The sound of drops crashing against the window fills the room until they are masked by the cries of a newborn. His lungs fill up with air, his fists tightly clenched, and his eyes closed. It’s the rainy season, Armistice Day, when my dad is born in the maternity ward of the Redoute Hospital in Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique. This small French island in the Caribbean Sea is the place of his early childhood. Where he sits in his grandfather’s convenience store, where he breaks thermometers with his cousins to drink the red liquid, where he gets chased by a rooster.

Where one day, his grandfather brings him south to see his cocoa field. They take a shared taxi—on my dad’s left, a woman wears a beautiful white pleated skirt. The constant turning of the car makes my dad sick. He feels his stomach twisting and turning as the car continues to zigzag through the hills and trees, and he ends up throwing up all over the lady’s skirt. “It’s okay,” she says. He wipes his mouth, and the sickness starts to subside.

The field is elevated, and when they get to it, he can see the sea, deep blue, just like the sky. He hasn’t seen it like this before. His grandfather grabs a cocoa pod and opens it with a large knife. Inside are the hidden beans that make chocolate when processed, each covered by a white pulp. My dad brings it to his mouth—it’s tangy and so sweet that the taste stays in his mouth for a long time, even after they’ve left the cocoa field and the sea.

*

Before the Europeans landed in Martinique, the island bore other names: Madinina, the “island of flowers,” and Jouanacaera, “the island of iguanas.” It was inhabited by the Arawaks, the first people of the island, and then the Kalinagos.

French settlers arrived in Martinique in 1635, and in 1642, Louis XIII allowed the slave trade on the island. Cane sugar became the main crop harvested on the island, but also cacao and tobacco. These crops were sent to Europe, and the money collected from the sales was used to buy more slaves in Africa, who were boarded in the holds of ships heading for the Antilles. In the crowded and dark slave decks, they gasped for air, unable to stand. On the mainland, the Queen and her court drank chocolate and marvelled at the sweetness.

*

In 1794, France was one of the first European countries to abolish slavery, five years after the French Revolution and the ratification of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Carried by the wind of freedom and fraternity, the elected representatives of the people voted for the complete equality of white men and men of color. 

Yet, not even twenty years later, in 1802, it was reinstated. The story goes that Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife, born into a family of plantation owners, convinced Napoleon to reinstate slavery. While this is the story that many have heard, there is no historical documentation of Joséphine de Beauharnais being the reason slavery was re-established. Historians cite economic reasons, as well as lobbying from plantation owners, as more probable causes.

Slavery was abolished in France and its colonies, for good this time, in 1859. Eleven years later, a statue of Joséphine was inaugurated in Fort-de-France in the Jardin de la Savane. It was sculpted in Carrara marble, valued for its whiteness. Around her, eight royal palms stand tall, their branches shading her and honoring her.

*

When my dad is six, his mother returns to Martinique. She had left four years prior after finding a job on the Mainland through the Bumidom program. She brings two people with her and introduces them to my dad: her husband and his baby sister. The four of them go back to the Parisian region, away from the island and the sea.

The Essonne department in the South of the Parisian region is where my dad’s first home on the mainland is located. When he looks up, it’s not blue skies he sees, but grey clouds covering the sun, tinting everything with a cold hue.

*

Aimé Césaire became the mayor of Fort-de-France in 1945, and he remained in that position for fifty-five years. Before he started his political career, he was one of the founders of Négritude, a literary and political movement carried by French Caribbean and African writers, which sought to reject colonialism and embrace their black identity and pride. As a mayor and a representative in the National Assembly, he fought for Martinique to be recognized as more than a colony. In 1946, Martinique officially became a French department, although some anti-colonialist activists would have preferred independence.

In 1963, the French government started to give away one-way tickets from the overseas territories to the mainland. The goal was for them to come as an additional underqualified workforce, mostly in the service industry. That’s the Bumidom, a program designed to relieve the industries and services that are struggling to hire by bringing people from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Reunion. At the time, unemployment rates were high in these places, and the program aimed to reduce the growing population of these overseas regions, considered by some politicians to be too high and a potential time bomb. It also accomplished another goal: weakening the independentist movements by sending the young members of the Martinican workforce away. The memories of the bloody independence war that lasted eight years in Algeria and ended a year earlier are fresh. The Bumidom, then, will be a tool for the French government to guarantee it doesn’t happen again. They can’t lose any more of their territories.

*

The growing murmurs of resentment and anger over the statue of Joséphine floated to the ears of Aimé Césaire and his mayoral administration, and in 1974, they decided to move the statue over to the border of the park. In her new home, without her royal palm trees, Joséphine is a lot less visible, and yet, she still stands.

*

I am a year and a half old when I land in Martinique for the first time. My mother holds me tight as we walk the steps to disembark from the plane, and my dad, next to us, makes sure we don’t leave anything behind.

I don’t know anything about the sweetness of the cocoa pods, but my father’s eyes are soft as he takes pictures of me in my mother’s arms.

The walls of my grandmother’s house are pink, and I almost bump into one as I run around the wraparound tiled porch, a flower that I picked in my grandmother’s garden in my hand. From the garden, I can see the sea, so blue I don’t know where it stops and where the sky starts.

At the beach, my mom picks me up off the ground and walks us up to the sea. She lowers herself into the water, and my toes touch the waves. The cold contrasts with the heat of the sun’s rays on my skin. We go further into the water. I start to fuss, and my mother takes me back to shore. We dry off and sit under the shade of the tree. Its leaves tickle my back. 

*

In February 1974, agricultural workers of Chalvet went on strike. Life had always been much more expensive in overseas territory than on the mainland, and these workers demanded higher salaries. They were ambushed by the police on Valentine’s Day, and as they threw rocks at the officers, the police answered with bullets. Many were injured, and one man, Ilmany Sérier, was killed. Two days later, a couple of hours before Ilmany Sérier was buried, the lifeless body of a young man, Georges Marie-Louise, was found on a beach, not far from Chalvet. For Martinicans, this young man was killed by the police. For the prefect, this couldn’t be, as the autopsy didn’t reveal any signs of violence. But people took to the streets, and though the workers finally obtained a small raise, it didn’t erase the blood that was shed.

*

The statue of Joséphine was found decapitated by an anonymous group in September 1991. The town ordered a new head for the statue, but gave up on the project before it happened. The statue remained in the park, headless. At various times, she was the target of graffiti, red blood staining her neck.

Interviewed anonymously in 2017, one of the people that were present the night that Joséphine lost her head admits that cutting her head was easy, but that it ended up being heavier than they had thought it would be. The interviewer says, “To this day, no one knows where the head is, except for you.” He says, “Yes, and there’s no way her head is ever going to be returned.”

*

I am five years old when I land in Martinique for the second time. As we step into the Fort-de-France airport, I hold my dad’s left hand tightly. My three-year-old brother holds his right hand, and my one-and-a-half-year-old sister is in my mother’s arms.

We spend a week at my grandmother’s pink-walled house, running around the wrap-around porch, and playing games the three of us invent as we go, then we go to a house that my parents have decided to rent for our second week on the island.

There are enough bedrooms in the house for each of the siblings to have a room of their own, but we decide to sleep in the same room on the king bed. At night, our mom tucks us into bed, me on the left, my brother on the right, and my sister in the middle of us. Mom closes the white mosquito net behind her as she blows us a kiss. I wake up in the morning with three new mosquito bites. My brother wakes us with a swollen earlobe—turns out he’s allergic to mosquitoes, which is not a convenient discovery to make on a tropical island where mosquitoes are emboldened by the hot and humid air. My dad gently rubs ointment on my brother’s ear to try and make it itch less.

In the morning, we go to the beach, and my mom holds my sister, who’s wearing floaters, just the way she used to hold me. I’m old enough to swim on my own, so I put on goggles, make sure they are tight around my head, take a deep breath, plug my nose with a thumb and index finger, and go down in the water. It’s calm in here, and a blueish green surrounds me. The ripples and the sun partner together to create a wavy pattern on the sand. I reemerge out of the water when I’m out of breath, my braids sticking to my neck.

In the afternoons, we go back to the house and play in the garden. We lay on the hammock, the three of us small enough to fit somehow, my sister and brother on one side, me on the other. We talk about the beach, the palm trees, the flowers. Everything is beautiful.

*

The first flag of Martinique, starting in 1766, was blue. A white cross separated four quadrants of the flag, each filled with a white fer-de-lance viper. Jean-Philippe Nilor, in 2018, argued that the flag was reminiscent of slavery and the colonial days of the island. Since 2023, the flag that flies alongside the French flag on city halls is now red, green, and black. The colors are inspired by the pan-African flag, representing the African diaspora and pan-Africanism.

In December 2024, for the first time since its creation 104 years earlier, Miss Martinique was crowned Miss France. Angélique Angarni-Filopon was born and raised on the mainland, but decided to go live in Martinique, where both her parents are from, in 2023. Her skin is dark and her hair short. She received a wave of criticism and backlash over her appearance and her age. People say that she wasn’t crowned for being the most beautiful, but to appease political tensions with overseas territories. Angélique Angarni-Filopon continued to stand tall, her hair styled in fingerwaves, proudly holding her crown.

*

In the wake of protests against racism and police brutality after the murder of George Floyd, the anti-colonial collective Rouge-Vert-Noir demanded that the town of Fort-de-France take the statue of Joséphine down by the end of the week. On July 26, 2020, a couple of days after the demand, the collective destroyed the statue.

Only the bust of the statue remains, exhibited in the Musée de la Pagerie. Black spray paint seems to have trickled from her neck to her chest, like a dark wound, forever unhealed.

*

I am nineteen years old when I land in Martinique for the third time. My mom steps out of the plane, then my dad, then my siblings, who grew up a little too fast. From behind, I look at my little brother, whose height surpassed mine five years ago. My little sister is convinced she is as tall as I, but for now, I can comfort myself in the few inches separating the top of our heads. From the balcony of the apartment we’re sharing for the next three weeks, we can look out at the sea, infinite and blue.

We’ve planned a beach day with my aunt, her husband, and my eleven-year-old cousin, who are here too. After parking the cars, we walk together for ten minutes, carrying towels and food, until we get to this secluded beach.

The sand is hot as I take small but fast steps to the water to join my sister and my cousin, who are playing in the waves. The sea is greener than I remember, but I don’t remember that much from my past visits.

On another day, we go to La Savane Des Esclaves, a slavery museum that looks like what a slave village would have looked like when it was practiced on the island and in the other French Antilles colonies.

Walking through it gives us a peek into what the slaves’ lives were: where they lived, how they made dinner, and what happened to them when they disobeyed direct orders. I look at the wax statues representing slaves and slave masters.

Slavery colors my skin and the history of this island. I know that in all probability, I am a descendant of both the slave and the slave master, the person who was taken from their home and roots, and the person who decided they were just another, an object at their disposal. I choose to only claim one side. I’ve always traced my lineage back to Martinique, but I don’t know where my roots go beyond this island. There is no documentation on where my ancestors were ripped from.

My grandmother’s house walls are still pink, but there are no babies to hold anymore. We have grown, tall as cacao trees, even without roots.

Back at the apartment, my sister and I lie in the hammock, she on one side, and I on the other. My brother can’t fit, so he sits on a chair on the balcony and draws the landscape in front of us.

After dinner, I sit at the table outside with my dad and sister, and we talk about theology. My parents found Kinder chocolate bars at the store this morning, and I grab one as my dad explains the trinity to my little sister. I ask him if we can go see the statue of Joséphine, who I’ve heard has been missing her head. “It’s not there anymore,” he says, “It was taken down last year.”

I take a bite of the chocolate bar. It’s sweet, and the taste stays in my mouth for a long time. The sea looks dark in the light of the moon. Maybe it always was. But I’ve never seen it like this before.