Island Beneath the Sea (57 page)

Rosette had lived her life with all the privileges of a girl who was free, first in the Valmorain's house and later in the Ursulines' school. She had never felt she was a slave, and her beauty gave her a remarkable assurance. Until that moment she had never been abused by a white, and she had no idea of the power they had over her. Instinctively, without realizing what she was doing or imagining its consequences, she returned the slap of the stranger who had attacked her. Hortense Guizot, dumb with surprise, stumbled; she broke a heel and nearly fell. She began to scream as if possessed, and in an instant they were enclosed in a circle of curious onlookers. Rosette saw she was surrounded and tried to slip away, but she was seized from behind, and moments later the guards had arrested her.

Tete learned of all this half an hour later. Many people had witnessed the incident; the news flew from mouth to mouth and reached the ears of Loula and Violette, who lived on the same street, but Tete was not able to see her daughter until that night, when Pere Antoine accompanied her. The saint, who knew the jail like his own house, pushed aside the guards and led Tete along a narrow passageway lighted by a pair of lamps. Through the bars she glimpsed the men's cells, and at the end was the single cell where all the women were crowded together. Only one girl with blond hair, possibly a servant, was not a woman of color, and there were two little black children in rags, asleep and pressed tight against one of the prisoners. Another had an infant in her arms. The ground was covered with a thin layer of straw; there were a few filthy blankets, a pail in which to relieve themselves, and a large jug with filthy water for drinking. Added to the overall stench was the unmistakable odor of decomposing flesh. In the pale light filtering in from the passageway, Tete saw Rosette in a corner between two women, wrapped in her shawl, with her hands on her belly and her face swollen from crying. She ran to put her arms around her, terrified, and tripped over the heavy chains around her daughter's ankles.

Pere Antoine had come prepared; he knew all too well the conditions the prisoners were kept in. In his basket he brought bread and small lumps of sugar to share among the women, and another blanket for Rosette. "Tomorrow morning we will get you out of here, Rosette, isn't that right,
mon pere
?" said Tete, sobbing. The priest said nothing.

T
he only explanation Tete could imagine for what had happened was that Hortense Guizot wanted to avenge herself for the offense Tete had done the family when she refused to take care of Valmorain. She did not know that her and Rosette's mere existence was an injury to the woman. Bereft, Tete went to the very house she had sworn never to enter again and threw herself on the floor before her former mistress to beg her to free Rosette; in exchange she would look after her husband, do as she asked, everything, have pity, madame. The other woman, poisoned with bitterness, gave herself the pleasure of telling Tete everything that came to her mind and then had her thrown out of her house.

Tete did everything possible with her limited resources to make Rosette comfortable. She left baby Violette with Adele or with Loula and every day took food to the jail for all the women; she was sure that Rosette would share anything she received, and she could not bear the idea that her daughter would be hungry. She had to leave the provisions with the guards; they only rarely let her go in, and she didn't know how much they gave to the prisoners and how much they appropriated. Violette and Zacharie provided the money, and Tete spent half the night cooking. Since she was also working and taking care of her baby, she was always exhausted. She remembered that Tante Rose prevented contagious illnesses with boiled water and begged the women not to drink from the water in the jug, even if they were dying of thirst, only the tea she brought them. In previous months several women had died of cholera. As it was already cold at night, she got wraps and more blankets for all of them--her daughter could not be the only one with warm clothing--but the damp straw on the ground and the water that seeped through the walls gave Rosette a pain in her chest and a persistent cough. She was not the only one sick; another was much worse from a gangrened wound caused by the shackles. At Tete's insistence, Pere Antoine got permission to take the woman to the nuns' hospital. The others did not see her again, but a week later learned her leg had been amputated.

Rosette did not want them to notify Maurice of what had happened; she was sure that she was going to be free before the letter could reach him, but justice lagged along. Six weeks went by before the judge reviewed her case, and he acted with relative speed only because she was a free woman and because of Pere Antoine's insistence. The other women could wait years before they even knew why they had been arrested. Hortense Guizot's lawyer brothers had presented the charges against her as "having physically attacked a white woman." The sentence consisted of lashes and two additional years of jail time, but the judge ceded to the saint's insistence and suppressed the lashes in view of the fact that Rosette was pregnant and that Olivie Guizot herself described events as they had happened, and refused to back her sister. The judge was also moved by the dignity of the accused, who appeared in a clean dress and answered the charges without haughtiness but without weakening, despite her difficulty in speaking because of her cough and legs so weak she could barely stand.

When she heard the sentence, a hurricane was unleashed in Tete. Rosette would not survive two years in a filthy cell, even less her baby.
Erzulie, mother
loa,
give me strength
. She was going to free her daughter whatever it took, even if it meant tearing down the walls of the jail with her bare hands. Crazed, she announced to everyone she came across that she was going to kill Hortense and the whole accursed family. At that point Pere Antoine decided to intervene before she too landed in jail. Without telling anyone, he went to the plantation to speak with Valmorain. The decision was costly to him, first because he could not abandon the people he helped for several days, and next because he was not accustomed to riding a horse, and crossing the river against the current was expensive and difficult, but he managed to get there.

The saint found Valmorain better than he had expected, though still an invalid and speaking in a tangled tongue. Before he threatened him with hell, he realized that the man had no idea of what his wife had done in New Orleans. When he heard what had happened, Valmorain was more indignant that Hortense had succeeded in hiding the episode from him, just as she hid so many other things, than concerned about Rosette, whom he called "the tramp." However, his attitude changed when the priest informed him that the girl was pregnant. He realized he had no hope of reconciling with Maurice if anything bad happened to Rosette or the baby. With his good hand he rang the cow bell to call the nun, and ordered her to ready the boat for a trip to the city, immediately. Two days later the Guizot lawyers withdrew all charges against Rosette Sedella.

Zarite

F
our years have gone by, and we are in 1810. I have lost my fear of being free, although I will never lose my fear of whites. I no longer cry over Rosette, I am almost always happy.

Rosette came out of jail infested with lice, wasted away, sick, and with ulcers on her legs from immobility and chains. I kept her in bed, looking after her day and night, I built up her strength with beef bone marrow soups and the nourishing stews neighbor women brought us, but none of that prevented her from giving birth before the time. The baby was not ready to be born
;
he was tiny and had skin as translucent as wet paper. The birth was quick but Rosette was weak, and she lost a lot of blood. On the second day the fever started, and on the third she was delirious, calling for Maurice. I understood then, desperate, that she was leaving me. I went through all the treatments Tante Rose had handed down to me, the wisdom of Dr. Parmentier, the prayers of Pere Antoine, and invocations to my
loas.
I put the new baby on Rosette's chest so that her obligation as a mother would force her to fight for her own life, but I don't think she felt it. I clung to my daughter, trying to keep her with me, begging her to take a sip of water, to open her eyes, to answer me, Rosette, Rosette. At three in the morning, as I held her, rocking her with African ballads, I noticed she was murmuring, and I bent down to her dry lips. I love you, Maman, she told me, and immediately after she sighed and her light went out. I felt her frail body in my arms and saw her spirit gently detach itself like a thread of mist and slip outside through the open window.

The ripping pain I felt cannot be told, but I don't have to do that
:
mothers know it, for only a few, the most fortunate, have all their children alive. Adele came in the early morning to bring us soup, and it was she who took Rosette from my stiff arms and laid her on her bed. For a while I let myself moan, doubled up in grief on the floor, and then Adele put a large cup of soup in my hands and reminded me of the children. My poor grandson was curled up beside my daughter Violette in the same cradle, so small and abandoned that at any moment he could follow right behind Rosette. So I took off his clothes, placed him on the long cloth of my
tignon,
tying it like a bandolier across my naked breast, binding him next to my heart, skin against skin, so he would believe he was still inside his mother. That was how I carried him for several weeks. My milk, like my affection, was enough for my daughter and my grandson. When I took Justin from his wrapping he was ready to live in this world.

One day Monsieur Valmorain came to my house. Two slaves took him from his coach and carried him to my door. He looked very old. "Please, Tete, I want to see the boy
,"
he asked me in his rasping voice. I did not have the heart to leave him outside.

"I am very sorry about Rosette.... I promise you I had nothing to do with that."

"I know, monsieur."

He stood looking at our grandson for a long while and then asked me his name.

"Justin Solar. His parents chose that name because it means justice. If he had been a girl, they would have called her Justine
,"
I explained.

"Ay! I hope to live long enough for me to correct some of my errors
,"
he said, and I thought he was going to cry.

"We all make mistakes, monsieur."

"This boy is a Valmorain by his father and his mother. He has blue eyes and can pass for being white. He should not be brought up among blacks. I want to help him, I want him to have a good education and bear my surname, as is right."

"You will have to speak with Maurice about that, monsieur, not me."

Maurice received in the same letter the news that his son had been born and that Rosette had died. He set sail immediately, although we were in midwinter. When he arrived the baby was three months old and was a tranquil little thing with delicate features and large eyes
;
he looked like his father and his grandmother, poor Dona Eugenia. I greeted Maurice with a long embrace, but it was as if he wasn't there, dried up inside, with no light in his eyes. "It will be up to you to take care of Justin for a while
, Maman,"
he told me. He stayed less than a month and did not want to talk with Monsieur Valmorain, no matter how much his uncle Sancho, who was back from Spain, asked him. Pere Antoine, on the other hand, who was always trying to help, refused to act as intermediary between father and son. Maurice decided that the grandfather could see Justin from time to time, but only in my presence, and he forbade me to accept anything from him, not money, not help of any kind, and least of all his name for the boy. He asked me to tell Justin about Rosette so the boy would always be proud of her and of his mixed blood. He believed that his son, fruit of immeasurable love, had a special destiny and would do great things in his life, the ones he had wanted to do before Rosette's death had broken his will. Last, he ordered me to keep him far away from Hortense Guizot. He did not need to warn me.

Soon my Maurice left, but he did not go back to his friends in Boston
;
he abandoned his studies and became a tireless traveler, he has blown over more land than the wind. He often writes a few lines, and that way we know he is alive, but in these four years he has come only once to see his son. He arrived dressed in skins, bearded, and dark from the sun
;
he looked like a Kaintuck. At his age no one dies of a broken heart. Maurice merely needs time to grow weary. Walking and walking across the world he will gradually find consolation, and one day, when he is too fatigued to take another step, he will realize that he cannot escape sorrow, he will have to tame it, so it doesn't harass him. Then he will be able to feel Rosette by his side, accompanying him, as I feel her, and perhaps he will come get his son and again be interested in putting an end to slavery.

Zacharie and I have another child, Honore, who is just beginning to take his first steps holding onto the hand of Justin, his best friend and also his uncle. We want more children, although this house is getting small for us and we aren't young--my husband is fifty-six and I am forty--for we would like to grow old among many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of them free.

My husband and Fleur Hirondelle still have the gaming house and continue to be associated with Captain Romeiro Toledano, who sails the Caribbean transporting contraband and runaway slaves. Credit has not been available to them because laws are very harsh for people of color, even for whites associated with blacks, which is the case for Fleur Hirondelle, so their dream of owning several places to gamble along the river has not worked out. As for me, I am very busy with the children, the house, and remedies for Dr. Parmentier that I now prepare in my own kitchen, but in the evenings I give myself time for a
cafe au lait
in Adele's patio of bougainvillea, where all the neighbor women come to chat. We see Madame Violette less, for now she is most often with the ladies of the Societe du Cordon Bleu, all very interested in cultivating her friendship since she presides over the balls and can determine the luck of their daughters in the
placage.
It took more than a year for her to reconcile with Don Sancho
;
she wanted to punish him for his flirtation with Adi Soupir. She knows the ways of men and doesn't expect them to be faithful, but she insists that her lover at least not humiliate her by strolling along the dike with her rival. Madame has not been able to marry Jean-Martin to a rich quadroon, as she planned, because the boy has stayed in Europe and does not plan to return. Loula, who can barely walk because of her age--she must be over eighty--told me that her prince left the military career and lives with that pervert Isidor Morisset, who was not a scientist but an agent for Napoleon or the Lafittes, a drawing room pirate, she swears among sighs. Madame Violette and I have never again spoken of the past, and having guarded the secret so long, we are convinced that she is Jean-Martin's mother. Only rarely do I think about that, but one day I would like to have all my descendants together
:
Jean-Martin, Maurice, Violette, Justin, and Honore, and all the other children and grandchildren I will have. On that day I am going to invite all my friends
;
I will cook the best Creole gumbo in New Orleans, and we will have music till dawn.