Book of the Little Axe: a Novel by Lauren Francis-Sharma

Author:Lauren Francis-Sharma [Francis-Sharma, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802147035
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

3

Mamá recovered, relapsed, then recovered again. She’d had Eve traipsing about the bush, picking roots for a bush bath, boiling what was left for teas and soups, crystallizing some into jellies and crèmes. Mamá was fond of saying that she had more than once “fixed herself up” and “done what that crop of unlicensed doctors on the island could not.”

While still ill, Mamá had wielded her Catholic sword of guilt to remind Jeremias of the penance he’d have to proffer for not coming to visit his sick mother. As such, Jeremias began attending Sunday lunches again. And Mamá had demanded that he bring his entire family.

“Mamá, you’re looking much better.” Jeremias said this each time he arrived, whether true or not. He complimented Mamá, always, on the food, spoke with her about the latest cliff-hangers in the magazines and part issues he’d borrowed from Monsieur DeGannes, while Francine, with her “long face,” sat always with Pierre on her lap, refusing to eat what was tendered, seeming to regard her lack of hunger as a hindrance to adult conversation.

After lunch one Sunday, as the sword-sharp grass began to wilt under the sun, Mamá suggested they take tea outside. Mamá and Papá sat on their rockers, Eve and Jeremias along the dusty rail of the verandah, while Rosa and Francine shared the top step with Pierre. The ladies hand-fanned warm air while Papá told the story of Jeremias as a young boy, temporarily blinded by a colony of stinging wasps, finding his way home without sight. Pierre was captivated, glancing back and forth between his grandfather and father with large, glowing eyes.

After Papá’s story, Eve brought them up on local gossip—the woman flogged by her newly married son for speaking out of turn to his wife and the obeah man who had thus managed, with cucumbers and a candle, to rid an old man with a half dozen children of his young wife’s lover.

“I hear Monsieur DeGannes found himself a dog-faced Englishwoman to marry,” Eve finished.

“That’s not polite,” Mamá said.

“I hear the same,” Jeremias said.

“That she’s dog faced?” Mamá laughed.

“Non, that he’s getting married.” Jeremias looked to Francine, as if to apologize for not mentioning it sooner. “If he marries this woman, he’s deemed English. Fit to do as he wishes. Putting together old English money and new French money is bloody brilliant business.”

“It’s all the same dirty business, all the same slave money,” Eve mumbled.

Mamá glared at Eve. “People don’t make love on a hungry belly,” she said before turning again to Jeremias. “Has DeGannes met her as yet or is this all prearranged?”

“The arrangements were made in England, but she’s arrived and is staying with family friends until they can get a ‘real man of God to perform the ceremony, not a demagogue like Padre José,’ she was heard saying.”

“Oh yes, we are all devil worshippers here, aren’t we? You should see how those Protestants stare when we go to Mass!” Mamá set her hand on her stomach as if to soothe it.

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