House of Rougeaux(74)

* * *



Eleanor stood on the deck of the steamer, wind whipping at her face and the ends of the scarf she had used to secure her hat. The steamer had left Trinidad behind and now there was no land in sight. Albert used to say that when he was grown he would visit Mémé’s island, but he had never had the chance. He married Genevieve and the babies started coming. The closest he ever got was to name one of his children after it, because Mémé had taught him that Martinique was so beautiful.

Eleanor disembarked at the town of Fort-de-France and found her way down the pier, a bit shaky from the journey over the open sea in a smaller vessel than she was used to. She headed toward a cluster of buildings near the beach, flanked by waving palms, where she found what looked like a café. It was mid-morning and the heat was stifling. She wished for nothing more than some shade and a cool drink. Stepping through the doorway she found the place empty, save for a young man busy scrubbing something behind a whitewashed counter.

“Bonjour,” Eleanor said, slumping into a chair. Really she was feeling dizzy, perhaps she had gotten a little seasick.

“Bonjour Madame,” said the young man, approaching. She asked for something to drink and he disappeared through a small door out the back. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The young man returned with an earthen pitcher and a glass, but when she tried to speak she was overcome by a swallowing darkness full of tiny dancing lights.

The next thing she knew she was stretched out on a bench in a shady courtyard. The young man was fanning her with a tea towel, and a matronly woman bent over her, patting at Eleanor’s cheeks with her hands. When Eleanor roused, the woman helped her to sit up. She told her in a French dialect that she must change clothes. Eleanor gathered that she wasn’t the first person in Victorian dress to faint in this woman’s presence, and accepted her assistance into a small room off the courtyard, without argument.

The older woman, dressed in the typical Caribbean style Eleanor had glimpsed in Trinidad, rummaged in a trunk and pulled out a white linen gown and a blue shawl. With the authority that a mother holds over a small, misbehaving child, she quickly separated Eleanor from the layers of her clothes and helped her to unlace her corset. The rush of blood freed from its bindings caused her to feel lightheaded again and she sat down on the trunk, naked now except for her chemise and drawers. Then she lifted her arms and allowed the woman to slip the linen dress over her head. A moment later she was back on the bench in the courtyard, with a glass of coconut water.

The matron was called Marbeille; the young man, Abel, was one of her sons. The café belonged to her family and was, as Eleanor would learn in the next few hours, one of their many enterprises. Did Eleanor need a place to stay? They had two rooms they rented to guests.

“So,” Marbeille said to her, once Eleanor was installed in a small, comfortable room on the other side of the courtyard and finally much revived, “are you a daughter of the Island?” Eleanor told her that she had come from America, and that her grandmother was born on the island. That she grew up on a sugar estate called Mont Belcourt. She had heard Mémé speak now and then about her childhood, but in truth Eleanor had learned very little. What was it Mémé used to say about her elders? She had an aunt who healed the sick. The name came back to her now, emerging suddenly from some long-forgotten place.

“Mémé Abeje?” Eleanor asked aloud. Could that be right? Why would she have referred to her aunt as Mémé? As a grandmother?

Marbeille’s eyes widened in recognition and surprise. “You are a p’tit of Mémé Abeje?”

“The granddaughter of her niece,” Eleanor said. “Do you know that name?”

“Everyone knows that name, child.”



* * *



Early in the afternoon the café filled with diners, locals stopping to eat amid the labors of the day, and all manner of people coming in from fishing and passenger boats, or who otherwise did business in the busy port town. Several more of Marbeille’s grown children had shown up and were at work with her in the outdoor kitchen that occupied one side of the courtyard. They brought out large plates of cassava cakes, a spicy bean and vegetable stew, and fried fish with plantains. Marbeille greeted patron after patron with the news that, by some miracle, a p’tit of Mémé Abeje was here with them from America. Most everyone knew one story or another about the legendary Obeah, the great healer, and they were eager to tell Eleanor what they knew. One man, who alternated pulls on a pipe with spoonfuls of stew, said to Marbeille, “Old Silas still lives. Perhaps she should go to see him.”

Eleanor struggled to keep up with the stories. Creole was so very different from the French she knew. It was a revelation that an ancestor of hers was known here, since it was not likely there was anyone who could have remembered Hetty, who had left the island as a girl. Silas was Mémé Abeje’s last apprentice, a quimboiseur, the man with the pipe had said. He lived in a village not so far from his own, and was known for his healing abilities. He was quite old now, though, and did not work so much anymore.

“My wife has business that way tomorrow,” said the man with the pipe. “I know she would not mind the company.”



* * *



Eleanor spent much of the later afternoon and evening at the beach, in an area of shade afforded by a stretch of dense foliage. She had brought with her a thin sheaf of paper and a fountain pen she had purchased in Paris, intending to write a letter home to her family in Montreal, but these remained tucked away in her handbag. Once she touched the sand, she began to take in the immensity of sea and sky. She let her ears attune to the rush of the surf and her hands stayed still, folded together in repose. The murmur of the waves and distant cry of an occasional gull were very welcome.