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McKenzie.” It wasn’t true that she was
Miss
McKenzie. Rebekah had married Benjamin McKenzie. But her husband was dead or at least he was like dead—run away on a naval ship or dead in a Puerto Rican rain forest, so the stories poured. But Rebekah was not like Antoinette. Rebekah was a woman who managed to do as she pleased. Even though her husband’s brothers did not drop a dime and did not drop in for visits, they could not take away what she had gained. She had the McKenzie house. She had the McKenzie marriage. Her sons had the McKenzie name.
    In the same yard where Rebekah stored her table, she also grew her fruit. She sold what she didn’t use in the market. She played her piano in her parlor. She took in pupils, daughters of the wealthy, though never the daughters of men she slept with, which meant not Madame Bradshaw’s daughter. Besides, Rebekah loved the market. Loved the noise and the interaction. Loved the power. Loved using the power she had. In the market she was more than a woman selling lime and mesple. She was a doctor, a kind of doctor, and her specialty was women problems.
    She had a power that came from all those people who had made Owen Arthur Bradshaw, all those people who made all of us. Knowledge of the mustard from Scandinavia. Knowledge of the nutmeg from West Africa. Knowledge of the sesame from China. Knowledge of the sea grape from the Arawak. So Rebekah could do things. She could make the blood in your body course saltwater—burn you from the inside out. Erode your womb as if it were tin until the eggs inside rattled like a beggar shaking acup. She could make a stingy husband’s pockets turn to dust, his fingernails turn to dust, then his mind slowly turn until the coin crumbled out of his ears. She could get a woman from St. Thomas to New York City safely, even on a drowning ship. Every woman on island knew what Rebekah McKenzie could do. Of course, she could get rid of what Antoinette wanted riddance from.
    “I need to lose a little fruit.” Antoinette spoke quietly and looked the other way.
    “Did you try the mash of dirt with nutmeg and pepper sauce? That worked before.”
    “Nothing turns this fruit into juice.” Antoinette rolled one of Rebekah’s limes around in her hand.
    Rebekah made change for someone else and passed that person a bag of limes and mesple. “Try the tea with soursop and sea grape. Follow with a soak in scalding salted water.”
    “This is a hard lime.” She looked at Rebekah now. She leaned over the table, squeezing the lime she now held in her hand. “Don’t make me beg, sister.” For, of course, that is what they were. Women loving the same man. They had this in common, like two daughters sharing one father.
    Rebekah looked at Antoinette’s hands, which were now sticky with sour pulp. “I’ll see you this evening.” Then she passed Antoinette the sweetest mesple on her table.
    —
    Oh, but what happened that evening was not enough because nothing would be enough. Afterward, Antoinette lay in her own bed at Villa by the Sea. She had gone to visit the Lovernkrandts for just a brief visit to chat with Liva about the possibilities of iguana shoes and mongoose stoles. Then she’d gone to Rebekah’s. Rebekah had put her hand on Antoinette’s stomach and then pulled it away as though she were burnt.
    —
    Now it was night and Antoinette lay in her bed, but this time she was not alone. The doctor had come. Not because Antoinette had lost the baby. But because Antoinette had walked the whole way home from Rebekah’s, forgetting her sidesaddled mule tied up outside of the McKenzie house where everyone would know. Antoinette had walked up the grand stairs to her own house, then turned and flung herself down. But Antoinette didn’t even twist her ankle. She didn’t even retain a bruise. Nothing at all happened to the baby.
    But the madame of the house flinging herself down her own steps was dangerous enough. So the doctor had been summoned and the