“It’s nothing,” the mother said, “stay in bed.”
“Who were they shooting at?”
“At the birds. You know they like killing them.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and forced him back in bed.
“You haven’t been playing soccer lately?”
“No.”
“Where’s Fred? He doesn’t come by to see you anymore?”
“No.”
She had the horrible sensation of a foreign presence in the room. She turned her head toward the window and grew quiet.
“Don’t waste your time,” she continued with effort. “Study on your own until then.”
“Until when?”
“Until things get settled.”
She regretted these last words and lowered her eyes as if she were guilty of something. This nineteen-year-old man was as lucid as she was and it was tactless to treat him like a baby. By doing so she risked losing his friendship, which meant so much to her and which she had done so much to keep alive. She spoiled him in secret, like a wily Apache, slipping him money she had saved through great sacrifice. “Your stingy old man won’t know about it,” she told him with a complicit wink. She often went into his room to confide in him, to talk about the father, about his illicit nightly outings that could only have one purpose. He had protested, not being able to imagine this serious and mournful fifty-year-old man wrapped in a woman’s arms, but then one day he had seen him, suddenly young again, talking to a strange young woman in a car, and he had begun to have his doubts. But out of a kind of masculine solidarity, he had refused to betray him, although he became less affectionate and effusive with him.
“I’ll make you a rum punch,” she said to him.
“With lots of rum, please.”
“With lots of rum,” she acquiesced obediently.
She went downstairs to warm the milk into which she then mixed an egg yolk and some rum. She tasted it and added more rum.
Mélie looked at her without saying anything. The small slanting eyes in her black face glowed with mean-spirited joy.
Why does she also hate me? What have I ever done to her? the mother wondered.
“Madame Louis, your father-in-law told me to make sure no one touches this bottle,” she finally said in a honeyed voice in her drawn-out Creole.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Madame Louis, but he told me, ‘Mélie, if anyone in this house drinks that rum without my permission, I’ll hold you responsible.’”
“Well, you will have to tell him that Monsieur Paul is ill and needed it.”
“Yes, Madame Louis, I will tell him. Monsieur Paul has the flu?”
“And a fever.”
“You’re right, then. What the grandfather was afraid of is someone drinking the rum for no good reason. He doesn’t like drunkards. That’s what he told me, Madame Louis. I’m going to boil a lemon for Monsieur Paul. But I’ll need money to buy it because I can’t just go pick one anymore… You understand?”
She pointed to the garden.
“Yes,” was all the mother said.
The hammering resounded as she stepped onto the landing. She looked through the window and saw two men nailing a notice to an oak trunk. She went into her son’s room, where she found him sitting and listening, trying to understand the sounds he had heard. He took the cup from his mother’s hand and drank down the scorching punch in one gulp.
CHAPTER FIVE
The mother waited until the house was asleep and cautiously got out of the bed where her husband was sleeping. She threw on a dress and felt her way down the stairs. Outside, the beaming moon promenaded across the sky. Suddenly it was veiled by a cloud and all was plunged in darkness. The mother walked up to the stakes and stopped there. She looked at the notice, white as a tombstone, and read these words: NO ENTRY. She stood there a moment, motionless, staring at the trees, which seemed more massive in the darkness. A light gust of wind shook their branches and an owl hooted, as if awakened from its slumber.
“Who goes there?” a voice shouted.
A gigantic black silhouette rose up.
She involuntarily stepped back as a cry of terror escaped from her lips. She saw him, his eyes full of hatred, laughing silently, and she trembled. He drew his gun and pointed it at her: “Want to do it with me, mulatto girl? Want to do it?” she heard. She raised her hands to the sky and shouted, no, no, and ran back home. A bullet whistled past her ear. She threw herself to the ground and crawled to the kitchen door. As soon as she was safe, she closed her eyes and put both hands to her heart. Her fear and the shortness of her breath made the rattle in her chest unmistakable this time. She remained that way for several minutes, head tilted, listening to her heartbeat; then, opening her eyes again, she found herself at the sideboard, opened it and grabbed the bottle of rum. She took great swigs straight from the bottle and put it back in its place. The father was still sleeping. She went to bed, pulled the sheets over herself, hoping the feeling of the covers would comfort her. She touched the shoulder of the man sleeping beside her, and he grumbled, surly in his slumber. Such loneliness! she thought. In vain she tried to sleep, and dawn found her with her eyes on the ceiling and her arm across her forehead.
At that moment, she heard cautious footsteps brushing along the stairs. The steps were getting closer, halting to the rhythm of a pendulum, and the stairs creaked just as regularly, just as mechanically. She got up and opened her bedroom door: Rose was standing before her disheveled, eyes smeared with tears and shoes in hand.
“Mama! You scared me,” she exclaimed in a hushed voice.
“Where were you?”
“Mama, please. I’m twenty. I’m not a baby anymore. Surely you know that.”
“My God!” the mother said, closing her eyes.
“No need for drama, please. I know what I’m doing. Go, go get some rest,” the young woman added in a whisper.
Her mother left her and returned to her bedroom. The father was awake. She sat on the bed and, hiding her face in her hands:
“Rose spent the night out,” she said without looking at him. He coughed, hoping he had misunderstood, and rubbed his eyes:
“Where was she?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“How should I know?”
“We’ll have to ask her,” he added, weighing his words. “Maybe she was with some friends, at a party. We’ll just have to ask her.”
At eight, Rose was sitting at the table like everyone else, bathed, made up, and so fresh one could swear she had stayed in bed all night.
“In the name of the Father and the Son,” the grandfather began before breaking his bread.
The others, except for the invalid, ate as they watched him do this.
“Oh, by the way,” Rose said in an offhand manner, “I had forgotten to tell you about it earlier, Papa, but I was invited out last night and it was too late by the time I remembered. I didn’t want to wake you and Mama, so I just snuck out.”
“Next time, you’ll let us know beforehand, won’t you?” the father said calmly.
“Of course, Papa.”
He had two new anxious wrinkles between his eyes.
“I have to run. Come on, Rose, we need to see that lawyer this morning.”
They got up and left immediately.
“My father is using his daughter to try to sway the lawyer. It turns out he’s a shrewd strategist,” Paul explained quietly. “There he goes taking Rose down the wrong path.”
“A little respect for your father, my grandson,” the grandfather shouted, interrupting him.
He pulled on his goatee and lowered his voice:
“You can’t lead anyone down the wrong path. A dog is born good or bad and the same thing goes for a human being.”
“In that case, we aren’t responsible for anything,” the young man added in a voice that invited no reply.