Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [109]
These reflections carried her as far as her own backyard, where a gang of the older children—Paul, Caco, Sophie, Yoyo—were hopping up and down with the excitement of watching a kitchen maid wringing the necks of a brace of ducks. This task completed, she caught their blood in a gourd bowl into which the juice of several lemons had been squeezed. Elise looked on, approving the procedure.
Merbillay came out of the kitchen case, took the beheaded ducks, and strung them up by their feet from the low eaves of the building. In this climate, a fowl need not be hung for longer than a day. These ducks would be plucked and stewed and served with their garnish of mango this same evening.
Merbillay beckoned Yoyo into the kitchen to help with the peeling and dicing of mangoes. Elise put her head in the door to observe. It was just lately that she had taken account of Merbillay’s talent for cooking and incorporated her into the service of the grand’case, though the woman had been at Habitation Thibodet for years and often used to cook for the soldiers when they were encamped nearby. Her oldest, Caco, was Paul’s great friend. And Sophie often played with Yoyo, though the difference in their ages was greater. But now Sophie, though she was the elder, had run off squealing with the other children, leaving Yoyo to work at her mother’s side.
Merbillay gave Elise the ghost of a smile and turned to grinding spices in an old stone mortar. Her elaborately turbaned head lowered over this work. She took some pains with her appearance, was a lover of beads and gold bangles and colorful cloth. Elise did not know her age, but for the several children she had borne she still seemed youthful—her flesh plump and taut and not a line on her full face. Furthermore, she seemed to manage the two men who were her children’s fathers with no trouble.
What was the secret to that, Elise wondered, with an admiration which did not quite rise to envy. She walked around the house and up to the gallery of the grand’case. Tocquet and Nanon were seated there, drinking coffee. Elise was a little surprised at this, for it was now late morning, and Tocquet would usually be away on his own affairs at this hour. She sat down with them, spreading her skirt, and Zabeth came at once with a fresh cup and saucer and the silver coffeepot.
“Successful in your foraging?” Tocquet said.
“But of course,” Elise replied. “I should think Nanon would have showed you our booty.”
Nanon smiled, looked here and there, and suddenly caught sight of her one-year-olds, François and Gabriel, tumbling toward the edge of the pool below the gallery.
“Oh,” she said. “You will excuse me.” She jumped up and ran trippingly down the steps, her skirts caught up and bunched in one hand. Elise watched her rush across the lawn; there was more than mere pretext for her haste. Gabriel, the black one, bolder of the two, was making a long, precarious reach for a violet flower of the bwa dlo ornamenting the pool, and if Nanon had not caught him up by the scruff, he would quite likely have fallen in. Though the water was scarcely knee-deep, a child of that age did not need much water to drown.
Elise watched the scene, a little sourly. Gabriel made no sound, but his eye was on the flower and his arms and legs kept churning, without purchase, toward the goal. It was François, the pale one freckled by the sun, who gaped his jaws and began to wail at the sight of his brother’s frustration. The two boys were not much alike for twins, and Elise rather doubted that her brother was father to either of them.
But this was a subject not to be explored. She felt Tocquet