I sat with Rosalie for the last time. To me, she looked nearly the same as she had on the day I met her in Monsieur Petit’s kitchen.
“I was young then!” She gave me a cup of tea and a slice of coconut cake dolloped with cream. “But not as young as you were.”
We had both made a promise to the same ghost, and because of that we’d been bound together by fate. That had been part of my good fortune.
“Let’s not say good-bye,” she said to me on my last day in St. Thomas.
I agreed it would be best not to. We both knew that I could never thank her enough. She had taught me everything about raising children when I’d become the mother of three so suddenly. Despite the fact that she’d been violated and forced into servitude, she couldn’t have been kinder to a girl who knew nothing, not even what happened when a husband came into bed. “Didn’t your mother tell you anything?” she had asked me each time she discovered how much I had to learn. Whatever I did know had been a lesson from Adelle and then only told to me in whispers to ensure that my mother couldn’t overhear.
As I was leaving I noted that Rosalie had adopted the rose tree my mother had hated. She said it was an unnatural plant, not worth the water it needed to survive, with huge pink blooms that called wasps and bees to it, but it had been on the patio of the cottage for so long, Rosalie said, who was she to let it die?
“My mother despised it even though it was a gift from my father. Likely she wanted something more.”
Rosalie shook her head, mystified by all I still had to learn. “She didn’t like it because it wasn’t for her. There was another woman in your house, and she was very pleased with this gift. Mr. Enrique has been taking care of the rose tree ever since your mother disposed of it.”
I didn’t ask any questions and she didn’t offer any answers but, we understood each other all the same. We both had come to believe that Adelle was more to my father than most of us had known, except, perhaps, for my mother. As a girl I had known the world by way of my own angry heart, and hadn’t paid attention to issues that didn’t concern me. Children were hushed and dismissed, sent to their rooms. So much the better, I’d always thought. I was immersed in my own troubles, plotting my escape. But now my memory added all I’d failed to see: the intrigue of a closed door, three petals of a fragrant rose burning in a dish in the kitchen, a woman crying, the garden gate closing so softly I hadn’t been sure whether or not I’d heard it, the redness of my father’s eyes when he came to tell me I was to be wed, the way my mother would study Jestine, as if looking for features she might recognize.
I left Rosalie before either of us could cry. I had spent more time in her company than in anyone else’s, and she in mine. I was fierce with other people, as harsh as my own mother on some occasions, but never with Rosalie. She had managed to see through me. She’d told me things other people would have been afraid to say to my face, but she never told me I was wrong to get into the bed of the young man from France. Now as we said our good-byes, she kissed me three times, then a fourth time for luck. She reminded me of her best piece of advice and suggested I would do well to listen to her.
Love more, not less.
IT WAS THE END of the season for the flamboyant trees, the glorious month of September. I wouldn’t see flowers such as these again, not unless I traveled to Madagascar. The sailors from that country had gone to great trouble to bring the original specimens across the ocean, wrapping the roots in burlap, sharing their own precious drinking water, all for a blessing on their journey. There were only few blooms left, but I gathered enough to leave an armful of flowers on Madame Petit’s grave, and on the grave of the Reverend’s first wife, for my marriage to Frédéric had been recognized and my children’s names had been written down in the Book of Life and I believed I owed this to her ghost. I left white stones in remembrance of my sons, and my parents, and of Isaac. He’d known I’d never loved him, but that hadn’t mattered at the time. We had an agreement and we both kept to it. When I left, leaves drifted into my hair. Usually I kept them, out of respect to the spirits, but on this occasion I shook my head, letting them scatter. They came from the bay tree and were spicy with scent. Some people folded them in with their belongings when they packed for a journey, but I left them where they’d fallen.
• • •
JESTINE AND I SET off on a windy day when the sea was green. My husband held me for as long as he could, until the captain called, insisting it was time for us to leave. There was the tide to think of, and seas that grew rougher with each day that was further from summer. Jestine and I both wore black, as if in mourning for the lives we’d once led and the people we would no longer be. We noticed a pelican swooping after our ship and left fish from our dinner on the railings. We collected feathers to keep on our bureaus. But when we were far out to sea, a chill met us and the pelican disappeared. We tossed out crusts of bread and mussels taken from their shells, but there were no birds here, so far from land, only the blue light of the open sea.