The cool air, the light north wind from the bay, chased sleep from my eyes. I had to get ahead of the rain. I patted the horse I’d leased and climbed into the dray, ready to head for the hills to Belvedere Estates. The arrangements for this visit to Grenada were made quickly. Mr. Bates contracted lodging for me and took a longer lease than I wanted. His judgment might prove right. Being near Charlotte for more than a month would ensure she wasn’t without support. It would also give me time to convince her to return to Roseau if these Fédons couldn’t protect her.
A tall fellow pointed at me. He stood on the other side of the thin street, near a building no taller than a coconut tree. Grenada’s architecture was so different than Dominica’s.
“Miss Dolly, that is you.”
Caught. And by one of Joseph Thomas’s loud business associates, John Garraway. Resisting the urge to flee, I pasted on Mamaí’s distant smile. “Yes.”
“Miss Dolly.” He waved his chewed-up straw.
“Yes, Mr. Garraway.”
“I’d heard some talk about you being in Grenada. Here for a visit?”
“Business, sir. How are you?”
“Business, you say.” He tugged on his sagging jacket. “Thomas said you were an enterprising woman. Does he know you are here?”
Well, the man wasn’t living in Thomas’s pockets or he’d know Thomas and I ended more than a year ago.
“I’m in a hurry, Mr. Garraway. An appointment. Do take care.”
He tipped his hat, and I took up the reins.
Then his fingers fastened to the side of the dray. “Well, Miss Dolly, I hope you have a good day. Hope your business lasts longer. Thomas will be back soon. I know he’ll want to see you.”
My smile fell away. “You have a good day, Mr. Garraway.”
Snapping my wrist, I forced my horse to move. It took two hours of empty trail before I simmered down. The quiet of the forest blanketed me. Ferns offered a canopy. Moss and dried mud carpeted everything.
Rising slowly, the dray climbed the next hill. The air here was thinner and sweet. Red beak-shaped flowers lined the road, but so did large sugar plantations, on the left and right.
Like I sat in Pa’s dray and tried my hardest not to see the terror, I was there again and couldn’t not see the misery.
I missed none of it. The sight of half-naked souls toiling in woods famous for chiggers made my stomach rip into pieces. I stared down at my fisted hands. I couldn’t look up again until there were no more plantations, till the right side had become good again.
At the top of the mountain trail I scanned the valley below.
Plowed fields.
Endless parcels of land sectioned with cane sprouted to the sun.
Then I saw black and brown men in shoes and straw hats that looked like thatched roofs. This was Belvedere Estates, Charlotte’s new home.
My heart fell and slammed into my gut. Holy Father, let the coloreds not be as bad as the whites. Let whips not be used. Let punishments have no teeth.
If not for Charlotte, I’d turn around and pretend I didn’t see this, how free colored fell into the ways of owning folks just like the whites.
Hitching with hiccups, I held my breath and counted.
Then I let myself forget. Like I had in Montserrat, I stopped seeing the fields. I focused my strength on Charlotte and the house with green shutters.
My daughter must’ve seen me. She came running at top speed. As soon as I climbed down, her arms locked about me.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
How long we stood draped in the other’s embrace, I wasn’t sure.
But I knew this was where I was needed, not London.
“Mama, the whites here. They’re hateful. They keep trying to tear us down. They’ll enslave us.”
I pulled away a little but put my palms to her chin. “What have the whites done?”
She clasped her palms about her high-waisted cotton gown. “They are demanding papers of all free coloreds. If you can’t prove your manumission or birthright in time, the governor will sell you.”
Charlotte had grown up as Cells’s, the daughter of a rich rum maker. She’d worshiped and danced with whites. What had happened to make my child fear them?
“Explain, girl.”
“They put many of the coloreds’ wives in jail. Mary Rose, Julien’s wife, she was a week away from being sold.”
I pulled my daughter against me. The pounding in my chest must speak for me. I’d let no one, no one white or colored hurt her. “I have a copy of your papers. You’re safe.”
“Miss Dolly, good to see you.” Charlotte’s husband came out onto the porch; clinging to his billowing linen sleeve was a young woman in a bright gold tunic and plantain-green pull skirt. I loved her fine hair plaited and pinned under her crown, a turban of red and palm green.
“Miss Dolly,” Jean-Joseph said, “this is my sister-in-law, Julien’s wife, Rose. Mary Rose Fédon.”
Offering Charlotte a handkerchief, I nodded at the woman and extended my arm.
She gripped it. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Kirwan.”
“Good to meet you, Rose. It’s Dolly.”
Her eyes were bright and her chin raised and noble. Hard to believe this woman had been jailed for weeks and survived. My poor sister had been changed forever in a day.
“Yes, ma’am.” She turned back to Jean-Joseph. “You don’t have to walk me back.”
“No, Rose. My brother wouldn’t want any Fédon women unprotected, not now.”
Colored wives being jailed? My pulse jittered. A few minutes alone with Charlotte would tell me if I needed to give up my new lease and steal my daughter away from Grenada.