I shook my head.

Emmanuel smiled and began to snap his fingers, slightly out of time. “Li se yon esklav ki damou, li se yon esklav ki damou, li se yon esklav ki damou, Libète moun Nwa! Which means, of course, that I am a slave of love to my black Libertie.”

My eyes shot through with pain as I felt tears form, but I forced myself not to cry. He looked at me expectantly.

“Very clever,” I murmured.

“Ha! You will learn. Anything here that happens at midnight is known by dawn. And by morning, the neighborhood has turned it into a song.”

He bent his head to kiss my fingers. I bent my own to meet his.

“Please don’t leave me with her,” I whispered.

“I thought you were brave,” he murmured back.

And then he was gone.

I turned to Ella, who had not moved from the divan. I sat down, primly, on Emmanuel’s chair.

“What are you sewing?” I said.

She unbent her head and looked at me. She held up a lady’s jacket—black fabric with red thread she was embroidering. The embroidery was so thick and close together in some places that the jacket looked crimson. In others, it was nearly black, with only a bit of red curled over.

“Very nice,” I said.

“You cannot possibly understand it.”

“It is a jacket.”

“Yes, but you can’t know it.”

I frowned. “I do not understand,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said. She set aside the jacket, as if in a rush. “We must get to market.”

“Ti Me!” she called suddenly. “Ti Me!”

Ella and I sat there in the quiet. She glared at me, her nostrils flaring slightly. Today, her hair was pinned up, but two tendrils framed her face. One still held the paper curler she must have put in last night, after she left our bedroom. The other was valiantly trying to hold on to a curl but was losing in the humidity of Haiti.

Ti Me was slow to come, but she finally appeared in the doorway.

“Mademoiselle,” she said.

“We must get to market, Ti Me. Honestly. Fwi a ap gate. We will be left with nothing. Papa must not be made sick paske nou parese.”

“Wi, mademoiselle.” Ti Me looked from me to Ella. “Just let me get my basket first,” she said.

The market was a kingdom of women. All around me, old women were bent with produce loaded onto their backs, baskets topped with the green fringe of sweetgrass. Some of the old women had gray skirts; others, blue and yellow ones. There were younger women, too, who walked faster, hips rolling, legs spread wide, hurrying past. And children. There were children everywhere—some clothed, some naked, all barefoot. I had thought, back home, with my mother and Madame Elizabeth and Lenore all around, that I was dark. But here, shining in the sun, I saw women with skin the color of the night sky.