The Reinvention of Love

he sailed away, went home and married that Englishwoman. I heard nomore of him. Papa sent me the marriage announcement from the paper. This was cruel of him, I suppose, but Papa is angry with me for having lied. He says he would have understood if I had just told him the truth. But what is the truth, sister?
    Albert sailed for home. I was living in the shadows of Bridgetown. The white women who lived in the plantations moved to the other side of the street if they saw me approaching. They seemed afraid of me. I could see it in their eyes. Only Madame Baa felt any sympathy for my position. Only Madame Baa did not judge me.
    I worry that she will be stared at in Paris. I worry that she will be just as much of a curiosity in Paris as I have been in Bridgetown.
    Papa paid for our passage. Madame Baa wrote to him and offered to bring me home. “I have always wanted to see Europe,” she said.
    If Maman is with you, sister, will you tell her that Madame Baa has looked after me like a mother, and that I would have perished without her kindness. Will you kiss Maman for me, and tell her that I wanted so much to see her again, just once more again?
    Madame Baa wants me to stop writing this letter. She says it is upsetting me to think of you, to be writing like this to you. But she does not understand. If I do not think that you are still out there, somewhere, then you will cease to exist at all. And if that happens, you will disappear from my childhood. I will never have had a sister. There will be no one ahead of me on the slope of lawn at dusk.
    It is not that I believe you are alive, but I believe you are somewhere. You are somewhere just out of reach. If I keep writing to you, if I keep calling out to you, then perhaps you will wait for me to catch you up. Perhaps you will hear me.Papa was restless with the pain of your dying. Only the sea could console him. Only the sea’s embrace was strong enough for him to feel. He felt that the wrong daughter had died, and he was right. It should have been me, sister. I didn’t matter as much.

    Victor Hugo c. 1870

    I would like to be a child again. You would be alive, and Maman would be alive. We would still be living on Notre-Dame-des-Champs, with the pond in the garden, and the roses against the windows. I remember our happiness there.
    A sailor has just come by to ask if I want to go below decks. He was very polite. The sailors do not know what to make of us – two women travelling together, one black and one white – but they are nice to us. I don’t feel as afraid going back to France as I did coming across the ocean to Halifax by myself, those few years ago. I don’t feel afraid, even with tonight’s rough passage, but I am a little afraid of seeing Papa again. He does not think that I have been on an adventure. He thinks that I have fooled myself, and that in fooling myself, I have also made a fool of him. Everything is about Papa, is it not, dear Sister? You know that he was not there to bury you, but that since then he has made a big fuss of walking part of the way to your grave on the anniversary of your death and writing poems about the experience. He has written a great many poems to you. You have been his muse, and I must admit that it has made me angry. I don’t want you to be a muse. I just want you to be alive again.
    A wave has just drenched the back of my dress, but I have held this book to my heart and saved the paper from spoiling.
    There are only a few more nights to go and then we will be in France. What waits for me? Not you. The last time you saw me I was a child. You might not recognize me now.
    Could you meet me, not Papa? Could you and Maman wait for me at the docks? Please. There is enough time to crawl out of the ground at Villequier and take a carriage to the coast.
    I am almost twice as old as you now. Think of that. How strange it is that you, my older sister, are so much younger than I am.
    The night is swirling around me – the waves, the voices ofthe sailors, the tap of the rigging. That noise sounds like the tap of the table leg on Jersey, from the table Papa told us was really you, communicating from beyond the grave. I didn’t really believe you were dead then. It seems truer now, but I pray that my voice still reaches you, sister, that these words find you. I would be lost without this hope.
    It’s cold here, on the deck of this ship, riding through the night sea. Maman said it was sunny when you went sailing at Villequier. She said