House of Rougeaux(12)
“What shall I do, Beje?” Adunbi asked, struggling to control his voice. He was ready to fly to any place on the estate where help could be gotten. But Abeje had already exhausted herself. She was failing her brother, and this thought nearly cut her in two. She swallowed, feeling as though a lump of hot iron were searing her throat.
“We’ll pray now,” she said.
Feeling her way in the dark, Abeje knelt at Olivie’s feet, holding them firmly to the earth.
“Holy One,” she breathed, “don’t take her away! Don’t take her now.” Tears overtook her.
“Stay with me,” Adunbi said.
At last all became very quiet. Olivie was breathing, but very shallowly and at long intervals. The baby slept at her side. Adunbi held Olivie’s hand. And then Abeje said the words that most pained her to speak.
“We must bring her outside, before it is too late.” It was well known that it was better for a soul to rise in sight of the sky.
Adunbi closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest. Together with Berthe they carried Olivie out of the hut to where she could see the stars. Adunbi buried his face in her shoulder. Olivie’s eyes opened, and she turned her cheek against his head.
Her eyes looked to the stars.
Her teeth bared in something like a smile, and then she was gone.
It hurt Abeje like nothing else to hear her brother weep. Her ears rang with the jagged edges of his pain.
They buried Olivie beside Iya.
Adunbi broke their cooking pot and laid the pieces on the grave while the people sang.
Right away they had to see what could be done for the child. There were only two women in the Quarters who had milk. One had two children already at the breast, and the other had not enough milk for another. They could feed Ayo only for a very short time before all would suffer.
Adunbi went to the Groom, the Irishman, to speak about it. The Irishman was willing to see if there was a woman on another sugar estate who could take the child, and to see if Monsieur would allow him to make some kind of trade. In two days it was arranged. The Irishman told Adunbi to bring him the baby. Abeje went with Adunbi as he carried Ayo to the barns, knowing that sending her away was her only chance at life. They bound the child to the Irishman with cloth torn from Olivie’s white dress. Then Groom mounted a swift horse and held out his hand to Adunbi.
“I’m sorry for ye,” he said.
Adunbi nodded gravely.
Groom rode away and was quickly gone from sight.
Adunbi stumbled away like a blind man. Abeje let him alone and found that she herself could scarcely move. Their heavy feet carried them, his toward the edge of the Sea, hers back to the Quarters. Already a fever was overtaking her. Abeje made it to the empty hut and lay down on her sleeping mat, and from there she was lost in dreams.
The sound of a heart beating filled her ears. She knew not if it was hers or her brother’s. She rose from her feverish form and up into the wide sky. A gull flew toward her, so close she saw its yellow eye, the open beak and pointed tongue as it cried out. The cry rang out across the whole sky. The gull flew past and she chased it to the edge of the Sea, where below a dark figure staggered down a cliff, and then across the sand that glowed blue in the twilight.
He meant to surrender his body to the warm Sea, to follow his wife, and surely his child. The Sea held him in her arms. The water rushed easily over her brother’s head.
Three dark shapes emerged from the deep. They circled her brother’s body. Round bodies and short, strong limbs. Abeje heard Iya’s name for the creatures, it was awon okun, sea turtle! The turtles circled Adunbi.
Adunbi lay on the beach, his cheek pressed to the hard wet sand. He coughed and vomited out sea water, spat it out as the warm Sea itself had spit out the man. He lay there a long time, the Waking Star shining alone in the lightening sky.
When Groom came back the next day he brought with him the heifer calf that was traded for Adunbi’s child. Groom told Adunbi that Ayo was now at the estate called Auxier, and he named the roads and directions there.
“She’ll live, God willing,” he said.
The heifer calf bawled nightly for its mother, and it took to following Adunbi during the day. He did not bear a grudge against it, its reason for being there. He patted its head when it nosed his arm, and if the calf complained when he went away from its pen, he let it out, and it trotted along at his heels, trailing as did his thoughts of his wife and child. He had them always in his mind and heart. As he grieved his wife, he also sought a way he could one day go to Auxier.
* * *
A new béké came to work for Monsieur as a foreman in the sugar works, who was young and skittish, and did not take well to the responsibility. He had a pack of dogs, vicious brutes that obeyed his command. One day he went with his dogs on the path below the barns and one of them spotted the heifer calf trailing after Adunbi. The dog came after it snarling and got it by the leg, and would have killed it if Adunbi had not beaten the dog off with a stick. But then the foreman tore the stick away from him and struck Adunbi across the back.
Abeje insisted he let her look, even though he assured her it was nothing, just bruises.
“Groom stopped him,” he said, “told him to keep his filthy dogs away from the barns.”
A few days hence Abeje saw Lise near the Quarters.
“Watch out for that new foreman,” said Lise. She had heard him speaking with Monsieur and Madame at the supper table in the Great House. Foreman had learned of her aiding the sick, and that she was the sister of the Groom’s “boy.” The foreman said he didn’t wonder if the two of them had the Evil Eye. Madame clucked at him, calling him foolish, at which he glowered and said, “I’ve seen their kind before.” Monsieur asked him where, and the foreman didn’t answer.