If you follow his commands, I told myself, you can become the woman he believes you are.

I felt the water creep up my spine, around my shoulders, and lick into my ears. Everything within me wanted to hold tight against it. My head dipped further below the surface, and all sound was gone now—except the sound of my own breath. My mouth and nose were still above the surface, and I took in one more bit of air, which felt warm now, when the rest of me was in cold water. And then I let go and trusted the water, and I was free. I opened my eyes a little bit. I could see the moon above us, and its light reflected, white and shimmering, on the water that surrounded me.

“Do you think,” I said to Emmanuel, “it’s the same moon over Mama right now? Do you think she is looking at it as I look at it, as I lie on top of water? Do you think she can know me right now?”

But he was tired of games by then. Or games that did not involve him. He sat up and crashed out of the water.

He took me to the water every Sunday afternoon. But first, we had to endure the mornings. Those we spent in sweaty prayer with his father’s congregation: the bishop sitting behind the pulpit in his heavy robes, the priest standing up to lead the service, Ella’s sewing circle sitting in the front pews with some of the Haitians who had joined the church early on, and the newest converts always standing in the back of the church.

No one seemed to question this arrangement, not even Emmanuel, when I asked him about it. “It has always been that way,” he told me. But Ella was more blunt. “They are our brothers in Christ, but they aren’t of our sort,” she said. “The Haitians of our station are lovely, but they remain papists. The ambitious workers here join our church because they know we have schools and aid and help, and they want that for their families. We love them very much and they love us, and we worship together, but we like to be with our sort. Don’t pretend you don’t understand.”

In our pew sat myself, at the farthest end, closest to the church window; Emmanuel, seated beside me; his sister, beside him; and Ti Me, at the aisle. Once, when we were all supposed to have bowed in prayer, I glanced up to see her neck straight, the only head unbent in all the church.

The church was Emmanuel’s father’s greatest pride. A stone building with rough windows dug out of the walls and a high ceiling. There was only one cross in the whole place, he liked to point out. No idolatry here.

We sang hymns in English first, then the Kreyòl translations. Bishop Chase strongly discouraged any hand clapping. “Americans can take it,” he said, “but it excites the Haitians too much.” So the songs swelled, but there was always some large piece missing.