12 November 1948
Martha Mason is not a bright girl, but there are a few things she knows.
First and foremost, Martha Mason knows her place. She knows that she is a descendant of the scorned Redlegs of St. John, the poor whites whom both the black descendants of slaves and the white descendants of slave masters look down upon, and as such, that she is the equal of neither. Secondly, Martha Mason knows that she is penniless. Her father, Gilbert, has just been fired from the Central Foundry for throwing down a lit match he used to light a cigarette he shouldn’t have been smoking on the job. Gilbert is a good technician, but this one foible has led to a fire that burns a hole in the center of town, and he is let go. Gilbert is lucky that all he has lost is his job but it does not feel like luck to his family, for whom his pay is the only source of sustenance. For two weeks the family of seven has been rationing one meal a day and as of yesterday, Martha has assumed the age of majority without the proverbial pot to piss in.
Martha Mason does not fool herself – she also knows that she has no head for numbers, no heart for nursing, and no hands for housework, so she knows that she must find and hold onto whatever employment the gods might allow to fall upon her.
This is why Martha Mason is blinded by tears as she walks the wrong way down the gently curving driveway of Baxter’s Plantation at seven in the morning, a driveway fringed by cabbage palms that legends say still hang heavy with the souls of the slaves who had been drenched in cane juice and tied there to be tortured by the stings of red ants. Martha is crying because, despite all she knows, she has still managed to lose the gift of a job that is only three days old.
Martha is barefoot, and dust clings to her toes as she wonders what she will say to the auntie who’d begged to get her the job as a maid in the Martineau household at Baxter’s Plantation, with the assurance that Martha was very good indeed at housework.
It is because of this crying that Martha almost misses hearing a spanking new Morris Minor rolling to a stop beside her and James Martineau bidding her stop crying, this instant. She is pretty as pretty can be, says James Martineau, but if no one has told her that she’s an especially ugly crier he doesn’t mind allowing her to know. Martha accepts the offer of a gentleman’s monogrammed handkerchief from a hand the color of fresh-cut mahogany and blows her nose without grace before she takes in the two kindly brown eyes staring at her from beneath lush black eyelashes.
Martha Mason may not be bright, but she is not above begging, either. By the following morning Martha is at work as the secretary in James Martineau’s office on Bay Street, typing his letters, making his coffee, managing his meetings, not unaware of the pleasure he derives from telling unexpected visitors to make their appointments to see him with her.
“See that white lady there?” he is wont to say, snapping his suspenders against the starched white of his long-sleeved shirt, a slight slick of sweat making his forehead shimmer. “She works for me. You got to speak to her first before you can speak to me, you understand?”
It didn’t take long for one thing to lead to the other is how Martha will describe the ensuing courtship to their daughter, Mira, many years later. It didn’t take long for Mira to come along. She will explain, matter-of-factly, that Mira is named after a married Portuguese woman her father remembered from a brief affair he had in Brazil.
James Martineau puts his mistress and his Mira into a tiny stone house in Britton’s Hill and hardly visits them there at all. This is not an issue for Martha, who understands that a Martha is not a woman befitting of a Martineau. In the year in which the first black man has been elected to the island’s Parliament, an established black businessman like James Martineau does not then go and align himself with someone beneath his own precarious station.
Martha understands this, but she struggles to explain it to Mira.
James Martineau has his Mira cared for during the day by an old black woman selected by his mother, and baby Mira is brought to his office at 3 p.m. each afternoon, where she is taught to sit quietly near Martha’s desk and play with her crayons while Martha types and files and administers. Badly. Martha Mason is never promoted, but she does not aspire to promotion; she aspires to a roof over her head, clean clothes for her daughter, sufficient flour and oil from her paycheck to make a month’s worth of bakes for breakfast. She aspires to enough. Each month James Martineau slips her a white envelope with Mira’s name on it, and it is from this envelope that Martha takes money for Mira’s smocked dresses and frilly socks.
James Martineau, one of the few wealthy black men in Paradise, is tall and reedy, with a high, intelligent forehead and the ability to engage and dismiss at will. While he paces the floor, dictating one thing or the other to Martha, he sometimes stops and catches his daughter Mira looking up at him openmouthed, and on these occasions he reaches over and rubs circles across the middle of her forehead, taps her nose with this thumb, and returns to his pacing.
When Mira is four, James Martineau marries a certain Miss Musson, the blonde daughter of a wealthy white merchant. In another four years, Ms. Musson has borne him three café-au-lait daughters and these little girls also come to the office in Bay Street, all dressed up in velvet and lace that costs more than the sum of money in Mira’s envelope. None of this is a problem for Martha, but how to explain it to Mira, whose forehead aches with longing when James Martineau fusses over and pets and kisses these three little girls? How to help Mira understand her mother’s hiss when she draws too close to James Martineau on these occasions, hoping for the reassurance of his thumb on her forehead? When Mira and one of the Martineau girls get into a fight over the seat placed closest to their father in the office, James Martineau orders that Mira should no longer be brought to the office after school. To console her daughter, Martha offers her a trip to town and an ice cream, which she pays for with money from Mira’s envelope.
Martha Mason is not bright; she cannot see how this envelope will impact her daughter in the future.