“Nord, are you okay? Are you seasick?”

Aunt Marlène’s question almost immediately set the other women chattering. An explosion of roguish laughter. Pointed sniggers that still carried a trace of tenderness.

Leaning against the mango trees weighed down with too much fruit, Désiré shot them a furious glance. As if to say: not now. As if this heaviness in his stomach wasn’t already enough for him to contend with.

They had warned him, after all. Cousin Marjorie might have just had her first communion, but that was no excuse to stuff his face with pastries. Not when they had to share with so many friends and family.

He looked at his cousin in a puffy white dress swinging her basket decorated with gold and white ribbons. It was just too much. She was giving out huge brioches wrapped in beautiful embroidered packets, and she was filling her small purse with envelopes and fluttering red and green bills that the others placed in her hand, looking solemn as they closed her fingers over their gifts. He couldn’t count on her sharing. Her habit of taking his things annoyed him, but he wasn’t allowed to complain. And he would get in trouble if he did the same in return. One day, when he was big enough, he would show her.

In the meantime, he had grabbed enough brioches already. He could almost taste her absolute unwillingness to share. Usually, he liked the sweet smell of the bergamot they added to the dough. Those were real brioches, he thought, the only ones worthy of the name, a fine crumb with a white cross cut into its top, and none of those grains of sugar that they sprinkled on the imitations they sold in patisseries. Those always made his stomach turn. The mango tree’s solidity had no effect on the dizzying sensation, like a merry-go-round, deep within his gut and slowly making its way up to his head.

“Nord! You all right over there, Nordver? Choppy waters ahead?”

Aunt Marlène was unrelenting, everyone’s laughter echoing heavily.

He wanted to get up and go, far away from all their jeering, get away from the nauseatingly sweet smell of their glasses full of rum. But he wasn’t steady on his legs.

Tania looked at him in bewilderment. She was beautiful in her too-short pink dress, probably a hand-me-down from her big sister. He could see her bony knees covered in scars. She was a total daredevil and as ornery as a mongoose.

“Why do they call you that?”

He could hear her voice as if at a great distance.

“Isn’t your name Désiré? Why are they calling you Nord now?”

He met her gaze. She had a brown splotch in the white of her left eye. He’d never seen it this close up. But suddenly it was less distinct, squiggles of light shimmered in front of his eyes. And the merry-go-round seemed to be speeding up. In the whirlwind, her voice still came through:

“Well, are you going to answer me? What’s this Nord Vert all about? You always told me it was Désiré. Where did this come from? Talk!”

He had just enough time to get up and run to the end of the yard. He threw up, the spasms painfully long, the smell of bergamot overpowering, on the dry earth.