Page 10 of Magic Lessons

A young woman named Juni, only a year or so older than Maria herself, was waiting on the dock, sent to hurry her along. Juni clapped her hands and called out a welcome in Dutch, in disbelief when she realized that Maria knew little of that language. “You had better learn to speak as we do,” Juni advised, in English now. “Or maybe you have the right idea; this way you don’t have to listen to what Mr. Jansen says.”

The captain handed Maria her papers, which stated that she belonged to the Jansen family of Willemstad. She was to work for them until the age of sixteen, at which time Maria would be a free woman. She now understood that her father had sold her into servitude; he would likely say it had been for her own protection, and perhaps he meant no harm. She was a girl on her own after all, with nothing to her name.

“Are you free?” Maria asked Juni as they walked side by side on the dock crowded with fish vendors and sailors, some of whom had no allegiance to any country and sailed only for themselves, pirates and traders of the roughest sort.

“I’m the same as you. Not a slave and not free. That’s another way of saying we’re nothing.”

Juni’s skin was a warm brown and her black hair was as long as Maria’s. Her African mother had been bound to the Jansens’ household as a slave, and her great-aunt had been granted her freedom only after working for the family for thirty years. Juni herself was a servant, and had been so all her life, since the time she was born, with no papers that affixed a time to her servitude. To Maria, that sounded like slavery.

“You have no papers?” Maria asked. “No date for your freedom?”

Juni was extremely beautiful, and men of all sorts stared at her as they walked along. “Mr. Jansen holds on to them for me. I’ll be free when I marry.”

But in fact, each time a suitor came around, Mr. Jansen found fault with him and sent him on his way. It didn’t matter if a man was African or Jewish or Dutch. None would do.

“Niet goed genoeg,” he would say every time. Not good enough.

“I plan to never marry,” Maria announced. She had seen a daughter in her future, but no husband. Only the man with the diamonds, who, as they walked along the wooden dock, under clouds of parrots, seemed an impossible fate.

“That’s what you say now,” Juni responded. “Just you wait. If you’re married you won’t be a servant.”

“I’m not certain I can be that now,” Maria said, a scowl on her face.

“We do as they tell us until they go to bed, then we do as we please.”

Maria had never had a friend and had never seen a need for one, but now in this faraway place she was grateful that Juni had a kind heart and had taken her under her wing.

“Do what I do, say what I say, and you will be fine,” Juni assured her.

It was easy to see how enchantments might be brought about here. The sky wasn’t blue in the early evenings, but instead there was a palette of color that ran from rose to deep violet to cobalt to ink. There were sixty-eight varieties of butterflies on the island, including large orange-and-black monarchs and tigerwings that only flew in the shade. The air was moving and alive, and when the wind came up suddenly it was a soft, dark breeze filled with salt and the tang of seaweed. Trapped in his carrying case, Cadin called to be set free. “Not right now,” Maria told him. “You’ll be out soon enough.”

“Mrs. Jansen wouldn’t like a bird here. She’ll say it’s filthy and will ruin her house,” Juni warned, not that Maria cared.

“Mrs. Jansen doesn’t need to know.”

Juni smiled at her then. The new girl seemed more interesting than most, and she thought she would be pleased to see how the household was provoked by someone who didn’t seem concerned with their rules.

As soon as Maria was rid of her grimy clothes that she had worn day in and day out, and had washed with strong soap and water so hot it stung, she began her new life. She was only a girl and exhausted from her journey, but she would do as she must in order to survive. There were two other servants sharing their chamber, sisters from Manchester, England, who had only another year to work off their debt.

“We’ll be gone in the blink of an eye,” the sisters boasted simultaneously, for they had the habit of saying the same thing at the same time. They thought they were better than Juni because her mother had been a slave, and better than Maria, who was so young and inexperienced.

Maria waited for the other girls to go to supper, then she hid her Grimoire beneath the floorboards before going off to explore. She knew well enough to keep her bloodline a secret, for her talents could bring her luck or misery. It was a curious place she found herself in, the opposite of all she had known. Where there had been darkness, there was now light. Where there had been a solitary life, there was now a bustling household. Much of the living space was outside, and as she crossed the courtyard she marveled at how in this arid, subtropical land there could be a garden that was so lush. She walked along a path that was bordered by mangoes and Jamaican apple trees and brilliant flowering aloe vera speckled with yellow blooms. It was here she set Cadin free. She had crafted an amulet to wear around her throat with a single black feather, so she knew he would always be called back to her, no matter how far he might go. The bird studied her from the branch of a guava tree, then rose into the dusky air of this new world of theirs. By now it was evening. The moon itself seemed different here, glowing with pale silver light. In the salt flats there were miraculous birds, flamingoes, white and scarlet ibis, green herons, great blue herons, and the black-crowned night heron that cried in the dark as if it were a woman pleading for her life. But of all of these, it was the robber crow that was most beautiful to Maria, for he had more compassion than any man she had ever met, and far more loyalty.

At supper, Maria was served funchi, a soft cornmeal dish, along with a small bowl of stoba, a spicy stew flavored with papaya, leftover from the Jansen family’s dinner. It was a large household, the Jansens and their three daughters, all nearly grown and looking for husbands. Juni and the sisters explained there was more than enough work for them all; they were pleased that Maria had come to stay. As for Maria, she was polite and cheerful, for Hannah had always said there was no need to ever let anyone know what you were thinking. Why be punished for your thoughts or beliefs? Maria believed no one should have her life signed over to another, but she kept quiet, knowing that, in the end, she would do as she pleased. To amuse the other girls she told fortunes by examining the lines on their hands. She had informed them that for women the right hand was the fate they were born with, but the marks on the left hand told the story of what they had experienced, the choices that had changed their original fates. The heart line was always most interesting; it was the mark that showed who was selfish, who would be content, and whose heart would be easily broken. She told them all they would fall in love and marry, which was true enough, leaving out the details they wouldn’t wish to hear: who would fall in love too easily and who would find sorrow and who would make a choice she would later regret. The Manchester girls were pleased with Maria’s special talent and called her their little sister. Little sisters would do well to be cunning, and it was wise for Maria to get along with everyone, at least for as long as it suited her, and it would have to suit her until she was free. She had one last precious orange left from those her mother had given her, and this she shared with the other housemaids before they fell into their white metal beds, the girls so happy to have her among them that no one complained when she left the window open on warm evenings to make certain that Cadin could always come home.

1679 III.

No one knows where time goes, all the same it disappears. Maria had turned fifteen in this strange land that still seemed like a dream. Every color was vivid, and when she stood in the brilliant light she sometimes found herself yearning for the dark green of the forest where ferns turned black in the frost. She didn’t wish to be a servant, she wouldn’t wish it on anyone, still she continued to do the work expected of her, seeing to the list Mrs. Jansen gave her each morning. She had become an excellent cook, and had learned to leave and enter a room without making a sound, walking barefoot on the tiles so as not to disturb the members of the Jansen family. Maria combed the Jansen daughters’ hair, washed in rum to keep it strong, and stitched their wedding dresses. She learned that eggs would keep well in limewater, that quicksilver beaten into egg whites could poison bedbugs, that lamp wicks would not smell bad if the cotton wick yarn was rinsed with vinegar, then dried in the fresh air. She was taught to shake carpets rather than sweep them and to wash silk dresses in green tea to restore their shine. During the day, she kept her eyes lowered and kept her mind on the tasks at hand. At night, however, she did as she pleased after Mr. and Mrs. Jansen went to sleep on the sheets she and Juni had washed with a harsh soap composed of lye and ashes, before they were hung out to dry in the garden, to ensure that the fabric would smell sweet, scented by fresh air and the clouds of fragrance rising from flowerbeds.

Who she truly was, she kept secret, a stone she had swallowed, those talents and traits she had inherited from the nameless women who had come before her. Maria never revealed how she knew to take in the laundry just before rain began to fall, or how she managed to chase the rats from the garden with a bit of white powder, or why she left garlic, salt, and rosemary outside their chamber door, to protect those inside from ill will. Certainly, she never explained why she refused to venture into the ocean when on their free Sunday afternoons she and Juni went to the shore. The day might be glorious, the sea might beckon, but she knew what would happen to someone such as herself in the water. She would float no matter what, and in doing so, she would reveal her true nature. This was why Hannah had kept herself hidden in the woods, and why Rebecca showed her talents to no one. It was a dangerous world for women, and more dangerous for a woman whose very bloodline would have her do not as she was ordered, but as she pleased.

On hot nights Maria and Juni escaped through the window so they might prowl the island. They were young and the heat made for restless sleepers. They were alive and wanted more than the room they lived in and the interests of people other than themselves. They’d grown close, for now it was only the two of them. The Manchester sisters, Katy and Susannah, had worked off their debt, and had then been free to marry the first men who came along, wretched suitors Maria warned them to deny. She looked into the sisters’ tea leaves and into their palms and told them to wait, there would be other men to choose from, or perhaps it might be better to set off on their own lives. The sisters hadn’t listened, and they’d married two silent, gloomy brothers. Their lives had changed very little since they had worked for the Jansens, only now it wasn’t a grand house they cared for, but wooden shacks near the harbor, one wedged next to the other on stilts above the blue sea that rotted the floorboards and left a silver sheen of salt over every dish and chair. When the trade winds came up, the sisters had to nail their furniture to the floor and tie themselves to the decks of their houses with jute rope. Their husbands were off fishing most of the time, and for that they were grateful, for they treated the sisters badly; sex was for the husband’s pleasure and women were not to speak back to men. Maria visited the sisters and brought them crisp red apples, an unusual fruit in this climate, for which she’d paid dearly. She told the sisters to prick the fruit with a needle as they said their husbands’ names, then bake the apples into pies which, once devoured by the men, would bring about kindness and a bit of consideration from the sour, ill-tempered sailors they’d wed. After that the sisters embroidered a blue shawl for Maria, and every bird on the island was sewn into the fabric, for both sisters owed her a huge debt of gratitude, and later both would name their first daughters Maria so that they said that name a hundred times a day with love and devotion.

On nights when Maria and Juni climbed out the window to poke around and look down lanes and sandy paths, they felt more fortunate than the Jansens’ daughters, who wore heavy silk dresses and undergarments constructed with bones, and tight shoes that left blisters on their feet, and were rarely allowed to go out on their own, even now that they were married and living in their husbands’ homes. Juni was called upon by young men and boys who were dazzled by her beauty, but no one noticed Maria. She’d learned a lesson from Hannah and Rebecca, and to protect herself from love she wore a black petticoat under her dress, the hem stitched with blue thread, the fabric washed with cloves and blackthorn. She knew how to walk in the shadows so she wouldn’t shine in the darkness. No one looked at her twice.

Often Maria and Juni borrowed the donkey kept in the stable with the family’s horses. They called the sulky creature Slechte Jongen, “Bad Boy,” for he would balk and refuse to carry them home, forcing them to pull him along with a rope to ensure they’d be back in time to start the family’s breakfast. They were almost children again when they urged the donkey to keep moving, holding their stomachs, keeping their hands over their mouths so their laughter wouldn’t rise into the air. But their world was not one meant for children, only for obedience and work. It was an island where some people had everything and others had nothing, and you could judge who was who from the shoes that they wore, the color of their skin, and whether or not their eyes were kept downcast while walking on the winding streets.

On some nights the girls visited the caves north of the city where escaped slaves had hidden, often until they were nothing but bones. Between 1662 and 1669, twenty-four thousand slaves had been shipped through Curaçao by the Dutch West India Company and the Royal African Company in Jamaica. These caves had been sacred places for the original people of the island, the Arawaks, all gone now, murdered or killed off by disease or shipped to work on plantations on other islands. The original people had left behind drawings that were more than a thousand years old. It was here, where marvelous renderings of the life they had known or imagined had been etched into the rock, that Maria often lit a white candle in memory of Hannah Owens. She was grateful for the years when she had been hidden away from the rest of the world in Devotion Field, and for the gift Hannah had given her when she taught her to read and write.