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The compliment, too nicely turned, rang false in my ears.

I thought he was making fun of me. I let go of his hand and ran away.

At the beginning of the ball, I had already noticed myself in the mirror, in my white dress, standing between Dora, Eugénie and Jane, and felt I looked like a fly in a bowl of milk. I was surrounded by respect and flattery owing only to my social position. Who would dare shun the daughter of a white-mulatto like Henri Clamont, owner of the best house on Grand-rue and six hundred acres of coffee, as though she were no better than Élina Jean-François or Alcine Joseph? I felt out of place among the French crewmen, our European store owners and the handpicked mulattoes. My mother found me in bed in my ball gown, weeping, head buried in my pillow.

“What now, Claire?”

“I feel sick, Mama.”

“In that case, get undressed. I’ll tell the guests you had to be excused.”

A quarter of an hour later I was in my nightgown and had slipped under the sheets when I saw Dora come in.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing, I just don’t feel well.”

“That handsome officer is asking for you. He told your father that you were the prettiest black girl he had ever seen. You know, Claire, these foreigners are stupid. If your skin is a little tanned, they think you’re black.”

“Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

“Frantz Camuse just arrived. He returned by boat. Try to get up.”

“No, leave me alone, Dora, I’m begging you.”

“Madame Camuse told me: ‘Go get Claire, she is no more sick than I am, and Frantz will be disappointed not to see her.’”

“No, I really am sick. Go tell Madame Camuse and let me be.”

When she left, I quietly jumped off my bed and cracked open the door. They seemed to have forgotten about me. Smiling his cruel feline smile, my father waltzed with Mlle Verduré, who was virtually swooning. His black hair was parted along a line that seemed glued to his skull, and his white face looked swollen. My eyes sought out my mother. Limp, fat, and white, she was sitting between Mme Duclan and Mme Audier, who inspired petty comparisons with an ugly doll Félicia had. Eugénie was waltzing with Frantz, and Dora and Jane with two French officers. I closed the door and went back to bed. The music prevented me from sleeping until the guests left. Georges Soubiran, Dora’s poor relation who was tolerated out of compassion, was harnessed to the piano and played nonstop until two in the morning.

Agnès Grandupré grew up under quarantine. She was erased from our lives, and I sometimes forgot she even existed. I caught a glimpse of her only at mass, where her arrival always provoked whispers and distraction. Gaunt, her feverish eyes glued to her prayer book, she held herself straight, chin proudly held high; her reserve was moving. It had been long since she had stopped visiting old Mathurin and she led a dignified and modest life. But society, spiteful and querulous, always seeking sacrificial victims, never forgave her. Her parents themselves had fueled the scandal by punishing her so spectacularly, for fear people would say they weren’t raising her right. “That nasty little Grandupré girl next door,” Mme Duclan called her. And even Mlle Verduré, whom I had once caught kissing my father at the piano and who was unmarried at thirty-five, would raise her eyes to heaven and cry out: “And she dares hold her head high!” This young woman’s tragic face seemed to conceal something other than vice. One day Georges Soubiran recited poems of such infinite sadness and refinement, and then admitted they were by Agnès. He was an orphan. Dora’s parents, with whom he lived, accused him of having spoken to Agnès and ordered him to break up with her. He packed his bags and left in response. Mathurin took him in. This time the scandal went too far and became the talk of the town. Agnès and Georges were in love and met at Mathurin’s for several days. The Granduprés almost beat their daughter to death and locked her inside the house. Tonton Mathurin stood in the middle of the street