The Albatross and the Mermaid
by Amanda Fox
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by Amanda Fox
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into, a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
This book is purely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously.
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*…*…*
Dedication
For my husband, who never gives up.
For my children, who make me laugh and cry.
For the rest of my family, for their enduring love and support.
And for my “amant de reve”, because without him, this book wouldn’t exist.
*…*…*
The Albatross and the Mermaid
*…*…*
Prologue
He told me that he loved me. He'd said it a total of eleven times over eight years; I'd counted. Counted each finger on both hands, plus one. Five instances occurred in the throws of passion, when his mottled penis--an appendage the color of plums and overripe strawberries--plunged in and out of my developing body. Twice, he'd mouthed the words across the dinner table as I cleared the dishes between courses--between the stew and custard, and the meat pie and spice cake. Three times, he'd said it in various locations around the great house: when he caught my arm on the way up the grand staircase, when he pushed me up against the stone wall in the cellar, and in the nursery as I lulled baby Stephane to sleep. The last episode happened in the kitchen when, with his wife’s back turned, he whispered those very words into my ear. “I love you Seraphine," he said. "I love you."
The day I knew for certain that Henri Bouchard’s love for me was false, was the day my life took a turn for the better. It was May 2nd, 1786 at about 3:30 in the afternoon, five years prior to Toussaint L’Ouverture’s joyous insurrection. A revolution had been brewing for some time and reports of many uprisings throughout the Caribbean had reached the house over the years.
Undoubtedly, we were all waiting for the big one to finally deliver our salvation, and as such, the mood between the supervisors and the workers was tense, orders coming down even harsher than usual whenever details of another outbreak made news. Cook always seemed to know about the gossip on and around the Lazare plantation, and that was how I found out about things.
Now, I wouldn’t say that I was a very smart person in those days, but that doesn’t mean I lacked the potential. It’s in us all; it’s just a matter of circumstance, and as you will see, mine were less than ideal. What little schooling I got was acquired mainly by accident as I dusted and tidied up around the master’s children. Marie Rose--Henri’s eldest daughter--took me as a friend and taught me the basics of how to read and write. Cook did what she could as well, but like most of us, she too lacked an education. At best, she tried to impart upon me the essential facts of life, or whatever those could’ve been living in such a terrible place.
And while I don't really blame myself for my predicament, I do wish sometimes that things had been different. Perhaps I should've made better choices, or maybe I should've appealed to the spirits for more guidance and help. No matter. Now that I'm dead I have the clarity to see things for how they truly were anyway.
I know most people fear the end, but in my world, being dead isn't so bad. If that were the case, most of us would never have made it through the fires of hell. Decidedly however, we came across the sea with the firm notion that after death, one is once again reunited with family and friends-- that when a person dies their spirit returns to the homeland for a great feast with all those who have passed on before.
That belief, my friend, is what gave us hope, enough to persevere through the long days and lonely nights of captivity. Considering this, it may seem odd that more people didn't put a rush on the process--you know, getting to the “better” before it was officially time. Admittedly, some did do that, but we weren't put here to cut our own lives short, and this left most of us making the best out of a really bad situation.
Certainly, my people found reasons to live, reasons to believe that life could change, if not for themselves then at least for the generations that came after. We learned from our hardships and took those lessons with us, and that is why, as one of the dearly departed, I remain an invaluable member of my community.
And now that I'm in a good place, I don't like to dwell on the past. There is one situation however that I must clarify because of the important lesson that it taught me. What love truly is or isn't--or was or wasn't in that time before--is my topic for debate.
As the rounds of precipitation began in those early days of the vernal equinox, it became glaringly obvious that Henri Bouchard never truly loved me, and it is with this tidbit of information that we return to our story…
*…*…*
The month of May fell right in the middle of harvest season, which ran a lengthy six months of the year, from January to July. An unusual amount of rain had flooded the earth that spring, causing the plants to grow faster than the cutlasses could be swung. Thus, the field workers were forced to labor into the twilight hours almost every evening, and I can't tell you the number of accidents--of cut faces, and slashed arms and legs--that those nighttime operations caused.
While the first and second gangs toiled among the tall stalks of cane in the blistering heat by day and in the shadows by night, I continued on with my job inside the house. While it seemed like I had been working for two or three lifetimes already, in reality, only a quarter of a century had passed. I was barely a woman.
Born on the plantation to a woman named Beatrice, I ended up an orphan at the age of three when my mother was beaten to death for drinking water when she should have been chopping cane. With no one to watch over me, I got shuffled around among the others until one day Lillian--a woman who had lost her own child during the passage overseas--took pity on me. As the cook, she managed to get me inside the great house, making sure I had enough food to eat and a warm place to sleep.
Thanks to her, I persevered, growing up alongside the eldest children of the Bouchard family. In the kitchen, I helped to gather vegetables, prepare meat, wash dishes, and scrub floors--any and all of the numerous tasks involved in running a household of that size. At the age of fifteen, things changed and I was put in charge of the Bouchard’s three youngest offspring--Stephane, Natalie, and Anaise.
Becoming the nursemaid on the Lazare plantation was not a decision of the missus, that's for sure. There were arguments over who should get the job, but as the man of the house, Henri had the last say. “You have a pleasing and kind nature, Seraphine. The little ones have taken a liking to you, and I think that you are perfectly suited for this job.” That was his explanation and I had no reason to doubt him.
The position was passed to me from an older woman named Mitzi who had succumbed to a devastating illness of the brain--when she couldn't remember the children’s names anymore and when she started behaving like she’d been possessed by the devil. It was a common affliction among us, and sadly, Mitzi was sent out one day, never to return.
After I accepted my post, I wondered about her often. When I asked him, Henri simply said that she'd been discharged of her duties and had gone to live with her cousins in town. In my heart however, I knew she'd been killed--probably burned to death or eliminated in some other equally abhorrent manner.
Ignorance is bliss as they say, and so, as a teenager I tended my charges happily, unconcerned for my own safety if things ever went awry. Again, it wasn't until later that I came to see Henri for the despicable man that he truly was, and not until after the grand contretemps that I am leading up to, that I contemplated the rationale behind his arrangement.
I think now that Henri entrusted me with the position of nursemaid for one reason, and one reason only. It brought me closer to his children, closer to his family, and indirectly, closer and more available to him as well. That must've been his intention, because that's exactly what happened.
Mind you, the particular moment that I knew I was meant to be more than an aide to the Bouchard’s children didn’t involve erotic words or sexual innuendo. With an easy stroke of his hand up the length of my spine--a casual touch where there hadn’t been one before--he so much as told me that I'd become an object in his quest for personal gratification. In fact, he spoke of something completely off topic when he made the move.
We were in the study and he was giving me instructions on what to do with Stephane and the girls while he and the missus were away for the morning. “Seraphine, make sure the children bathe once they’ve completed their lessons. The girls need to have their hair washed as we are expecting visitors later on this evening. Furthermore, the linens in the sleeping quarters need to be cleaned and the pillows fluffed. Please see that this is all done by the time we get back.”
On the last sentence of his diatribe, he moved up quite close to my front and reached around to trace over the vertebrae of my spine. As he did, his eyes met mine with a glazed-over look, like I was something delicious to eat and he was a very hungry animal indeed. Now, as I'm sure you can gather, whether or not I got involved with this man was never an option left open for debate. I was the slave and he was my master. That made it a done deal.
Oh, I may have put up more of a fight, but Henri seemed like a kind and gentle man, and I was such a lonely, young girl. I confused his sexual advances as signs of love and affection--two things that I craved more than anything--and thus sex with Henri became part of my job. I'm ashamed to admit this, but it was something I actually enjoyed most of the time, right up until the end that is.
The end. I remember that day as if it weren't a lifetime ago, mainly because it took place just before my twenty-fourth birthday, eight long years since Henri had procured me as his lover. Before I go any further, let me describe to you the man who stole my virginity, the man who was to become the bane of my existence.
To begin with, Henri was the color of boiled snapper, his skin ghoulishly pale next to my cocoa brown. His hair was the texture of a horse's mane and his eyes were so squinty that it was like the sun was always shining in his face. Oddly enough, he was devoid of eyelashes, but his eyebrows compensated for his lacking there by crossing over the middle bridge of his nose where they almost touched--two caterpillars saying hello.
Speaking of his nose, his nostrils were so narrow that I often wondered how he ever got enough oxygen. Moreover, his legs were like sticks and they pointed inward at the knee, giving him a rather feeble gait. When he stood naked however, he had a roll of fat that hung like a tire around his waist. Without a doubt, he was a rather pathetic human specimen, but then I was never drawn to him for his physical qualities in the first place.
Albeit homely, Henri's demeanor was amicable and his temperament seemed even-keeled. From what I'd seen, Henri was a good father to his children and a kind husband to his wife, who, if you ask me, was a very ill tempered and quarrelsome woman.
She never liked me--that's for sure. She must've known about my affair with her husband and was simply staking a claim to her territory, making it very clear who was, and who was not, the wife. Certainly, I would've found it hard to believe that she didn't know about the two of us, or the others.
Yes, of course there were others. Even I knew that. No man of status in the colonies--planter, trader, businessman or otherwise--was restricted in the number of lovers that he took. How did I cope with this knowledge? Well, I just imagined myself at the top of Henri’s list, focusing on his feelings for me (or what I interpreted were feelings for me), and closing the door on the rest. And Camille, well, I often wondered what he ever saw in her to begin with. I didn’t like to think that he picked her and I both, for I saw no similarities between us.
Now Henri’s personality, while affable enough, was certainly not the aggressive type, and it may have accounted for his less than stellar achievement in enterprise. Compared to other planters in the Caribbean, Henri Bouchard held title to only a single plantation--Lazare--which he'd named after his father.
Henri and Camille, and their six children lived with us most of the time. They’d come from somewhere far across the ocean, but stayed on the plantation a good three quarters of the year, sometimes more. Supposedly, they stayed so that Henri could ensure things ran smoothly, so he could guarantee that none of his underlings ever tried to displace him as overlord. His power I guess, was not so far reaching.
If you recall, the day in question--the “end” as it were--was a hazy May afternoon, and I was in one of the guest rooms in a remote section of the east wing. Henri and I had just finished having sexual relations as he was want to do at least four or five times a week. As I said before, I enjoyed my encounters with Henri and I will never forget my first time.
“Open your legs for me, mon cherie,” I remember him saying. “I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.” Tentatively, I unfolded, Henri helping some by pressing my knees to the side. When he then caressed my private area, the feelings that I felt were so intense that I actually cried. It'd been so long since I'd experienced intimate contact that these initial touches were overwhelming.
“Seraphine, it will be OK. You are such a dear girl, but don’t worry. I know how to make you feel so good, you’ll cry for me every time we’re together.” His arrogant words somehow made me brave and I mustered enough courage to watch what he was doing. Skillfully, Henri slid his fingers through the thatch of course black hair that covered my secret lips and everything moved along quite easily until he attempted to push his finger inside.
Met with resistance, he worked slowly, alternating gentleness with pressure until he was in up to his knuckle. “My goodness, Seraphine. I knew you would be unyielding, but this is better than I’d hoped.” Licking his lips, he poked and prodded until he was able to add another finger and yet another, stretching me until he'd ultimately replaced his digits with his erect penis.
With the enthusiasm of an unseasoned soldier, Henri's penis always stood up for me, and the more times he entered my body, the more I actually enjoyed the experience. I was proud to know just how much I aroused him, and sometimes when I saw him coming, he would almost gallop, a horse running to the trough after a long, hard ride. In the very least, our unbridled affair brought a variety of welcome pleasures to us both and I was grateful for the physical satisfaction that was prevailed upon my person.
As the years crept by however and as I thought more and more about the privileges that freedom would bring--a notion that was almost conceivable by that point in time--I began questioning both Henri’s motives and my desire for him. So when I raised my head off the pillow that day in May overcome by feelings of exhaustion and desistance, I was less than surprised.
“Come here Seraphine. Let me look at your face in the sunlight.” Sluggishly, I moved off the rumpled bed, pulled down the skirt of my cotton shift, and went to stand beside him near the open window. With each step, I felt the residual ache between my legs from where his penis had been only moments before, and my feet moved like stone tablets. I'd had enough, and I hoped that he wasn't expecting more.
There was a faint breeze that day and on a current of heated air, the poignant aroma of a hemp pipe wafted up from the shed down below. Somebody was smoking that afternoon, secreting away a few moments of bliss. Inhaling deeply, I tried to share in their diversion. When Henri reached over to clasp my hand--his palm was cold to my warm--I knew that something was wrong with him too.
Relinquishing his grip to finish buttoning his shirt, he murmured, “You are so beautiful Seraphine. Do you know that?” His eyes now vacant, he kept the compliments coming. “Your skin makes me think of a chocolate sun, radiant and sweet. And if I could press my nose into these lovely ringlets of yours for all eternity, I would be ecstatic.” He began nibbling erroneously at my neck, pulling a coil of hair to its full length.
What happened next, I consider a major turning point in my life to follow. Without warning, Henri pushed up behind me and shoved me hard against the window frame. Pressing his formless body into mine, he wrapped his arms around my slender physique and cupped one palm over my breast like it needed his support. Stroking and fondling me there briefly, he then firmly encircled my waist with his other limb.
“I have something to tell you Seraphine,” he said, anger in his tone. “I can’t see you like this anymore.”
With that, he pinched my breast, much harder than usual. Confused, I froze, wondering what I had done, wondering what had brought on this display of fortitude. It was so unlike Henri to use aggression in his sexual games. Was he angry because, as he'd stated, we couldn't be together anymore? Had he detected my feelings of distance and distraction? As I tried to understand what was happening, Henri was gaining momentum, tightening his arm around my middle like some giant snake intent on crushing its prey.
“The true nature of a person is exposed when things don’t go their way,” Cook used to say. With Henri’s sudden change in personality, I thus began to panic. Slapping at his wrists, I tried desperately to get him to stop, but as I sputtered and gasped, he started thrusting his pelvis up into my buttocks, threatening to take me again, more vigorously than he ever had before.
Screaming, I smacked at him fiercely, prying his hands away from the folds of my dress, thrashing about like my body was on fire. Much to my utter amazement, as quickly as it all began, everything then stopped. In that instant, Henri transformed into a mouse before my very eyes, shrinking away until he wallowed alone in the middle of the room. There, shaking his head, he lingered in his private space far away from where I stood. For a split second, I felt sorry for the man who had been commandeering my body for eight long years. When I looked down at the floor, unable to make eye contact, Henri walked out. It was over.
Following that day, there were to be no more sequestered kisses, no more coy looks, and no more declarations of love. Henri was done with me.
What'd happened for him to end it, I was never quite sure, but I have made my guesses. Did he ever truly love me? The irrational part of me says “yes”, but the sane part is convinced that he did not. Isn’t it odd how a person can be so enamored with another that they don't see the pit of danger that lies two feet in front of them? In my case though, I don't believe it was a person that was the attraction. I think it was more of a situation or an idea. Henri had always been kind, but I was never enthralled with the man. I believe now that I simply got lost in his conviviality toward me.
In that bedroom, I was left reeling from what'd just ensued and it was at that moment that another one of Cook’s famous sayings came to mind. “It is sometimes easier to forget your own plight, if you focus on the plight of others.” So with Henri gone, I looked back out the window and surveyed the vast fields of sugarcane where my blessed brothers and sisters dotted the landscape like flies on the carcass of a dead goat. Amid the tall stocks of cane, the workers tried to hide, or at least they should have. I'm sure they wanted to--anything to avoid the overseer as he milled about with his instruments of torture.
In the face of horror, the occasional glint of a razor-sharp blade caught the light from the sun, and I watched as the brilliant flash rebounded throughout the rows of crops. It made me think about how the field slaves spent week after tireless week, month after month, and year after year, digging and hacking away until their backs held a permanent arch. More specifically though it made me think about their situation compared to mine.
I knew that I was luckier than most. The floor that I walked across to get to my bed wasn't dirt-covered and littered with garbage. No, I lived inside where I was spared the annoyance of beetles, moths, snakes and insects. Make no mistake however. Even though my circumstances may have sounded better than those of the field workers, they still carried the inflictions of a double-edged sword.
Not one of us had it easy, and I, like everyone else in the house, moiled over the tasks that were meant to make the lives of the whites winsome and worry free. We were at the beck and call of our master and his family every second of every hour of every day. Being so close to those in charge had its own set of obligations, one in which, as I'm sure you understand by now, I became more than just a little embedded.
And while I will admit to having had sex with Henri on numerous occasions, I have to count my blessings that I was never forcibly plundered, though you could argue otherwise. What I mean to say is that I was never brutally raped like so many other slave women, including others on the Lazare plantation. Henri had never been harsh toward me and he certainly was not one of those twisted sorts who enjoyed stuffing explosives into women’s anuses or who got off on thrusting hot branding irons into their vaginas.
Owing to the fact that Henri was such a pansy in every other aspect of his life, it would've astonished me to find out that he'd ever engaged in anything too nefarious. He was the type of man to pass the buck of wrongdoing on to someone else, but you never know. I'd witnessed an unexpected side to him, and after that, I was never too sure.
With Henri’s news and his curious exit from the room, I was left alone--angry, relieved, disappointed and afraid. Ultimately, I'd been rejected, but more than that, I'd been betrayed. The man I thought I'd loved, (and whom I was positive had loved me in return), had just walked away without a single word of clarification.
The weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders at last, and yet, as I took this independence, it felt like I was being squashed by melancholy. I did my best to hold them back, but sadness triumphed, and my tears fell. As the emptiness moved through me, it all became glaringly obvious--who or what I'd been to Henri Bouchard had nothing to do with love. Invariably, I'd been an asset, an article, a piece of property like a hammer, or a cracked serving bowl--a thing for him to use, abuse, and discard at leisure. I felt foolish to think I'd ever been more.
Whether it was the darkest brown, or the lightest tan, it didn’t matter. We were all the same. We shared a likeness of complexion that was simply not white, and that is what sealed our fates. We were slaves--human chattel--working for the benefit of the white man with no payment or recompense of our own. Cheated, deceived, forcibly expropriated, we'd been stripped of family and social foundation, and left to rot for somebody else’s boon.
Through the heartache and suffering, we tried to stay strong, but for some of us, our bodies just stopped, giving over to death--a welcome end to an unspeakable journey. We tried our best to stay alive though, doing what was commanded of us until our hearts bled with sorrow and our bodies ached with pain. Some of us cut cane in the fields, working from the drone of the conch shell or the toll of the bell at sun-up, to a procession of maimed and enfeebled silhouettes at sundown. My people were forced to work into the dimness of every evening, until the overseer prodded them back to their bunks for the night.
Others worked under the roof of the great house, and that is where I found my place. By the time I withdrew from that fateful room, the sun had begun to set, and I knew that dinner preparations would be underway. I hurried back to the kitchen, not completely at ease, but carrying a lighter burden in my heart then I'd had hours earlier. My troubles however, were far from over.
*…*…*
After everyone had finished eating, Henri called across the table to his wife. “I have something for you, mon cherie.” This sudden announcement brought a flurry of excited claps from Camille. The children, who were half way out of the room already, rushed back in.
“Papa, what is it?” giggled Natalie.
“What have you gotten for Maman?” asked Stephane quietly, always the consummate boy.
“Let me see! Let me see!” squealed little Anaise. The older children as well, though they never spoke, stood at attention near their mother. Everyone was waiting anxiously, including the other house slaves, to see what Henri had brought for Camille. I too, stopped what I was doing and paused to get a look at the gift.
“Oh, Henri. What is it? Do tell me. Please! Please!” Camille begged, though to me, the tone of her voice didn’t indicate genuine surprise.
“Be patient, my love. I’m getting to it,” Henri laughed. And like royalty, Camille sat on her throne and waited. A second later (and so typical of her) his queen sarcastically cajoled, “Don’t tell me you remembered. You never remember.”
“Ah, but my darling. This is an extra special day, is it not? As a commemoration of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I honor you--my wife, my love--with a token of my affection.” With that, he got up from his seat and reached down deep into his pants’ pocket, pulling out a long, fancy-looking box. But while Henri may have been talking to his wife, he was staring directly at me, smiling like the devil. Walking over to where Camille sat, his eyes were glued to mine. “You are so beautiful. Do you know that?” he said. The statement was like a knife in my chest.
When he placed a necklace around her lily-white neck, Camille shrilled in delight. Standing tall, Henri declared, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man,” he paused, “or woman,” he paused again, “put asunder.” His valiant words made my heart sink, and I watched as Camille fingered the shiny treasure that lay between her breasts. When I looked up again however, I saw two people glowering at me--Henri and Camille both.
“It’s lovely isn’t it, Seraphine?” Camille gloated. “Would you like to get a closer look?” The question was hurtful and she knew it.
“No Madame, though it does look very beautiful from here,” I replied, practically choking on my words. “Monsieur Bouchard must love you very much.”
“He does indeed, don’t you darling?” She turned to Henri as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek.
“I will always love you Camille. You are my one and only.”
You know, in my heart, I wasn't a vindictive woman, but sometimes somebody's got to do a thing or two to make up for what's been going on. After Henri had walked out on me that day in the bedroom, he should've left well enough alone. But after his display the same evening at supper when he gave that self-righteous bitch the locket, and after Camille had taken a swing at me herself with those hateful words, I'd had enough. Can you say revenge?
Of course, as a slave, there wasn't much I could do, but I thought of two things. The first and most important element in my plot was to remain calm. I couldn't let them see how much they'd hurt me; I couldn't let them see my pain. This, I knew, would be my easiest task since I'd been doing it my whole life. As a woman of color, I'd bested the art of masking my misery.
The second component to my stratagem was to take the locket. Camille surely didn't deserve to have it. It should've been mine because of all that I'd given to Henri, don’t you think? After all, I'd given him my love--selflessly, willingly, passionately, without question or defiance--and what had he done? Nothing. Not one thing. I gave and he took. He took until he was tired of taking, until it was inconvenient for him to take, until the taking posed a problem.
Real love isn't based on convenience or profit. It has its roots in beneficence, and with Henri, it was never about that. The worst part of the whole deal though was not what he took or how much, but the fact that he wasn't even marginally grateful for any of it. He'd betrayed my innocence, disregarding any sense of obligation to say thank you or act civilly toward me in the end.
So I stole the necklace, though the details of the deed I kept to myself. One night, almost two years past the day it'd been proffered--when the family was downstairs entertaining guests and I was tucking the youngest into bed--I snuck into the master suite and took it.
There is another saying. My relatives are full of them. It goes, “The giver of the blow forgets; the bearer of the scar remembers.” I will never forget what happened during those years because I bore many scars, most of them invisible. And no one suspected me. It'd been too long and I'd played it cool enough that I was never pinned as the probable culprit. I'd managed to keep my disappointment about my relationship with Henri to myself, but it's not like I had to feign happiness for very long. I got over him, realizing that what I thought I'd wanted wasn't worth a pot to pee in. Henri--that pitiful excuse for a man--was definitely not worth anymore of my tears.
And Camille, well, she looked for it and looked for it, blubbering on like a baby that some horrible thief had taken her precious pendant. Of course, she was right, but no one believed her, not even her own husband. Henri blamed the loss on her propensity to slovenliness, making her angrier than ever. She vented her outrage by having us all whipped in the hopes of finding out the truth, but no one said a word. I'd made absolutely sure that no one knew anything.
Once I got my hands on the locket, I immediately buried it with my mother’s belongings, what little I had left of her. I didn't remove it from its hiding spot until years later, before I left Lazare. Now, don't assume that I was free after that, because not one of us during that time was ever completely free. Freedman or slave, black was still black, which meant that we were still treated as less than equal. That is often the case today, am I not mistaken? Yes, recompense can be a long time coming.
For me, it was worth it to have the necklace. It was something: better than nothing. I needed an object, a tangible item that I could take away from the situation, something I could hold in the palm of my hand and say, “This is what I got as payment for the hours I put into that job.”
My people say there exists a fair maiden born of the sea, a nymph with long silky hair and shelled jewels adorning her swan-like neck. They say she climbs the waves like a dolphin and rolls across the sandy ocean bottom where she is caressed by the seaweed and kissed by her children, the fish. They say that this divine water spirit is responsible for the protection, emotional healing and spiritual growth of all those who bow to her power. When I heard that she could bring me luck, I called to her, and low and behold, my Mami Wata answered. She blessed me with kindness and the rewards of love.
What happened to the locket? Well, I gave it to my daughter on the day of her wedding. My sweet girl Angelique was born out of a relationship that I shared with a man in the years after Lazare, and as older parents wise to the world, we cherished her dearly. She ended up working as a servant for a wealthy family, with many of the same duties that I'd done as a slave. She was paid for her efforts, however measly, and allowed to procreate at will--two things foreign to me for the first thirty years of my life.
I am gone now, my body buried with some of my other family members--my husband included--in a small graveyard close to the Lazare plantation. Over the years, I've watched over my relatives as others watched over me, providing guidance and inspiration when called upon. What advice am I most often asked to give? You should know the answer to this by now, but if you must inquire, I will tell you.
Love, I would say, takes work and is supported by sacrifice. It is about seeing the value in others for who they are, not what you want them to be, and it pertains to the repudiation of greed. It's about giving, not receiving. Only self-deprecating people think of it that way. No, real love is a voluntary and gratuitous desire to give of oneself, and if you find it, I would say, you should cherish it forever.
Superstition, Admonition and Dissuasion
To say that a Caribbean man is superstitious is a little like saying that all white women have flat asses--both statements being mostly true, but not always. In my case though, the stereotype is legitimate. I'm a grown man with sprinkles of grey in my beard and wrinkles around my eyes, but I still listen when my Auntie warns that danger is lurking around the next corner for her dear and unsuspecting nephew. I also believe that certain kinds of behavior can bring darkness upon a person’s soul, and I'm not one to engage in those sorts of activities. There have been times though, when I've acted, praying that the spirits were deep in slumber for an hour or two.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a “religious” person. I prefer to use the term “spiritual” instead. I don't go in for that “it’s my way or the highway” kind of bullshit--you know, the staunch doctrine that excludes and even punishes others of different faiths. I do however try to live according to the golden rule, that is, I do unto others as I would have done unto myself.
As a boy growing up in the suffocating and extinguishing climate of poverty, I was taught that if I reached out a hand, good things would eventually come my way. I believe it was my Auntie who said, “You reap what you sow.” It was just one among many proverbs passed down to me from the older generations.
In order to understand where I'm coming from, I should explain (for those of you who don't know) that the original African culture became a powerful and knowledgeable civilization mainly by way of the spoken word, a practice that has endured through ancient times, filtering into the entire Caribbean area during the years of slavery. As such, it is a legacy that links the Caribbean present to the African past, the very existence of which demonstrates that we have survived those deleterious years of colonialism, European lead destruction, and black vassalage.
And while I do want to emphasize the relevance of verbalization in African and Caribbean culture, I shouldn't leave out the influences of art and symbolism as vital ingredients of our lives as well. We convey ideas not only with the use of elaborate words, but also with pictures, drawings, patterns, colors, and every kind of visual representation imaginable. Yes, we are artists, as well as orators.
Note further that the importance of language and visual expression pervades all aspects of black culture, including our spirituality. More specifically, some Caribbean people use both verbal and pictorial interchange in ritual, during which time they call to the ancestors in the hopes of receiving the secrets of substantiality and enlightenment. From what I understand, if I listen carefully to the advice that's out there--heeding the natural rhythms of the universe by taking the advantageous routes and avoiding the unfavorable ones--I am sure to find my own best destiny.
I truly believe that there are pathways laid out for each and every one of us--good ones, better ones, and bad ones too. In prayer, the people of the past speak, revealing what those pathways are, but only if you listen. That's the key: you must choose to listen and ultimately that is at an individual’s discretion. I, for one, intend to take the advice that my forefathers and mothers have to give, and in the end, I believe it foolish to follow a road once traveled that's already proven to be destructive. Therefore, I try to live according to the recommended moral standards, and like I said earlier, I've only slipped up a couple of times.
As I’m sure you've surmised by now, in my culture, not only is the spoken word paramount, so too is the respect of elders. When they talk, we listen and if we're smart, we listen carefully. When I was a little boy, it was my mother who had the most to say, and one of the things that she said repeatedly, was that you could tell a lot about a person from how they related to children, senior citizens, and animals. She said that most people are nice to others who are of equal status, but only genuinely kind-hearted souls--the ones you can trust and love without reserve--are those who befriend the poor, defenseless beings of the world.
Moreover, my mother made it infinitely clear that I should trust my own instincts. “Do what feels right in your heart Adrian, and don’t let anyone try and tell you otherwise.” You should also know that Mama was the type of woman who sought out examples of her theories to prove them as adages of truth.
For instance, she used to extol to my siblings and I the virtues of every one of our teachers from kindergarten on up, saying that they were some of the best specimens that the human race had to offer. Now, she recognized that this particular postulate didn't exist without exceptions, and for teachers, there were two cases, according to her, when that honorable mould got broken. First, you had to watch out for the overworked pundit, she'd say, whose attitude had become derisive from staying on the job for too long. Then there was the case of the evil school marm who was hell bent on sabotaging the keenness for learning in young black children.
To my mother, racism was simply an affliction of the mind. It was like having cancer and about as hard to overcome. Instead of eating away at the internal organs of a person however, she speculated that racism controlled the logical mechanisms of the brain, causing some to have seriously warped attitudes about people of different colors and races. “You must open your heart to the love inherent in every person Adrian, regardless of their outward appearance. Look beyond the physical to see the spirit. Always remember that.” I've never forgotten.
As an extremely supportive individual, it was also my mother’s dream for her children to have the best in life, to have the things she could never dream of having, and further, to give back to the community and the world at large in ways she never could. Always the optimist, my mother’s wisdom follows me to this day, and I have to say, I give credit where credit is due since most of her hypotheses have tended to lie in the bed of truth.
Now, you might also ask if poverty has dictated my tenets in life, because, as I mentioned earlier, I did indeed grow up very poor. In response, I would tell you that neither pennilessness nor fortune makes the man, that neither one of these conditions is capable of changing the ideals towards which I strive. Additionally, it is important for you to understand that I do not speak of my childhood impoverishment with the expectation of a sympathetic ear. I'm not looking for pity. I do for myself and take responsibility for my own plight. What is out there is free for the taking. You must simply know what you want, and want it bad enough to get it.
Besides, no matter what a person’s condition, it's all a matter of perspective. Is your cup half empty or half full? My cup is overflowing, but I didn't always see it that way. Shit happens to people. Shit that can destroy you, or shit that you must eventually overcome. My situation started out pretty much average, but it ended up in the drudges of the filthiest crapper you could possibly imagine.
*…*…*
I will begin by saying that I was born in a place where the sun knows no mercy, where the weather is either unquestionably warm or scorching hot all year round. My family was poor, but life was good and we were happy--I was, at least. When I came to North America at the age of nine, we ended up in an area that looked a whole lot nicer than where we'd lived before, but from what I gathered later was really like living in the bowels of the richest country on earth.
Admittedly, I grew up on the underprivileged side of town, in a medium-sized city, in the end unit of a row of derelict townhouses, next to a train yard, and about one block from a huge electrical station. I was the third of four children to immigrant parents--two hard working factory laborers who were happy to find steady jobs on the greatest continent that the world supposedly has to offer. We moved here because my father said we'd have a chance at a better life, but things didn't pan out quite the way he promised.
When I was eleven, two years after being uprooted from the only place I'd known as home, both my mother and younger sister died in a fire at our house--a fire that for a long while after, my father blamed me for causing. It didn't happen quite the way he thought, but then, he wasn't home at the time. Where was he? Good question! He was out with one of his women friends--an infirmity that our move had only encouraged--and I guess it made him feel better to tell himself and everyone else, that the fire was my fault.
I remember that day like it has been bonded to my brain matter with the strength of a million bottles of epoxy. The nightmare began late in the evening of September 22nd, shortly after midnight. My father was out gallivanting as he'd made a habit of doing a couple of nights a week, carousing with one of a few women he kept on the side. My siblings and I used to speculate that he would meet them at work, or on the street, or anywhere for that matter, though none of us ever really knew for sure. Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, he wasn't at home. As for the rest of us, my brothers and sister were asleep and my mother was in her room with her door closed. I'd already been tucked into bed (my Mama doing that even to us big boys), but I'd since gotten up to go to the bathroom.
The moment I slid off my mattress, I could smell it--the stench of blackened toast, smelly socks, and frying electrical wires all combined into one frightening emission. For some weird reason, I thought it best not to disturb Mama until I knew without a doubt that there was a problem, so I headed into the hall to see what was going on. I didn't need to take more than one step outside of my bedroom and I immediately walked into a thin cloud of smoke.
Like a zombie being called by its master, I took to the stairs, and with each tread, it got harder and harder to breathe, harder and harder to see. We didn't have anything as sophisticated as a smoke detector in those days, and by the time I'd reached the bottom, I saw that flames were already roaring uncontrollably throughout the living room and into the kitchen. When I called for help, I hadn't more than opened my mouth and I felt my mother by my side clutching my shoulders.
“Go! Go! Let's get the others!” she shrieked, pushing me up the steps. As it was, Daniel and Kevin had heard the commotion already and as we were racing towards their room, they were racing towards us. Haplessly, we slammed headlong into each other at the top of the stairs where there was a fumbling about of legs and arms amidst the murky grey air and more panic than I'd ever experienced in my life. My mother was shouting the loudest, “Daniel? Kevin? Are you both here?”
“I hurt my knee. I can’t get up!” Daniel cried, having fallen in the confusion.
“Hold on,” my mother said. “OK. Adrian. Kevin. Help your brother outside. I’m going to get your sister.”
Of course, we did as we were told and we did it quickly, grabbing Daniel under the arms and haphazardly making our way out the front door. Shuffling away from the building, we fully expected to see our mother and Claire close behind, but what should've taken two minutes to accomplish, took forever. They never came out.
My father returned home about half an hour after it all started, just as they were pulling my mother and sister’s lifeless bodies from the house. I can picture it still. My brothers and I were standing on the front lawn wrapped in blankets by some lady from down the street, crying and crying and crying, screaming occasionally for Mama and Claire to come out, to come back, to just be all right, sobbing and bawling and mumbling in a frenzy of fear and dread.
When Emmanuel Moreaux finally got home and got out of his car--walking slowly towards our trio of devastated forms--I thought for a moment that he was going to turn around, get back into his shitty old Honda and drive away. He just had that kind of look on his face--like it was too late, like the best parts of his life were gone, like there was no point in him sticking around. He didn't leave, though he paused for a lot longer than he should have.
“Are you Mr. Moreaux?” came a voice. He didn't answer; he just nodded his head, up and down, up and down, obviously in shock. Then suddenly, like someone had stabbed him in the back, he bolted straight toward the ambulance where they were preparing my mother’s body. He knew she was dead and not because of the plastic over her face. I'm sure he could feel it. Maybe he knew that something dreadful had occurred even before he pulled up to the house. Maybe that's what brought him home in the first place.
Whatever the case, he pushed the attendants to the side, flung himself over the gurney, and began smashing his fists into her corpse. As he pummeled her, I pictured her the way I like to keep her even now, with her youthful body and kind face, her beautiful smile, her luminous skin, her shiny hair, and her gentle and perceptive eyes. But then abruptly in my mind, her flesh began to smolder, burning up in the same fire that was still spitting at us from inside the house. I saw her frying and blistering before my very eyes until she eventually turned into a pile of ash and bone.
Once the emergency staff got my father to let go, he crumpled into a heap on the ground, grabbing at his head and rocking back and forth for a long, long time. The rest of that night and the next week and month are still a blur, some thirty odd years later. Somehow we managed to get through the funerals and the burials, and everything that goes along with the expiration of human life, but I don't really have a good recall of any of it.
*…*…*
After their deaths, home life was like living in a morgue, the absence of those two females having taken the spirit out of the rest of us--three young boys left with a single male parent, who, by necessity, had to work double shifts just to keep a roof over our heads and some food on the table.
When my father was at home, it was like he was trying to make up for lost time by hibernating in his pitch-black room, talking to Mama in the great beyond. We often heard him mumbling to himself when he thought we were downstairs watching television. And now that he's older, he doesn't even try to hide his eidolic conversations anymore. To him, my mother always has been and always will be, right there by his side.
At least (and I give him credit for this), my father had the acumen to keep up with his faith, and he made sure that we visited our sanctum of salvation every Sunday where the communal spinsters and widows took my brothers and I under their wings. Those ladies became our surrogate mothers, and I thanked God for them sending the staples of nutrition in baskets--rice, meat, and salads--whenever they thought we looked a little too skinny. They also collected used clothes, dropping off garbage bag after garbage bag of old sweaters, too big jeans and worn-out sneakers onto the concrete steps of our townhouse.
If it hadn't been for the fellowship at our church, I would've ended up dead; I truly believe that. It was because of their unqualified support however that my brothers and I survived, prospered, and even had a chance to go to college. For that, the church women rounded up enough money through fundraisers and donations to give us a good head start at paying for tuition and books at our district facility of higher learning.
Even with the aid of the church though, my shattered childhood didn't set the tone for a very promising future. After the fire, I had a lot of anger to deploy, and at school, I picked fights with other kids for no reason, giving and receiving more black eyes than you could count. I was a bully to some and a punching bag for others, suddenly one of the bad kids.
At home, the scenario wasn't much better. Before the deaths of my mother and sister, we'd been quite close, but after, it was all we could do to remain civil in each other’s presence. Without my father around, things got pretty brutal, a typical evening usually starting with some kind of snide or negative comment made by Daniel.
“What the hell? You couldn’t have saved a little milk for someone else? You don’t think about anybody but yourself.” That was generally how it began, with him complaining about something trivial. Once he got started, things escalated until one of us ended up hurt or until our dad came home.
“I’m coming over there to watch TV, so move.”
“You jerk! Get your ass out of my spot.”
At that point in the conversation, after things had begun to deteriorate, Kevin would jump in. “You two are so pathetic. Why don’t you both just leave home? It would save us all the hassle.”
“Yeah, you heard him. You should just leave. So go get your stuff and get out. Move the hell away. I don’t want to look at your ugly face anymore.”
“He was talking to you, stupid Adrian.”
“Shut up the both of you.”
“I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my mother.”
Talk like this was common around our house, but the part about “my mother” was a slip and it got to us all. It put a stop to the conversation that particular night and for two whole weeks after. That’s how it was most of the time though. It was awful.
During those dark days, I wondered if I'd ever pull through, if we'd ever be a family again, and if I'd ever have a normal life. And things were looking pretty bleak for me, when something popped out from underneath the dryer in the basement one rainy afternoon.
The dryer was broken like most of the stuff we owned and I was banging around with my father’s tools trying to fix the damn thing. Finally, after about half an hour of frustration, I put a big dent in the door with my shoe, kicking it about ten times. As it jolted back toward the wall, I noticed a shiny bit of silver glinting up from amidst the big pile of dust that littered the floor. Bending down to take a closer look, I realized exactly what it was.
It was my mother’s long lost locket--a piece of antique jewelry that'd been passed down through the generations from my grandmother and from her mother before. As I sat on the concrete gazing at my newly found treasure, I remembered searching for it with my siblings, by my calculations about one month before the fire.
To the others who carried it--my kinfolk--the small, argentate trinket was a token of solidarity and strength, and to my mother, who kept it on her person or knew of its exact whereabouts at all times, it represented both of those things. It was beautiful--silver, inlaid with a few diamonds on the front and inscribed with the initials of its original owner on the back.
As the story went, the locket had belonged to one of my mother’s distant relatives--a house slave--who had stolen it as retribution against her white master. Apparently, the piece of jewelry had been given by the plantation owner to his wife as a present on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a gift that was also meant to mask a hidden affair between the white man and my distant cognate.
Hundreds of years later, after I discovered it, I took the locket up to my room (leaving the dryer to rot) and I lay down on my bed. Then, slipping one hand behind my head, I tightly clasped the silver pendant to my chest and closed my eyes. All of a sudden, visions of my mother and sister hovered over me, their ghostly arms reaching down to touch my face. Happy to have them back, I smiled and said hello. It was the first time in a long time that I'd thought about them in a peaceful manner, without smoke and flames engulfing their bodies.
“It’s going to be OK,” I heard my mother whisper. “You must live Adrian. Live for us.” It was at that precise moment that things turned around for me somewhat. Afterwards, whenever I needed my mother’s help, I clutched the necklace tight, allowing the shape of the cool metal to imprint onto the suppleness of my palm. Miraculously, that simple act would bring her back.
To me, the locket was a sign that my mother would always be there, and in that respect, it kept me safe from the demons that threatened to haunt me on a daily basis. It made the passage of time bearable, and I took her cue and tried to enter back into the world of the happy living. I never told another soul about my treasure, keeping it hidden at the bottom of my sock drawer in a small, leather pouch that I later found at a flea market. As for that proverbial cup, mine wasn't half full yet, but at least it was not spilling its contents all over the table.
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