Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [159]
Zabeth emerged, tinkling a coffee tray. She laid out cups and a sugar bowl before the two white women. Elise watched absently as she withdrew, then looked down at the pool again. Duck and drake still circled each other, among the violet blooms of bwa dlo. Then Sophie and Paul and Robert came galloping up the steps, Sophie cradling a basket of speckled eggs, sprinkled over with curls of down and bits of straw. Pauline followed, more slowly, a step or two behind the others—she was old enough now to consider the impression she made when she walked.
“Look how many!” Sophie said. “Shall we have omelettes? Do let us, please.” The two boys pressed on either side of her basket.
“No need for such extravagance on a weekday,” Elise said, frowning at Sophie’s bare feet and tousled hair.
“But there is company, Maman.”
“What?” Elise looked past the children. A group of charcoal sellers had arrived in the yard, leading donkeys loaded with bulging panniers coated with black silt. Behind them was a young black man afoot beside a woman who guided her donkey with a little stick. Elise blinked: it was Suzanne Louverture—with Isaac, whom she’d not recognized at first, for he had changed his dress uniform for a plain white shirt and loose canvas trousers.
Suzanne possessed a coach and team, but seldom used them for short journeys among the plantations and the bourg of Ennery. Within that area she preferred to travel in the style of a prosperous marchande, seated sideways on a fat, well-curried donkey, her forward knee hitched up, beneath her long skirt, on the roll of a finely woven straw saddle. She took her son’s hand now as she stepped down.
“Madame Louverture.” Elise’s hand groped to close the throat of her peignoir. “Do please come up! You must excuse us . . .”
Suzanne caught up her skirt in one hand as she climbed the steps; the other still held the donkey stick, a peeled switch of a finger’s thickness and a little more than a foot long.
“You’ll breakfast with us,” Elise said. “Perhaps an omelette.” She turned to Sophie, who was suppressing a spasm of excitement. “Take those eggs to Merbillay. And comb your hair! and put on shoes.”
Automatically Pauline reached to take the eggs, but Sophie twisted away from her. The two girls bumped hips, giggling, then Sophie hurried into the house, the boys tagging after. Elise called Paul back to her. “Go and find Caco, quickly,” she said. “I have a task for him.”
“But he will be working in the coffee today,” Paul said.
“Tell them he is excused from the field.” Elise pointed over the gallery railing. “Tell him I want him to trap those two ducks.”
“Oui, ma tante,” Paul said, and clattered down the steps, breaking into a trot as he reached level ground.
Suzanne had come to the table’s edge. She wore a long blue skirt and a pale rose blouse, with a dark blue headcloth dotted with white. “I would not inconvenience you,” she said. “I will not stay so long.”
“Come, sit down.” Elise indicated a third wicker chair. “Zabeth! More coffee.” She looked about. “But where has Isaac gone?”
Zabeth had reappeared on the gallery, holding the white infant against her shoulder and balancing the black one on her hip. She slipped Mireille into Elise’s lap, and set Bibiane down on the boards of the floor. Mireille had just nursed; a bubble of milk formed on her lips. Elise caught the cloth from Zabeth’s shoulder as she turned away and wiped the baby’s mouth.
“A fine strong child you have, Madame,” Suzanne murmured. “How old is she?”
“Six months,” said Elise. “Or no, it is seven.” She could feel herself coloring at this confusion.
“The time goes quickly,” Suzanne said.
“That it does,” Elise said. “But where is your son, who has