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  For Sage and Ava, together, my heart and my soul.

  And for Jane DeGannes. This is my tribute to you.

  Our hearts break not

  Though they are ever broken,

  A froth of laughter

  Tops our sea of sorrows

  Light flickers on horizons;

  Our souls like sunflowers

  Turn toward the dawning:

  Our hope begins its orisons.

  —Eric Merton Roach, “The Flowering Rock”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful first to my parents for reading every page again and again: Jennifer DeGannes Francis, one of the seven wonders of my world, who loves me as a mother was meant to love—because of you sharing your stories, I could envision this story; and Leonard “Terry” Francis, who answered the phone when I most needed it, enthusiastically offered wonderful stories and insight, and who, by example, showed me how this is done. I love you both forever and forever.

  To my grandmother, Jane, for her courage. So many questions left unanswered. Writing this story helped me understand better.

  To my husband, Anand, my best friend. Thank you for your wisdom, enormous heart, and for giving me the space. You are the true love of my life. To my children, Sage and Ava, whose zaniness gave me fortitude, whose presence in my life made Marcia a possibility. Without you two, this book does not exist. To my sister, Halcyon, who said yes to watching the children during this story’s birth. You were the key to this journey. I am extremely proud of you and I will always love you.

  To my dear friends, Dr. Tricia Bent-Goodley, a woman whom I admire endlessly and who never let me forget HIS plan, and Tanisha Lyon Brown, for the belly laughs, for letting me cry, and for believing from the beginning. Love you both so much! Much love to Tebogo Skwambane and Raqiba Sealy Bourne for your friendship and love, to Amanda Bastien, a great friend, who helped me see the meaning behind every setback, to William Cameron for your endless encouragement, to Alexa Dupigny Samuels for always checking in, and to her father, Michael “Bunny” Dupigny, for a wonderful chat about coming to America. To the members of my original writing group: Fataima Ahmad-Warner, Jonathan Roth, Lois Berge, Toby Perkins, and Donna Sokol. You beat me down, then lifted me up. Thank you. To my in-laws, Anita Sharma and Khemraj Sharma, who fed me delicious food and kept me in prayer. I love you both. To my cousin, Neal Charles, for your patient explanations and who, without fail, always found the answers. To all those who, along with the grandmothers, took care of and loved my children when “Mommy” couldn’t be there: Patricia Williams, Teresa Leite, Mona Francis, Nadia Raphael, and Donna Raphael. It takes a village, indeed! To my agent, Victoria Sanders, the woman who has made me smile from the moment I met her—you ARE the best. Also to Bernadette Baker-Baughman, who kept things moving with great humor. To Benee Knauer, my first real fan—New York is alive and well because of you! To my wonderful editor, Barbara Jones, classy, smart, witty, and fierce—the perfect answer—thank you for being such a champion. To Maggie Richards at Holt for such unbridled enthusiasm. To Steve Rubin, Pat Eisemann, Melanie Denardo, Joanna Levine, and the entire team at Holt for all your support and encouragement. To the memory of Dr. F. Elaine DeLancey, who in her professorial brilliance taught me how to see. I hope I make you proud. To Morgan, my original muse—I miss you very much. To Karin Focke and Susan Lynn Martin, who saw it and then made me believe it. To Jane Wu Adams, for your healing hands. To my friends and family who kept me in their thoughts during this process. Thank you! And most importantly to God, who never let me forget that I had a dream that needed attention. Thank YOU.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sources

  About the Author

  Reading Group Gold

  Copyright

  1943

  WORLD WAR II, NO CARNIVAL.

  Chapter 1

  MARCIA GARCIA

  The cardboard box trembled. The panicked squeals from inside it grew louder as I hurried through the overgrown grass.

  The school day was half over. Children were noisily filling the road across from me, unbuttoning their stifling uniforms in the heat of the lunch hour, scrambling home. I’d long ago stopped wondering what they thought of me. I didn’t want to feel the pang of loss for that old, simpler life.

  I crouched to peek inside the box.

  A wild opossum, a manicou, clawed at the corners. For an amateur hunter, a manicou was a big prize—a delicacy that could stretch for days—but distaste for finishing the job held me back.

  “Can’t be lucky if you’s a coward,” my mother had always said.

  Over at the right side of the yard, under the purpleheart tree, the boys were digging rusty spoons into the hot earth, hoping the bitter mounds of caked black dirt they piled onto their warped utensils would magically turn into warm slices of coconut bread. They hadn’t noticed me yet, off to the left, watching our dinner plan its escape.

  I ran to the underside of the house, finding the hammer my father had used to repair the base of my mother’s sewing table before she died and long before the neighbors sent him away from the village. Returning to the trap, I steeled myself and reached inside.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  I snatched the manicou’s small furry neck. Its rigid body thrashed across the damp floor of the box, its slanty, black, rat-like eyes looked up at me, wide and frantic. The manicou’s pulse quickened against my fingertips. It was putting up an honorable fight. But it could change nothing about its fate. The same was true of me.

  I wouldn’t look into the darkened box again. Instead, I squeezed its coarse fur and its next layer of squishy flesh, harder and harder, pushing its flailing body down into the peeling bottom of the box. I slid out the hammer I had wedged between my thighs and with half-closed eyes, I smashed its skull over and over until, finally, the throbbing between my shaking, bloodied fingers came to an end.

  * * *

  The boys sat side by side on the cool slab floor. I spooned the boiled manicou from the pot and scraped away the spiky fur with the knife I’d sharpened on a yard stone. The slightness of its body in my palms made me feel sickly. I swallowed thick bile before making a delicate cut down the middle of the manicou’s spine, pulling back its slick skin to expose the soft, pink-grey meat.

  The boys moved onto their knees and watched through eager brown eyes as I sliced the meat into inch-wide strips, layering it with seasonings. Lemon juice, salt, black pepper, fresh chunks of garlic, onion. I lifted the bowl to their noses, letting them smell the flavors seeping into the meat before I tossed
the tender, sticky pieces with my fingers. I never tired of seeing their awe at my performing the simplest tasks. I loved them for being with me when there was no one else left.

  I nudged them aside and relit the coal pot. The shimmery flames smacked the pot’s rusty bottom. The boys drooled. I passed my shirt over their mouths and tried to shoo them away, but they refused. The sugar melted into the hot oil, turning silvery black. I slid the damp cuts into the searing pot. The smoke swallowed us. The coconut milk whitened the pieces, offering a promising sizzle.

  My plan that afternoon was to feed the boys early and get them to my neighbor, Carol Ann, so I could leave on time for my appointment with Mrs. Duncan in Tunapuna. I wanted to avoid the after-school ruckus and the judgmental eyes. But it took a few hours for the tough meat to soften and stew, and then the boys took their time, massaging each bite between their small teeth.

  “Eat up,” I said.

  I wiped their faces, cleaned their ears, then set aside slivers for each of the next four days. Rice, bread, cassava, breadfruit—any one of those would accompany the leftover meat and gravy quite nicely.

  I hurried the boys to Carol Ann’s, where they both pressed their backs against her door and began to cry.

  “Come. Let her go,” Carol Ann said, yanking at their shirtsleeves.

  Being a seamstress required house calls. And living way out in Blanchisseuse, where roads were often blocked by landslides, for weeks or even months, I could never be sure when I would make it back. Carol Ann, a client whose taste didn’t match her budget, had been kind enough, on occasion, to mind them for me, though I long suspected by the way she chewed the inside of her cheek that she’d rather repay her debt to me any other way.

  * * *

  In Tunapuna, I delivered four drop-waist dresses before arriving at the top of Mrs. Duncan’s road. Although Mrs. Duncan had been my mother’s most loyal customer and likely wouldn’t have cared that I was ten minutes late, I despised the tardiness. I was sixteen years old. It was difficult getting customers to trust me. Sticking to my word, keeping my mother’s past clients happy, kept food on the table.

  I walked briskly with the sun disappearing behind a sky half-full of dust-colored clouds. I smiled at two ladies who stood near the road chatting with metal spoons in their hands. The thick scents of their aromatic foods boiling outside in heavy pots reminded me that I hadn’t eaten enough.

  I tapped on Mrs. Duncan’s door. I had scrubbed my fingers with vinegar and lemon juice before leaving home, but as they gripped Mrs. Duncan’s dress box, I could still smell the musky manicou fur.

  “Eh, who knockin’ the door?” came the deep bass voice of Inspector Duncan, Mrs. Duncan’s husband.

  I could hear Mrs. Duncan sucking her teeth for a long cheups. “Take two steps and open the door, David.”

  “Boy, you smart to stay to yourself,” Inspector Duncan joked to someone. “Get married and from the day you bring she home, you only gettin’ lip.”

  Thunderous footfalls grew close. I wiped thumb-size drops of rain from my face. I had to get out of Tunapuna within the hour or I wouldn’t make it back to Blanchisseuse in a rainstorm without flapping all the day’s money at some taxi driver who’d complain that “Nobody in dey right mind would leave Blanchisseuse one day and expect to go back de same day.”

  Inspector Duncan finally opened the door, gulping the last of what smelled like a spicy puncheon rum. “Good afternoon.” His hands were each the length of a newborn baby. His face sank into pillowy, purple-black, shiny skin that covered a head the size of a small boulder.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  I smiled but could say nothing else. My face had reddened at the sight of the East Indian man sitting on the floral-printed couch, cradling a glass, staring at me.

  He was quite handsome, I’ll admit. But he was old. Probably twenty-two or twenty-three. His skin, a deep-fried, golden brown and smooth like velvet pile. The outline of his lips like a bow tie. His nose, downward sloping and strong, with a black mole at its tip. His midnight-black shoes shone like marble, and his shirt, lightly starched, caressed his small muscular frame.

  I tried to release his gaze, but his large, dark eyes attached themselves to me. Eyes like a black, hot night. Eyes that made me want to crawl into something small and cool and shadowy.

  “Jennifer!” Inspector Duncan called. “The young lady … uh … Ma-Marcia … is here with your dress. Come back in here!”

  Mrs. Duncan shrieked with delight, wiping her hands on a red and white cotton apron I’d given her as a gift. When she smiled, her cheeks grew into small, firm circles. “Oh, my dressmaker! Come, chile.” She sweetly scooted her husband aside. “Don’t mind them two old fellas. They don’t teach manners in the police force.”

  Again, I tried to shake off the Indian fella’s gaze. Staring straight at him and making sure not to be detected by the Duncans, I rolled my eyes to the top of my head.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Duncan,” I said, patting her hand.

  “This chile is always so polite,” she said.

  The fitting took only fifteen minutes, but by the time we returned to the parlor, Inspector Duncan’s patience with his wife had worn thin. “Jennifer?” he said, with a hard cheups. “Where’s the food? We’re hungry.”

  I was pretty certain their conversation would wind up in a fight. I mumbled, “Good night,” closing the door behind me. The Indian fella sat, huddled in his corner seat, watching me leave.

  If I had any luck I’d catch the last bus and make it back to Blanchisseuse before midnight. If I didn’t, I would have to beg Mrs. Duncan to let me stay the night and run off early the next morning so as not to leave Carol Ann in a pinch past lunchtime.

  It was raining harder. I scrambled toward the bus stop where a quiet crowd had already gathered. Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind me. I heard someone say “Hello,” breathlessly, at my back. I didn’t bother to turn around.

  “Sorry,” the voice said, moving closer. “I said ‘hello.’”

  Finally, I turned. The Indian fella from the Duncans’ couch. Had he left before Mrs. Duncan’s dinner was served?

  “Hello.” The wetness on my bare arms left me so chilly, even my voice shook.

  “We just met at the Duncan house up the street there,” he said.

  The bulging, bright headlights of the bus caught my attention. I didn’t have time for that fella’s gibberish. “We didn’t meet,” I said.

  The bus forced its way through new puddles, and I squeezed between two skinny fellas in the middle of the line. Tapping my wet sandals against the muddied walk, I climbed the steps, positioned myself in the first empty seat I could find, and never once looked back.

  FAROUK KARAM

  I wasn’t sure why I wanted to see that gal. She was saucy. Saucy women were too much of a headache for me. Actually, women, saucy or not, were too much of a headache for me. In my twenty-three years, I hadn’t yet met a gal who coulda kept my interest longer than three weeks. I didn’t think she would be any different, but the fun was in the hunt, eh?

  My dinner at Inspector Duncan’s house had marked the first evening of my monthlong holiday. I’d hoped to take a quick trip to Tobago, but my money wasn’t feeling right, so I decided to just lime with a few fellas on the weekends, head out for a couple of days to Maracas Bay, and perhaps go down south to visit some old school friends in Princes Town. You know, enjoy myself. How I ended up way north in Blanchisseuse was beyond me. A cousin I had met maybe twice lived in Blanchisseuse-proper. My thought was, if I found that gal and wanted to spend a little time with her, I could stay with my cousin for maybe a week, swim and fish in Marianne Bay, talk to the gal a bit, and then head back into town.

  I knew it wouldn’t be the most luxurious way to spend my holiday. People in Blanchisseuse were still dragging their bare heels along hot dirt roads, growing their own produce, and sweating to keep their one or two underfed fowls from straying into a greedy neighbor’s yard. The pace would be sl
ow. But for a city boy like me, an easygoing place like Blanchisseuse could be a good change.

  During my school years I had learned that when the captain of the British surveying engineers sailed around Trinidad in 1797, he came to a settlement at the mouth of a river. A place the Spaniards had called Madamas after the women who washed their families’ clothes there. A place the French settlers had translated to Blanchisseuse, meaning “washer-woman.” It was this place, this Blanchisseuse, that the British captain had described as “lush and beautiful.”

  I had only been twice before, but what I most remembered about Blanchisseuse was the quiet. At the end of the main road where the spring bridge arched over the Marianne River had to be the quietest place on earth. I could sit on that bridge six hours a day and not hear one other human sound except my own breath rattling over the trickling water and my own feet tapping in rhythm to the rustling of a million trees. And when that river detoured into some thick woodlands I’d probably never see, my imagination had no choice but to roam wild and free with it.

  In Blanchisseuse, people could live simple lives. While mothers scrubbed tattered clothes and gossiped alongside friends, children played on steep, rugged cliffs, dove into frigid, fresh water, and laughed by the riverside, half-naked, for long afternoons.

  Me showing up there asking the neighbors questions and trying to learn that gal’s routine naturally upset some things. People in Blanchisseuse didn’t want to be bothered by outsiders. But there was something else. I had been a policeman for years, and there was something about the way those neighbors were holding back words that didn’t set well.

  * * *

  By the way her house sat at an angle, it was difficult from the road to tell how far it stretched behind the front door. It didn’t seem like much. Crooked and unsteady on its legs, it wasn’t any wider than two outhouses squeezed together. Close to the porch steps, heaps of black-brown dirt were piled to one side, with no sign of grass ever having grown there. There were no fruit-bearing trees in the yard, which was almost impossible in Trinidad, and wild bamboo stalks, seemingly misplaced, sat in a patch of tall grass covering the only window on the left side of the house.