The Josephine B. Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

Joseph?” I heard Uncle demand.
    I went to the door, pressed my ear to the crack.
    “Not that they aren’t lovely,” he went on, “and of baptismal innocence, both of them—but face it, a girl without a dowry? The lad must be desperate. And if he’s such a fine specimen, why must he go halfway around the world for a girl he’s never even seen? And a penniless one at that. If he’s all our sister says he is, it seems to me he would have his pick of any of the pedigreed strumpets in France.”
    “Désirée’s no fool,” I heard my father answer. “How old is the Marquis now anyway? Sixty? Seventy? When he hangs up his fiddle, Désirée will be—” Father made a rude noise.
    Then Uncle Robert said something, but I couldn’t make it out.
    “If she can make this”—Father’s words became unclear for a moment—“she’ll be legally related. And it wouldn’t do, would it, for a relative to end her days in a charity hospital.”
    I heard a chair scrape on the wood floor. “I can see the advantage to Désirée—but why would the son go along with it?” Uncle Tascher asked.
    “Does the boy have a choice? Until he’s twenty-one, if his father tells him to jump in the Seine, he’s got to jump in the Seine. And if our sister tells the Marquis to make his son go jump in the Seine, I believe the old bastard would do it. The Devil knows what she does for him in return.” He laughed.
    “So you think young Alexandre is being forced into this arrangement?”
    “Not so much forced as bribed. Happiness is an unlimited income, if you ask me. The only way the young chevalier can get his hands on his fortune is to marry. And my guess is that his piss-proud father told him (at our beloved sister’s suggestion, God bless her): Look, if you want my permission to marry, it must be a Tascher girl.”
    There was another burst of laughter and the talk turned to slave prices. I climbed back into bed. I felt a strange tingling in my belly. What did Father mean, that Aunt Désirée had done something to the Marquis—something that made him do her bidding?
    January 5.
    I told Mimi that Manette might be going to France to be married. “She’s scared,” I said.
    “What’s to be scared of?” Mimi asked, mashing the plaintain with violent strokes.
    I wasn’t really sure what it was Manette had to be afraid of, but I knew it was something—something to do with dogs climbing over each other, trembling in that pathetic way. “You know, marriage duty.”
    “Is she in flowers yet?”
    I shook my head. “What does that have to do with it?” All I know is that the cook isn’t allowed to cure pork when she’s in flowers. *
    “Child, don’t they tell you anything! ” But Mimi didn’t tell me anything either.
    March 17.
    Now Manette is ill—she has a fever, just as Catherine had. Mother says it’s her fear of getting married that brought it on.
    I crawl in under the covers beside her and try to cheer her. I tell her how grand it will be in France. I tell her about the wonderful dolls they have there, and how our beautiful Aunt Désirée will look after her. I tell her how handsome the chevalier is, how smart and how educated, how noble and how rich. I tell her how envious I am. (Oh, but I am!)
    But in her fever she only cries. There are nights when I’m so afraid she will die, as Catherine did, in one big moment gone, just a limp body on a rumpled bed, no more or less than a rag doll.
    June 23, 9:00 P.M.
    Father came back from Sainte-Lucie yesterday. Right away he and Mother got into a quarrel.
    “But Manette never did want to go!” I heard Mother say. “It was you put those words in her mouth.”
    She started crying that he couldn’t take Manette from her, not so soon after losing Catherine. Father yelled, “You crazy créole women and your children!” I felt the walls shake as the door slammed shut.
    June 24.
    Father has relented. He wrote to Aunt Désirée, telling her he wouldn’t be able to bring Manette, she