Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (best short novels .txt) 📗

“No,” I said. “I am listening to the jungle.”

“You are angry?”

“Shh,” I said. “I want to hear the trees.”

I heard a splash as he sat up. “You don’t understand,” he said. “That’s the way you learn. That’s how my father taught me.”

“Your father is always right?”

“In this he is.”

“You will ignore your father when he tells you how to be a doctor, but if it is about drowning your wife, he is correct.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Half drowning your wife.”

“You’ve never wanted me to feel something in the same way you do?” he said quietly, to the water. “That’s all I wish for here.”

I thought then that maybe we could try to understand each other again. I stood up. I unbuttoned the blouse that stuck to me, stepped out of the skirts that clung to my legs. When I was bare, I walked back into the pool and sat down beside him.

“Like this?” I set my arms on the surface of the water.

“Now lean back.”

If you follow his commands, I told myself, you can become the woman he believes you are.

I felt the water creep up my spine, around my shoulders, and lick into my ears. Everything within me wanted to hold tight against it. My head dipped further below the surface, and all sound was gone now—except the sound of my own breath. My mouth and nose were still above the surface, and I took in one more bit of air, which felt warm now, when the rest of me was in cold water. And then I let go and trusted the water, and I was free. I opened my eyes a little bit. I could see the moon above us, and its light reflected, white and shimmering, on the water that surrounded me.

“Do you think,” I said to Emmanuel, “it’s the same moon over Mama right now? Do you think she is looking at it as I look at it, as I lie on top of water? Do you think she can know me right now?”

But he was tired of games by then. Or games that did not involve him. He sat up and crashed out of the water.

He took me to the water every Sunday afternoon. But first, we had to endure the mornings. Those we spent in sweaty prayer with his father’s congregation: the bishop sitting behind the pulpit in his heavy robes, the priest standing up to lead the service, Ella’s sewing circle sitting in the front pews with some of the Haitians who had joined the church early on, and the newest converts always standing in the back of the church.

No one seemed to question this arrangement, not even Emmanuel, when I asked him about it. “It has always been that way,” he told me. But Ella was more blunt. “They are our brothers in Christ, but they aren’t of our sort,” she said. “The Haitians of our station are lovely, but they remain papists. The ambitious workers here join our church because they know we have schools and aid and help, and they want that for their families. We love them very much and they love us, and we worship together, but we like to be with our sort. Don’t pretend you don’t understand.”

In our pew sat myself, at the farthest end, closest to the church window; Emmanuel, seated beside me; his sister, beside him; and Ti Me, at the aisle. Once, when we were all supposed to have bowed in prayer, I glanced up to see her neck straight, the only head unbent in all the church.

The church was Emmanuel’s father’s greatest pride. A stone building with rough windows dug out of the walls and a high ceiling. There was only one cross in the whole place, he liked to point out. No idolatry here.

We sang hymns in English first, then the Kreyòl translations. Bishop Chase strongly discouraged any hand clapping. “Americans can take it,” he said, “but it excites the Haitians too much.” So the songs swelled, but there was always some large piece missing.

It was nothing like when the Graces sang. It was nothing like when we sang at home in Kings County. It did not look like any fellowship I had known, but the bishop was proud of it, and much of the time spent in church was giving thanks for his intelligence, his humanity, and his hard work here.

Ella did not approve of our swimming lessons. She said it was an affront to the Lord’s day. But Bishop Chase said it was up to a man to decide how he and his wife would spend the rest of the Sabbath, and so Ella only complained once. When we left for the mountains, though, she’d make it a point to get on her knees in the parlor and continue her prayers.

The bishop continued to say nothing. But after the third swimming lesson, the priest began to preach from Ecclesiastes, about the wife cleaving to her husband’s family, about the obedience of marriage. Bishop Chase sat behind him the whole time, in his heavy robes in the heat, not even succumbing to it by fanning himself, as the others did. He was silent, looking straight ahead at some life that none of us could see.

I would reach for Emmanuel’s hand while the priest spoke, if only to show some little sign of defiance, and he would take mine, but just for a moment. Then he would set it back down on the pew between us. Even that small rebellion was too much in his father’s church, though when I would ask him about it, in our bed at night, he would say, “It was hot, Libertie. Too hot to hold hands.”

Libertie,

I have received the notice from Cunningham College. And I understand, now, why you married that silly boy in haste.

I am so angry with you. And you are not even here to rage at! What a clever trick you played on me, my girl. What a lesson