Technically, Hélène and Liam were condemning their children to two decades of indentured servitude and themselves to seven years. Because of Cathy and Perry, Joseph had asked his father if there was a law against amalgamation in South Carolina. There wasn’t—but there was a colonial statute calling intimate relations between whites and blacks “unnatural and inordinate copulation” and making the perpetrators and children of such offenses into virtual slaves.
Joseph thought Miss Conley close to perfection. He could hardly object to her brother marrying his sister. This union would make Miss Conley a permanent part of Joseph’s life. He would have a legitimate reason to worry about her and enjoy her company, because they would be family. In the eyes of the Church and the law, Joseph and Miss Conley would become brother and sister. Intimate yet entirely safe.
In June,Joseph’s father and Bishop England returned from Haiti, sunburned but otherwise intact. Now there were two colored Priests in the Americas: during the mission, His Lordship had ordained a Mr. Paddington, who had been born in Haiti and educated in Ireland and Rome.
Bishop England related this over dinner in the presbytery. Joseph’s father didn’t wait for his weekly visit; he found Joseph in the Biblical garden the next morning, eager to speak and heedless of anyone who might overhear.
Joseph hurried him into the garden shed and closed the door. Until they lived in a kinder world, such revelations belonged in theshadows. While Joseph tidied his tools, his father recounted his journey to meet his mother. Joseph could hear it in his father’s voice: part of him had wanted to stay in Haiti.
In Great-Grandmother Marguerite’s day, Charleston’s free blacks had had to purchase numbered copper badges to wear on their breasts at all times or they’d risk the Work House. Even now, the law demanded that slaves hired out by their masters wear such badges—much like the city’s dogs. Yet the way Joseph’s father spoke about their African relatives, it was as if he wore an invisible badge over his heart—and he was proud of that badge, no matter its cost.
“I have six brothers and sisters and nineteen nieces and nephews. My mother and her husband have a little land but not much money.” Joseph’s father stared through the wall of the garden shed all the way to Haiti and raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Yet they are content. They have each other, and they are free. I wish you could have met them, Joseph. My mother has a scar on the side of her head, and she’s missing the top of her right ear—because my grandmothershother in order to steal me. My mother was sixteen years old when it happened—fourteen when she gave birth to me. We cried forhoursand talked for two days straight. Her mother’s people, my people, your people—they’re called the Yoruba. My mother’s true name is Ìfé.”
Joseph could only guess at how that might be spelled, but the pronunciation wasn’t far from her French name, Ève.
“Before I was baptized René, my mother named me Ekúndayò.”
How easily his father might have been someone else. How easily Joseph and his sisters might never have been born.
“Ekúndayò,” his father repeated. He scratched at the peeling skin of his sunburned wrist, but he was smiling. “It means: ‘sorrow becomes happiness.’”
CHAPTER 23
The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.
— Dr. William Acton,Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs(1857)
After more than a year in Charleston, the Conleys’ fortunes had not altered. Liam remained a copyist, Miss Conley a catechist and seamstress. At least Joseph’s mother and grandmother seemed to be warming to the Irish brother and sister. Bereft of Cathy and Perry, the Lazare women welcomed the Conleys for another Christmas holiday. Hélène and Miss Conley had become as close as sisters—in truth, closer than Hélène and Cathy had been. They called each other “Ellie” and “Tessa” and cherished their shared secret: someday, they would be sisters-in-law.
While Hélène and Miss Conley taught each other French and Irish carols at the piano, Liam watched them with a broad smile. He exchanged knowing looks with Joseph and his father.Do you see?the Irishman’s expression said.We’re already a family.Miss Conley was even wearing one of Hélène’s altered gowns. Liam’s coat must be the finest he owned; but its elbows showed clearly his sister’s repairs.
Shortly after the Feast of Saint Valentine, Joseph sat in the confessional, leaning into the winter light that entered through the barred door so he could read his breviary while he waited for penitents. He’d had few today, all seminarians. Most people confessed and received the Eucharist only at Christmas and Easter.
A few members of his congregation were more scrupulous, like Miss Conley. Every Sunday, she knelt at the rail to receive the Body of Christ from him. But she had never confessed to him. Sometimes Joseph worried that he’d done something to make her distrust him. Her countenance brightened whenever she saw him; she seemed to enjoy their conversations as much as he did. But some kind of unease remained hidden behind her eyes. Might Miss Conley suspect how he struggled to admire only her soul?
Then Joseph reminded himself that no one in his family had chosen him for a confessor. He recalled how much easier it had been for him to make a good confession in Paris, where all the Priests had been strangers.
Finally Joseph heard the rustle of skirts that announced a female penitent. He closed his breviary and sat upright. Even with the grille, he was careful to shield his eyes with a cupped hand.
“Bless me, Father,” the young woman whispered beside him. “I confess that I am sinfully happy!”
Joseph sighed, dropped his hand, and abandoned the rules. “Good afternoon, Hélène.”
For a moment, his sister grinned at him through the grille, but it quickly turned into a pout. “Don’t you want to knowwhyI am sinfully happy?”
“Only if you’re going to make aproperConfession. You don’t sound at all contrite.”
“I’m not!” At least she seemed a little sorry aboutthat. “But I knew you’d be here, and I couldn’t wait to tell you!”
“This is aSacrament, Ellie.”
“No one else is waiting!”
“A real penitent could arrive at any moment.”
“Then I shall tell you my newsoutside.” Hélène flung aside her curtain. Then she yanked open the door of the confessional booth, exposing Joseph to the light.
He squinted and scowled up at her. “Hélène! This is entirely inappropriate!”
