Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel by Tiphanie Yanique Read Free Book Online Page A

that. Rebekah even knew that Owen Arthur called Madame Bradshaw “Nettie,” for he had called Rebekah that more than once in the storms of their lovemaking. “Madame Bradshaw, you won’t be mother to this one.”

11.
    Every night for the next many months, young Eeona was made to lie all night in her own bed, which was now on the other side of the house. The room beside Mama’s was being readied for the new baby. Eeona lay alone and seethed. She was old enough, a marriageable age herself, to know better. But she was livid that she and her father had not swum together at night for so long. They had not danced on the balcony at dusk for so long. He had not taken her for walks at dawn for so long. All that time he now gave to Mama. “Your mother is the madame of this house,” he had said to her when she’d searched for him that first lonely evening. “I have to be with her in this time of need.” The resentment grew in Eeona’s own body like a tumor, or like a child.
    Antoinette’s stomach grew like a continent. Owen stayed beside her, as the doctor ordered. Despite desiring her early expectant body, he had never made love to his wife when he knew she was pregnant. He always feared losing the child. Besides, if Antoinette ever made it to a rounding in the belly she would no longer seem as nubile to him as in the first months of her condition. This is the stage when Owen had always desired the narrowness of his daughter’s body and so would go elsewhere to relieve himself. But now Rebekah was pregnant, too. Nothing narrow there. He had been ordered to stay with Nettie and he wanted to stay. Perhaps this might be the hoped-for boy in her womb. So now the husband and wife made love, for the doctor had prescribed this as well. She was large as a ship, and Owen steered like her captain. He found he enjoyed the new swelling and the heat that spread inside. Owen never muttered Rebekah’s name when making love to his wife. “I own her” was mantra’d in his head, but he never let that escape either.
    The one time Antoinette went to the market that season, Eeona and Miss Lady both went with her. But she didn’t go again until the baby wasborn. For that one time Nettie had seen Rebekah, selling sweet pepper and nutmeg. And Nettie had seen Rebekah’s own slope of belly, just a bit larger than Antoinette’s. Madame Bradshaw had not known about the other pregnancy. For fear of causing more nervous episodes in the madame, no one had even let the meté slip. But now Antoinette knew what had happened. She had not won out over Rebekah. They were both in this together.
    The morning that Antoinette finally felt the steady contractions, Owen Arthur was inside her. She moaned and he, mistaken, thrust harder. She let him finish because she was a good wife, after all. When he slumped beside her, she turned to face him. “You made the baby come.”
    There in the bed, it felt like the Earth was pounding out of her. When the baby did come, it wailed as though on fire, and its hair was red as lobster. Antoinette looked the child in the face. “Oh,” she said. “If I had known it would be you . . .” The child was red all over. Her lobsterness reminded Antoinette of a time before nannies and maids and a husband with a ship. Reminded her of Anegada. So she gave the baby a trick name.
    When Owen came in, Antoinette allowed him to take their daughter. Owen held the child, not so disappointed at her femaleness as he had thought he might be. Instead, he wondered if this one would help diffuse the dangerous love he had for the other. He thought of a name like Francesca or Liberia that might give the girl some freedom. But Antoinette spoke clearly. “I’ve named her Anette. After me.” Instead of a middle name, Antoinette had Stemme, her maiden family name, put on the baby’s birth certificate. Naming is a parent’s first sorcery.
    She gave her breast to Anette. But the red-haired baby gnawed at her mother instead of sucking.