Beluche appeared at the school with a letter from Valmorain, explaining to his son the reasons why he would not go home that year and containing enough money to buy clothing, books, and any whim he might want to indulge. His orders were to take Maurice on a cultural trip to the historical city of Philadelphia, a place every young man of his position should know because it was there that the seed of the American nation had germinated, as Valmorain's letter pompously stated. Maurice left with Beluche, and for those weeks of forced tourism he remained silent and indifferent, trying to disguise the interest the trip aroused in him and to fight off the sympathy he was beginning to feel for that poor devil Beluche.

The next summer the boy was again left waiting two weeks at the school with his trunk all packed, until the same chaperon showed up to take him to Washington and other cities he had no desire to visit.

Harrison Cobb, one of the few teachers who stayed at the college during Christmas week, had noticed Maurice Valmorain because he was the only student who did not have visitors or gifts, and who spent the holidays reading alone in the nearly empty building. Cobb belonged to one of the oldest families in Boston, established in the city since the beginning of the seventeenth century and of noble origin, as everyone knew but he denied. He was a fanatic defender of the American republic and abominated nobility. He was the first abolitionist Maurice met, and he would mark the boy profoundly. In Louisiana abolitionism was considered worse than syphilis, but in the state of Massachusetts the subject of slavery was discussed constantly because the state's constitution, written twenty years before, contained a clause that prohibited it.

Cobb found an avid intellect in Maurice, and a fervent heart in which his humanitarian arguments immediately took root. Among other books, he had him read The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in 1789 in London with enormous success. This dramatic story of an African slave, written in the first person, had caused a commotion among European and American audiences, but few knew of it in Louisiana, and the boy had never heard it mentioned. The teacher and his student spent evenings studying, analyzing, and discussing; Maurice could at last articulate the uneasiness slavery had always caused him.

"My father has two hundred plus slaves that one day will be mine," Maurice confessed to Cobb.

"Is that what you want, son?"

"Yes, because I will be able to emancipate them."

"Then there will be two hundred plus Negroes abandoned to their fate and an imprudent boy in poverty. What is gained by that?" his teacher rebutted. "The struggle against slavery is not done plantation by plantation, Maurice, the way people think; the laws in this country and the world must be changed. You must study-prepare yourself and get involved in politics."

"I'm no good for that, sir!"

"How do you know? We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test."

Zarite

I had stayed on the plantation almost two years, according to my calculations, before my masters again brought me to serve with the domestics. In all that time I had not seen Maurice because during his vacations his father did not let him come home; he always arranged to send him on a trip to other places, and finally, when his studies were complete, he took him to France to meet his grandmother. But that came later. The master wanted to keep him far away from Madame Hortense. Neither was I able to see Rosette, but Monsieur Murphy brought me news of her every time he went to New Orleans. "What are you going to do with that pretty girl, Tete? You'll have to lock her up to keep her from stirring a storm in the street," he would joke with me.

Madame Hortense gave birth to a second daughter, Marie-Louise, who was born with a tight chest. The climate did not suit her but since no one can change the weather, except Pere Antoine in extreme cases, not much could be done to make her comfortable. It was because of her that they brought me back to the house in the heart of the city. That year Dr. Parmentier had arrived in New Orleans after a long time in Cuba, and he replaced the Guizot family's physician. The first thing he did was stop the leeches and mustard rubs, which were killing the child, and the next was to ask about me. I don't know how he remembered me after so many years. He convinced the master that I was the best person to look after Marie-Louise because I had learned a lot from Tante Rose. Then they ordered the manager to send me to the city. It was very sad to bid farewell to my friends and the Murphys and travel for the first time alone, with a permit to keep from being arrested.

Many things had changed in New Orleans during my absence; more garbage, more coaches and people, and a fervor of constructing houses and extending streets. Even the market had been expanded. Don Sancho no longer lived in the house with the Valmorains, he had moved to an apartment in the same neighborhood. According to Celestine, he had forgotten Adi Soupir and was in love with a Cuban woman whom no one in the house had ever seen. I moved into the mansard room with Marie-Louise, a pale little thing so weak she didn't even cry. It occurred to me to bind her to my body-that had given a good result with Maurice, who was also born sickly-but Madame Hortense said that that might be fine for blacks but not for her daughter. I did not want to put her in a cradle-she would have died-so I opted to always carry her in my arms.

As soon as I had a chance, I spoke with my master to remind him that I would be thirty that year and was due my freedom.

"Who will care for my daughters?" he asked me.

"I will, if that is what you want, monsieur."

"You mean that everything will be the same?"

"Not the same, monsieur; if I am free, I can leave if I want, none of you can beat me, and you will have to pay me a little so I can live."

"Pay you!" he exclaimed with surprise.

"That's how coachmen, cooks, nurses, seamstresses, and other free persons make a living, monsieur."

"I see you are very well informed. Then you know that no one employs a nursemaid; she is always part of the family, like a second mother, and later like a grandmother, Tete."

"I am not a part of your family, monsieur. I am your property."

"I have always treated you as if you were family! Well, then, if that is what you plan, I will need time to convince Madame Hortense, though it is a dangerous precedent and it will cause a lot of gossip. I will do what I can."

He gave me permission to go see Rosette. My daughter had always been tall and at eleven she looked fifteen. Monsieur Murphy had not lied, she was very pretty. The nuns had succeeded in curbing her impetuousness but had not erased her dimpled smile and seductive gaze. She greeted me with a formal curtsy, and when I hugged her she went rigid. I think she was embarrassed that her mother was a cafe au lait slave. My daughter was what mattered most to me in the world. We had lived like a single body, a single soul, until my fear that she would be sold, or that her own father would rape her, as he had me, had forced me to separate from her. More than once I had seen the master feeling her, the way men touch girls to know if they're ripe. That was before he married Madame Hortense, when my Rosette was an innocent little girl and he set her on his lap with affection. My daughter's coolness hurt me; to protect her, I might have lost her.

Nothing was left of Rosette's African roots. She knew about my loas, and Guinea, but in the school she had forgotten all that and become a Catholic; the nuns were nearly as horrified by voodoo as by Protestants, Jews, and Kaintucks. How could I reproach her for wanting a better life than mine? She wanted to be like Valmorain, not me. She talked to me with false courtesy, in a tone I didn't recognize, as if I were a stranger. This is how I remember it. She told me she liked the school, that the nuns were kind and were teaching her music, religion, and to write with a good hand, but no dance because that tempted the devil. I asked about Maurice, and she told me he was fine but that he felt lonely and wanted to come back. She knew about him because they wrote each other, as they'd done ever since they were separated. The letters took a long time to arrive, but they kept sending them without waiting for answers, like a conversation between fools. Rosette told me that sometimes a half dozen came the same day, but then several weeks would go by with no word. Now, five years later, I know that they addressed each other as "brother" or "sister" to throw off the nuns, who opened their students' correspondence. They had a religious code for referring to their feelings: the Holy Spirit meant love, prayers were kisses, Rosette posed as the guardian angel, he could be any saint or martyr from the Catholic calendar, and, logically, the Ursulines were devils. A typical letter from Maurice said that the Holy Spirit visited him at night, when he was dreaming of the guardian angel, and that he waked with a desire to pray and pray. She answered that she prayed for him and had to be careful among the hordes of devils that were always threatening mortals. Now I guard those letters in a box, and though I can't read them, I know what they say because Maurice read me some parts, those that were not too daring.