Cathy gaped at their father. “Mama doesn’t know?”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “No, and you mustn’t tell her. Promise me.”
“How could you not tell her?”
“Your mother—” He couldn’t meet Cathy’s eyes. “Your mother has enough to worry her.”
“How could you ask her to marry you and not?—”
Their father dropped his hands from Cathy’s shoulders. He looked past her toward the cottage as if Mama might be standing there, but the porch was empty. “When you fall in love yourself,ma minette, you’ll understand: how fragile it is—how terrifying.” His voice grew quieter with every word. “I’d hoped one day… But it’s too late now.”
Cathy glared at him. “Are you going to tell Hélène?”
“Do you think I should? Joseph? We should decide this together.”
“She needs to know,” Cathy murmured.
Joseph nodded.
When they entered the cottage,Mama asked why Joseph and his father had gone swimming in their trousers. She was distracted by Cathy, who’d started crying again. She buried her face in Mama’s puffy sleeve like she hadn’t done in years. Mama thought it was still about Madame Talvande’s school.
Their father found Hélène reading in her bedchamber. Joseph hovered at the threshold to listen while their father told Hélène that everything she knew about her grandmother was a lie. “A fairy tale,” their father called it.
Hélène did not cry or run away from him, but she looked very serious. They should have waited to tell her. Eight was too young tounderstand. Her first question was: “Do you remember your real mama?”
“I don’t.” Their father shook his head. “I’ve tried.” He stroked Hélène’s hair. She had always been his favorite. “I have dreams sometimes…but they’re only dreams.”
“I bet she was nicer than Great-Grandmama.”
He smiled back. “I bet she was.”
“May is nice. So are Henry and Agathe. Am I related to them now?”
He kissed the top of her head as if she’d said everything right. “We areallrelated,ma poulette. God created every one of us. Remember that.”
CHAPTER 13
Amongour Catholic negroes we sometimes find exemplary instances of that to them most difficult virtue,—purity. … negroes are, as a race, very prone to excesses, and unless restrained, plunge madly into the lowest depths of licentiousness.
— Patrick Lynch, Third Bishop of Charleston,Letter of a Missionary on Domestic Slavery in the Confederate States of America(1864)
Now more than ever before, Joseph knew he must become a Priest—if Holy Orders were even possible for a colored man. Was such hot blood capable of celibacy?
His sisters’ friends had started to peer at him and giggle, to look away shyly but invitingly. They seemed especially interested when Joseph was wearing his soutane and surplice. Little did they know what his vestments truly concealed.
In his encyclopedia on Saint-Domingue, Moreau de Saint-Méry had written:“The mulatto’s only master is pleasure.”Some scholars argued that the Curse of Ham resulted not only from Ham disrespecting his father but also from Ham violating God’s command that everyone on the Ark remain continent. Ham was the only one who disobeyed and lay with his wife, so his skin turnedblack to bear eternal testimony to his wickedness, and Ham’s descendants were cursed with servitude.
But weren’t Priests servants too? Wasn’t total devotion called “holy slavery”?
Joseph longed for a voice telling him what to do, for God to speak to him as He had to Noah and so many saints. Because Joseph heard nothing, did that mean he didn’t have a vocation? But hefeltsomething when he served at Mass, or even kneeling alone before the altar of the cathedral as he was doing now.
Their Saint Finbar’s wasn’t a proper cathedral, the Grands had told him many times. They had worshipped inside proper cathedrals in France. Those were made of stone. Bishop England’s was of wood, small, squat, and shingled. Its altar was simple, but it held what mattered: a Tabernacle—and inside it, the Real Presence of the living God. That was what Joseph felt, rippling the still air: power and peace, something—Someone—that started outside him but filled him, exciting him into action. Surely that meant Godwascalling him.
But Joseph wantedwords. He wanted God to cry out: “Whom shall I send?” so that Joseph could shout back: “Here am I, send me!”
Perhaps he was not showing sufficient humility. In the aisle of the cathedral, Joseph lay prostrate. He rested his forehead on his hands and begged for a sign.
“Take, Lord, all my liberty…” He had been following the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Joseph had recited this prayer so many times, he knew it by heart:
