“We?” asked Sarith, surprised, “Not we, Julius, because I’m not going!”
“What do you mean, you’re not going? You surely cannot stay here? Your child will be born soon, and then you will certainly need to be at home.”
“You can’t possibly want me to travel to the Boven-Commewijne!” exclaimed Sarith. “You yourself said that I must take things quietly, and now you want me to make that tiring journey for two days in a boat!”
“It will be less tiring than all that dancing you’ve been doing of late. I’ll have an easy chair with cushions installed in the boat,” said Julius.
“But I’m not going. It’s far too dangerous with all those Boni-negroes raiding plantations.”
“They will certainly not raid our plantation.”
“I don’t want to go. No, no, no, I won’t go. What if something goes wrong? There’ll be no-one to help me!” By now Sarith was screaming.
“You don’t need to worry about that. After all, you have Kwasiba and we also have an excellent midwife at the plantation – Nene Trude, who helps all the slave-girls with their births and everything always goes well.”
“So you want her to attend to me, do you? What is good enough for slave-girls is good enough for your wife, too. I don’t want that, I don’t, I want my mother with me when that moment comes. Oh, you see, you don’t love me or you’d never treat me like this.” Sarith began to wail with rage.
“But oh my darling,” Julius couldn’t console his little woman quickly enough. “Of course your mother can come to you at Klein Paradijs. As far as I’m concerned she can stay with you, if that’s what you want.”
“Is that what you think? Do you think for one second that my mother would want to come to such a faraway place? My mother always wants to be in the town in December. Here in Paramaribo. She’s here every year around this time.” Sarith was now sobbing loudly, for she thought of all the parties that took place around New Year, and she would just die of misery if, as last year, she had to be on the plantation again in this period while everyone in the town was feasting away. “Don’t you see,” she wailed, now stamping her feet and thumping various objects around, “I won’t go to the plantation, do you hear, I won’t go. You never let me do anything; you don’t even want me to be with my mother right now. You don’t really love me.” Sniffle, sniffle. Wailing and stamping and shouting “I want, I want” had always been tried and tested ways for her. As a thoroughly spoilt child she had always got her own way with such tantrums, and now, too, all this wailing and screaming worked, for Julius, totally put out by this outburst, knelt next to her and said soothingly, “No, dearest, I hadn’t thought of all that, but you’re right. Stay here if you wish. But aren’t we putting too great a burden on the De Ledesmas? They might be family, but is this all all right?” Esther, however, said that they certainly had no objection to having her sister there. This house was after all almost like Sarith’s parental home. They would look after Sarith well. He did not have to worry. And so Julius left for his plantation, thinking dejectedly that this was all turning out very differently from how he had imagined it.
On 4 December Sarith’s baby was born. It was not an easy birth, mainly because Sarith herself was exceptionally scared of the unknown and behaved as if she was the first woman in the world ever to give birth. The whole house was in uproar that night. Kwasiba, who for safety’s sake had also been sent by Julius to Paramaribo, was continually running up and down the stairs with hot water and complaining about this misi who was making everything so much worse by not being able to relax. Mini-mini knelt next to the bed, mopping her misi’s forehead, holding her hand and speaking comforting words.
Only when the boy was born and had had his first good cry was Sarith finally at ease, and when she had the child lying next to her on the bed and Mini-mini had washed her face and combed her hair, she said, “He’s beautiful, isn’t he, Mini-mini?”159
And Mini-mini said quietly, “He is beautiful, yes misi,”160 thinking sadly about another little boy who had been born a few months earlier and had not been granted an earthly existence.
Jacob de Ledesma ensured that his brother-in-law heard as quickly as possible that he had a son, and within just four days Julius was in town. He gazed happily on his wife. He was so pleased that he had a son again. “We’ll call him Jethro,” he said.
“Jethro, why Jethro?” asked Sarith. She was wanting another, much more modern, name.