They gave Tete the only room for slaves in the house, a room without ventilation but clean, and Violette dug among her clothes and found something adequate for her to wear. Her tasks were so many she couldn't list them, but basically consisted of carrying out the orders of Loula, who no longer had the age or breath for domestic chores and spent the day in the kitchen preparing salves for beauty and syrups for sensuality. No sign on the street announced what was offered inside those walls; word of mouth was enough to attract an endless line of women of all ages, most of them of color, though some whites also came wearing heavy veils.
Violette appeared only in the afternoons; she had not lost the habit of devoting the morning hours to her personal care and to leisure. Her skin, rarely touched by direct sunlight, was as delicate as creme caramel, and the fine lines around her eyes gave her character; her hands, which had never washed clothing or cooked, were young, and she had added several pounds that softened her without making her appear matronly. Mysterious lotions had preserved the jet black of her hair, which she combed as she always had in a complicated bun, with a few curls hanging loose to delight the imagination. She still provoked desire in men and jealousy in women and that certainty added a swing to her walk and a purr to her laughter. Her clients confided their cares to her, asked her advice in whispers, and bought her potions without haggling, all with the most absolute discretion. Tete went with Violette to buy the ingredients, from pearls to clear the skin, which she obtained from pirates, to painted glass vials a captain brought her from Italy. "The container is worth more than the content. What matters is the look," Violette told Tete. "Pere Antoine maintains the opposite," Tete countered, laughing in return.
Once a week they went to a scribe, who wrote a letter Violette dictated for her son in France. The scribe took responsibility for putting her thoughts into florid phrases and handsome calligraphy. The letters took only two months to reach the hands of the young cadet, who punctually replied with four sentences in military jargon to say that his condition was positive and he was studying the language of the enemy, without specifying which enemy in particular, given that France had several. "Jean-Martin is just like his father," Violette sighed when she read those missives written in code. Tete dared asked how it was that maternity had not made her flesh flabby, and Violette attributed it to her Senegalese grandmother. She did not confess that Jean-Martin was adopted, just as she never mentioned to Tete her affair with Valmorain. However, she told her all about her long relationship with Etienne Relais, her lover and husband, to whose memory she had been faithful until Sancho Garcia del Solar came onto the scene; she had not fallen in love with any of the earlier suitors in Cuba, including the Galician who was on the verge of marrying her.
"I have always had company in my widow's bed to keep myself in shape. That's why I have good skin and good humor."
Tete judged that she herself would soon be wrinkled and melancholy from having consoled herself alone for so many years, with no incentive but the memory of Gambo.
"Don Sancho is a very good man, madame. If you love him, why don't you two get married?"
"What world do you live in, Tete? Whites do not marry women of color, it's against the law. Besides, at my age I have no reason to marry, especially an incurable carouser like Sancho."
"You could live together."
"I don't want to maintain him. Sancho will die a poor man, while I intend to die rich and be buried in a mausoleum crowned with a marble archangel."
A day or two before the time for Tete's emancipation was reached, Sancho and Violette went with her to the Ursulines' school to tell Rosette the news. They met in a room for visitors, large and nearly empty, with four rough wooden chairs and a large crucifix hanging from the ceiling. On a table sat cups of warm chocolate, with a coagulated skim floating on the top, and an urn for the alms that helped maintain the beggars that came to the convent. A nun attended the interview and kept watch out of the corner of her eye; the students could not be in the presence of a male, even the bishop, without a chaperone, and all greater reason a man as seductive as that Spaniard.
Tete had rarely mentioned the subject of slavery with her daughter. Rosette knew vaguely that she and her mother belonged to Valmorain and compared it with the situation of Maurice, who depended completely on his father and could not decide anything for himself. It did not seem strange to her. All the women and girls she knew, free or not, belonged to a man: father, husband, or Jesus. That was, however, the persistent subject of her letters from Maurice, who being free was nevertheless more affected than she by the absolute immorality of slavery, as he called it. In childhood, when the differences between them were less apparent, Maurice had tended to sink into tragic states of mind caused by the two subjects that obsessed him: justice and slavery. "When we grow up, you will be my master and I will be your slave, and we will live together very happy," Rosette told him once. Maurice shook her, choked with tears. "I will never have slaves! Never! Never!"
Among all the students of color Rosette had the lightest skin, and no one doubted that she was the daughter of free parents; only the mother superior, who had accepted her because of the donation Valmorain made to the school, along with the promise that she would be emancipated in the near future, knew her true situation. This visit turned out to be lengthier than the previous ones in which Tete had been alone with her daughter with nothing to say, both of them uncomfortable. Rosette and Violette hit it off immediately. Tete thought that in a certain way they were alike, not so much for their features as for their color and attitude. They passed the visiting hour in lively chatter, while she and Sancho mutely looked on.
"What a clever and pretty girl your Rosette is, Tete! She's the daughter I wish I'd had!" Violette exclaimed as they left.
"What will happen to her when she leaves school, madame? She is used to living like a rich girl; she has never worked, and she thinks she is white." Tete sighed.
"That is still a while away, woman. We'll see," Violette replied.
Zarite
On the appointed day I waited for the judge at the door of the court. The notice was still attached to the wall, as I had seen it every afternoon for those forty days, when I'd gone, with my soul on a thread and a good luck gris-gris in my hand, to find out whether anyone had opposed my emancipation. Madame Hortense could stop it, it was very easy for her-all she had to do was accuse me of debauchery or bad character-but it seems she did not dare defy her husband. Monsieur Valmorain had a horror of gossip. In those days I'd had time to think, and I had many doubts. Celestine's warnings were ringing in my head, as well as Valmorain's threats; freedom meant I had no help I could count on, no protection or security. If I did not find work, or fell ill, I would end up in the line of beggars the Ursulines fed. And Rosette? "Be calm, Tete. Have faith in God, who never abandons us," Pere Antoine would reassure me. No one came to the court in opposition, and on November 30, 1800, the judge signed my freedom and turned Rosette over to me. Only Pere Antoine was there; both Don Sancho and Dr. Parmentier, who had promised to come, had forgot. The judge asked me what surname I would like to have and the saint gave me permission to use his. Zarite Sedella, thirty years old, mulatta, free. Rosette, eleven, quadroon, slave, property of Zarite Sedella. That is what the paper said; Pere Antoine read it to me word by word before giving me his blessing and a tight hug. This is how it was.