“It doesn’t matter what people say,” she told me. “He’s already your husband.”
Rosalie understood wanting what you could not have, as Mr. Enrique had a wife on another island and could not marry her. But I was not as patient or as tolerant as she was. The green bitterness growing inside me was a dangerous flower. I could taste the tang of sourness it gave off, like arsenic, the poison left out for the mongooses sent here from the other side of the world.
In a few weeks letters began to arrive from the Petit family, as they tried to gain control of the business. They were half owners, after all, having inherited what had once been my father’s holdings along with my first husband’s estate. The St. Thomas newspaper had been sent to them, and they were in shock, afraid their assets on our island would disappear if left in our hands. Frédéric put the letters away, but I found them. The family had written that he was too young and they’d been mistaken to send him; he was now obligated to give over control and send the ledgers and records of the business to France. But he did no such thing. He may have been young, but he was stubborn, a believer in doing what was morally right, even if it meant breaking the law.
We soon received a letter from the congregation stating they had begun a correspondence with the Rabbi in Copenhagen and had asked that the King’s court undo our marriage, which they stated was granted outside of Jewish law. We were under siege. Frédéric and all the children fell ill with some mysterious sickness that made them unable to eat. I boiled herbs and made a tea from berries and ginger, and they began to heal. But the case against us went on.
Because of the pressure from the community, the King’s court suddenly reversed itself, declaring our marriage illegal, stating that we had not presented ourselves as Jews when we asked for permission to marry. I was officially a sinner, damned by the Grand Rabbi. Now women spat on the street when they saw me. I began to carry an apple inside my shawl, not out of hunger but because it was the fruit of our family and I believed it might ward off any curses set against me. Soon I stopped going out. I locked myself in the house and wore black again.
Rosalie came to my bedside. “Don’t let them win,” she told me.
“They have.”
“They think they have. But they can’t if you don’t allow it.”
Still, I stayed in bed for nearly a week until Rosalie said I had to let her change the bed linen. When I got out of bed she dumped a pitcher of water on my head. I screamed, and stood there sputtering and waterlogged while my youngest children laughed at me.
“If you can’t wake up, then we’ll do it for you,” Rosalie said.
I was sopping and stunned, but something inside me awoke, the self I was, the woman who knew what she wanted and what she must have. I threw my arms around Rosalie in gratitude. Then I dressed and readied myself for the world, driven by anger and desire, but perhaps that is always what drives a woman to fight back. I had my sons go into the hills and cut down armfuls of flowers from the flamboyant tree. I took these with me and went to the cemetery. I wrapped the branches in wet muslin so they might bloom with a deeper scarlet shade. Dusk was near. The blue-tinted light sifted over me as I prayed at the grave of Esther Petit. I left her armfuls of the flowers she favored. Then I looked for the grave of the Reverend’s first wife. I had brought her something special as well, an apple from the tree my father had been sent long ago from France, the one that had lost most of its leaves in the heat of the fire, but still bore fruit. I begged the Reverend’s first wife to tell her husband, who was still on earth, to let us be. Perhaps he’d never known love himself in his marriages, but surely even he should be able to see it when it was right before his eyes.
WE WENT ON ABOUT our lives as if we were the only people in the world. I found several white strands in my hair, and Jestine pulled them out at the root. We sat on her porch and watched the sea, and waited for what would happen next, as we used to do when we were girls, when our lives seemed like a story we ourselves could tell. I still dreamed of Paris, only now when I dreamed I was walking through the Tuileries I was searching for someone, driven by panic, running through the rain. Some nights I couldn’t breathe, and Frédéric woke me, assuring me that he would be with me always and that I needn’t search for him. I suppose I had been talking in my sleep. I held him close and kissed him until I couldn’t think.
When we wed we did not mention our intentions to the congregation, or to the elders, or to the Reverend who’d made us stand in the rain. We had no license to wed, but we did so anyway. The small gathering was held in the parlor of Monsieur DeLeon’s large house. He had given a speech at my first wedding and had not abandoned me even though he made it clear he did not approve of my choices. He had helped me out of respect for my father, inviting ten men who had been bar mitzvah to be our witnesses. All of them wore black, as if attending a funeral. DeLeon was a learned man, as my father had been, and he spoke the prayers the Reverend should have said. The ten pious men were uncomfortable with the proceedings, but they murmured Amen. I knew that as soon as the service was over Monsieur DeLeon would not wish to see me or speak to me lest he be cast out of the community.