I felt Emmanuel’s hand on mine. I had been running my fingernails down the tablecloth, in one long swipe, like the claw of an alley cat. He wrapped his hand around my wrist and squeezed it. I knew he meant it kindly, but I only wanted to pull away.

I had thought, up until that moment, with the Graces speaking warmly and Emmanuel joining them in their jokes and conversation, that maybe I could do what my husband was pleading with me to do. But then I thought of a thousand more nights in this beautiful country. Would he order me from the table, as his father did, if I said something he did not like? And would I leave with dignity, like Ella did, leave in a fiction, or would I kick and scream as I wished she would do, as I wanted to do now, and be called mad and unruly.

It was quiet for a moment. Emmanuel turned to Louisa and Experience apologetically. “Ella has not had the opportunities you have,” he said. “She has never been to school. She is a bit unused to polished company, but I hope you will not hold that against her.”

“I would never hold it against her,” Louisa said, and Emmanuel smiled as Bishop Chase raised his head in the air. He’d heard the music in her voice, but he could not quite place it.

I had the satisfaction, at least, of seeing his expression when the world did not make sense for him. If only for a moment.

THE GRACES WERE to sleep in the parlor, on the broken-down divan that we pushed to the parlor chairs. I stood in the doorway and watched as Ti Me prepared their bed.

Experience cocked her head in Ti Me’s direction as she knelt over the chairs. “This is life in Haiti, then?” she said to me. “All you do is sit up here and make sure Emmanuel is happy when he returns home?”

“You do not have to take in laundry or mending to stay afloat?” Louisa added.

“You are what those girls at school always wanted to be: a lady of leisure.”

I laughed. “Leisure is stifling.”

“Listen to the cheek of this girl,” Louisa said, leaning over to Experience, “telling you and me, you and me, dear Louisa, that leisure is stifling.”

“I would give anything to be stifled,” Experience said dryly, and this set all three of us to laughing again, so loudly that Ti Me looked up, annoyed.

“Lordy,” Louisa said, when we’d made a configuration of furniture that finally seemed as though it would fit the two of them. “I would never have guessed that you live such as this. Experience and I, each night, would say ‘Where do you think she is now? Do you imagine she sleeps in a hammock beneath banana leaves?’ And now to find you living in something like Cunningham’s dining hall, but just with warmer weather …”

I frowned. “That is unkind, Louisa.”

“Is it?” She looked up. “I did not mean it to be. I only mean, your life seems different from what you told us it would be.”

“Isn’t that true for all of us?” I said. “Could you have imagined traveling the world with Experience, sleeping in stagecoaches, arguing with impresarios as naturally as if you were debating the merits of philosophy back at Cunningham?”

“No,” Experience said. “This is true. We could not have imagined that.”

“So then life is different for all of us.”

“Is that why you have not written back to your mother,” Louisa said, “only sent her one telegram telling her you are with child and scaring the poor old girl half to death?”

I started. “How do you know anything of that?”

“Our last performance, before we left the North, in Manhattan, she had heard we would perform, and she came. She showed us the telegram herself. She said, ‘Will you write to her? Will you find out what she means? Will you send her my word?’ And I said, ‘I will do you one better, madame. We will be traveling to Haiti ourselves and can deliver any message that you wish.’ And so she gave us this.”

And here, Louisa reached into her pocket and handed me a folded-over piece of paper, much wrinkled where it had been pressed up against her hip.

“It is from her?”

“She said to place it in your hands if you were alive, and onto your grave if you were dead.”

“She thought I was dead?”

“She said you have not written her a word since your marriage. I think she is justified in thinking you had passed.”

The paper was the same yellowish shade as the pages in her accounting book. I could not bring myself to open it.

“Libertie, it is very cruel of you to send a telegram like that to your mother and never write a letter,” Louisa said.

“I did not know what to say.” My voice came out low. “How would you explain this house to her, if you had to explain it?”

“I guess that is fair,” Experience said.

“Are you safe here, Libertie?” This was Louisa. “Are you well?”

I did not know how to answer her questions. I took the letter and bowed my head and said, “Good night. I will see you in the morning.”

I had promised Emmanuel, for the sake of our guests, I would not sleep in the shed that night. As I climbed the stairs to our bedroom, I felt the letter wrinkle in my hands. I did not want the ink to smear.

When I opened the door, he was there already, of course, in bed. He looked up, expectantly.

“Are they comfortable?”

“I think so.”

“Will you be comfortable?”

“I do not know.”

“At least lie down.”

I set the letter carefully on his desk. I pulled my smock over my head and dropped it on the floor, so that I stood naked in front of Emmanuel.

He sat up in bed. “Come closer,” he said. “I mean, if you please.”

I kept my eyes on him as I approached. When I reached him, he held out one hand, placed it on my stomach, put the other around my waist, and let it rest at the small of my back. He rested his head on my stomach, and I felt the whisk of his eyelashes as he closed his eyes. I looked away from him, to the letter on the table. I both wanted to stand here, with his head on my stomach, with his arms holding the world, and I wanted to crouch on the floor and read every word my mother wrote me. I did not know which way to move and could not break away. So we stayed like that, for a long time, listening to the house settle around us.

Finally, he sighed. “I have missed you,” he said.

“Let us sleep,” I said.

A little past midnight, I heard his breath grow heavy and knew he was fully asleep. I pushed myself out of bed, carefully pulled the chair from his desk, and sat, naked, on the planks of wood, reading my mother’s hand.

My Dearest Libertie,

You do not write, and that may be because you are no longer on this Earth or it may be because you are still angry at me, but either way I miss you and wish to know where you are, so I write this letter to you and send it by way of your friends, the Graces, hoping that it finds you at peace, whether you are on this Earth or below it.

The house feels truly dead now. I do not like staying here most nights. Most nights, I sleep in the waiting room of the hospital.

I write to you from the dark of the waiting room. It is about ten o’clock at night. I’ve just heard the church bell ring. I was to attend a lecture tonight, but I did not feel spirited enough. Besides, the topic is one I think I already know well: “The Future of the Colored Woman.” It is an argument I am too old and tired to add anything to, I think.

The speaker is a very smart young woman, like your friends. She travels from city to city to talk to groups about the colored woman—a marvelous business, one that could not have existed even ten years ago. I told her this, and she seemed unimpressed by her own strangeness. She smiled and said, “Yes, mum.” And I suppose that counts as progress, when a girl like her does things I could not imagine and does not stop once to think of them.

I had hoped I had made you brave like that, Libertie. Perhaps there is bravery in being a wife. Certainly, there is bravery in being a mother. I think you will learn that soon enough, if my calculations are correct.

I have delivered more babies in the last six months than I ever did when you were here with me during the war. I do not know if it is a sign of hope or a sign of desperation, that our people have gone baby mad. I think there are now more colored people in Kings County than ever before. Sometimes on the street, I do not recognize a single face, and I think how this is both a good thing and very lonely-making.

The last woman I attended, it was not here in the hospital. She was a very poor woman. Her husband came and begged me to come to her. He said she had been in labor for many days and he worried that she might not make it. I was tired. I had thought I would go back to the house, for once, that evening, and try to sleep there. But the man came just as I was about to leave, so I followed him to his home.