I began by telling them about us, Alula and Koahu, and our lives on the island. I related the tale of our crossings with Joubert and Roblet and our subsequent separation. I recounted the crossing with Feuille and Feuille’s life on the Desire plantation. Finally, I told them about the crossing with the slave girl Jeanne. The two women sat side by side, holding each other’s hands as they listened.

After I’d told them these tales, I requested a pause. I was not used to such exertions and my head was dizzy. It was midway through the afternoon. The sky would darken in an hour or two. The ladies waited in respectful silence, chewing their cakes and sipping coffee politely, worried that I would revoke the privilege they’d been accorded. But now that I’d begun, I would not be stopped. The tales poured out of me, one after the other, like pearls on a necklace.

I took up my own story in the moments following the crossing with Feuille. When one has crossed into a new body, I explained, there is always a period of familiarization with it—with its history and idiosyncrasies. The manner in which the soul adheres with the new body is never quite the same. What’s more, the body’s memories do not come all at once. Rather, in the first few hours there is a flood of them, triggered by countless exterior sights, sounds, and smells. Over the next few days, the stream of memories slows so that by the third day they are but a trickle. Some memories are deeply buried and can surface weeks, months, or sometimes years after a crossing.

Having just crossed into the body of this girl in that New Orleans hotel room, I turned to take one last look at my previous body, that of Feuille. He sat directly before me, a ghastly sight, his mouth encrusted with streaks of dried blood, the result of the removal of his gold teeth before the crossing. In his gray-blue eyes a dazed new soul was now blinking timorously in perfect ignorance of what had just occurred. The guilt occasioned by my act of thievery stabbed me into action. I gathered together all our belongings, including the money and gold that would launch us into our next lives, and stepped out into the hallway, where Mother was anxiously waiting. Upon seeing me she burst into tears and hugged me. The sight and touch of her prompted a hailstorm of memories in me so great and vivid I almost fainted. I composed myself and told her not to cry but to rejoice, for now we were free.