“A physician?”
“’Tis nothing to worry over, son—simply a confirmation of your good health.” Bishop England stood. “I will ask Dr. Moretti. Perhaps he can even teach you a little Italian! Now, have you discussed your vocation with your family?”
“I will.” Joseph knew most of them would be pleased. He suspected his father would be furious.
After Joseph crossed Queen Street,he paused at the sight of the two steeples ahead: the Unitarian Church and St. John’s Lutheran. He thought of the congregations who assembled thereevery Sunday and the graves in those churchyards: so many lost souls… Once he was a Priest, Joseph could baptize them and grant them Absolution; he could save all those people—the living ones, at least. All he had to do was convince his father.
Resolutely, Joseph continued down Archdale Street toward home. He found a tall, grey-haired man standing outside their gate. The man turned at his approach, and Joseph slowed. It was Philippe Noisette, holding a cutting in a pot. “Ah, Joseph! What fortunate timing. I am in need of an ambassador.” Noisette lowered his voice. “Iknowyour mother saw me, but she is pretending she didn’t.”
Joseph was tall enough now to peer through the slats at the top of their gate, and he followed the Frenchman’s gaze into their yard. Mama strolled the garden beds alongside the piazza, selecting blooms to take inside. Careful to keep her back to the gate, she glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder and scowled at Noisette. Deafness had few advantages, but the freedom to ignore someone you didn’t like was one of them.
“The sign says your father is out, but I promised him this cutting.” Noisette extended the flower-pot, so Joseph had to look back at him. “Would you take it? It’s rooted, but best to leave it in the pot another week.”
Reluctantly Joseph accepted the cutting. For a minute, he only stood there on the sidewalk and stared at the small severed branch. Joseph wanted nothing to do with this man or his plants. Noisette lived in sin with one of his slaves; he could legally sell his own children—and yet…that also meant heunderstoodthe Curse of Ham in a way Bishop England never could. Perhaps African blood did not matter to God, but it mattered to everyone else. “You know about my father, don’t you?”
Noisette’s caution gave Joseph his answer. The Frenchman glanced again toward Mama. She glared back and hurried into the house, slamming the door behind her. Finally Noisette replied: “I know he is a skilled physician, a loyal friend, a devoted husband, and a doting father.”
Joseph clenched his teeth. “Imeanabout…” He was not going to say it aloud. They were completely exposed, but he wasn’t about to invite Noisette in. Joseph glanced behind him. Two men approached on the other side of Archdale Street, deep in their own conversation. Strangers, Joseph told himself, who would not draw conclusions from a few guarded French words.
Noisette leaned closer and dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “What I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is this, Joseph: the prevailing theories that mulattos inherit the worst of each race, that they’re weak, even sterile—it’s absolute rubbish.” He pointed to the cutting in Joseph’s hands. “Noisette roses have been so successful because they possess the qualities of bothRosa moschataandRosa chinensis. They don’tloseanything. Botanythriveson hybrids: taking two good things and combining them to make somethinggreat.”
People weren’t plants.
“Other men of science—andmen of color—will argue that mulattos are superior to negroes because of their white blood. That is equally ridiculous. I know my children’s virtues didn’t come from me alone. Your father’s intelligence, his humor, his compassion, his courage—do you really thinkallof that derives from his French blood? Do you really believe that youhave inherited nothing good from him and his mother?”
Perhaps Joseph’s father was intelligent, but so was Satan. His father’s humor was usually ribald. As for hiscompassion… Where was the compassion—or the courage—in raping a deaf woman? Noisette saw only what he wanted to see.
CHAPTER 14
His situation is peculiarly unfortunate and disturbing…
— “The Humble Petition of Philippe Stanislaus Noisette” to emancipate Celestine and their children, denied 1820s
Grandmama took her meals with them now, so Joseph could tell everyone about his vocation at once. He was so anxious he could hardly eat, yet the words wouldn’t leave his tongue. When Cathy asked to be excused, finally he managed: “Wait—I have…” Haltingly his hands followed his speech so that Mama would understand too. “I talked to Bishop England today, about attending the College of the Propaganda in Rome.”
“Are you going to be a Priest?” Hélène gasped in delight.
“I want to be,” Joseph answered, careful to avoid his father’s stare.
“Rome!” Grandmama hurried down the table to kiss the top of his head. “Your grandfather would beso proud!”
Mama broke her rule about embraces. In fact, Joseph wondered if she’d ever let him go.
‘The Propaganda hasn’t accepted me yet,’he reminded her.
‘They will,’ she assured him with a smile on her lips but tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘Iknowthey will!’
“They’re fools if they don’t,” Cathy agreed.
Finally Joseph had no choice but to meet his father’s eyes.
He stood scowling at the end of the table. “May I speak to you in my office, Joseph?”
He knew it wasn’t really a question. So he left the approval of his sisters, his Mama, and his Grandmama to obey.
His father told Joseph to close the door behind him. At first, he couldn’t even look at Joseph. He only stared at his painting of Saint Denis, one hand braced against the wall and the other hanging limply at his side. The decapitated forms of Denis’s fellow martyrs lay bleeding at the edges of the frame. At the center, Denis’s headless body groped for what it lacked. In the dim light that penetrated the white curtains, his father’s skin resembled the martyrs’: he was the color of a corpse. “I have dreaded this day,” Joseph’s father murmured without turning. How different his reaction was from Bishop England’s. “Must God havebothmy sons?”
At first, Joseph bristled at such an equation. His brother Christophe wasdead. Then Joseph remembered that becoming a Priest was a kind of death. Wasn’t that what he wanted, to die and be born again, better than before? He would enter seminary as a sinful colored boy but emerge as pure and white as new snow. He would cease to belong to his family, because he would belong to God andallfamilies. He would wear black to remind himself and everyone else that he was dead to the world.
