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The next day I strapped Félicia into a corset, which didn’t make her any thinner. We left the baby with Augustine and went to the church.

A pressed and powdered crowd jostled inside. Not exactly the “cream of society” as Mme Camuse would point out, elegant and old-fashioned in her long black dress and the feathered hat she wears only for special occasions. Annette glittered on Jean Luze’s arm. Two maids of honor dressed in pink walked before them. Then came the groom on Félicia’s arm, M. and Mme Trudor, Dr. Audier and his wife, Eugénie with her pharmacist, who was dragging his partially paralyzed leg, the mayor dressed like the prefect in his eternal gray suit and black hat, and others from Port-au-Prince whom we did not know, friends of the Trudors. On my way to church I noticed Jane Bavière standing by her door with her son, and Dora peering through her blinds. The sight of them unnerved me. I had not dared invite either of them, thereby acquiescing to the rules of good society and the established order.

The crush of people at church had prevented me from staring at Jean Luze to my heart’s content. I noticed only his distant and chagrined expression as he walked Annette to the altar. He seemed so miserable that I thought he was jealous.

“Look how furious Jean looks,” Félicia whispered to me. “I had to scold him to make him do this. It bothers him to put himself on display.”

Was she as sure of herself as she seemed?

Back home, as the guests gathered in the living room, champagne flutes in hand, the commandant arrived. He greeted only Annette and Paul Trudor and remained standing, his back to the wall. Our eyes locked. He slowly walked up to me and hissed:

“So our hatred is mutual,” he said to me.

But his expression seemed to belie his words.

I started to tremble while my eyes clung to his lips, his teeth, his hands. I saw him smile, so I turned my back to him abruptly.

Again I found myself across from M. Trudor, who was about to speak, surrounded by guests straining their necks to get a good look at the newlyweds.

If the speech was dismal, fortunately there were too few of us to notice.

Jean Luze made me his partner in crime, winking at me with an amused smile, as if I were colluding with him in witnessing this disaster.

Another sleepless night, thanks to Calédu. I’m angry with myself for having trembled before him. I have no other choice but to curb my hatred if I want to decipher the frightful expression on his face. It took some doing, but I managed to chase him from my thoughts.

How empty the house feels without Annette! You might think you were in a funeral parlor. No more dance music, no more peals of laughter, no more stormy exits. We eat lunch in silence, Jean Luze, Félicia and I. I do the laundry as before, wash Jean-Claude’s bottles and look after Félicia. Am I regaining confidence in myself? To what should I attribute this sudden joie de vivre that has me flinging open the window, drawing deep breaths of the cool morning air into my diaphragm, then closing my eyes and throwing myself across my bed with arms splayed like a cross? So luxurious to lose oneself in a dream-world where one lives only for oneself! Floodgates opened, barriers collapsed, shackles broken, I am now joyfully bounding toward freedom. Just me, face to face with myself, with no one around. Will I die without knowing the firm embrace of a man? There comes a time when virginity seems indecent. Has my upbringing so marked me that it seems out of the question to satisfy my needs in an irregular way?

Annette showed up with Paul eight days after the wedding. We were having lunch. She came in running and kissed us with exclamations of gaiety and joy.

“Félicia, my poor dear! You don’t look so good.”

This is turning into persecution.

Without waiting for Félicia to respond, she rushes to the crib and returns with Jean-Claude, whom she simply woke up.

“Look, Paul darling, he’s so adorable!”

She devoured his cheeks with kisses before finally putting him back on his mother’s lap.

A mad