“Then how could you do this to us?” Again and again the ocean smashed into them, but Joseph refused to retreat. If only that foam could wash him white.
At the corner of his vision, he saw his father narrow his eyes. “What exactly have I done?”
You “suspected” what you were, and you violated Mama anyway!Even now, Joseph could not say it aloud. “You took advantage of the Grands! They didn’t know, did they?” Every wave sucked at the sand around his feet, burying him deeper. “If I hadn’t overheard, would you ever have told me?”
His father hesitated before he replied. “No.”
“Why not?!”
“Because of the way you’re acting right now!” Joseph’s father spread his hands as if the answer were obvious. “For Heaven’s sake, son, I haven’t given you syphilis! Everyone acts as though African blood is some kind of curse.”
Itwas. It even had a name: the Curse of Ham. Ham had seen his father Noah naked and mocked him, so Noah cursed Ham and his descendants with black skin. The curse followed all of them, no matter how distant the connection: Joseph had heard that black skin could show up in children whose parents looked white.
“It’s a lie, but it issodeep…” his father continued with all the passion of his race. “I think some of the slaves believe it—that they are worthless, that they areless.”
If everyone treated you like you were less, then you were. Joseph stared down at the buried stumps where his feet had been. He wished the sand would cover him completely, or that the waves would carry him out to sea.
“I know what you’re feeling, Joseph, because I’ve felt it too. I wanted to spare you that. I know what that feeling has done to your mother. Shedespisesherself. She thinks it’s a sin to be special. She wants to disappear into God like a nun. It doesn’t have to be like that. I hope someday you’ll meet the deaf men I knew in Paris. They’reproudof who they are. Their deafness—something the rest of the world sees as a burden—it makes them stronger. It makes their lives richer than you or I can imagine.”
When his father gripped his shoulder, Joseph flinched but did not pull away. The sand held him fast.
“You must never, ever think there is anything wrong with you, Joseph.I’m the mistake.Youwere desired, anticipated, welcomed…”
Joseph closed his eyes against his father’s lies. If only he could close his ears too.
“Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are.”
In his mind’s eye, Joseph saw only Mama bound to her bedposts—all the proof he needed that therewassomething very, very wrong with his father, with him.
Over the churning of the waves, it took both of them a minute to realize that a new voice was crying out behind them: “Papa? Papa!”
Joseph opened his eyes and turned his head to see Cathy standing above the reach of the water. Even from this distance, tears glistened on her cheeks.
“I’m coming,ma minette!” Their father climbed the beach toward her.
Joseph dragged himself from the sand and followed.
Cathy didn’t move. “Joseph told me.”
Their father stopped just shy of her. “I wish he’d let me do that.”
I wish you weren’t our father, Joseph thought.
“Then it’s true?” Cathy peered up desperately at their father. “You’re really a… And I’m—a quadroon? An octoon?”
“You are the same beautiful girl you were this morning.”
“But I might have looked like…” She was trembling. “If I have babies,theymight look like…”
“I don’t think that’s possible, unless you marry a colored man.”
“I don’twantto marry a colored man!”
“You can marry whomever you like,ma minette.”
“No I can’t! I’d have to tell him!”
“He hasn’t told Mama,” Joseph cut in.
