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teach his wife the very thing she going use against him for the entirety of they marriage.
    So he gone with her. Love her till the day he dead, but also he own her in a way. Because of what he could make her do. Leave her fiancé. Get rid the not-yet-baby. Leave her Anegada land and never return.
    I ain saying this is the way it happen with my parents. This ain true history. I just saying that given what we know about the place and about the time, my version seem to have a truth somewhere. Is just a story I telling, but put it in your glass and drink it.

8.
    Antoinette lay in bed and knew she was awake. Her eyes wanted to open but she resisted. She knew what would happen. Instead, she lay with her arms spread wide open as though she were about to scoop up a child. Her legs spread wide as though to take a lover. Both these postures were the problem. Even though her eyes were closed, even though the mosquito nettings draped down, tenting the bed, the orange glow of the sunshine still seeped through her eyelids. She could hear the sea outside the window. She could hear the eager humming of the mosquitoes just outside the net.
    Antoinette curled her fingers into a fist. That is how small the child inside her was now. She had bled red blood and still the child, no bigger than her fist, remained. She must win this one. This one was stubborn, but she must win. There was already one child. She’d done that—given Owen the girl. Enough.
    You see, Antoinette had vision. With another child she would surely lose herself. How did other women do it? Seven children. Twelve children. Even her mother, married to her fisherman on that tiny atoll, had had only her.
    And just then, as Antoinette thought of her dead parents and the island of Anegada where the sun set at her feet, her eyes fluttered open before she could stop. The light hit her full-on. The nausea that came was fast and hard. She raked the netting aside and leaned over the chamber pot. She pitched out last night’s supper, now reddish, even though they’d had mutton with mint jelly and fungi with avocado pear. She flopped back onto the bed, breathing hard. Her eyes slit, half open, letting the sun come at her gently now.
    She was married well, despite her brownness and meager upbringing. She had a daughter and a house and a maid-cook. She had a man-about-the-house who also brought fish to their door. And they were all Americans now. They would be allowed American passports someday soon. Eeona was growing up fine, just fine. Owen had taken a mistress, but what landed man did not have an outside woman? Genteel women such as Madame Bradshaw were supposed to be still. Perhaps Antoinette Bradshaw was just selfish.
    But Antoinette made a fist again. This time she raised the fist into the air and slammed it down into the soft of her belly. She cried out. But she did it again. She cried out again but still she struck herself again and then again. Suddenly Miss Lady was at the door, knocking and knowing. “Madame Bradshaw. I could come in? You having the illness?”
    Madame Bradshaw was infamous for how quickly she could lose a baby. Bed rest, the doctor had said when she was carrying the one after Eeona. But she lost that one despite the bed. She’d drowned that one in her womb actually, but who could prove that? Fresh sea breeze, the doctor had said for the next, but Antoinette had pitched that one, too. Then bed
and
fresh air he had said, so Antoinette had been made to stay in bed all day and all night with the windows flung open. That baby made it to the quickening. But then stilled. Was stilled.
    “I’m fine,” Antoinette called to Miss Lady, but Miss Lady flowed in anyway. She had tea and bread, which she left on the nightstand. She gaveMadame Bradshaw a hard look. “This one must be a girl. Stubborn,” she said, before taking away the chamber pot. Antoinette narrowed her eyes. Miss Lady knew Antoinette had other plans besides children. But Sheila Ladyinga could at least