‘Then I’ll take May—or Henry.’
Mama went pale and glanced over at May, who was adding biscuits to the table. After the hangings that summer, Mama had watched their slaves with fear in her eyes.
Joseph himself didn’t know what to think. The Grands seemedworried now too. They had decided to sell their cook, since she’d mourned Denmark Vesey and his conspirators. If Papa acted any differently toward their negroes, he was even nicer to them. He’d bought Henry’s mother Agathe to be their new cook, against the Grands’ objections—she’d grown up on Saint-Domingue, though Agathe’s old master had brought her to Charleston long before the slave revolt.
To Hélène, Mama said only: ‘Henry and May are busy.’
‘I could take Hélène,’ Joseph offered. He was a Soldier of Christ now. Surely he could protect his little sister through a few Charleston streets. He liked Grandpapa’s clocks too. The shop wasn’t much farther than the Philosophical and Classical Seminary, and Joseph was allowed to walk to school by himself now. Although Mama still fretted about that.
‘Your father and I have indulged you too much since—since we returned from Paris,’ Mama decided. ‘Hélène will make her first Confession soon. She must learn that we cannot always do what we want to do. We must ask ourselves: “Will it please Our Lord?”’
Hélène frowned. ‘Why does God care if I see Grandpapa’s clocks?’
‘God cares abouteverythingwe do.’
‘But…’ Hélène’s chin, her lips, even her nose began trembling, and she made a little whimpering sound as if her kitten had run away. She was very good at this, acting as though the world would end if she didn’t get what she wanted. Her pouting was particularly effective because she rarely asked for anything unreasonable. Often Hélène begged for something entirely selfless. If Papa were here, he would be pudding. Joseph himself felt his heart breaking. Behind him, he heard May snigger. Cathy just rolled her eyes.
Mama chewed her lip and squeezed one of their hands in each of hers as if she might never see them again. Finally, she gave in. Mama made them promise to go straight to Grandpapa’s shop and come straight back.
As he and Hélènepassed beneath the palmettos and chinaberry trees, as they darted across the sandy streets ahead of approaching horses, Joseph saw two negroes for every white person. Men delivering messages, dressed in livery so everyone knew who owned them. Women in head kerchiefs carrying baskets of brightly-colored fruits or briny-smelling fish and crabs from the market. Even from here, you could see the flags atop the tallest ships in the harbor.
Apart from his sister stepping in manure as they crossed Broad Street, they arrived safely. Hélène left her soiled pattens in the alley, and they entered the shop. They were greeted by the familiar sound of the clocks tick-tick-ticking away all around them like a hundred mechanical hearts.
Many of the cases were wood or porcelain, but these were not Joseph and Hélène’s favorites. The truly memorable pieces wereormolu, gilded bronze, each design different from the last. The clock-face might be set in the rose window of a miniature cathedral; might be disguised as the wheel of Napoleon’s cannon or a maiden’s chariot; might overlook an entire scene from an opera or a myth.
Hélène spotted a new clock. She pointed to the gold bas-relief on the base, where a man carried a limp woman in his arms, followed by a monk. “Is this Romeo and Juliet?”
Joseph studied the figures on the top of the piece. A mostly naked man sat painfully beside the clock-face, his hands bound above his head to a palm tree. A golden woman stood over him, her hands on the ropes. The final clue was the dog in the bas-relief. “It must beAtala. It’s a story by Chateaubriand, set here in America.” Joseph pointed to the man, then the woman. “Chactas is an Indian. Atala is half-Spanish like Papa. She does kill herself like Juliet.”
“Because she can’t be with her beloved?” Hélène sighed, her elbow on the counter and her chin in her hand. She loved romantic stories.
Joseph nodded. He supposed this was not the time to remind his sister that suicide was a mortal sin. “Atala made a vow to her mother and the Blessed Virgin that she would stay chaste.”
“She wants her beloved to chase her?”
Joseph laughed. “C-h-a-s-t-e. It means…that you’re pure, that you don’t get married. Like Priests and nuns.” He saw Hélène still didn’t understand, but he didn’t understand it himself, what exactly husbands and wives did together to make themselves impure.
“That’swhy she can’t be with her beloved? A sillyvow?” His sister’s forehead was wrinkled in protest. “Why doesn’t she just say she’s sorry and then marry him?”
“Vows are sacred, El. You can’t break them.”
“It’s better than killing yourself,” Hélène muttered as she wandered to another clock.
Chactas was supposed to be a pure-blooded Indian, yet on this clock, his skin was as black as a negro’s. Often Joseph couldn’t tell which figures were Indians and which were Africans, since they all had headdresses and skirts made of feathers and the same black patina for skin. Grandpapa said the French artists had probably never seen AfricansorIndians. But they made all the savages and animals a solid gleaming black on purpose, because of how strikingly it contrasted with the white of the clock-face and the gold of the rest of the piece. These black-and-gold clocks had been popular for decades. They sold better than the time-pieces with figures of Frenchmen, Greeks, or angels, because those were entirely golden.
One jet-black man toted a clock on his back, while another pushed his in a wheelbarrow. Four wooly-headed boys carried a clock on poles. Their lips nearly touching, a black-skinned couple draped over another time-piece in an embrace that always made Joseph avert his eyes. One of the man’s hands cupped the woman’s bare breast.
Hélène pulled Grandpapa over to a new sculpture. Standing on a golden pedestal and flanked by two cherubs, it was the bust of a black girl with a feathered turban on her head. Below her broad nose, her lips were slightly open in an eternal smile. “They sent you the wrong thing, Grandpapa!” Joseph’s sister scowled. “There isn’t a clock in this one.”
“But there is,ma petite,” he smiled. “Queen Marie Antoinette herself had a clock like this. Watch closely now.” Grandpapa pulled on the left earring of the negress, and her eyes rotated in her head.
Hélène shrieked in delight. She stood on her toes to see better.The right eye of the negress now contained an X, her left eye a 13. Her turban must be full of clockwork.
Some of the other clocks were simple automatons: as the gears kept time, hidden mechanisms would cause parts to move. The arms of little musicians pulled bows across their instruments. A ship bobbed on the waves.
Beside Joseph, a fat negro nodded his head over and over, his wide red lips dipping toward his long-stemmed pipe. The clock-face sat inside his round belly, surrounded by his golden robes. Joseph half expected his huge eyes to blink, but the negro just kept nodding.
“That’s supposed to be Toussaint Louverture,” Grandpapa said behind him. “Do you know who he was?”
