Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

times a day. And if this had happened, niña…do you see? You wouldn’t suffer what you suffer now. Nor would Jarry. Percival would have married me, and Jarry would have grown up free. But these things, they were not to be, no, por donde salta la madre, salta la hija…. Where the mother leads, the daughter follow—so in my old country it is said—and hijo de gato ratón caza, the cat’s son chase the rat. You see how it turns out. For Clarisse with Harlan, it is just the same as Percival and me. Now it has touched you, too. It is all fruit, fruit of the poison tree. And it isn’t over yet. No, I look into your eyes this morning, I look into this old man’s face and see the trouble there, and fear that we have not seen the beginning of the worst.”

“Do you mean to frighten me?”

“It isn’t me you need to fear.”

“Do I need to fear Clarisse?”

Paloma’s face takes an obstreperous set.

“Harlan thinks we’ve been bewitched.”

“What is it to me what Harlan thinks?”

“Did Jarry tell you what I saw?”

“He told me what you said you saw.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Paloma looks toward the window now. “I don’t know what I believe. I only know there cannot be a prenda here. It makes no sense.”

“I don’t know what a prenda is.”

“And you don’t need to know.”

“But my locket, Paloma,” she protests, “the one I gave Harlan for our engagement—I saw it there. A knife was driven through the hinge. And the plate that had the leeches on it. Who else could have put them there except Clarisse?”

Paloma’s eyes are furred and hot. “Do you understand what you are saying? You’re telling me she is a bruja, niña. You’re telling me my daughter is a witch. I’ve looked into her eyes, I’ve asked, and she says she knows nothing of these things. Whose word am I to take—yours, or my own child’s?”

“Then whose else could it be? I know what I saw, Paloma.”

“I only know it cannot be Clarisse’s. For her to do this, to make a prenda—even if she knew how, and where would she have learned?—for any woman not yet past the change to do this would be to risk her life, and more than that. Much more than her life. It would be to damn herself. Why, niña? Why would she do this? No, this I will not believe. Clarisse would not break regla.”

“What is regla?”

“Regla, niña? Regla is order, proper order. There is regla in a house, a land, between two people, you and me, a mistress and a slave, between parents and children, between a woman and a man. There is also regla between us and them”—she points her chin toward Percival—“between the living and the dead. When it’s broken, niña, nothing can go right. The nfumbis and nkisis give us a chance to make repair, sometimes only hours. Percival was given years and never did make right. Now he’s died and left us with his mess. And it’s not just Percival. This war that’s coming—that is what I think it is. Long ago, in Africa and Europe, regla was broken by our kings, who sold their people, and yours, who bought the slaves. Many of my people have lost faith along the way. They think slavery is proof our gods are weak and lower than your God, but what I think, niña, what in my heart I believe, is the nkisis left it up to us, and now the time is past. Now they are tired and angry. We have failed to make regla, and they are coming to administer it, they are on us even now. Because, you see, niña, we have one chance, however long or brief, to make repair in love and gentleness, but if we let it pass, they come in blood and fire…. Now when I hear that there are armies raised to north and south, I fear the spirits are coming to make regla in this nation. I hear you’ve seen a prenda in the woods and fear they’re coming to make regla in this house.”

“What do you want from me, Paloma? I mean no harm to you or yours, but I can do only what’s in my power.”

“The truth is in your power, isn’t it? That is what I want from you, niña, and all I want. Before you accuse my daughter, look into your own heart. If Percival is innocent and you know the truth, don’t let us put him in the grave, accused. If Harlan’s lie hurt you, spare me and Jarry what was done to you. We’re human, too. Help us, niña. If you will, then I’ll help you.”

And whom do I betray? thinks Addie. Do I tell her and betray my husband? Or do I keep the secret and betray Paloma, Jarry, Percival, myself? It’s strange to her how clear the answer is….

“I understand your disappointments, Paloma,” she says, wringing out the sponge and putting it beside the body on the board. Her face has taken on the melancholy cast it wore as she watched the oarsmen and the parakeets vanish in the Nina’s wake. “I wish I could give you what you want and all you want, but I’ve told you everything I can. All I can do now is strive to be as good a mistress as I can. To that end, I intend to start right now, today, to make arrangements for new clothes so people in the quarters can be comfortable, at least.”

Paloma studies her for a long beat. “Bueno, child, que así sea,” she says, and as Addie makes her way toward the door, the old woman grips her wrist. “Just remember, niña, there is also regla in the self.”

Addie merely blinks and makes no answer, and in this moment it is as if the older woman has receded behind a wall of glass.

Reverend Hilliard is a thin, bald man with an ascetic face and steel-rimmed