Cane River

  Her pictures were quiet. They had deserted her, and it seemed fitting, a reflection of the emptiness of her future. She wondered if the yellow fever had taken the glimpsing away from her forever, as it had taken everything else.

  19

  N arcisse came to her instead of sending for her. It was a Sunday, her own day, and Philomene had not gotten out of bed, even though the rooster had announced the day’s beginning hours before. Her room off the kitchen smelled of bacon grease and mourning. They all thought she had gone a little crazy, like Doralise’s husband, she knew that, but it meant that they left her to herself on Sundays.

  His boots sang out on the floorboards, warning his approach. She kept her eyes shut and her face to the wall, but she heard the heavy arrogance of his gait and smelled the cigar smoke he brought with him to the doorway of her room. There was a moment between sounds as he adjusted to the darkness, and she heard him come farther into the room, towering over her, nearby.

  “You have a lot of people worried about you,” he said almost gently.

  Philomene said nothing. She didn’t get out of bed. She didn’t even roll over.

  Narcisse stiffened against this affront. “You hear me talking to you, gal. You better beware, Philomene.”

  Philomene held the blanket up to her chin, rolled her body into a ball, and leaned back against the wall, still on the pallet. She could smell herself and wondered if he did, too. Her hair bunched in matted clumps against her cheek, unwashed, uncombed, and brittle.

  Philomene was seventeen years old, and she felt used up. Wherever she went she could smell the stale breath of bitterness prodding her. Her days were drab and hard, and her nights were full to bursting with the silent grief that her isolation nourished. Loneliness had become an ugly, open sore that festered instead of healing over. She refused to give herself the relief of lingering on what should have been and so drifted on the edge of nothingness from day to day.

  Clement was the only man she wanted, but waiting for him was foolish and impractical. He was gone because he had been as powerless as she was. Her glimpsings had tricked her into thinking there could be something more, into desiring, expecting. Losing her children had shown her how futile that was. She was barren and empty, pretending to be human, imitating the things she had done before, long ago. Pretending that it mattered to get up one more day. She was surprised each morning when she woke that she hadn’t died of her aloneness the night before. The days were colorless, and there were only fleeting moments of comfort for her at week’s end, when she could go to see Suzette, or Elisabeth, or Doralise and Gerant. Occasionally she saw her grandfather Gerasíme, whose hip had gotten much worse.

  The weeks had passed with her feeling naked and exposed, tensing for the next blow, subject to the whims of some force intent on grinding her up until there was nothing left. And when it seemed that she had reached bottom, that the greedy hands could pull her no lower, Narcisse Fredieu appeared in her room. This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.

  “Are you listening to me?” Narcisse asked. “Your father asked me to look after you and yours. I told him that I would. That makes three generations of your family under my care. Elisabeth, Suzette, and you and Gerant.”

  Philomene was afraid of this man in her little corner off the kitchen, whether he had saved her from yellow fever or not. The familiarity in his tone threatened to swallow her up, and she was alone with him, with only the thin blanket and her night shift between them. It was important to concentrate, to listen to him carefully. He was talking about the people left to her, the people she still cared about. She opened her eyes but kept her head down. She refused to let him see her face still raw with the absence of Clement and their babies.

  “Your mother and I played together as children. We spent hours in the cookhouse with your mémère Elisabeth and in the quarter with Gerasíme. I’m fond of your family and am in a position to make your lives easier. I can protect you. I made that promise to your father. And I’m interested in you. I’ve told you that before.”

  Philomene heard Narcisse take in a breath and pause. She waited.

  “You have to shake this off, Philomene, you have to get beyond the last few months. You’re still young. You’ve let yourself go down. It’s time to think about the future. There can be more children.”

  Narcisse moved closer, touching her lightly on the shoulder. “We all know you can speak. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Philomene tried to identify the tone of voice that the watcher was using with her, the rise and fall of his words as important as the words themselves. His speech was not as gentle as the words buried in them insinuated, an undertow of threat to the calm flow. Narcisse had been circling her for a long time. As long as she had been married to Clement he’d kept his distance. Philomene had gotten to know this man and his crablike moves toward her. Always from the side, seldom forward. How many years had he been watching her, without action or declaration? The fact that he was here now, in her room, with Oreline somewhere in the house, signaled a change in the fragile distance he had kept before.

  The puzzling thing was that he was moving toward her with caution, when they both knew he could take her if he wanted, without consequence, especially once her father had left Cane River. Last week Eugene Daurat had come to this very room to announce that he was going back to France. Only then had she realized how much her father’s presence had protected her. Without him living on Cane River, she would need to find some other way to defend herself or be prey for any of the men who would come and expect her to service their physical or emotional needs. Narcisse Fredieu was one of those men, but not the only one. She had just known of him longer. She was sure that taking her was precisely what was on his mind, although it made no sense. She disgusted herself, unkempt, dirty, smelling of despair, so dried up that even her milk had been taken from her.

  If Narcisse Fredieu was determined to have her, their long dance could end no other way, unless she was prepared to risk death—his death and then, by definition, her own. Even with all that she had lost, she was not willing to face death. There was more to come for her. She was sure of it. And now with Narcisse Fredieu’s hesitation, with his caution, he handed her a shield, however thin. She had to use his lust to her advantage, but her mind was too numb to form a plan.

  She could be as outwardly respectful to Narcisse as she needed to be. How long she could hold him at a distance was another matter. The glimpsings had not come to her for some time, and she had never seen Narcisse in any of them. Maybe he wasn’t connected to her future. Maybe if she held him back for long enough, his mind would turn in some other direction that didn’t include her. Maybe his wife, Arsine, would be able to keep him by her side and away from Philomene’s room, although the gossip that traveled the river already had Arsine spending more and more time on extended visits alone outside the parish. Maybe the protection Narcisse talked about was more like the kind Ferrier had provided. The young farmer had never touched her mother or her or Palmire, and she had never heard of him coupling with any slaves. There were no stories, no rolled eyes, no side glances, no café au lait babies attached to his name.

  She didn’t believe for a moment that that was the kind of protection Narcisse Fredieu was offering.

  As if to confirm her thoughts, Narcisse approached her pallet and lifted a handful of Philomene’s long dirty hair, stroking it in a grotesque perversion of Clement’s touch.

  “You need to clean yourself up. I plan to have you, Philomene. It would be better if you came to me willingly. Better for everyone. I want what’s best for you. What’s best for all. Think about that. I’ll only be so patient.”

  He left as suddenly as he had come, his retreating footsteps muted by the sound of her own beating heart in her ears.

  * * *

  When Eugene Daurat had told Philomene he was quitting Cane River for good, preparing to vanish as if he had never existed, she’d kept her silence. He?
??d admitted that he had sold her brother, Gerant. “To a good place,” her father had said, “to a neighboring planter who will treat him well.” Still no word passed Philomene’s lips.

  Now one thing had become certain. It was time for her to reclaim her voice, to begin the complicated negotiations for the rest of her life. She needed to turn her thoughts to what she could get in return. Her family needed protection. It was up to her to step up to what needed doing, to use whatever was at hand. She needed to talk to her grandmother, and if she didn’t go today, she would have to wait for another week.

  Philomene no longer had Clement to safeguard what had been soft in her. She got up from her bed and dressed.

  * * *

  17 January 1858

  Natchitoches, Louisiana

  Eugene Daurrat, resident of the Parish of Natchitoches, to Henry Hertzog, for $1650: a negro man, age about 20, named Gerand. Hertzog furnished by individual note, payable 1 May next, for value received. Witnesses: G. E. Spilman and Dr. Fleming. Signed E. Daurat and Henry Hertzog. Recorded 2 February 1858. [Natch. Conveyance Book 51: 355–6.]

  Sale of Gerant.

  * * *

  It took her thirty minutes to get the pass and then three hours of hard walking. Philomene found her grandmother outside her cabin in the Fredieu quarter, tending her vegetable patch, and Elisabeth held her fast, surprised and excited to see her. Philomene wished she could stay in the comfort of her grandmother’s arms, but she gave herself only a moment before she pushed herself away. They sat on the porch of the cabin, out of the sun.

  Elisabeth studied her. Philomene knew how she must look. Her grandmother went into the cabin, and Philomene sat on the floorboards at the base of her grandmother’s chair on the porch, the way she had as a child. She faced out toward the garden and waited. Elisabeth came back with her comb in her hand, eased herself into her chair, gripping Philomene’s shoulders between her knees, and began to use her fingers to unmat Philomene’s hair.

  “You must get lonesome up to Madame Oreline’s by yourself. We all think about you, and pray for you.”

  Philomene would have liked to cry, to be done with it, but no tears would come. It was time to speak.

  “Mémère,” she said, her voice raspy and awkward. She had practiced on the walk through the woods, pushing sound out of her mouth again, reopening the gate between thought and word.

  Elisabeth’s hands froze in her hair, but for only a moment. “You’ve come back to us,” she said, squeezing her hands around Philomene’s shoulders. Elisabeth continued to untangle Philomene’s hair and began to work the snarls with the comb.

  “I’ve lost everything.” Philomene’s stored-up voice had a hard edge.

  “No. Not everything.”

  “Mémère, I came to tell you about what I saw.”

  Elisabeth turned Philomene’s face toward her, looking at her granddaughter sharply.

  “A glimpsing? It’s been a long time.”

  Philomene shook her head. “In the fever.”

  Elisabeth kept at the combing as Philomene talked.

  Philomene told her grandmother all of the details she could remember about the fever dream, the bubbling water, Clement’s appearance and rescue of Thany in the yellow boat, cradling Bet in the crook of her arm.

  “There was something to the dream, like a message from a glimpsing, but . . .”

  Philomene let her voice trail away, taken with another thought. “You have to believe in the last glimpsing, Mémère. It is important.” It hurt her throat to talk, but she didn’t want to stop. “You will sit at one end of the table, and Maman will sit at the other. You wait and see. It will be our own food and our own house, and we will be together again.”

  “God will provide.”

  “I believe God will provide, too, Mémère. Just that sometimes He needs help to remember who to provide to.”

  “I have always believed in your glimpsing, child.”

  “I am going to make it come true,” Philomene said.

  “What can you do?”

  “M’sieu Narcisse has come to me. I must use that.”

  Elisabeth’s thighs pressed hard into Philomene’s shoulders. “Lord, how many times?” she said, her voice a strangle. “Can you go to Mam’zelle Oreline?”

  “Madame Oreline was the one who sold Clement,” Philomene said bitterly. “She makes menu choices, and sets up social affairs. She can appeal to a husband, but she is in the spider’s web along with the rest of us, like you always say. Waiting for the spider to get home.”

  “There’s no keeping out of his way?”

  “Things have gone too far in M’sieu Narcisse’s mind for him to stop now. I want something in return. Not a trinket now and then. I want big things. Freedom. Land. Money. Protection. For all of us.”

  “You play with fire, child.”

  “M’sieu Narcisse has two farms already, and big desires. And he is smitten, like a boy in short pants. With no doing on my part, he has watched me for years. If I put some work into it, he is my best chance at a protector. Like Madame Doralise would do. Now that Papa is leaving, it will be somebody. At least with M’sieu Narcisse, he has a fascination with me he cannot let go. He could have taken me long ago, but he didn’t. He has fear and superstition alongside the fascination.”

  “Don’t be so reckless to think you can win Narcisse Fredieu’s heart,” Elisabeth said.

  “What am I to do with a white man’s heart?” Philomene’s response was icy. “I want his head, his mind. I am not helpless, Mémère. I can watch people, too, look into their souls, know them. He wants me to know him, but he will never know me. I will use the glimpsings.”

  “You haven’t had a glimpsing for years. You may never have another one.”

  “If I made up a picture now and then, he would never know,” Philomene said. “The glimpsings could keep him afraid.”

  “What about children sure to come?” Elisabeth asked. “You are fertile, Philomene, and you don’t know which kind of white man he is. The sneaking kind sprinkling seed from one quarter to the next, never looking back, or the kind to keep his own flesh and blood off to the side, hidden, slipping them something now and again. Not many are the third kind, a man who comes out to his children in the daylight.”

  “I’ve seen him with children, white and colored. He has a true fondness,” Philomene said. “He might buy the children in. I want my children to be free. He could buy me, so that any children would belong to him, by law as well as blood.” The thought made Philomene shudder. Narcisse was a complicated man with complicated moods and complicated motivations. It was impossible to know what he would do, how he would react.

  “Nobody who wasn’t born free is getting free these days,” Elisabeth said. “When you finally open your mouth to talk again, child, everything that comes out frightens me.”

  “Clement and the babies are gone,” Philomene said. “They were yesterday. Today is Narcisse Fredieu. Tomorrow will be the children.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Narcisse to come to her again, and this time Philomene was ready.

  “I had a glimpsing, M’sieu. About you and me.”

  “So, you choose to talk again, after all this time. That is progress.” Narcisse sat alert in the moonlight chair in Philomene’s room. “Tell me about this glimpsing.”

  “I saw you come to me for the first time, but it wasn’t off the kitchen, not inside this house. It was a cabin of my own. You had just picked a ripe persimmon with its green stem still attached, and you gave it to me to eat.”

  “Persimmons are not ripe for months,” Narcisse said, his dark eyebrows knit.

  “I do not control the glimpsings, M’sieu. I only tell you what I saw.”

  Philomene stole a glance at Narcisse. He was hanging on her every word. She was not sure Narcisse would believe her lies, but his long-standing belief in her powers allowed her to hope. She concealed the outward signs of her relief when he stood up to go.

  “
You will be mine, Philomene. If it makes it easier, it may as well be the way you saw it.”

  * * *

  Narcisse had Philomene moved from the dark, airless room off the kitchen. One of his slaves built a small cabin on Oreline’s property, behind the farmhouse. It had its own fireplace and was for Philomene only, a foolish expense on someone else’s rented land. And he waited until the fall, when the persimmon trees bore fruit and he could bring one to her, stem intact, before he claimed the prize.

  Through it all, the betterment of her living quarters, the feverish return visits to her cabin by Narcisse Fredieu, Philomene grew in strength. She had found at last a useful direction for her bitterness.

  20

  “I saw something important, M’sieu Narcisse,” Philomene said to him as soon as he entered her cabin door. Even in the dimness of the small room, Narcisse could see how she held herself erect, away from him.

  “You don’t even give me time to take off my hat, or stop to pour me coffee?” Narcisse groused, weary from a long day.

  “It is a glimpsing,” Philomene said, standing ground where she was.

  Narcisse placed his hat on the table. “What did you see?” he asked. His tiredness was gone.

  “There is going to be a child, and you must give it protection,” she said.

  Narcisse’s mind raced. A child. His child. “Protection?”

  “I am with child. You must provide,” Philomene repeated.

  Narcisse rushed toward her, barely registering the momentary confusion on her face. He gripped her arm roughly, wild hope and pride edging him forward.

  “Do not toy with me, Philomene,” Narcisse demanded. “What about the child? Will it be a boy, a girl? What will it look like? What kind of glimpsing is this?”

  Philomene shrank back from him, as if in fear. But that frozen moment was all there was, and then her face closed again into composure.