Chapter 22 #2
His father glanced over the gardenia bushes to ensure that his wife was still at her prayers.
“After we met Ninon on Sullivan’s Island and she told me the truth about my mother, I started wondering: If she didn’t die when I was born, what if she wasn’t dead at all?
What if she didn’t want to give me up? You know what my grandmother Marguerite was like.
” He sat on the bench nearby, and Joseph joined him.
“I met with Ninon again. She told me everything she could remember about the plantation where I was born. I wrote it all down, and added a few details I learned from other Saint-Domingue émigrés. Two years ago, before Dr. England left on his first mission to Haiti, I asked him to take my information to President Boyer, to see if enquiries could be made. You know how easily Dr. England wins people over, so Boyer agreed to help. Having a dictator on your side has its advantages. Last year, when Dr. Clancy returned from Haiti, he brought word that my mother had finally been found, very much alive.”
Bishop Clancy knew they were colored now, too?
Even if the news had been sealed in a letter, no good could come of this.
Joseph’s father was putting all of them at risk.
If their secret became known in Charleston…
Joseph could transfer to another parish, and Cathy was already planning her flight with Perry.
But for Hélène, their mother, and their grandmother, starting over would not be so easy.
Movement drew Joseph’s attention to his mother, who rose from her prayers. She threw Joseph a hopeful glance and returned to the house.
His father murmured in her wake: “I don’t think you can understand, Joseph. You’ve had a mother all your life. This is my only chance to meet mine.”
Joseph also knew that state law would not permit her to visit South Carolina instead.
“You could come to Haiti with me, son.”
“I’m a Priest now.”
“You know very well that Dr. England could use a second pair of consecrated hands there even more than here.”
“I have classes to teach at the seminary. Besides, Mama would never let us both go.”
His father sighed. “Would you write your grandmother a letter, then?”
“Can she read?”
“I’ll read it to her.”
“What would I say?”
“Anything. Tell her about yourself. She’ll be as proud as I am.”
“I doubt she’s even Catholic.”
“Anyone would be proud of you, Joseph.”
“Because I’m the first colored Priest in America?”
His father stood and scowled down at him. “Because you’re a wise and compassionate young man. Most of the time.”
A fortnight after Joseph’s father sailed for Haiti with Bishop England, Cathy, Perry, David, and Sophie left for Missouri.
To distract their mother from her grief, Joseph and Hélène coaxed her into visiting the orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy.
Several children had lost their hearing to fevers.
Joseph and Hélène had taught them basic signs, but few people had the time or patience to converse with the children, let alone teach them to read.
Soon, Joseph’s mother and grandmother were visiting the orphans together. They’d always made little gifts for the children. Now they presented these in person. The Sisters of Mercy reported that what the orphans cherished most were their laps and their arms.
His mother and grandmother must have been visiting the orphanage on the day Joseph stopped at his parents’ house to retrieve a book.
Even Henry and May were out, because no one greeted him.
Everything was quiet till Joseph entered the hall and heard the murmurs in the parlor.
He recognized Hélène’s voice, and the other sounded like…
Then Joseph saw them: his little sister and Mr. Conley seated together on the sofa, bare hands clasped, knees practically touching, a flush of pleasure suffusing her cheeks as he whispered something that sounded like poetry.
When she realized they were not alone, Hélène sprang up instantly in front of her lover, as if to shield him from Joseph’s wrath. “This isn’t what it looks like! You needn’t challenge Liam to a duel!”
Who’d ever heard of a Priest fighting a duel?
To his credit, Mr. Conley was also blushing, and trying vainly to move in front of Hélène. She wouldn’t let him, and neither needed protecting; Joseph was frozen in place on the threshold.
“Well, it is what it looks like, but nothing happened!” Hélène continued at the speed of a locomotive.
“And nothing happened at Christmas, either! I promised Papa I wouldn’t follow in Cathy’s footsteps.
Papa already knows about Liam and me—and he gave us his blessing!
” She dropped her eyes to the rug and pouted. “Except he’s making us wait…”
“…until I have established myself as a lawyer,” Mr. Conley completed. “Until I can support your sister properly. Not in the manner she’s accustomed to, and not in the manner she deserves—I’ll never be wealthy—but…”
“Liam will make a name for himself; I know he will,” Hélène gushed. “He’s going to represent people like Mama, and immigrants and colored people!”
How many of his clients would be able to pay him?
His sister darted forward to squeeze Joseph’s hands. “I told Liam the real reason Papa is visiting Haiti.”
“Hélène!”
“Your family’s secret is safe with me, Father. On my life, I shall tell no one.”
“Surely we can trust Tessa,” Joseph’s sister cut in.
Emotion climbed Joseph’s throat—and not all of it was dread. If she already knew… “You’ve told Miss Conley too?”
“Not yet, but—”
Joseph shook his head. “You can’t, El. She teaches children.
She might not mean to reveal anything, but—” One of her students might speak cruelly of negroes, and before she thought of the consequences, Miss Conley might scold him by declaring that her dearest friend was a colored woman…
“This is how rumors start.” Joseph turned to the Irishman.
“Have you been reading the laws of your new state, Mr. Conley? Do you realize what we’re facing if the wrong people find out? ”
The Irishman averted his eyes. “Your father could never return to South Carolina—none of you could leave and ever come back. If you remained in Charleston, you’d be forced to find white guardians, pay a capitation tax, and obey the same curfew slaves do.
You’d be barred from restaurants and theatres and constantly reminded of your ‘inferior position.’”
And their treatment in the Northern states wouldn’t be much better.
Mr. Conley met Joseph’s gaze with defiance. “But such injustice will not change unless we fight it, Father.”
“You’ll be risking exposure by fighting.”
“I’m not afraid,” Hélène insisted.
Mr. Conley smiled at her. “Your sister is afraid of nothing. She has a heart the size of a cathedral. After all, she loves me. For the rest of my life, I shall strive to be worthy of her.”
“Will you give us your blessing, Joseph? Will you say our wedding Mass? Even if it doesn’t happen till”—Hélène bit her lip and threw a mournful glance at her suitor—“ten years from now, when Liam can support me?”
Joseph sighed. “Mama and Grandmama won’t approve of this match, El.” No doubt they were still hoping Hélène would marry a Middleton or a Pinckney.
“That’s why we haven’t told them yet.” Her brow furrowed. “Do you approve, Joseph?”
“Of course. I’m happy for you.” First he offered Liam his hand as a brother. The Irishman gripped it with obvious relief. Then Joseph blessed their betrothal as a Priest.
Technically, Hélène and Liam were condemning their children to two decades of indentured servitude and themselves to seven years.
Because of Cathy and Perry, Joseph had asked his father if there was a law against amalgamation in South Carolina.
There wasn’t—but there was a colonial statute calling intimate relations between whites and blacks “unnatural and inordinate copulation” and making the perpetrators and children of such offenses into virtual slaves.
Joseph thought Miss Conley close to perfection.
He could hardly object to her brother marrying his sister.
This union would make Miss Conley a permanent part of Joseph’s life.
He would have a legitimate reason to worry about her and enjoy her company, because they would be family.
In the eyes of the Church and the law, Joseph and Miss Conley would become brother and sister. Intimate yet entirely safe.
In June, Joseph’s father and Bishop England returned from Haiti, sunburned but otherwise intact. Now there were two colored Priests in the Americas: during the mission, His Lordship had ordained a Mr. Paddington, who had been born in Haiti and educated in Ireland and Rome.
Bishop England related this over dinner in the presbytery. Joseph’s father didn’t wait for his weekly visit; he found Joseph in the Biblical garden the next morning, eager to speak and heedless of anyone who might overhear.
Joseph hurried him into the garden shed and closed the door.
Until they lived in a kinder world, such revelations belonged in the shadows.
While Joseph tidied his tools, his father recounted his journey to meet his mother.
Joseph could hear it in his father’s voice: part of him had wanted to stay in Haiti.
In Great-Grandmother Marguerite’s day, Charleston’s free blacks had had to purchase numbered copper badges to wear on their breasts at all times or they’d risk the Work House.
Even now, the law demanded that slaves hired out by their masters wear such badges—much like the city’s dogs.
Yet the way Joseph’s father spoke about their African relatives, it was as if he wore an invisible badge over his heart—and he was proud of that badge, no matter its cost.
“I have six brothers and sisters and nineteen nieces and nephews. My mother and her husband have a little land but not much money.” Joseph’s father stared through the wall of the garden shed all the way to Haiti and raised his shoulders in a shrug.
“Yet they are content. They have each other, and they are free. I wish you could have met them, Joseph. My mother has a scar on the side of her head, and she’s missing the top of her right ear—because my grandmother shot her in order to steal me.
My mother was sixteen years old when it happened—fourteen when she gave birth to me.
We cried for hours and talked for two days straight.
Her mother’s people, my people, your people—they’re called the Yoruba. My mother’s true name is ìfé.”
Joseph could only guess at how that might be spelled, but the pronunciation wasn’t far from her French name, ève.
“Before I was baptized René, my mother named me Ekúndayò.”
How easily his father might have been someone else. How easily Joseph and his sisters might never have been born.
“Ekúndayò,” his father repeated. He scratched at the peeling skin of his sunburned wrist, but he was smiling. “It means: ‘sorrow becomes happiness.’”