The sound of the market so loud it was nearly unbearable, but it was sweeter than the silence in the Chase household. It was the hum of a hundred women talking and laughing and trading and gossiping, to make the day run. Every woman, it seemed, was calling out to the others, “Maren, maren!” It was the one word I knew, the one I had learned from weeks on the boat. Sailor, sailor, the women were shouting. But when I asked Ti Me and Ella about it, Ti Me opened her mouth to answer and Ella cut her off.

“You’ll notice, the Haitian women are not very chaste,” she said. “And it all stems from that. All of this does. All of this chaos around us.”

Ti Me closed her mouth and drew ahead of us, the basket balanced on her head. She had left this conversation.

Ella followed my gaze. “Oh, Ti Me would agree with me,” she said. “It is part of Papa’s work, to bring a civilizing force to this great country. Look.” Ella pointed one pale finger. Behind us, the mountains rose, impressive and lush and green. “This country could be rich. But a country is only as wealthy as its wives and mothers. You will see.”

I was not sure how the same home could produce an Ella, so full of spite her fingers shook at the mountains around us, and an Emmanuel, for whom the very same mountains brought tears to his eyes. I could not make sense of it, and I knew asking Ella directly would not get any response I could understand. It was a question for the night, for the space of time held between two bodies in bed—the one place in this country, I was learning, where I could speak the truth. Emmanuel, too.

I smiled at Ella in response.

To see her out in the market was strange. She walked like a very proud duck—both ankles turned nearly out, toes pointed slantwise. Every few feet, she swept the hem of her skirt up. I think it was to protect it, but it seemed to swirl up more dust and muck from the road. Ahead of us, Ti Me walked steadily, her own skirts tucked up into her apron to keep them from dragging in the mud. This practicality, perhaps, was what Ella thought of as so unchaste. It was what a man would think, not a woman, who knew how heavy skirts could get with dirt.

Watching Ella, I tried to see where Emmanuel was reflected in her movements. It relieved me that I could not. How could I love a man so much and detest the person closest to him? I thought again of what he had said. That they had not shared a life in a long time. I looked around me at the streets, the women bent over, Ti Me now stopping at a market stall, talking with another woman, a fruit I did not recognize in the palm of each of her hands. She was weighing them. Then she leaned over, spat on the ground. The two women began to argue furiously.