House of Rougeaux(49)

Josie stood behind Margaret, her clever fingers at work weaving Margaret’s hair into a thick plait, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Hetty looked down at her own hands, twirling Josie’s flower in her fingers. They were Josephine’s hands. They were Tata Abeje’s. They were the earth, baked by the sun. As if the earth had risen up and shaped itself into a living, breathing woman. As if such a thing could be.





6





Guillaume





Montreal, 1883 - 1889





Guillaume Rougeaux was just past his forty years the first time he saw himself in a photograph, a daguerreotype of him and his wife Elizabeth, called Bess, and their six children. It was the year 1883. Their oldest son, Albert, stood to Guillaume’s left, tall and stern, a serious young man of nineteen, working for the railroad and engaged to be married. Dax, the baby, set on Elizabeth’s knee, and the others, beside their mother on a velvet-draped bench.

The taking of the photograph was a happy, if curious, occasion. They had two pictures made, one to hang in their own house, and one for Maman, even though she lived just next door and saw them each and every day, and even though she was not alone, since Papa had passed. Guillaume’s youngest sister, Josephine, was still at home. Bess put the daguerreotype in a varnished wooden frame and hung it in the bedroom beside the large oval mirror on the dresser. In this way Guillaume studied it every Sunday when he fixed up his tie for church. What he saw when he looked at himself in the photograph were his broad shoulders and wide-set stance that gave the surprising impression of a sawhorse. Which is what he said to Bess. “I look just like a sawhorse!” And to which she replied, her attention mostly on the linen she was folding, “I did always think that same thing myself.”

Guillaume’s sister Josephine was tall for a woman and built like an iron rail. While her brother took after their father physically, and their sisters after Maman, she took after neither parent. How did such different fruits fall from the same tree? Maman always said she resembled her old aunt, back on the Caribbean island of her birth. Josie had had a few admirers as a girl, but no serious suitors. She was fine to look at, she was kind, intelligent and capable in the important things, but she was different, and the older people gently discouraged any of their sons who took an interest. Josie herself was not concerned, said often enough that she was not the marrying kind. Maman worried over her, just as she had when Josephine was young, but Josie told her she had long ago considered herself in a kind of solitary marriage with the Holy One. This was the kind of strange thing she said. And in truth she did seem as happy as any of the rest. Unusual as she was, she was at home in the bosom of her large family, a strange dark bird among a barnyard full of handsome cockerels and hens and broods of fluffy chicks.

Now that Maman had grown frail, it was a great comfort to all that Josephine took care of her. Josie often took her nieces and nephews on walks along the riverbanks in fine weather, acquainting them with the names and natures of most every kind of plant they saw; she had gleaned much from local almanacs, and more by her own forays. She regarded the plants as friends, and had the children press so many flowers in the family Bibles that any reading produced a rain of dried petals. The children loved their Auntie, all accepted her difference, if they even noticed it. Josie and Maman never lacked for anything, as they were kept well supplied by the family with all the goods necessary for living. If Josephine appeared different from her peers and Guillaume did not, it was only by chance. His difference remained on the inside.

When Guillaume was eighteen two things happened: he fell in love for the first time, and was engaged to be married, though this concerned two different people rather than one.

He was engaged to Bess, who was his best friend, not counting his sisters. They knew each other from school and from church and just about every criss-crossing of the community. Elizabeth was buxom, always laughing; she spoke English and possessed a smooth, ebony complexion, unlike Guillaume, who, because of his French grandfather he never knew, was brown like a cake of raw sugar. One day in summer she asked him to help her tote a load of cedar shingles from a neighbor’s home to her house. They took a shortcut through a patch of forest near a canal, sharing the load of a large wicker basket, until they stopped to rest a few moments on a grassy embankment. They spoke easily together and then fell silent, watching the water.

Elizabeth cleared her throat.

“What about marrying me?” she said, laughing at his shocked expression. “Why not?” she said. “We know everything about one another, and we’re the best of friends.” The openness in her face bent his heart.

Guillaume’s brow knitted up like the cinch on a gunny sack, his throat squeezed so that his words barely escaped.

“You’d want me?” he asked.

“Of course I would,” she said, her voice descending from bold to soft. “I mean, I do.” He took her hand. The thought of them marrying, of making a family together, was enormously comforting. If it had to be done, and it did, Bess was the one.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“Let’s talk to our parents then,” he said. He helped her up, an arm around her waist. She put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, but he trembled inside.

Their parents were naturally delighted, gave their permission and their blessing, and set the wedding date for one year later. Now, as Guillaume and Papa worked together in the saddlery, Papa began to thread their dialogue with all the wisdom he had gleaned from married life as to what made a good husband and a good marriage.