Luckily, at the new school I sat beside a girl named Marianna King, who grinned at my confusion and whispered in French, “Pretend you know what they’re saying and eventually you will.” This turned out to be true, although it took months for the miracle of my understanding to occur. During that time everyone came to believe I was an idiot, and perhaps some of them thought that was why I was in this school with people of color, rather than in the school run by the synagogue like other boys of my faith.
But my idiocy in matters of scholarship was not the reason I was there. Something had happened years before I was born, and people of our own faith were not friendly to us. We had not been made to feel welcome to worship in the synagogue. I had once or twice sneaked up the marble steps so I might slip through the gated courtyard to peer inside. I saw the mahogany cabinet that was home to the Torahs, the scrolls of our law, and the huge tablets with the rules of Moses inscribed upon them. There was a domed ceiling, and at night the house of worship was lit by candlelight, so that the ceiling glowed as if it was the firmament. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. But I had come out of curiosity and wonder, rather than drawn there by faith. Our family was not invited to holiday dinners, parties, funerals, or weddings. I knew that my parents had offended the Reverend and a scandal had ensued. My mother never once admitted this to me, but I’d heard gossip, and my older brothers had told me they’d been born before my parents had been officially married. I found this difficult to believe.
Perhaps my family’s standing was fueled by the fact that no one liked my mother. Only her maid, Rosalie, defended her headstrong ways. Rosalie had cause to favor my mother, for it was my mother who had insisted that my father hire a solicitor to search for his manager’s wife on another island. In doing so, he had discovered that this wife had died ten years earlier. Mr. Enrique was therefore free to marry Rosalie. For that reason alone, Rosalie was loyal, and though they belonged to different societies, the two were faithful to one another. Tell one a secret and it was as good as telling the other.
My mother had arranged to hold Rosalie’s wedding in the garden of the house where my mother had grown up, opposite the cottage where Mr. Enrique, and now Rosalie, would live. She rented it from the new family in residence without bothering to mention it was not a Jewish wedding, but rather a marriage for African people. The new owners of the house closed their shutters and went out for the evening. Because of this they missed how ethereal their garden became on the wedding night, enchanted, lit by candlelight. The music was wonderful, flutes and the drums. We were the only Europeans invited. There was dancing until all hours, and my brothers enjoyed watching the women dressed in their finery. But I preferred to be in the back of the garden, where I could examine the pink flowers of the bougainvillea growing up the stucco walls in huge bunches. There was an ancient lizard beneath a hedge that barely moved when I studied his form. I sketched with a stick in the dirt, trying to capture the outlines of a century plant with huge gray-green leaves. Mr. Enrique worked with my father. On this night he was wearing a formal suit and vest ordered from Paris, a gift from my mother. He surprised me when he came into the garden. He was now a married man, and perhaps he needed a quiet moment to think through his new standing in life. He was at least twenty years older than his bride, respected by my family and by his community.
“Marriage is a lot of noise,” he said, but he looked pleased.
My mother had told me that if Mr. Enrique hadn’t saved my grandfather I wouldn’t be alive, so I was a little in awe of him.
“A piece of paper doesn’t mean anything,” the new groom went on. “Your mother knows that.”
From early on, I was aware that just because something was a rule, it wasn’t necessarily fair. My mother glared at other women of our faith on the street for they never greeted her, and when they came to shop in our store, there was no conversation. However, the love between my parents was unlike what I saw between other married couples, who were dutiful toward one another, often referring to each other as Madame and Monsieur after decades of marriage. My parents could not restrain their emotions. Sometimes I heard murmuring and laughter from their chamber at night, and often I saw them holding hands when they thought no one was near. Their love was a mystery to me, and yet it was part of our lives, a door that shut out the rest of us, a place inhabited by them alone. I would not like to have witnessed anyone say a bad word about my father in my mother’s presence. She was fierce, and when I was very young I wondered if she’d been bit by one of the werewolves in the stories she told me. I had seen her gazing at the moon as such creatures are said to do, as if she recognized something up above us that was invisible to the human eye.