Chapter 9 #3
“Exactement!” the man smiled. “Noisette roses were named after my brother Louis Claude and myself. I sent him one, and he made it famous in France.” Monsieur Noisette gestured to the young mulatto. “Allow me to introduce my son, Pierre Louis.”
Joseph’s eyes went wide. He’d thought this day could not become any stranger. Monsieur Noisette looked like a pure-blooded Frenchman. If this boy was his son, that meant he had— With a negress!
Joseph saw mulattos every day in the streets. But until this morning, he had not really understood how they happened. And no one he knew had openly admitted to causing them. This man felt no shame for what he’d done. Noisette seemed proud of his colored son.
The boy had extended his nut-brown hand.
“Joseph!” Papa hissed in English. “Have you forgotten your manners?” He acted as if this situation were perfectly normal, as if conventional etiquette applied. Joseph was beginning to think he did not know his father at all.
Joseph couldn’t move. He couldn’t even look at them. At the edge of his vision, he watched the mulatto drop his hand.
Noisette cleared his throat and turned back to his flowers. “I was just testing Louis to see how many of these plantings he could name by genus and species. How’s your Latin coming, Joseph?”
“Bene,” he muttered at the ground.
“Do you know that all plants have Latin names? For example, Digitalis purpurea is foxglove—your father is familiar with that one. The Latin names are important, because they allow botanists in different countries to communicate with each other. Even in the same language, a common name can refer to different plants, or many common names can refer to the same plant. Linnaeus was a doctor too, but he wasn’t thinking of medicinal uses when he designed his classification system.
Do you know why he grouped plants the way he did? What criteria Linnaeus used?”
Joseph shook his head.
Noisette grinned and dropped his voice as if he were telling a secret. “Very meticulously, one by one, he counted the plants’ sexual organs.”
Joseph gaped at him, afraid to look down. “Plants have…”
Noisette nodded, still smiling. “Usually several!”
Joseph swallowed. Did Mama know this?
Papa chuckled. “I think you’ve scandalized the poor boy, Philippe.”
“If a flower has both male and female parts,” Noisette continued, “what do we call it, Louis?”
“A ‘perfect’ flower,” the mulatto answered.
“Très bien! Let me show you one.” Noisette took them over to a cluster of white lilies. “This is called the pistil.” He touched the bulbous tip of a stalk that was darker than the petals and jutted out from their center. “Would you say this part is male or female, Joseph?”
He knew he was blushing. Wasn’t it obvious?
“It’s female!” Noisette declared. “These stamina with the pollen, they’re the male organs.”
Joseph averted his eyes. Lilies were obscene.
Lilies! In paintings and statues of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, white lilies often accompanied them.
Mama had explained that lilies symbolized the purity of Christ’s human parents, how they had never corrupted their bodies by lying together.
Mama and those artists certainly did not know about this.
Papa asked Noisette about their spotted rose leaves. He talked to the mulatto as if he were any other boy. Finally, he led Joseph back to their chaise.
After they’d climbed inside, Papa sat staring at the reins.
“That’s twice today you’ve disappointed me, son.
But before I lived in Paris, when I was your age, I saw the world the way you do: black and white, so to speak.
” Papa looked over the field to the distant figures.
“In some things you’re so mature, I forget how young you really are, and that all you’ve ever known is one small corner of Charleston.
I should have introduced you to the Noisettes years ago.
” Joseph felt Papa’s eyes on him, but he didn’t raise his own. “Have you noticed them at Mass?”
Joseph shook his head. He always kept his attention on the Missal or the Priest.
“That’s because the Noisettes sit in the gallery.
The colored members of our congregation also receive Communion last. In the so-called Catholic Church!
At the cathedral, Dr. England’s solution is to offer a separate Mass.
If you truly want to serve God, Joseph, remember: ‘never do to another what you would hate to have done to you by another.’ I’ve seen inside white and black bodies, son. They aren’t any different.”
“If you really believe that,” Joseph asked quietly, “why haven’t you freed our slaves?”
Papa’s sigh was almost a groan. “Because South Carolina has made it impossible! Since the Act of 1820, the state legislature has to approve every petition, and they’ve shown time and again they’ll free slaves only for ‘heroic deeds’—only for exposing revolts like Denmark Vesey’s.
Why didn’t I free Henry and May before 1820, when manumission was merely difficult?
Why don’t I submit a petition now on principle?
” Papa’s voice became a mutter, as if he were talking to himself.
“Because of what your mother and her parents would think. Because I’m a hypocritical coward. ”
When they reached home, Mama met them in the front hall, and she glared at Papa. Joseph had not meant to stay and watch their hands. But when he reached the first stair landing, he glanced down and saw Mama making his sign name. Joseph couldn’t resist the temptation.
‘He wanted to go!’ Papa answered. ‘And I think my son should know my friends.’
‘Was that woman there?’
‘Philippe’s wife has a name.’ Smoothly and rapidly, Papa spelled each letter with his fingers: ‘C-E-L-E-S-’ That was as far as he got before Mama rolled her eyes and turned her head away.
‘She is his slave.’
Lightly but firmly, Papa tapped her shoulder till she looked back at his hands. ‘Even if he managed to free her, Celestine would have to leave South Carolina.’
Mama raised her eyebrows as if to say: How would that be bad?
‘Philippe and Celestine love each other! They’ve been together most of their lives! They have four beautiful children, and they love each of them just as—’
‘Those children should never have been born.’
‘What?’
‘They are his slaves! Did your friend think about how selfish he was being? The offspring of—couplings like that aren’t black, and they aren’t white! Where do they belong? They’re unnatural! I will not have our children associating with—’
“‘Unnatural’?” Papa echoed aloud as well, as if he’d misunderstood.
‘Blacks and whites are different.’ Mama lingered on the sign: starting with two fists in front of her and then drawing them apart as far as her arms would reach. ‘God made them different for a reason. They do not belong together. Not like that.’
‘Many people say you and I don’t belong together. That I shouldn’t have married a deaf woman. That you shouldn’t have married at all.’
‘We are nothing like them!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you and I aren’t different! When I was born, I was like you! Our children are normal, not cursed. I praise God for that every day.’
‘I don’t want normal children! I didn’t want a normal wife! But sometimes, Anne, you are entirely too conventional!’
Mama’s breath caught, her hands trembled, and she turned away from Papa. She closed her eyes and made a sound that was halfway between a whimper and a sob.
Papa stepped forward quickly and took her by the shoulders till she opened her eyes. “I’m sorry!” he said with words as well as with his fists against his heart.
Tears still descended her cheeks, but she submitted to his embrace.
Papa kept speaking aloud, the way he would sometimes, even though he knew Mama couldn’t hear him. “The last thing I want is to hurt you, Anne.” Papa stood holding Mama near the pier glass, and he seemed to be examining their reflection. “But you call me ‘unnatural’…”
On the stair landing, Joseph scowled. No she hadn’t: Mama had called mulattos unnatural. Joseph must have misunderstood some of their signs. He wasn’t used to reading hands and faces from such a high angle. This was why you shouldn’t spy on other people’s conversations.
As he turned away, Joseph heard Papa murmur below him: “You see what you want to see…”