That night I was a married woman. As a marriage gift Frédéric presented me with a copy of Redouté’s illustrated book of roses, Choix des plus belles fleurs, printed in France. No other man would know I wanted that book more than anything, more than diamonds or pearls. We lay in bed and turned the pages; the heavy paper was scented with salt from the volume’s journey across the sea. “Are you happy with it?” my husband said to me. I hesitated to say what I felt, for I loved him too much and was afraid I would be punished for doing so. Still, I said, “Yes,” and we didn’t leave our chamber for twelve hours.
Rosalie teased me about that every day afterward. “Married people don’t act like you do,” she said.
• • •
BY THE TIME OUR second son, Moses Alfred, was born, three years later, his name was entered into the synagogue books beneath his brother’s name. This time I did not have to break in and do it myself, the Reverend’s secretary made the entry. Rosalie thought it was perhaps because I named this second baby for my father, who was so beloved in St. Thomas, and for the patriarch who had brought our people to freedom. Frédéric believed it was because the congregation was tired of the scandal. We had outlasted them, he said. He laughed and kissed me and asked who among them could deny we were anything other than an old married couple with or without the Reverend’s blessing. My husband and Rosalie could think what they liked. I knew the truth. If the congregation was no longer set against us it was due to the Reverend’s wife, the one who was dead and buried whose ghost I honored, and the living one I’d petitioned for help.
Still, we were outcasts and we lived our lives as such. On Saturdays Frédéric said prayers in the garden with the boys, and then we went to Market Square, where people who were not of our faith spent their free day. There were over a dozen nationalities listed in St. Thomas and so many foods to choose from in the marketplace on Saturdays that it was like a carnival. I always craved Spanish food, eggs and sardines and olives, and we had maubie, a drink of fermented bark made from the maubie tree, not alcoholic, but laced with cinnamon, delicious when you’d acquired a taste for it. The Jewish businesses, including our own, were closed on Saturdays, and all shops were closed between twelve and two every day, so we often went swimming on Saturday afternoons, trekking down to the beach where the turtles came one day a year. I went in the water in my underclothes, since I was with my children. Hannah was always there, watching over them. Now thirteen, she was better at mothering than I was. I thought she must have learned what a kind heart was in the twelve days her mother had lived. Her pale hair was gold in the sunlight and I prayed she would have an easier time in this world than most women did. When she came to sit beside me, I felt her mother’s love around us both as leaves fell from the trees even though there was no breeze and the air was still.
IN THE YEAR 1830, our third son was born on July 10. Jestine and Rosalie were with me, which was fortunate, for this was not an easy birth. This baby had a mind of his own and didn’t care how much pain he caused me. I choked on my own screams, and Frédéric and the children were ushered from the house. It was not until much later that Jestine admitted that both she and Rosalie thought they might lose me, for the labor lasted three days and three nights, and every hour was an agony. I had begun talking to the spirits. When Jestine and Rosalie realized I was in deep conversation with the first Madame Petit, as if I were planning to join her, they became so frightened they took a vow that they would do all they could to save me should it come to a choice. They would let the baby go, and pull me back to life.
I knew nothing of this, of course. I was in a fevered state and didn’t notice that Rosalie was crying. I was burning up as if I were overtaken by something stronger than myself, and the aching I felt was different than it had been with any other birth. Before he appeared, this child was difficult, intent on causing me pain. Yet when he was born, I loved him best, precisely because of our struggle, a secret I kept from all the others. I had named him Abraham, after his father’s first name; then Jacobo, after Jacob from the Bible; then Camille, to always remind him that he was French. He was most like me and had my faults. He did not sleep but cried through the night, just as Madame Halevy said I had done. When I went to hold him he pulled away from me. He was perfect, a beautiful baby, but I wondered if his sleeplessness was due to an illness.
Even beneath Jestine’s tender touch this baby seemed unsettled. When I hadn’t slept for two weeks straight and Jacobo wasn’t gaining any weight, I knew what we must do. I asked Jestine if she would come with me back to the herb man, though neither of us was certain he was still alive. He’d been ancient when we last saw him, and if people in town went to call on him they did not say so, for such engagements were made to combat troubles and tragedies.