“He says I can’t attend Madame Talvande’s, that it’s too expensive! That’s because she teaches girls how to be ladies! If I don’t goto Madame Talvande’s,” Cathy wailed, “I’ll never attract a good husband!”
His sister was eleven; he did not think she should be despairing about her prospects just yet. At least, not because she lacked feminine accomplishments. Cathy lackedbreeding. Should he tell her about their grandmother? If their places were reversed, wouldn’t he want her to warn him? Joseph began walking more slowly. “I think…it might be dangerous for you to attend Madame Talvande’s, Cathy.”
“What?”
“Aren’t most of her teachers from Saint-Domingue?”
“Yes! They’re French! The best in the city!”
“But one of them might have known Father there.”
“How couldthatbe dangerous?”
“I overheard him talking to one of Madame Talvande’s slaves—a midwife. She witnessed his birth.”
“And?”
Joseph realized they’d nearly reached Uncle’s cottage. He could see their father, Mama, and Hélène seated at the table on the back porch. From here, you couldn’t tell anything was wrong. Joseph stopped. “His mother wasn’t Spanish, Cathy. She was a slave.”
“A-An Indian?”
Joseph shook his head.
His sister’s eyes widened, then slitted in indignation. “That’s impossible. The midwife was lying.”
“She had no reason to. Great-Grandmother Marguerite did.” The woman made a little more sense to him now. “The slaves killed her husband and all their children. Our father was the only family she had left.”
Cathy gaped at him.
“The way Father talked to the midwife—he already knew.”
“But—” Cathy turned her attention to their father. Her hand went to her hair. “You mean—when Theodosia said I looked like a… She wasright?”
Joseph nodded.
“What are you two doing?” Hélène ran out to them and yanked on their arms to pull them after her. “I’mstarving!”
At the table on the porch, Mama chided them for their long faces and the fact that they weren’t eating. ‘I know Cathy is upset about Madame Talvande’s,’ Mama prompted. ‘Is Frederic neglecting you, Joseph? Is that what’s bothering you?’
Joseph could only nod. He certainly couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. Instead, Joseph studied him when his father’s attention was elsewhere. He saw the truth written in every line of his father’s face—in the broadness of his nose, the thickness of his lips, and the dense coils of his hair.Why have I never noticed this before?This man was born a slave. He should still be a slave.
He had no right to a woman like Mama. When he bound her wrists to his bed, did his father laugh? Did he congratulate himself because he had made a white woman his slave? Joseph stared at his father’s hand against Mama’s on the tabletop: at the difference in their skin, at his fingers trapping hers any time she was not signing. Joseph shivered in spite of the heat.
After luncheon,Joseph wanted to escape again, but he got no farther than the porch steps. He felt as if he’d never leave this island, or at least that a different boy would leave it. Before Sullivan’s Island became a summer resort, he remembered, it had served a different purpose: as a quarantine site for Africans.
His father found him on the steps. Joseph sprang up immediately and strode toward the ocean. “Joseph!” his father called behind him. “Come back, please!”
Joseph ignored him. He did not slow down till he felt wet sand beneath his bare feet. He did not stop till the tide washed up and splashed against his thighs. He was still in his trousers, but he didn’t care.
His father followed him, relentless, wading out to him through the next crest. “You understood my conversation with Ninon, didn’t you?”
Above the snap of the wind and the churning of the waves, Joseph was practically shouting. “How long have you known?”
“I didn’t, till today,” his father yelled in return.
Joseph glared at him over his shoulder.
He heard his father’s sigh of acknowledgement only because the man was so close. “I havesuspectedfor a long time. Since I was a child.”
