Left at the Mango Tree (28 page)

Gustave made notes and diagrams, drew maps and added up figures, designed every detail with the accuracy of an engineer. Had he and Raoul ever shared a common aim, or labored toward a common end, the combination of their accidental science and their incidental philosophies might have shamed even the likes of
Mr. Stan Kalpi. I like to think that, had things ended differently, they might have joined forces one day, for my sake if for nothing else. That they were ever at odds with each other still strikes me as the most terrific of ironies. Raoul had no reason to blame Gustave for who I was. There had been no ravaging and no magic spell. Only the careless sleight of hand of a hearty midwife, inebriated by the moon.

Abigail stumbled through the soft, green brush a stone’s throw from the edge of the sea, her arm pulled taut by that of the seedy port girl who held onto her, leading the way. “Hurry, Abby! We’re almost there. She’s under the mango.”

Although the islanders who spoke of the seedy port girls made no distinction between them, Abigail, no doubt owing to her own pregnant past, treated them with respect and decency, extending the further courtesy of knowing each of the girls by name. The one who tugged her arm was named Lilly. The one that lay writhing under the mango tree, Claudine.

Abby (that’s what the seedy port girls called her) knelt at Claudine’s side and touched her brow. It was wet with sweat, but little cause for concern. The night was hot, and Claudine in the throes of labor.

“How long have you been here?” Abby asked. She addressed her question to Lilly but studied Claudine’s face, measuring the girl’s pulse while awaiting an answer.

“Her water just broke. We were here walking. When I realized, I just laid her down and ran to get you. Is she alright?” Lilly was crying. She had never seen a woman giving birth, and she was scared.

“She’s fine,” Abby lied. “You did good.” Claudine still had perhaps hours to go, but Abby’s intuition already told her something wasn’t right. It would be a delicate birth, but nothing she couldn’t manage.

“It hurts, Abby.” Claudine’s voice was a whimper. Abby soothed the girl with warm words and tucked soft leaves under her head and under her knees. She told Claudine to relax and to breathe slowly, to fix her gaze on a single star, or better yet on the moon. The swollen moon that waxed high in the still, dark sky and beckoned.

Lilly stretched herself out beside her friend, holding Claudine’s hand and whispering into her ear. Telling her she would be fine, believing she must surely be about to die. Abby said it was too early for Claudine to push, and so Lilly tried to focus Claudine’s thoughts on other things.

“Look at the stars,” Lilly said. “Do you know about the constellations?”

Abby nodded at Lilly’s efforts. Good, Abby’s nod said. But before Claudine could tell them that when she was a girl she could pick out every constellation in the sky, before she could say that she’d learned them from a book her best friend gave her for her birthday, a terrible cry split the air, drowning out the song of the leaves that had gained volume and force in the few minutes since Abby had arrived at Claudine’s side. Abby recognized the cry, though she couldn’t fathom its meaning or explain its presence there just then: it was Edda’s.

“Stay here with her,” she commanded Lilly, who gazed in horror as Abby’s silhouette rose and retreated into the night.

In the sand not too far away Abigail found Edda collapsed and gripping her belly. Her water had broken, too. Abigail mumbled a curse to the moon and set about comforting her charge.

“Abigail....” Edda tried to speak, but couldn’t. Abigail cooed reassurances into Edda’s ear and stroked her hair, stretched out the girl’s body and laid her hands on Edda’s swollen middle.

Both the beach and the brush had fallen into darkness by this time, though the evening’s curtain was thinned by the moon. It had risen up fully now, exerting its pull and release on the waves that crashed loudly and rolled to shore. Abigail raised Edda’s skirt. Edda gasped for air and Abigail saw the blood that poured from Edda’s body, seeped through the cotton of her panties. Abigail’s thoughts flew far off, to Emma Patrice, to her blood-sister who had gotten away and left Abigail home to take care of things.

Their struggle began.

Edda’s hair mingled with the damp sand, Claudine’s with the dry twigs of the brush. One called out. One pushed. Blood spilled onto the sand and onto the brush beneath the mango. Abby, as if a spirit possessed, divided herself, attending to four lives at once.

The mischievous moon smiled down on them all and sent the sea into a violent, enchanted rush, guiding the female contractions that mimicked the waves. Spurred by the sea’s urgency and assisted by the wind, the leaves sang even louder suddenly, in harmony with the cicadas and the hummingbirds who didn’t know if it was night or day. While Lilly watched Claudine and cried, the song crescendoed to a frantic, fevered buzz; it fell on top of the women, like a thick blanket that might smother them.

They could hear nothing for the noise that filled their ears, the living sound that seemed to populate the air around them. They tried to ignore it, to escape it by closing their eyes. Claudine concentrated on the body inside her. Edda rocked her body in time with the island’s tremble.

Claudine was the first to find escape from the noise that drowned her baby’s cry, her eyes opening again only long enough to steal a glimpse of her little girl. Abby laid the baby at Claudine’s side and tried to rouse her, but in vain. When Lilly realized her friend was dead, she fainted and left Abby alone in the wild darkness, cursing the devilish moon, who had hidden behind a cloud.

The magic moon laughed at the women’s struggle. The leaves were too agitated, the wind so strong it ripped them from the very trees that bore them. Then the fracas suddenly culminated in a guttural human cry that would confirm a superhuman deed.

Edda!

Abigail left Claudine’s child in the arms of its dead mother and ran the length of the beach to where she had left Edda a moment before. She threw herself into the sand, feeling in the dark for Edda’s body. Edda was unconscious, but breathing. The baby between her legs was not. Edda’s little boy was dead.

Abigail jerked the child to her chest, trying to coax it to life, but its limbs refused to stir and its voice refused to sing. She had already let two lives get away, but she wouldn’t let a third be destroyed. Edda wanted a baby. Edda needed a baby. And a baby she would have, the baby left at the mango tree. Abigail moved with new resolve and cleaned Edda’s body and that of her dead son as best she could. She ran to the brush with the dead child in her arms and prayed to the darkness that Lilly hadn’t awakened from her swoon.

The darkness complied, and when Abigail reached the mango tree, Lilly was still unconscious. Abigail laid Edda’s baby under the already cool flesh of Claudine’s arm and picked up Claudine’s wriggling orphan (the babies of seedy port girls almost never had fathers, that much Abby knew).

Back and forth, Abigail moved again between the brush and the beach, her eyes adjusting to the night just enough to get her through her task. She revived Edda and placed the newborn in her arms, then she let them both doze again in the sand. She revived Lilly and told her that both Claudine and her baby were dead. She handed her the corpse that had come from Edda’s belly and sent her off to make arrangements. She cleaned and composed Claudine’s body, lowered Claudine’s skirt over her like a blanket, closed the sprawled legs, adjusted the feet in their complicated strappy sandals. She stroked Claudine’s forehead and told her goodbye, then returned to where Edda lay sleeping on the beach, with me, Almondine, in her arms.

The mighty moon was pleased. On Wilbur’s wedding night, her finger had poked a hole in the soil of an earthly womb and dropped a seed into it; tonight she had reaped an almond from a mango. Contented, the moon finally took her leave. It was morning, and time for Abigail to take us home.

Once she had eased my mother and me into bed, Abigail’s plan required a bit of fine-tuning. For one thing, one very important thing, the morning light had revealed that I was not one of those seedy port babies without a father. My parentage was clear. When Abigail realized the truth, it was too late. Edda had already bonded with the child she believed to be her own as she lay sleeping on the beach, my tiny self warm on her chest. Abigail had been forced to let her bring me home. That Edda seemed not to notice anything amiss only made matters worse; Abigail would never, ever, pry me from my mother’s arms now.

While my mother and I slept that first day of my lucky—if black-and-white—life, Wilbur and Abigail conspired. Abigail told him everything: where I came from, how Edda’s baby and
Claudine had both died on the beach, what Abigail had done. Even someone of her caliber needed help once in a while, and Wilbur proved a ready ally. He had seen Edda and me together for only a few moments before we fell asleep, but in those moments he had seen his wife happier than he had ever known her. He couldn’t bear to take me away from her. And I
needed
a mother, didn’t I? If Edda could live with my white skin, my reddish eyes, and the halfhearted mole on my cheek, then who was Wilbur to question?

“If Edda’s happy, then so am I,” he said.

Together, Wilbur and Abigail reconstructed the circumstances of my birth to be reported to the rest of the islanders. To allay any suspicion of Edda’s presence on the beach that night, they would say that she had given birth at home, and that she had had a very easy and normal delivery. To cinch the charade Abigail would burn behind the house the sheets that Edda’s labor had supposedly soiled. When Edda awoke the next morning, they planned to tell her she had dreamed her walk to the beach and her delivery there, but in the end there was no need. Edda had no recollection whatsoever of the night and the evening before.

Her unwitting cooperation and Wilbur’s espousal of Abigail’s scheme began to erase the doubts Abigail had experienced in the daylight that first shined on my almondine skin. Any doubts that remained could be explained away by generic island magic, which was abundant on Oh. Abigail’s plan was working. Only she and Wilbur knew the truth, and both loved Edda enough to take it with them to the grave.

You’re thinking that Gustave must have known the truth as well, known that he fathered a child with poor dead Claudine. But he didn’t. When Gustave discussed mealybugs with Raoul over Puymute’s finest wine and swore he knew nothing about me, he
was telling the truth. He knew almost nothing of Claudine either; she was merely one of the girls from the seedy port bar among whom he made no distinction, their prices being equal. Even less did he know of her pregnancy, for the seedy port girls hid such matters ably.

So you know now where I came from, but that’s not all there is. What matters is that
Raoul
find out the truth, that he reconcile it with his Stan Kalpi notions of identity and the bigger picture we all fit into, like the misshapen bits that latch onto each other to form the whole of a jigsaw puzzle. To do so, he must still corner Gustave, or so he believes, because on Oh, like farina leads to packages and adverts to smugglers, just maybe the threat of arrest betrays paternity.

If you feel sorry for Gustave, who when cornered won’t know to confess his inadvertent crime, don’t. Not yet. Though I’d be the first to forgive him his indiscretion that night under the mango, he
is
still a thief who bribes a man’s best friends, and worse, if you believe the tales the islanders tell. Before he can evoke pity, Gustave has a long legacy for which he will have to atone.

In the bedroom of his small, simple villa with indoor plumbing and wispy fabrics, Gustave sat at his desk near the window. By moonlight he scratched pencil notes on lined paper, elaborating his smuggling plan. To make certain that he had omitted no detail, he constructed a rudimentary model with boats of folded newspaper, olive-bodied men with toothpick legs, and peanuts for pineapples. The paper boats and peanuts were for measuring whether Gustave’s big boats would be big enough to accommodate the
crop that must cover four acres. The olive-bodied men, because Gustave was hungry.