Maria made Hannah’s black soap when the moon was waning, adding local ingredients, aloe vera and hibiscus. It was a hot night and Maria was burning up, using the largest iron pots in the house. The soap was so fragrant bees awoke, birds sang at an hour when they should have been silent, and fussy babies suddenly slept through the night. When she was done making the soap, she fell into her bed and didn’t wake for eighteen hours. It took a huge amount of energy and focus to make this soap, and because of this whoever used it would benefit and appear younger, perhaps by as much as ten years. In the morning, women from Willemstad and from all over the countryside came to buy the bars wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Even Adrie was impressed by the profits Maria brought in. She tried the soap herself, and when she looked in a mirror she was surprised to find she was as pretty as she’d been as a girl.

For three months they lived together, happier than they’d been for a long time. When there was a chore to do, they decided when it would be seen to. They awoke when they wished to, and washed sheets and clothes for themselves, not for the Jansens. Time was slow, with each day a pleasure, but time speeded up and took over eventually. The baby arrived on a night when the moon was hidden behind clouds. It was the windy season, unpredictable spring, but soon the wind died down, which signified good fortune to come. What is a daughter but good fortune, as complicated as she might be. Maria dragged her straw pallet outside, then drew a circle in the dust around her chosen birthing place as protection from evil. Cadin settled onto a low branch, watching every move she made with his sharp eyes. It seemed a long time since he’d found a baby in the snow, wrapped in a blue blanket, her hair as black as feathers. Now the night was hot, and the earth was sand, but the blanket set out for this baby was the same one Rebecca had stitched late at night in the Lockland house. Hannah had folded the blanket into the bottom of Maria’s satchel, dusted with lavender to keep away the moths. As the labor began, Maria took up a pair of scissors. She held up her long black hair that reached to her waist in a single braid and cut it short enough to graze her shoulders, unusual for a woman in this time and place. To have a child she knew she must make sacrifices and this would be the first of many.