Jessamine

Chapter 1 - Arabella

She draws nearer, nearer. I can feel her in the air...a disturbance, a shiver...the way I know when rain is coming long before it sweeps in from the sea beyond Headley Point. She is coming, and we will speak. We have a lot in common, we two, though she is alive and I am not.

Chapter 2 - Grace

The heat body–slams me as I emerge from the plane; a heat like the island is on fire, the flames around the corner, just out of sight. I don’t know how I will stand it but Julian is waiting for me in the Arrivals area. Back in Philly, his complexion was almost the same almond shade as mine, but the Caribbean sun has burnished his skin to a deep coffee. He looks good. The smile on his face broadens as he sees me. He raises his open arms.

I drop my bags and run to him. I hold him tight, and breathe deeply, loving the musky man–smell of him.

Is this all your stuff? he asks, looking at my two suitcases and my carry–on.

They will do until the container gets here. The shipping company promised me three weeks. I have not let go of him. I’ve not seen him in six months, and I’ve missed him as much as I’d miss my eyes were a thief to take them from me in the night. He kisses me, and I know he knows everything I’m feeling. A little smile plays around his mouth as if this knowledge is a secret sweet to him.

He nods to a man in a red polo shirt who picks up the suitcases and follows us to the car.

Yo, Mr. Hylton.

How’s it going, Mr. Hylton?

People watch me and call out to him as we walk over to the airport’s small parking lot. Julian waves to them, answering some by name. Their expressions as they watch me range from calculating curiosity to mischievous lechery. Foreign women are seen here either as status symbols or sexual doormats. Julian blames it on tourism.

Do you know everyone now? I ask to distract myself. I have never lived in a city of less than a million people, and I think that will probably be the hardest adjustment. St. Crescens’ thirty–two thousand worry me.

Julian laughs. Not everybody. Most, though. His tone is super–confident. It is the way he sounds when he talks about the new political party he has formed with his friends. I do not share his confidence but I’ve just arrived and I’m an American. I’m terrified he’s making a mistake. He’s come back to St. Crescens to live after twenty–one years in the States and now I have followed him here, playing the dutiful wife, but my thoughts are clouded with doubts.

He points his remote at a shiny, silver Land Cruiser which beeps a response as the porter takes my suitcases around to the back. I finally release my hold on my husband and walk around to climb in the passenger seat. The Land Cruiser is new, its leather interior pristine, the dashboard daunting in its precise array of instruments. In the rear–view mirror, I see Julian peel a couple of purple–colored dollars from his clip to pay the man. The St. Crescens dollar is worth half of the American but St. Crescians, as they call themselves, are very proud of their money.

How’re Dad and Mother July? he asks, as he gets in and starts the car. Mother July is his pet name for my mother, July Sommers.

They’re fine. Mom went crazy at a rose sale a couple days ago. She bought off probably their entire stock of white ones so now she’s stumped about just where she’s going to put them all. She wants to be able to see them from the house.

He nods. Below the patio would be a great area.

I visualize the stone patio with its wide curving steps that lead down to a grassy area and the garden beyond.

Along the path, you mean?

No, right below the patio. Along the wall.

He’s right. The dark gray of the wall’s stones would be the perfect backdrop for the potent beauty of white roses.

I’ll tell her you suggested it. You know she respects your taste. It’s true. My mother often turns to Julian when making decisions about the house. A graduate of Stanford’s School of Architecture, design comes naturally to him. He has a gift for it. After he did Senator Langley’s home in Sag Harbor Hills thirteen years ago, a whole new high–powered crowd sought out his services, and his fees went through an already high roof. This is the reason why none of our friends understand why he’s given everything up to return to a small island they only heard about through him.

You know, there’s been a lot of development in the capital since you were here last, Julian says.

He brought me here eleven years ago, before we were married, and I haven’t been back since. Not because I didn’t like the island. I just found it hard to find the time and coordinate my schedule with his. Now, I stare out the window as we head up one of the island’s steep hills. The lush, direct beauty of the island, its towering hills, the shining emerald growth, the aquamarine of the sea shading to indigo as it deepens and disappears into the horizon; these are the things of which my memories are formed.

Wolverton was nice just the way it was, I say. In fact, it was already overcrowded. Too many cars and too many people.

And pedestrians weaving in and out of cars. Thirty–three years of the United People’s Movement and people still have no protection from vehicular traffic in the nation’s capital.

The People’s National Party is taking a stand for sidewalks? I am joking but Julian doesn’t smile.

He glances at me, his face completely serious. That and much more.

I hope politics hasn’t robbed him of his sense of humor.

How is your grandmother? I ask to change the subject.

The same as usual. She says she doesn’t want to live in Serenity Village any more. She wants to move out, maybe come live with us.

I digest this in silence. Julian’s grandmother refused to meet me when I visited, and she refused to come to Philly to our wedding. Not because she’s frail or because she’s unwell, though she’s in her late eighties but because she had never been off the island. She told Julian that if God meant for man to fly, he would have given us wings. Julian was laughing when he told me but I never really got the joke.

She says she’s ready to meet you now.

What’s changed?

You’ve come here to live so she can’t continue pretending you don’t exist. She says she’ll make a St. Crescian woman out of you in no time. She also says she can’t wait for the babies. Julian shoots me a sidelong glance.

There are no babies, I point out, as if this has escaped his attention.

She says there will be. ‘Hylton men have strong seed.’ That’s a direct quote.

Oh, God.

Don’t worry. Julian pats my thigh. Her bark is worse than her bite.

We agreed when we first got married to postpone having a family, and we’ve never really talked about it again. We’ve both had too much going on so it’s never been an issue but I can’t imagine a worse time to have a baby than now when nothing is certain and everything is in flux.

I stare out the window as the road enters a village. Julian slows the Cruiser, on the lookout for reckless children and animals. An old woman waves to us from the verandah of a house no bigger than the living room in our Philly home. Her toothless mouth widens in a huge smile. I wonder who she thinks we are. I wave back and she leans forward, her arms undulating in a semaphore of welcome. She’s mouthing something but I can’t make out the words and then she’s out of sight.

A chicken flies across the road, an admiring rooster in hot pursuit.

Ahead, a group of men are sitting outside a small, wooden shop painted in the yellow and blue colors of the local beer. They whistle at me until one of them realizes who is driving and then they begin to yell, P.N.P! P.N.P! Hylton! Hylton! Julian slows and acknowledges them with a few staccato bursts of the car horn. He waves his free arm out the window in wide, extravagant arcs.

See! he says as we drive on. The people are with us. The country people. They are the real backbone of this nation but they’ve been taken for granted for so long it’s like we’ve relegated them to the past. See that. He nods at a man crouching under a standpipe in his underwear. The man’s back and arms are shiny with lather. They don’t have running water in their homes. Some of them don’t even have electricity. A man died just last week in the Sandy Bay area of Wolverton, electrocuted trying to steal power. The Electricity Department warns them but they don’t listen.

I crane my head to look back at the bather. When our eyes meet, the man spits on the side then nods to me, his mouth open, his lips drawn back from his teeth in an unconscious parody of the old woman’s smile. I turn back, unsettled, suddenly anxious. Is it me he’s objecting to? I glance at Julian but his eyes are on the road now that we are out of the village.

Do you want me to put on the air conditioning? he asks.

What?

The air conditioning. You look really hot.

I pull down the sun visor on my side and check the mirror. It’s true. My cheeks are covered in a light film of perspiration and strands of my shoulder–length hair are plastered to my neck.

Okay.

He adjusts the controls and fiddles with the vents so the air comes my way.

I start to bring up my window but he stops me.

People here think you’re stoosh if you drive with the windows up. They want to know you’ll hear them if they shout to you.

Stoosh?

You know, snobby.

You’re kidding me.

Julian shrugs.

We drive on, over and through a gully created by tall, mossy boulders covered with ferns and creeping, wide–leaved plants I don’t know the name of.

You’re going to love Jessamine. Now that the renovations are through, it’s perfect.

Fifteen rooms, right? I want to be as enamored of this house as he is but I’ve been too busy packing, saying good–bye to family and friends, mentoring my replacement, waving off the jokes of colleagues and shopping to pay close attention to all the details.

It had about eighteen but I got the contractor to knock down a couple walls.

Is that safe? I have a sudden vision of the house collapsing on itself as we sleep, its walls unequal to the task of keeping the roof over our heads.

Yes, don’t worry. They weren’t essential. We’ll be there soon. Are you excited?

I nod. And it has a garden, you said?

Yes. In the front courtyard, along the walls there are plants but I haven’t really looked at them so I don’t know if they’re just weeds. There’s an old water fountain, too, that I think we can get to work again. Most of the space is around the back. I’m having it cleared out so you can try your hand at landscaping.

In Philly, we lived in a Victorian townhouse Julian renovated on Irving Street. There had been a spacious deck on which I’d always planned to start a container garden but I’d never had the time. I’m looking forward to a yard, a space I can shape in the same way Julian shapes his buildings and makes statements out of stone and steel.

She comes. She comes.

I get a sudden odd feeling and goose bumps pimple the skin on my arms. I rub them away.

You’re just acclimatizing, Julian says, reaching for my hand.

Of course, I say, but it had felt like something more. I hope I am not coming down with something. I am always among the first to catch whatever is going around.

We emerge from the gully and begin to coast down another hillside. Wolverton, the capital of St. Crescens, lies before us in a u–shaped harbor. I remember that when I’d visited, a cruise ship pier was under construction. Today, the brilliant white of three of the huge ships contrasts sharply with the blue of the sea and the green of the hills. The capital seems tiny in comparison to these floating behemoths.

We didn’t come in this way last time, did we?

No, but this road goes right past our house.

Our house. It sounds good, really good. I try not to wonder what will happen if he doesn’t win, if his party loses the elections. There can’t be that much of a demand for architects on a fifty–two square–mile island. Will he give up and come back home to Philly? Or will he try and make a go of it here? We’ve agreed that I will take the year off from working to settle in but what if, afterward, I can’t find a job? These are the kinds of doubts I have worried about at night but now I push them firmly away. We are here together, and that is what matters. That is what matters most, I repeat to myself.

Chapter 3 - Arabella

My journey to St. Crescens began before I even knew the island existed. It began with the first breath I took of mango–scented air and it quickened as India, the country of my birth, tightened itself around my heart like a loving and powerful serpent. Years after I’d left it, my memories of that vast sub–continent were like a siren song in my blood, drawing me across the Atlantic in search of heat and life and color.

My mother died first. She went to sleep one night during the monsoon season and never opened her eyes on this world again. I was two years old. My father, a man as remote as the purple hills we could see from our bungalow in the Peshawar cantonment, lived thirteen years more. He was an army officer. We were strangers to each other, polite but distant. I learned early on that expressions of affection made him nervous and that my childish conversations baffled him.

I had my ayah, Armina, for company and, from my sixth birthday, Nauri, who was my age. Nauri came to the cantonment every week with her father to sell the brass jars and the chattis and the other things the cooks of the station needed. Nauri was lucky and lived in Peshawar, the city, with her mother and father and her whole family.

I loved Peshawar. It was so unlike the cantonment with its rigid schedules, its precision and orderliness which made it seem like some dull pond beside the tumultuous river of life that coursed through the city. I went there as often as I could. I was enthralled by the saddhus and the smell of jellabies being fried in the open. I never tired of the glorious bazaars with their linens and quilts flapping in the wind and their displays of colored glass bangles clinking and glinting in the sun. And the people, oh, the people. How I loved to watch them walk by; the bearded Sikhs resplendent in their turbans, the chattering eunuchs in their richly–colored saris, the water carriers balancing great brass jars on their heads, and here and there, the dark men of the south, made mysterious by the rarity of their sighting.

Nauri explained why Indian mothers put lampblack around the eyes of their babies and why people felt compelled to give the saddhus money instead of telling them to go and earn a living, like everybody else. She told me about caste and explained why untouchables covered their mouths when speaking to those of higher caste and why they hid if a Brahmin approached so as not to pollute his eyes. We argued about that. It is too unfair, I cried. She’d shot back that it was only because I was casteless, like all foreigners, that I thought that way. She said that this was why the feringhi sought to abolish the old customs, to erase the shame of being without caste.

On her thirteenth birthday, Nauri’s father sent her away to her betrothed and his family in a hill village, and my life was dust in my mouth after that. I thought I would choke on it. If I was already a solitary child before Nauri left, after she was gone my solitude closed in around me like a cloak. I hardly ever left the house or the cantonment, my excursions to the city being of little value now that my interpreter was gone.

Were it not for my teachers who came to the bungalow every day, I would have forgotten the sound of my voice for my ayah was a small, quiet woman. When I had no classes, the house was silent.

Then my father died in a skirmish in the purple hills and people remembered me long enough to send me to England; to his sister’s family. High time too, I heard them say. I was fifteen. At the train station on the day of my departure for Bombay, the tears of my ayah flowed freely, mingling with those spilling from my own eyes until I did not know whose held the most sorrow. On the shuddering train and later, on the ship that took me to my parents’ country, I came to think of loss as a thing I carried with me, something heavy and tangible like the brass jars of the water carriers. Like some tragic heroine in a Greek myth, I would never be able to put it down.

How dreary and strange Mother England seemed after India. The cold seeped into my bones, and I felt myself becoming as gray and wretched as the sky over London. I missed the constant tumult of noise most, even above the smells and the colors and the jellabies. Peshawar, of course, had been a clamorous place but the peculiar noises of the cantonment had their own charm. The shouts of the regiments on parade, the music and laughter from the neighboring bungalows, and the dramatic quarrels of the servants were the sounds of my dreams. London with its foggy stillness was a tomb.

My aunt and uncle had five children and did not have much time for me but I stayed in their house until I was two and twenty. It was good of them to keep me for so long but I helped to school their children and made myself useful around the house, mending clothes and seeing to the running of the household whenever my aunt was indisposed. Whatever they spent on me, I believe I repaid tenfold before I departed.

There were few choices for me. I did not want to be a shopkeeper’s assistant and I could not be a barmaid or any type of servant. There was really only one avenue for me, unless, of course, I married, but Englishmen read India’s stamp on me and left me alone. I knew what I must do and where I had to go. 66 Haskel Street. To the hostel for out–of–work governesses. I could pay the small weekly fee for board and lodging out of the inheritance my uncle turned over to me when I was twenty–one but I was on the hostel’s waiting list for months before a room became available.

Happy to be there and on my own at last, I busied myself poring over the notices, keeping out of the way of the other women and going to interviews. Success was long in coming. I was always wrong for a situation. I did not know German, I could not play the harp, I was too young, too inexperienced.

Then, in November, the Administrator of St. Crescens placed an advertisement in The Times for a governess for his three children. The advertisement did not actually mention who the successful applicant would work for. It only said that the employer was looking for a lady of respectable character who could teach French, geography, history, mathematics, drawing and the piano. What caught my breath was the part that said it was a posting in the Colonies. I wanted to leave England. I hated the place and yearned for the brightness of the tropics but 1878 was a bad time for women like me. Many governesses were out of jobs and desperate for work. The hostel strained at its seams, and I knew they turned away women daily. When I saw the advertisement, I did not think I had a chance, my French was the agony of Madame Claudette and I could scarcely draw a face, but I applied anyway.

On the day of my appointment, I wore my best dress and my most serious expression, determined to impress my interviewers with my suitability though my palms were moist with my nervousness. It went well but I hardly dared hope for success. Then a week after the interview, I received a letter of employment, explaining my duties and all the other terms and conditions. St. Crescens was not India but I read and re–read the beautiful lettering, treasuring every word. A ticket for my passage to the West Indies on the barque, the Revel, was included in the documents they sent me. A month later, I sailed out of Bristol.

Chapter 4 - Grace

I sit up when we near the capital. The road is much better now. Smooth asphalt undulates before us like a velvet ribbon. Julian blows his horn at drivers he knows, men, and women too, who blow their horns back or wave as they peer at me.

Without warning, we turn off onto a dirt road bordered on both sides by what look like weeping willows. The trees are huge, not so much in girth but in height, their long, elegant trunks soaring above us. They are easily sixty, seventy feet tall.

What are they? I ask.

Mile–high trees we call them, Julian says. Casuarinas.

They’re wonderful. Like weeping willows or something.

Close your eyes, Grace. Please. We’re nearly there.

I do as I am told. The car continues on for a minute or so more then Julian comes to a stop and turns off the engine.

Keep them closed, he whispers, leaning over and brushing his lips against my cheek. I turn to face him but he chuckles. Not now, my Grace. I hear him open his door, and the car begins to ping, ping, because he’s left the keys in the ignition. I grope for the wheel but he is at my door. The heat reaches in to me as he helps me out. My stomach is in knots. I take a deep breath. I wish he’d emailed pictures so I would be more prepared but he kept it a complete secret. Like the good reporter I’d been, I tried to find information about the house on the Net after he told me its name but only a couple St. Crescian realtors have websites and neither had listed an estate house by the name of Jessamine.

Okay, you can open them now.

The house is as beautiful as its name. A wide, stone staircase leads up to a deep verandah that looks cool and restful. The front door is wood and glass and is flanked by tall shutters in an olive green that perfectly matches the house’s pale yellow color. Smaller shuttered windows are all around the house, open and welcoming.

Do you like it?

I love it, Julian. It looks just like my idea of the Caribbean.

The rich Caribbean, you mean. There is a slight edge of bitterness in his voice but I ignore it. The house he grew up in was more like the houses we passed in the village near the airport, small wooden affairs of not more than two or three rooms. He’s told me that a hundred times if he’s told me once and I know he still can’t believe how far he’s come.

I turn to look back down the driveway and notice the ornate fountain behind me, an elaborate affair of fish and cherubs frolicking above a basin.

The water’s supposed to come straight up into the air, but, you know, it seems so European I was thinking of selling it. What do you think?

Of course it should stay. It’s wonderful.

It makes us look pretentious.

It’s just a fountain, Julian. Why should it make us look any more pretentious than the house itself?

Nothing’s just anything around here, Gracie. I have to be careful about my image. The people already count the fact that I’ve been away so long against me. I can’t afford for them to think I’m an elitist, too. But he doesn’t belabor the point. Come. He grabs my hand. Let’s go inside.

I follow him to the house.

Is this real marble? The smooth steps gleam under my feet in a checkerboard pattern of black and white tiles.

Yes. Original to the house. Aren’t they great? They were so dirty, nobody realized what they were made of until I found this old man whose father worked here as a boy in the 1800s. He got right down on his knees and cleaned them with some home–made mixture. Can you believe it? He said he’s ninety–three but he looks at least twenty years younger. He’s amazing! You’ve got to meet him.

I squeeze his hand. He’s like a little boy in his enthusiasm.

Those were out in the back, he says, pointing to the terra cotta pots, greenish–black with age, that flank the top step. The verandah was enclosed back in the day. There was hardly anything left of it so we just pulled it all down. In fact, most of the wood in the house had to be replaced though it was mahogany.

Where did those come from? I nod at a couple of rocking chairs and a small table to my right.

The estate auction I told you about in February. They were in really good condition. That’s courbaril wood, which was used a lot back in the old days.

Nice.

Okay, now for the inside. Damn, I forgot the keys. He releases my hand and runs down the steps. His excitement is catching. I’m tempted to peep through the glass for a preview of what’s in store for me but I hold back. I want my husband to be right there with me as I walk into my new home.

Julian bounds back up the steps and pushes the door open. With a sudden, swift movement, he bends and picks me up. I twine my arms around his neck.

What are you...?

It’s an old custom to carry your wife into her new home, he says, as he swings me sideways so I don’t hit anything.

On her wedding night! We’ve been married ten years.

Yes, but I never did it.

Still carrying me, he passes through a narrow vestibule and enters a large, sun–filled room. The wood floors shine like the sun on still water.

Julian! This is beautiful. The room is empty. When I was in Philly, he’d told me furnishing the house would be mostly my department. Except for the pieces he got at that auction and the major appliances, he hasn’t bought anything.

Thank you. I’m really, really glad you like it. He gives me a firm kiss then puts me back on my feet. For a long minute we stand together like that, belly to belly, drinking in each other with our eyes.

Did you miss me? he asks.

Yes. Oh yes, man o’ mine.

He lowers his lips to mine, and I feel how I felt the first time we kissed, like I never want to do anything else but be kissed by this man, like loving him is the be–all, and the end–all of my existence, and that is alright with me, independent career woman that I am. Our tongues meet, and I press my whole body into his. I can feel how much he wants me but he’s the first to pull away.

I have to finish showing you the house. Come on, it won’t take long.

I pout but the house has been the main topic of his conversation and emails over the last several months. Now that I’m here, everything will have to wait until he has taken me around every nook and cranny.

Was this the ballroom? I ask, stepping away from him, willing myself to not mind.

I can’t answer that. It’s a big room but I don’t know that it’s as wide as all that, given the hoops those white women used to wear. Upstairs, the study is even bigger. His brows wrinkle. Now that you mention it, I think the contractor said that was most likely the ballroom. Julian has never had more than a distracted interest in history, even in the history of houses. His mind works in the abstract, a space is an empty canvas for him. He doesn’t spend too much time thinking about what it was before he came along. I would have thought this would have hampered his development as an architect, this lack of respect for the past, but it did the opposite. He approaches everything with a fresh outlook, and his clients like the idea that they can start anew without having to pay homage to what was there before or to how it was used.

The dining room is on this side and... there, he points to my left, is the living room.

I walk through the door. The room is a bit bigger than the first; a door on the far side opens to the verandah.

Window seats! I cross to one and sit down, leaning my back against a twelve–inch thick wall. That was how rich people built houses back then, solid. Planters were afraid of the hurricanes that churn through these islands every few years, destroying everything in wrathful frenzy. But the weather would not have been the only thing on their minds. I think about the articles I’ve read in the tourist magazines that mention slave rebellions and the riot of 1879 when most of Wolverton was reduced to rubble. There was a lot to be frightened of but, in a house like this, a man and his family could feel safe and secure, invincible even.

Julian, this place really is everything you said it was. I thought I’d feel strange but it’s weird, I feel right at home.

A broad smile lights up his face. His hazel eyes gleam.

Come, he says, putting his arm around me and leading me through the door. The dining room is just as wonderful and is the mirror image of the other room, except that it’s not empty. There is a long table in the middle of it. On top of the table is a silver candelabra. As I draw closer, I see that an envelope is propped against the candelabra and my name is written on it in Julian’s flowing handwriting.

It’s not my birthday.

If I didn’t know that after all this time, I’d be in trouble.

I make a face at him and reach for the card. The cover is simple, just a red heart outlined on a textured white background. I open it.

Thank you for coming to live here with me and for making my life complete. I will never forget the sacrifice you’ve made for our love. I adore you, Julian.

Tears come to my eyes, and I turn to hug him. Thanks, baby, I whisper against his ear.

No. I’m the one saying thanks. You really don’t know how much it means to me, your coming here. If you hadn’t joined me, I don’t know what I would have done.

Mr. Hylton. Mr. Hylton. The shout comes from outside, startling us, but Julian recovers first.

Coming, I coming, nuh. Wah happen? he yells, falling into the dialect. That’s Alphanus, he says to me. A man from town I’ve hired to help with the yard and whatever else. You want to come meet him?

In a minute. Let me finish exploring, okay?

Sure, darling.

I watch him go, all my love for him so close to the surface I feel it will spill over, forcing me to run to him and hold him tight so he can never move away from