Near the end of our journey, when we reached Kingston, I could tell from her restlessness that something was bothering her.
“Are you anxious to be home?” I asked, thinking she had found the journey more trying than I realized.
“No…yes,” she responded.
“Do you want to leave immediately?”
“Why do you question me?” she shouted. “Is it not enough that I hate Kingston?”
“Hate? Whatever for?”
“You are so stupid!” she screamed, bursting into tears.
A man ought to be able to help his wife, to save her from distress—but I could not think what to do. I sat gingerly beside her on the bed and she fell into my arms. “It is the worst place in the whole world!” she said, weeping, her whole body shaking in despair.
“Kingston?” I was bewildered.
“Do you not know? Do you really not know?”
“Bertha, I—”
“My mother is here,” she snapped.
What can she mean? “I thought your mother was dead.”
“She might as well be.”
“Bertha…? I don’t understand…your mother?”
“Fairfax,” she said, her face twisted in anguish. “My mother is mad. Insane. She is shut up in a lunatic asylum. I have not seen her in years, nor Michael, either.”
“Michael?” I asked.
“My brother,” she whispered, calmer now but still clinging to me. “My brother Michael, poor thing. He is with her there, the two of them: she a madwoman and he an idiot since birth.” She looked directly at me then. “Do you wonder why I hate this place, why I do not want to be reminded of her?”
I held her close, and she wept. I had thought her mother dead, but this, was this not worse? “I should not have brought you here. I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head quickly, as if to rid herself of the memory of her mother. I could not imagine it, and yet—would not the presence of a living mother, even if her mind is gone, be better than no mother at all? I had no idea, but, If I had a mother alive, I thought.
But Bertha’s hand was on my private parts, and I had already learned that sometimes the best way to bring my bride out of a sulk was in the act of intercourse, which she entered into with a wild abandon that I took at the time for passion. We spoke no more of her mother.
A modern man is pleased if his wife enjoys the act of love, and in those early days I cherished Bertha with a grateful heart, thanking God that he had given me a wife who was as lusty as she was beautiful. When we had finished, I gazed at her lying beside me on the sheets, and I said, “We will make beautiful children together.”
Unaccountably, she began to weep silently, and I could think of nothing to do except to hold her close until she fell into sleep. But later that night, I woke to her weeping again. She mourns for her mother, I thought. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I am here; I will take care of you.”
“The baby,” she muttered between sobs. “I cannot find the baby.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “You’ve had a bad dream. It will be all right in the morning. Go back to sleep.” I thought I felt her body soften, though the weeping went on and on, until, finally, she wore herself into exhaustion.
The next morning I woke first, and I lay beside her in bed, gazing at her—at her face relaxed in sleep: dark eyelashes against satiny skin; full, red lips that almost seemed to move as if she spoke in her dreams; masses of lustrous black hair. When she does have a child, I thought, it will be as beautiful as she. The thought roused me, and as if she sensed it, she murmured in her sleep and reached for me. I kissed her, and she pulled me into her with a passion. When our ardor had spent itself at last and we rose from the bed, I vowed not to mention the dream she’d had in the night, for there was no reason, I thought, to ruin the last day of our honeymoon.
*
We might have stayed longer in Kingston; I might have taken Bertha down to the docks to see the Sea Nymph. She might have been excited to see that sleek ship that was soon to be mine, but I could not insist she stay where she was so ill at ease. In Spanish Town I had legal papers to sign regarding the ship’s purchase, so we moved into my town house for a few days. I was surprised that she seemed familiar with the place, but there was no reason she might not have visited before, as a child accompanying her father on business. And of course she knew Sukey, whom she greeted wildly with kisses and embraces and enthusiastic chatter about all we had seen and done—more of what we had done than I considered decent, in fact. But marriage was new to her, I told myself, and I supposed she could not refrain from spilling out whatever came into her mind. And of course I knew enough to understand that, much as we might not prefer it, servants are always privy to whatever happens in a household.
Sukey served us grog in the parlor while Molly and Alexander carried our things upstairs to our bedroom—what had been my father’s room, and then mine, and now was ours in this house. When I rose to leave to go to my office, I asked, “Will you be all right here alone?” for I knew she hated being by herself.
She laughed. “Alone? Alone? But I am here with my sisters.”
Her comment took me aback, but what could I say in response to that? She had, indeed, grown up with Sukey and Molly, and so I left them alone together.
I was gone for perhaps three hours, and when I returned evening was descending. I was eager for a home-cooked meal after all those days of eating in taverns and inns, and I smelled the distinct aroma of Sukey’s pepper pot as soon as I opened the door. I heard laughter coming from an upstairs room, so, delighted, I climbed the stairs, imagining myself in five or ten years, hearing children’s laughter filling the house as women’s laughter filled it now.
I came into the bedroom to see the three of them sitting in a circle on the bed. The curtains were all drawn, but in the gloom I could make out Bertha in her undergarments and the other two in their simple dresses, all three of them barefoot, their heads together, staring at something on the bed. Sukey saw me first and caught her breath. Bertha glanced up. Molly scooped up whatever they had been looking at and kept her eyes focused on the bed.
“My husband has returned!” Bertha exclaimed, stretching her arms out to me. The other two scampered off the bed and out of the room.
I came closer. “What were you doing?” I asked.
She turned around and stared at the bed, as if she had already forgotten. “Oh, just a silly game the Africans play. Come here, my love. Come and kiss me.”