During the day, I did well enough. I sat near Ti Me in the cookhouse and tried hard to learn the language, enough so that one day I could ask her about the gods she and Emmanuel loved.

But every night, I betrayed him, when I dreamt of being with my mother.

Sometimes, I dreamt I was a girl, working quietly and companionably with her in her study, the heavy smell of camphor around us. Sometimes, I dreamt I was finally driving the black carriage with dr. sampson and daughter drawn in gold on the side. In every dream, Emmanuel, marriage, my desire for him, was forgotten, nowhere to be found. When I woke, I would long for her again, even as Emmanuel’s arm sat heavy across my breast, even as I felt the long naked length of him against my back.

Sometimes, in the dreams, she held me in the softness of her lap, as if I was a child, and swept a gold fan over us.

The drumming that had started all around us that October, that startled me from morning sleep and afternoon rests, was a relief. It shook my head free of grief, and to its rhythm I could sing Love Emmanuel, and so forget my mother.

“The idolatrous Haitians worship the dead,” Ella spat to me, the walls of the sitting room, the sewing in her lap, whenever she heard the drums. Emmanuel had told me that, yes, the dead here held a special place. But what do you call it when you worship a memory of a living person, of one who has never been completely known to you, and when your worship is unwilling, driven not by a desire to honor but because you have realized the world didn’t make sense with her, and does not make sense now that you are without her?

“Fet Gede is their All Souls’ Day, but as with everything outside of America, the sense of humor here is keener,” Emmanuel had told me in bed the night before the holiday. This was his favorite position to tell me stories—while lying down.

“Ella tells me that the men tie skeleton hands to their belts and circle their hips in lewdness,” I said.

“In that, she is not wrong. If there was ever a holy day designed to speak to Ella’s delusions, this is it.”

Already in the night, we could hear music and laughing, louder than usual.

“It is one big celebration for the spirits of those who passed,” Emmanuel said.

“It sounds macabre.”

“It is not.”

“If I went with you, I could see for myself if it is not.”

“But then who would keep the peace with Ella and father?”

In the morning, my bed was empty.