one of our Senators, a gentleman from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sent a bushel basket of Chesapeake Bay oysters 'round to the townhouse in honor of R.’s return last evening. People heard that he had a wife and that she died. Neither of us was hungry for supper, so we ate the oysters for breakfast.

He said I looked like a mermaid. I said he looked like King Neptune.

He did look just like some briny sea god, with a mud-caked shell in his fingers, sucking down the juice after the plump-jiggle slid down his throat. I had to smile at him, and smile at the memory of wanting him to slide down my throat. My desire for him had been so much more than distraction or work. Once upon a time I was as hungry for him as today we are hungry for breakfast.

Love and desire are not the same thing. Most often they don't even live in the same house. They should but they don't. He promised me a trip back across the water, to Europe, a grander tour, ensemble, together. He didn't see me shudder.

For his teeth were finding a pearl just at that moment. He plucked it from his mouth with his fingers. The pearl was blue when you looked at it one way and gray when you looked at it in another. It was very small and not so exactly round. He balanced it on the tip of his pointer finger, and I snatched it with my tongue and swallowed.

I want to surprise him. At least once again. I want to insist without words that we will not just be restless, and prosperous, and contained.

I want to have more than a liquor bottle to keep me in my skin, to keep me in my house. Once he could rock me into my skin, rock me out of my imagination into the marrow of my bones. He did that for me and I remember it. Will every kiss I kiss be in remembrance of him, who he used to be ?

I swallowed the pearl, and tears appeared in his eyes, tears I had never seen before. He knows our passion plays hide-and-seek with us now. Rain falls in our hearts. Rain, rain, go away! Cindy and R.B. want to play! Oysters are no breakfast food.

As if in sympathy, it began to rain outside. After breakfast I went to my room to write a letter to Beauty, a letter full of gloom. "It's raining now. Heaven's tears are washing over us. In the Capital City this is the sacrament that substitutes for breakfast with Beauty..." I had just written those words when R. walked into my room without knocking.

He kissed me on the back of the neck and dropped a pack of letters onto my little desk. I asked him what it was. A smile curled onto his lips, sharp and tight, as dangerous a curve as the curve of my breasts.

Sneering, he was an especially good-looking man; nastiness brought a flash of' earlier days" across his face. I had to tell myself to breathe, because he took my breath away. He flicked that packet onto my desk in a manner these city Negroes might call "hincty," something akin to but different from "uppity," with a studied nonchalance that barely covers insolence and smells of fear.

For the first time, in all the time I had known him, he was trying too hard. The gesture was, as the Creoles (who, though few and far between in number, lend their great charm to this city, when they can be found) say, "un peu trop," just a little too much. Or were all his gestures that way and I just was seeing it for the first time? Certainly this gesture was de trop and his words were the cherries on the cake. "Your manumission papers," he said, without hurting me at all.

He walked out of the room without saying another word.

They were love letters. The letters Lady had written to Cousin and the letters he had written to her. I had heard from Miss Priss that Lady, in her delirium on her deathbed, had called out someone's name. It was hard to hear what she was saying, but Miss Priss thought she was calling Feleepe, the name of her cousin who had been killed in the duel. The cousin who died in New Orleans just before Lady married.

Lady herself had told me some little about him. Once, even, holding me in her arms, she had laughed and cried, laughed and cried, rocking me back and forth, kissing my head, whispering, "I wish you were my child, I wish you were my child." I thought very little about it. I had so long and reverently wished for Lady to be my mother, her wish sounded to my ear only natural and true. It's hard, having natural wishes in an unnatural time.

There is no difficulty in deciphering these letters. Each of them wrote a beautiful hand. Each was urgently trying to convey information of supreme importance, and they felt safe, so their sentences ran frankly naked. Lady and Cousin were beautiful children, bold and unhurt. For a time, in the early pages, that untested boldness served them as bravery and lent clarity to every utterance. Later, when I knew her, Lady's every utterance was dressed, and all meaning obscured and distorted, the way her body was obscured and distorted by whalebones and hoops and cinches and pantalets and all manner of torturous frippery. But at the first all was plain and simple.


P,

I add no dear or darling, your name alone is prayer! I tremble in fear of God's judgment, for I know I am guilty L.L of idolatrous worship-of you. How can I love God with all my heart when I have no heart? You have my heart. I beg you to go to church on Sunday, for it is the only way my heart can go and I may see you there.

Ask Daddy soon. I am not too young. And Mother loves you so. I hear her call, her greeting, "Sweet son of own departed sister." How she does go on, Mamma. This house is neither cool enough nor hot enough.

Take me away from it to some place where the air is not the temperature of my skin-where mosquito bites are not the only thing I feel.


Dearest Girl, Darling E

Dearest and darling are your name. Belonging to you alone. There are other Elizabeths, other Emilys, other E s, but there is only one dearest girl, you. I shall give you fire and ice when we are married.

I'll rub ice on your wrists in July and build great big fires in December. Don't you swoon.

P.P.


Mother found your last letter and took to weeping. "What does he mean, what does he mean? " When I tried to explain, she interrupted me, saying, "Oh, it's all too clear, all too clear." I have no idea what she's so upset about. You should ask Daddy at once. I think they don't believe you really want to marry me.

Your E.


My dear E

Your father refuses to let me marry you. I asked him to state his reservation, and he could say only that your mother disapproves of the match. I must talk to my Aunt.

P.P.


Mother does nothing but cry. She took me on her lap and whispered, between sobs, "If it was possible, I would allow it." If I do more than bow in your direction at church, she will remove me from the city.

She says the curse of Haiti is upon us.

P.


What does Haiti have to do with this? I have my little income from there and you have yours. It should buy us a little freedom. This all sounds like a nightmare my old Mammy used to tell me about ill-used slaves coming to haunt families that were cruel to them. Sometimes they scared the people so bad, their hearts beat right out of their chests, then stopped beating at all.

E


Darling,

Your mother, my aunt, refuses to see me at all. I'm just about to go to the graveyard to talk with my mother.

P.P.


You must write. It's been days since I spoke with you. I come to your house and am refused entrance. Have the gates of hell opened and swallowed you whole?

P.P.


What do you know of Haiti? I don't believe I've ever seen it on a map.

I don't believe I'll ever take another teaspoon of sugar in my life.

Mother doesn't know that I know why she believes we can't marry. The reason doesn't constrain me. Doesn't shackle my heart from yours. But my tongue is locked in the prison of my mouth. You would have to make your own decision, and I do not know what you would decide, and if I tell you what I know, you will never be yourself again, and if I do not tell you, we will never be what we might be. If you wish to know, send word and I will tell you.

Your cousin E.


Darling E.

Was our great-grandmother a murderess? Did she kill a hundred slaves because one displeased her? I refuse to be afraid or ashamed of decades-old indiscretions of my progenitors. Tell me at once, and I will be as I remain, who I am, the man who wants to marry you.

P.P.


Our great-grandmother was not a murderess. She was a Negresse.

E.


Dear E.

I am surprised you put those words to paper. I am proud of you, very proud, and I should still like to marry you. I spoke with Aunt. Your mother sees no life for us that will not destroy the rest of the family. She says her confinement and the confinement of her sister, my mother, were agony, greatly lessened but not ended by the arrival of perfect pink infants. She says they watched the tips of our ears and ridge of skin around our fingers every night for signs of darkening. I asked her what she would have done if she had seen the tip of your ear turn the color of one of the walnuts just falling. Even if you had turned the color of butter, if she had turned the color of butter, I would have put the pillow on her face and I would have cried. Color comes in so slow over a period of ten days, if you do it quick even the Daddy don't see the dark in the baby. Of course the Mammy knows. They've seen all manner of white-looking nigger children.