Notes

chapter 1
Isle des Chevaliers When the slaves arrived The oldest house on the island is called L’Arbe de la Croix The two men both feel like exiles from their native lands.
Margaret expects Michael, their son, to come home for Christmas, and Valerian says she is silly and speculates that she must have been drinking
Margret wear frownies to prevent her face from wrinkling and valerien teases her about mangos and how there making her fat.
Valerian criticizes Margaret for inviting lots of Christmas guests after he asked her not to, and she says she hates the island and wants to accompany Michael when he returns to the United States after Christmas
Ondine is irritated at Margaret for ordering the mango and for demanding an elaborate Christmas menu. Ondine thinks only poor people eat mangoes, and she thinks that the Christmas menu is impractical. she believed that michael does not love margret
sydney and ordine are glad to see jadine, gideon the yardman a general derogatory term for the poor black population of Queen of France
chapter two
Jadine is awake, and she remembers a day she spent in Paris, when she was celebrating her appearance on the cover of Elle magazine and her achievement of academic honors from the Sorbonne.
after going shopping for the celeb party she sees an astonishingly beautiful black woman wearing a yellow dress. Her skin was dark as tar, her cheeks scored with African tribal markings, and she had no eyelashes as she left the store, she stopped, turned, looked directly at Jadine, and spat on the ground.
the burden that Jadine feels to be true to being black, although she prefers European cultural forms
it unsettles jadine because she wanted the women to respect her
Margaret is stuck in a state increasingly common forgetfulness
chapter 3
They have dinner margret made dining mistakes and jadine talked about christmas only bringing up if michael was coming
Valerian says that margaret made micheal into a loser and too old to mothered
margaret screams and says there's something black in her closet and it was a black mad with dreadlocks and valerian offers him a drink
chapter 4
margret felt mad the he was offer to dinner and that he was intented to rape her
Sydney is also mad that she would invite him into the house
thereesa and gidion bothe knew he was in the house and belive he is a descendant of the first slaves who were brought to the island
He thinks she is very beautiful, and he remembers when he was hiding how he used to sneak into her room to watch her sleep. He stopped doing this when he began to worry that he smelled like a wild animal and that his smell would wake her up.
He askes her how many sexual favors she had to perform to advance her modeling career.
she gets mad a physicall and he calls her a white girl and tells her how a black girl should act.
as a child she resolved to never let any man break her
chapter five
the man decides to clean up after val and the otheres wanted to call the police
the beauty of jadine won him over
he will now be named son
what made val ask him to stay was the smile he brought that reminded him of michael
he wishs that he would come for christmas though doesnt want to tell margret that
William Green is the man's name
Son explains that he left Eloe because he killed someone, and she says she hates killers. Son tells her that he would not kill her and he loves her
Margaret says that Son is bad luck and hints that he wants Margaret because Son was in her closet.
Jadine surprises herself by defending him. She is amazed at the depth of her anger toward Margaret, a white woman, for presuming that Son desires Margaret and not her.
chapter 6
chirstmas eve . Valerian and Margaret have slept together for the first time in a
Ondine complains to Sydney about the elaborate menu Margaret has planned, and she worries about Jadine’s relationship with Son.
Valerian says he fired Gideon and Thérèse in the course of the day for stealing some of the apples he imported for Margaret’s apple pie recipe
Son fumes that Valerian can so casually dismiss the people on whose labor and land he has made a fortune. He thinks capitalism is a giant system of waste. He becomes more furious when Jadine defends Valerian’s actions.
Then Ondine reveals the truth: When Michael was young, Margaret used to torture him by sticking him with pins and burning him with cigarettes.
son says that that white people and black people should not sit down together.
chapter 7
Jadine and Son move into Dawn’s vacant apartment in New York and spend all their time together. Jadine is glad Son is so handsome, and she loves introducing him to her friends.
Son nor Jadine really seems to care about money, and they do not have any savings. As they spend more and more time together, Jadine starts to feel like less of an orphan, and she and Son feel like they are the only two left in love in New York City.
Spring begins to arrive. Finally they leave for Eloe.
chapter 8
Margaret tried to explain her behavior to Valerian, but she sickened him when she told him that she abused Michael because it felt delicious.
alerian says he does not know because all he can think about is the image of Michael under the sink
Valerian notices that she actually looks prettier and also stronger.
After New Year’s, Valerian retreats to his greenhouse and spends most of his time there, letting the plants go wild. In his guilty haze, he has lost any sense of the value of order there. A dead plant is as good as a live one. Giving up, he lets the ants invade.
chapter 9
Jadine and Son travel to Eloe, Florida
To amuse herself, she began taking pictures of Eloe residents. But when Son returns, he angrily grabs the camera away
She thinks that Eloe is blacker than any place she has ever been and loud with plants and animals.
She reflects to herself that the people of Eloe think sex is dirty and strange, but she decides to stay
Jadine feels as if she is somehow in competition with Cheyenne
Jadine feels like Eloe is “rotten,”
n response, he holds her out the window by her wrists, and she is so scared that she wets her pants.
instead asks him if he wants to be “a yardman” all his life.
hat all her education has been useless if it has not taught her about the world’s racial realities and the hardships faced by people like Gideon and himself.
Once he has gotten his say, he pulls her back in the window, and they sweetly make up.
He also tells her that she cannot understand where he is coming from because she is not from anywhere, whereas he is from Eloe. Jadine tells him that she is fine not being from anywhere if it means not being from Eloe
he asks her to marry him and she says yes, on the condition that he goes to school. He agrees to this proposal but asks that they get their own apartment
it angers him that she makes living in Eloe sound easy, when in reality life in Eloe is very hard.
He says that a black woman who raises her child as white is robbing him of his culture. As he talks, he gets increasingly angry and physically aggressive and invokes the story of the tar baby before leaving the apartment for a few hours.
Jadine is gone.
chapter ten
Jadine says that she must go to Paris
Sydney The power dynamic has shifted, and now the servant is making the decisions. for Valerian
Son continues to feel that he must follow her.
Thérèse offers to take him instead
Son stumbles onto shore, and as he picks up speed his vision fades, and the island opens to accommodate him as he joins the horsemen running.
nature is preparing to reclaim its ground.