House of Rougeaux(40)

Didi looked over at Martine and raised a finger. “Momma,” she said, “wouldn’t you know it, but Martine has already been offered another job.”

Martine bit her lip. This one might shock Momma even more than the Braddocks.



* * *



Martine stood in her bedroom, washing her face at the basin with fresh, cool water. The sky out the window was dark, and her image in the little mirror was lit from the lamp beside her bed. That morning seemed like such a distant memory it couldn’t have been the same day. Downstairs Papa and Momma were talking things over. Momma hadn’t said yes or no, but with Papa, Martine knew it was a long shot. The thought of working for Lucille filled her with hope, and the energy that comes with the opportunity for a wrong to be made right. She pressed the towel to her face and prayed for the chance.

Martine changed into her nightdress and got into bed. She picked up the package from her bedside table and tore off the paper, admiring anew the beautiful book of poetry that was now her own. She opened the book and gingerly turned the crisp pages to the William Blake section. There was one she was looking for, the one about the tiger. She read it over a few times, lingering on the last stanzas.

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?





* * *



Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?





Reverend Este’s phrase, All God’s creation is welcome here, echoed in Martine’s mind. What if here wasn’t just church, but everywhere? What if here was the human heart?

In the drawer of the bedside table, together with the little Bible secreted with pressed flowers, a few ribbons she’d won in school, and a drawing of a cat Maxwell had once made for her, Martine kept a fountain pen. At some point she had borrowed it from her father’s desk and had neglected to return it. She took it now from the drawer and turned to the back end of the book where there were a few blank pages. In the top corner of one she wrote out two lines from the poem.

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?





And then, of her own idea, she wrote,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make me?





Martine closed the book, placed it and the fountain pen gently in the drawer, and blew out the lamp. She lay back on the bed and drew up the covers. Tomorrow would be tomorrow. For now it was still night.





5





Hetty





Montreal, 1853





Margaret held Josie on her lap, the girl’s long legs draping over onto the ground where they sat. Their bare feet were muddy from the chase, and Margaret’s fair hair spilled over her shoulders in soft waves, having lost all its pins, which would now be scattered in the grass, to be found later by crows. Tiny beads of sweat shone on Josie’s forehead and Margaret smoothed them away, singing softly.

Hetty watched, stretched out next to the baby, Joah, who slept on his carrying cloth. Margaret and Josie could almost be mother and child, Hetty thought, if it weren’t for the fact that in color and features they were near perfect opposites. Hetty allowed her eyes to close, listening to Margaret’s song, to the breeze that swept the embankment and the blackberry bushes where they had filled their pails, and to the sounds from the river beyond.

Of all Hetty Rougeaux’s children it was Josephine that most reminded her of a certain part of herself, of faraway places, the ones she had known as a child. Because unlike the others, who took for granted roots that bore straight into the earth, Josie never quite seemed of this world. By 1853 Hetty had spent most of her life in Montreal, having arrived in the Province from the Caribbean a girl of thirteen years, the company and property of two sugar estate heiresses scarcely older than herself. She remembered much from her girlhood on the Island, but when she sifted among these memories, looking for the thing that was like her daughter, it always eluded her.

Once when Josie was very small, three or four years old, she pointed to a man who had come to do business in her father’s saddlery. She declared there were two owls flying about his head.

Another day, upon waking she told her mother that she had floated up out of her bed, up through the ceiling and all the way up to the sky to visit the stars.

“What a lovely dream,” said Hetty, petting the child’s round forehead.

“But I saw Papa too, Maman,” Josie said. “He met an old wolf in a house and didn’t want to buy his leather.” Indeed, Hetty’s husband was away that night, meeting with a trader about a shipment of goods for his saddlery shop. He returned later that same day with an empty wagon, saying the leather he meant to buy was of such poor quality that he refused it. Hetty looked at Josephine, playing in the corner with her rag doll, and suddenly remembered a place she had never been.



* * *



Thérèse and Nicola Belcourt began their education in Québec City. They attended a school for young ladies where they learned dancing, pouring tea, piano, poetry, proper French, and other charms. In the evenings they taught Hetty to read and write, to read music and play piano, and because Hetty was curious, how to figure numbers. These were lessons carried out in secret, minutes stolen here and there out of sight of the elder Belcourts. Learning piano was permissible, but not letters and numbers. Hetty collected candle stubs, hiding them in interior pockets, with which to illuminate the books the Belcourt girls gave her for her nightly reading practice.