicaro to have any television at all, never mind the largest model available. The first Americans, Everly’s mother said, because Lito Gonzalez had one before the Lederers, brought it back from Havana in the trunk of his enormous Cadillac.
Willy had read about television in Popular Mechanics. He looked at all the Lederers’ magazines, even the boring ones such as Forbes and Time, flipped through the pages as if he would know it if he came upon something interesting. He seemed to be absorbed in what he was reading, confident that he could recognize what was worth paying attention to. Everly picked up her parents’ magazines and turned the pages, looking for what she guessed Willy might look for, wishing she had that same confidence. She suspected that the best way to pay attention to Willy was to be as interested in everything as he was, do whatever she saw him do. She watched him turn the pages and looked at his pink palms. Willy’s hand was black. The pink was on display, tender-looking, like a hand that had been pricked with pins, or plunged in scalding or icy water.
Willy said television would be the new way to learn about things and keep up on the world. He said Cuba needed news, and maybe American news would be better than the news from Havana, which was all biased. What did biased mean? That it isn’t news, he said. It’s what President Batista wants people to hear. He explained that Cuba didn’t really have a free press, that the newspapers were all censored by the government, and any news that made the president look bad wasn’t printed. It was important to keep up on politics. If you didn’t, you chose, by not choosing, to accept the way things were. Everly wondered about her own parents, who never mentioned politics. Were they choosing for things to stay the way they were? Maybe they weren’t hungry for information the way Willy was. Willy said that Cuban radio was as bad as the Cuban newspapers, but at least it was good for tuning in to dance music. Batista censored the CMQ news, and all they had for talk programs was a faith healer. Willy said lots of people practiced superstition instead of putting order in their lives. Willy didn’t waste money on lottery tickets and holy water. He had plans, not pipe dreams. “I save my money, and who knows? Maybe someday I get my own house. If you spend it on lottery tickets and holy water, you guarantee you end up with nothing.” On his day off, Willy polished Mr. Gonzalez’s Whitewall tires and picked up odd jobs from the other Americans. Word had gotten around that he could fix things, appliances and even cars, and that he was a patient tutor of Spanish and French. “How come you know so many things?” Stevie asked. Everly knew why. Because he listened, and because he was smart. She could tell that when he worked around the house he was absorbing everything. He had a trick of not looking at whomever it was he was listening to most intently. If someone was having trouble, Willy was right there to help. Like when George Lederer, working at home one afternoon, was trying to adjust the tabletop fan on his desk and the fan wouldn’t stay in the right position, just kept flopping over and blowing papers around. He grew frustrated and started banging the fan on the desk. Willy asked if he could have a look. He got a screwdriver and carefully tightened the spring on the fan.
Everly’s mother arranged a kids’ party to debut the Du Mont television—Nicaro kids, the Stites boys, and a few others from Preston. The Allain children were not invited, and Panda cried because she wasn’t allowed to come. Duffy’s mean streak had compelled her to announce to Panda that the Lederers owned the largest television in the Western Hemisphere and would be watching cartoons and eating cupcakes the next Saturday. “Do you even know,” Stevie asked Duffy, “what a hemisphere is?” “A place,” Duffy said. “It’s a place!” Stevie was of the growing opinion that Duffy was turning into a monster. Stevie had developed a habit of flirting with Tico Leál, a Cuban employee at the nickel plant. Duffy spied on her older sister, going so far as to lie flat on the floor outside Stevie’s bedroom, her ear to the draft under the door. “Shhh…” Duffy said to Everly, who caught her one afternoon and asked what she was doing. “Stevie is talking to someone,” Duffy whispered. “A man—he’s in the yard talking to her through the window.” One afternoon Stevie opened her bedroom door, and practically stepped on Duffy. Stevie told her to knock it off, and said that if Duffy ever mentioned a word to their mother, she would live to regret it. “Are you threatening me?” Duffy asked. “Definitely,” Stevie said. Duffy seemed satisfied by the answer; a threat was a threat, and she kept her mouth shut, at least for a while. Tico Leál continued to visit Stevie at the window, and elsewhere, too. Everly saw them in the bleachers of the Nicaro baseball diamond, kissing. Stevie started sneaking out her window at night. From her own bedroom, Everly would hear Stevie’s window sliding open. Everly didn’t think Duffy was a monster. Duffy was “amoral,” which meant neither moral nor immoral. Morals were learned, and Duffy hadn’t learned hers yet. And maybe there was something to be said for a child who was a monster. She would make a good killer, because she didn’t care and it wasn’t her job to care. If you told Duffy to slam someone over the head with a heavy book, or maybe a brick, she would immediately do it. Not just gladly, but with delight.
Willy and Flozilla put out snacks for the television party, little roulades they made with one of Marjorie Lederer’s precious canned hams. When Willy and Flozilla retreated to the kitchen, K.C. said to Everly, “Your houseboy. I swear I know him. He was Mr. Bloussé’s boy.” K.C. said that if it was the same person, he’d come to the Stiteses’ house when K.C. was a tiny boy.
After everyone had left that afternoon, Everly told Willy what K.C. had said.
“I don’t know any American child,” Willy said.
“But he says you were Mr. Drussay’s boy.”
“I don’t know a Drussay.”
“A man from Haiti, he said, who brought workers over.”
“You mean Mr. Bloussé? I’m not his boy.” Willy shook his head. “Not for a long time.”
Willy’s people were from Haiti, but he’d been raised by this Bloussé—a white man from France. The man brought groups of Haitians over to cut sugarcane for the United Fruit Company, and he’d taken Willy wi
th him all over the Caribbean. He’d taught Willy to speak English and proper French, not like a Haitian but like a French person spoke it, and to do arithmetic so that Willy could help with his business, organizing boatfuls of Haitian laborers to go here and there working for foreign companies. Willy said he didn’t remember K.C., but he remembered going to the Stiteses, and there might have been children there. “The big house,” he’d said to Everly, “on the end of the avenue.”
“You know Willy!” Everly said to Mrs. Stites the next Saturday. They were sitting together, about to play a Bach two-part invention that Everly hadn’t practiced sufficiently. It was exciting having Willy around her house, and she had to partly concentrate on him—where he was and what he was doing—which made it hard to focus on anything else.
“Who’s that, dear?”
“Willy,” Everly said. “He visited you when he was a boy. With Mr. Bloussé.”
“I do know a Mr. Bloussé. He came with his family. Three girls. He didn’t bring anyone named Willy. Shall we begin?”
Mrs. Stites didn’t remember him, Everly later realized, because he wouldn’t have mattered when he came to her house. He wasn’t a guest. He was the help.
Willy referred to him as mister, Mr. Bloussé. Had Willy worked for him? Or was he more like a father to him, since he raised him? Somewhere in between, Willy said. It was hard to explain. Mr. Bloussé told him what to do and he had to do it, so he supposed it was more like he worked for him. But Mr. Bloussé taught him languages and sent him to a tutor for reading and writing, which made him more like a son. And eventually he’d left, just like a boy leaves a father to go out on his own. “Did he pay you?” Everly asked. “He raised me,” Willy said. “That was the payment.” He said Mr. Bloussé shipped people over to Cuba from Haiti to cut sugarcane. “Like cattle,” Willy said. “They made almost nothing, I mean nothing, for backbreaking work, while Mr. Bloussé is living like a king in Le Cap. He’s white, but he choose to live in a black world, where he rules everybody. Even his own wife. He married a black woman and she’s his servant and wife both. Slave and wife both, just like his cane cutters. They are worse off than servants because they owe him for the ship passage and they never make enough cutting cane to pay him back. The daughters were his servants, too, just like the wife. Everybody running around bringing Mr. Bloussé this and that. The wife, she knows he can put her out in a second, and she’s back to selling discount underwear on the streets of Le Cap, where he found her to begin with. We’re all running around like he owns us. Like we’re his property. I got tired of it and decided I was through.”
Everly didn’t understand how a man could have a wife who was also his servant. Daughters who had to work or they would be put out of the house. But it didn’t seem like she’d understand any better by asking Willy to explain. It was something she’d have to figure out by thinking about it. It was a different world. It almost didn’t seem real.
So he’d just left? “That’s right,” he said. They docked in Cuba and suddenly he knew he was done being Mr. Bloussé’s boy. He tended people’s flowers around Santiago and learned Spanish. He remembered Preston and how beautiful it was, because Mr. Bloussé had taken him there. Very fancy, he said, with pretty gardens. He figured you could have a fine life in Preston, and that he would go there and look for work as a gardener. He hitchhiked from Santiago, and the man who gave him a lift said there were jobs in Nicaro, because the nickel mine was reopening. “Now I work for your father,” he said. “He pays me and when I’m finished for the day I’m finished for the day.” Being raised by Mr. Bloussé had meant he was never finished for the day, and that he was always owing. You have to make a clean break sometimes. No good-bye, just the act of good-bye.
Was Mr. Bloussé sad when Willy went away? Willy shrugged. He hadn’t seen Mr. Bloussé since the day he made his decision, at age fourteen, and he was twenty-one now. They never saw each other again? Willy said there was a Willy who traveled with Mr. Bloussé, and there was this Willy talking to Everly and clipping the Lederers’ hedges, the Willy who lived on his own, and in the evening worked for no one but Willy. They weren’t the same person, and he couldn’t see Mr. Bloussé and not be the old Willy. They would have nothing to say to each other unless he wanted to go back to being Mr. Bloussé’s boy.
“I was sent to be your driver,” Willy had said to her father, a week after their arrival in Nicaro. He’d stood at the back door with his cap in his hand, a navy blue newsboy’s cap.
Her father said he didn’t need a driver.
“Then I’m your houseboy,” Willy said. He’d heard that none of them spoke any Spanish. “You need a houseboy, sir, if you don’t speak the Spanish language. I can speak it for you.” The smile on his face was so broad, so contagious, that George Lederer couldn’t turn him away.
Her mother said that although Willy was lazy and preferred delegating chores to doing any actual work, you couldn’t help but like him, his gentle manner and that dazzling smile, and that they’d be lost without him. Everly heard the lady from French Guiana say he was “compelling.” What did it mean? “That she’s attracted to a Negro,” Stevie whispered. “He’s not a Negro,” Duffy said. “What is he, then?” Stevie asked. “He’s Willy.” None of them was attached the way Everly was. “You follow me around like a little dog,” Willy said, and patted her on the head. She didn’t mind.
Marjorie Lederer still didn’t speak any Spanish, although she practiced her French every afternoon. She’d been practicing her French every afternoon for as long as Everly could remember, but she never seemed to advance to another level. She’d say things to Willy in French, give instructions like she was helping him out, since English, her mother said, was Willy’s third language. But Willy didn’t understand her mother’s French and would repeat words in what must have been the proper pronunciation, asking if that was what she’d meant. “Yes,” Marjorie Lederer would say, and repeat Willy’s pronunciation. “That’s right. You say it perfectly now.” He had a way of making everyone feel good. Her mother’s French wasn’t proper, but she was trying. Willy was complimenting the effort.
The Du Mont television worked, but it didn’t get good reception. When Everly’s mother wanted to watch something important, Willy was sent up on the roof to hold the antenna this way or that, so the picture would stay clear. The week after they got the TV, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation was televised. “Live,” her mother kept saying, which Everly found confusing. Wasn’t everything live? Or did it mean seeing in present time something that was evidence the present had taken place, like the photos and souvenirs that Stevie collected to put in her scrapbook? Maybe it meant you could experience something and see it as a memory at one and the same time. Stevie had a photo album with clippings about the queen, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor pasted onto its matte black pages. Underneath, in white grease pencil, details like Gala Christmas party, Bois de Boulogne, Dress: Givenchy, Dec. 1951. Everly sometimes took the book out, but more for the amusement of snooping than any real curiosity about the duke and duchess, who seemed wooden and unreal, characters mentioned in ads, like the one in the Havana Post for El Louvre, the big ice cream parlor on La Rampa. “Try our rum raisin, the Duke of Windsor’s favorite!” The coronation went on and on, Queen Elizabeth sitting under hot lights and sweating visibly, in a huge crown and a long dress that looked scratchy and uncomfortable. It was raining in Nicaro, hard, and her mother had Willy up on the roof adjusting the antenna, his foot wedged against a drainpipe so he wouldn’t fall.
Stevie and their mother sat glued to the set. Everly went out on the porch and shouted questions to Willy through the rain, until her mother said he could come down, that the coronation was over.
Willy said his family was still in Haiti, but it would be impossible to find them. He said he wasn’t sure of their last name, couldn’t remember it. He’d been with Mr. Bloussé since he was six years old, and on his identification his name was Willy Bloussé. He didn’t have papers for traveling and doubted
he could go to Haiti. Didn’t he have a passport? He showed her what he had: one pocket-worn yellow index card, his name typed on it, stating that he’d been vaccinated for communicable diseases, the Nicaro doctor’s signature underneath. “You have to vaccinate,” Willy said, “if you want to work in a white person’s home. Everybody have to vaccinate.”
His father had come over to cut the cane in Cuba when Willy was little. When his father returned, there was a problem. Willy hadn’t known what the problem was, but it had something to do with Mr. Bloussé. Mr. Bloussé came to the house and spoke to Willy’s father, and when Mr. Bloussé left their house that day, Willy was sent with him. Wasn’t Willy sad to leave his family? There were ten children, he said, and they ate nothing but boiled yucca. The boys had to cut sugarcane and there was no money to go to school. Without Mr. Bloussé, he never would have learned to read. And anyway it was his own fault, he said, getting sent with Mr. Bloussé, because he’d dreamed of escaping so he wouldn’t have to cut the cane. When he was little he’d wished he was Chinese, anything but what he was. “The Chinese are clever,” he said. “You don’t see them cut cane. They grow vegetables, work in the sugar mill, sell ice cream. They find a way to make a life without cutting the cane.”
“Guanabana! Carombolla! Mamoncillo! Limone! Mango! Piña! Plátanos!” The Chinese came to the Lederers’ door every afternoon, selling fruits, vegetables, fish, tools, soaps, and laundry supplies. Willy showed Everly how to choose a ripe pineapple, how to cut it with her knife, and make a perfect spiral of the outer skin, which was patterned like fancy leather upholstery. Could you save it and use it for anything? No, she discovered. It immediately rotted. You could tell that a pineapple was ripe, Willy explained, if it was veined with red like a bloodshot eye. After school, she’d go home and buy one of the bloodshot pineapples from the Chinese vendor, Lumling. They were small, a one-person pineapple, and she’d eat the whole thing and feel like she was eating something that had to do with Willy.
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