Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

"I'm no good for that, sir!"

"How do you know? We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test."

I had stayed on the plantation almost two years, according to my calculations, before my masters again brought me to serve with the domestics. In all that time I had not seen Maurice because during his vacations his father did not let him come home; he always arranged to send him on a trip to other places, and finally, when his studies were complete, he took him to France to meet his grandmother. But that came later. The master wanted to keep him far away from Madame Hortense. Neither was I able to see Rosette, but Monsieur Murphy brought me news of her every time he went to New Orleans. "What are you going to do with that pretty girl, Tete? You'll have to lock her up to keep her from stirring a storm in the street," he would joke with me.

Madame Hortense gave birth to a second daughter, Marie-Louise, who was born with a tight chest. The climate did not suit her but since no one can change the weather, except Pere Antoine in extreme cases, not much could be done to make her comfortable. It was because of her that they brought me back to the house in the heart of the city. That year Dr. Parmentier had arrived in New Orleans after a long time in Cuba, and he replaced the Guizot family's physician. The first thing he did was stop the leeches and mustard rubs, which were killing the child, and the next was to ask about me. I don't know how he remembered me after so many years. He convinced the master that I was the best person to look after Marie-Louise because I had learned a lot from Tante Rose. Then they ordered the manager to send me to the city. It was very sad to bid farewell to my friends and the Murphys and travel for the first time alone, with a permit to keep from being arrested.

Many things had changed in New Orleans during my absence; more garbage, more coaches and people, and a fervor of constructing houses and extending streets. Even the market had been expanded. Don Sancho no longer lived in the house with the Valmorains, he had moved to an apartment in the same neighborhood. According to Celestine, he had forgotten Adi Soupir and was in love with a Cuban woman whom no one in the house had ever seen. I moved into the mansard room with Marie-Louise, a pale little thing so weak she didn't even cry. It occurred to me to bind her to my body-that had given a good result with Maurice, who was also born sickly-but Madame Hortense said that that might be fine for blacks but not for her daughter. I did not want to put her in a cradle-she would have died-so I opted to always carry her in my arms.

As soon as I had a chance, I spoke with my master to remind him that I would be thirty that year and was due my freedom.

"Who will care for my daughters?" he asked me.

"I will, if that is what you want, monsieur."

"You mean that everything will be the same?"

"Not the same, monsieur; if I am free, I can leave if I want, none of you can beat me, and you will have to pay me a little so I can live."

"Pay you!" he exclaimed with surprise.

"That's how coachmen, cooks, nurses, seamstresses, and other free persons make a living, monsieur."

"I see you are very well informed. Then you know that no one employs a nursemaid; she is always part of the family, like a second mother, and later like a grandmother, Tete."

"I am not a part of your family, monsieur. I am your property."

"I have always treated you as if you were family! Well, then, if that is what you plan, I will need time to convince Madame Hortense, though it is a dangerous precedent and it will cause a lot of gossip. I will do what I can."

He gave me permission to go see Rosette. My daughter had always been tall and at eleven she looked fifteen. Monsieur Murphy had not lied, she was very pretty. The nuns had succeeded in curbing her impetuousness but had not erased her dimpled smile and seductive gaze. She greeted me with a formal curtsy, and when I hugged her she went rigid. I think she was embarrassed that her mother was a cafe au lait slave. My daughter was what mattered most to me in the world. We had lived like a single body, a single soul, until my fear that she would be sold, or that her own father would rape her, as he had me, had forced me to separate from her. More than once I had seen the master feeling her, the way men touch girls to know if they're ripe. That was before he married Madame Hortense, when my Rosette was an innocent little girl and he set her on his lap with affection. My daughter's coolness hurt me; to protect her, I might have lost her.

Nothing was left of Rosette's African roots. She knew about my loas, and Guinea, but in the school she had forgotten all that and become a Catholic; the nuns were nearly as horrified by voodoo as by Protestants, Jews, and Kaintucks. How could I reproach her for wanting a better life than mine? She wanted to be like Valmorain, not me. She talked to me with false courtesy, in a tone I didn't recognize, as if I were a stranger. This is how I remember it. She told me she liked the school, that the nuns were kind and were teaching her music, religion, and to write with a good hand, but no dance because that tempted the devil. I asked about Maurice, and she told me he was fine but that he felt lonely and wanted to come back. She knew about him because they wrote each other, as they'd done ever since they were separated. The letters took a long time to arrive, but they kept sending them without waiting for answers, like a conversation between fools. Rosette told me that sometimes a half dozen came the same day, but then several weeks would go by with no word. Now, five years later, I know that they addressed each other as "brother" or "sister" to throw off the nuns, who opened their students' correspondence. They had a religious code for referring to their feelings: the Holy Spirit meant love, prayers were kisses, Rosette posed as the guardian angel, he could be any saint or martyr from the Catholic calendar, and, logically, the Ursulines were devils. A typical letter from Maurice said that the Holy Spirit visited him at night, when he was dreaming of the guardian angel, and that he waked with a desire to pray and pray. She answered that she prayed for him and had to be careful among the hordes of devils that were always threatening mortals. Now I guard those letters in a box, and though I can't read them, I know what they say because Maurice read me some parts, those that were not too daring.

Rosette thanked me for the gifts of sweets, ribbons, and books that came, though I didn't know who sent them. How could I buy anything for her without money? I thought that Master Valmorain sent them, but she told me he had never visited. It was Don Sancho who gave the gifts in my name. May Papa Bondye bless the good Don Sancho! Erzulie, mother loa, I have nothing to offer my daughter. This is how it was.

At the first possible opportunity Tete went to talk with Pere Antoine. She had to wait a couple of hours because he was making his rounds at the jail, visiting prisoners. He brought them food and cleansed their wounds and the guards did not dare stop him because word of his holiness had spread everywhere; some claimed that he had been seen in several places at the same time, and that sometimes a luminous plate floated above his head. Finally the Capuchin monk returned to the little stone house that served as his dwelling and office with his basket empty, wanting only to sit down and rest, but other needs awaited him and it was some time before sunset, the hour of prayer, when his bones took their ease as his soul rose to heaven. "I greatly regret, Sister Lucie, that I do not have the energy to pray more and better," he would say to the nun who attended him. "And why do you need to pray more, mon pere, if you are already a saint?" she invariably replied. He welcomed Tete with open arms, as he did everyone. He hadn't changed; he had the same sweet eyes of a big dog and the smell of garlic, he wore the same filthy robe, his wood cross, and prophet's beard.