“That’s enough. I need to sleep, too.”
“Please,” Claire moaned. “Don’t leave.”
“Selfish, selfish, Agatha. Only thinking about yourself while the world is burning.”
Marie walked to the door, looked back at the dumb pleading of Claire’s face, like an animal kicked for no reason. Almost enough to turn around and give in and coddle her, because Marie did love her. But this was the way of the world; Claire better learn it. It sickened Marie to see such innocence in such old eyes. Why should Marie take pity when no pity had been taken on her?
She slapped off the light and shut the door. As she went downstairs to warm herself a cup of milk with rum, she heard the muffled sounds of Claire’s sobs. Later, Marie went back to her room. Claire was deep in sleep, her forehead furrowed and sweaty as an infant’s. Marie slid into the bed, and Claire rolled against her and sighed.
* * *
Marie poured cornmeal on the living-room floor to form the vévé for Papa Legba, opening communication with the spirit world. Was the vodou real? Yes and no. Marie knew as little about it as the man in the moon, only what she had stolen from spying on Maman, yet it had become more real to her than time spent in church. Why? Claire and she pretended for each other that it was real, that both felt its power, and that made it so. Wasn’t that what was meant by faith?
It is complicated to be a survivor. Sometimes you have to pretend in magic. You have to find a way to bury the dead.
Maybe the vodou had worked on her as well. After Jean-Alexi came, she realized too late she had changed.
Part Four
Chapter 1
Minna came to Claire’s room, folding away fresh laundry in drawers for the first time in months. “You met Jean-Alexi, nuh?”
“You decided to do laundry?” Claire nodded. “He’s the father?”
Minna looked down at the bulge of her stomach as if in surprise. “Oh, no. No.”
“Why is he here then?”
“Our new foreman. He was a very good farmer before on Dominica. He won’t cheat us. He can be trusted.”
Claire thought about this changeable thing, trust. How she had squandered it so freely on a stranger who was more a figment of her imagination than a real self. But as she looked into Minna’s face, she knew that the woundedness was real; Claire simply did not know the source or the outcome of the hurt she was hiding. This girl was made up of motivations Claire had no way of guessing. Paranoia? All she could feel was a longing to go back to the way they had been before the man’s arrival because she sensed he would change everything.
She did not mention that the barn, supposedly packed full with the furniture from the house, including Raisi’s armoire, had been half-empty.
That night Minna set the table for three. But only the two women sat down in the usual candlelit semidarkness. After waiting for a long time, Minna, skittish, finally gave the signal that they could eat. She had been waiting for an appearance by the man that did not materialize. Clearly she wasn’t in charge. Dinner was the usual hodgepodge of food — smoked sausage and the wheel of cheese, refried beans and rice, oranges.
“You must have spilled some of your drink. There was a stain on the back of the couch.”
“I don’t know,” Claire said, digging into the bowl of beans. She, too, had learned the art of not answering.
“Jean-Alexi doesn’t scare you,” Minna said, a statement rather than question.
“Should he?”
“He needed a job. A place. Only for a little while. I needed to repay him a debt.”
Claire stared at her plate. “But you’re supposed to be looking out for me, too. Are you?”
“His wife and daughter are gone away. Macheted by bandits. Their faces taken off.”
“Oh.” This explanation stripped off her anger. Claire wondered if this explained the wildness she saw in his eyes.
“He is a lost man.”
When Jean-Alexi finally appeared from the barn, he and Minna exchanged angry words rapid-fire in a patois French Claire couldn’t understand, but she smiled up into his face, ignoring his dirty hands as he touched the food, the reek of his unwashed body. Away from him, Minna paradoxically appeared timid, subservient; in front of him, she became defiant, combative.
The women made small talk while Jean-Alexi wolfed down his food, ignoring them.
“Enough woman talk.” He shoved his chair back with such force it banged against the wall behind him. The room shrank as he rose to his full height. He seemed like a caged animal indoors, not-of-his-place. “Go make us coffee.”
“I think later—”
“Go!” he yelled, and Minna flinched as if he had hit her, bowed her head, and left them alone. Paralyzed, Claire felt her heart press against her lungs, her breath come in shallow spurts.
“I told Maleva here, it be a good thing if you sign over the farm to her. To make the working of it go fine.”
“Why do you call her that name? That’s not her name.”
“She take good care of you, non? Better than that worthless family of yours.”
Claire processed that her family had been discussed between them, judgment passed. Something terrible was dawning on her, a pressure behind her eyes that made the objects in front of her swim — Jean-Alexi’s face distorted into a fun-house mask. “It’s not my farm to give.”
“There’s ways, lady. Anyway, Maleva alone in the world like you.”
Finally something from him she could grab on to, control the direction of the conversation. “Tell me. She won’t.”
But he shook his head, determined on his own narrative. “The ways I see it, lost got to help the lost in this world.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t help but agree with him. His power both attracted and terrified her. How could an innocent girl such as Minna hold out against the likes of a Jean-Alexi? “Is that what you two are doing? Helping each other?”
“You got it wrong, lady,” he said, coming up close. “I am not lost. I am one of the conquerors of this world. Don’t forget it.”
“You won’t let me forget it, will you?”
“There’s work to be done.”
“The farm belongs to my husband’s family. I’m calling him to come meet you.”
“No need. I just passing through. Don’t want any trouble for Maleva, do you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, but he smiled, picked his teeth, and walked off. A terrible, strutting little rooster.
Minna came out, watched him walk away, shaking her head. “The devil must have his little day…”
* * *
The next days passed in a game of cat and mouse, Jean-Alexi conducting business out in the barn on his cell phone, coming into the empty house only for meals. During those meals, he always waited till Minna was out of the room, then broached again the subject of signing over the ranch. It did not seem possible that Minna was unaware of these efforts, and Claire put it to delicacy on her part to refuse to acknowledge them.
When she was alone with Minna, she pleaded that he be sent away.
“Got to be careful what genie you let out of the bottle,” Minna said. “Jean-Alexi goes the opposite way he’s told.”
“He’s asking me to sign the farm over to you.”
Minna bit her lip. “That’s his making. I was foolish calling him. He’s too lazy to work the farm. He’ll be moving on.”
“But why did you call him?”
“Why? Why?” Minna mocked her. “He’s home. He’s familiar. No matter how bad, he knows me. You can’t escape your history.”