“Merci, Madame.”
Suzette backed away and began the five-mile trip back home to Rosedew. If this baby could not have a last name, at least it would have protection from someone who did.
* * *
Suzette and Elisabeth were in the cookhouse together when the contractions began to grip Suzette’s body.
“Mère, this one’s in a hurry,” Suzette said.
Elisabeth gloved her hand and moved the heavy kettle from its hook to another farther away from the hottest flames in the fireplace. She took Suzette by the arm and walked her slowly down the path to the quarter. They stopped whenever the contractions came again. It was early afternoon and almost everyone was in the field. By the time they got to Aunt Jeanne’s cabin Suzette was panting heavily, unable to let go of Elisabeth’s arm. Aunt Jeanne sat on her pine stump on the front porch, an infant asleep in a wooden box at her feet. Three small children looked up from playing in a muddy puddle.
“It’s her time,” Elisabeth said to the old woman, nodding toward Suzette. “Send one of the children to let Madame and the midwife know.”
A light-skinned little boy in a shapeless shirttail smock trailed Elisabeth and Suzette as they made their way farther down the row to Palmire’s cabin, built a small distance away from the others at Louis Derbanne’s command.
“Why are you going to my house, Mémère?” the boy asked as Elisabeth helped Suzette inside the empty cabin.
“Go on back to Aunt Jeanne, Paul,” Elisabeth said. “We have women’s business. And you stay out of sight when Madame comes down here.”
There were two cots in the room, one for Palmire and the other for her three children. Suzette eased herself onto Palmire’s cot and pulled the blanket over her, waiting for the next contraction. There were several split logs and some kindling inside, and Elisabeth started a fire in the fireplace.
“I’ll be back directly,” Elisabeth said to Suzette, turning to go out again. “I need to get some copal moss to brew you tea for the pain.”
“Don’t leave me, Mère,” Suzette begged. “Please. He’s coming now.”
Elisabeth propped up Suzette’s knees where she lay on the cot, fanning back the blanket to get a better look. “He sure enough is,” she said.
Gerant’s birth had been all exhaustion and pain, and by the time he came out into the light Suzette had been sliding into a darkness of her own. With this second child, it was as if the process were in reverse. It was the baby who took the lead, and when it emerged head first Suzette was alert and wide awake.
“Not a boy at all,” Elisabeth said. “Quick as lightning and you got yourself a girl.”
Elisabeth brought the baby up close to Suzette’s face and placed her in Suzette’s trembling arms. Suzette saw the thick blue cord of life that connected her to a girl-child.
“What’s wrong with her?” Suzette could hear the hysteria in her own voice. The baby was gray.
“Don’t worry,” Elisabeth said. “The color will turn. We just don’t know what direction yet.”
From outside came sounds of a buggy and voices. Françoise and the midwife arrived breathless at Palmire’s cabin almost at the same time.
“Philomon already got here,” Suzette said to Françoise as soon as they came through the door. She looked down at the face of the little gray baby with tiny blue fingernails and dark matted hair that clung to her head like a helmet.
“Philomon is a boy’s name,” Françoise said.
“Philomene, then,” Suzette said with as much faith as she could muster. “That fits a girl.”
Françoise nodded. The name held.
* * *
This girl was Name Phelman Dorrod Some spelled it Fellerman Door Rod.
--Cousin Gurtie Fredieu, written family history, 1975
* * *
14 May 1843
Natchitoches Parish
Baptism of Phylomene, born 1 November 1841 to Marie Louise [sic], slave of Widow L. N. [sic] Derbanne. Godparents: Lois Rachal and Marie Doralise Derbanne. [Immaculate Conception Church, Register 10, Baptism of Slaves 1831–1846: unnumbered 1843 entry.]
Baptism of Philomene. [Mother’s name in error.]
* * *
Suzette drowsed one Saturday evening as she breast-fed Philomene in Palmire’s dark cabin. The space was cramped, overflowing with life. She and Palmire slept together on the same cot, nose to toe, each with her nursing infant girl. They had put Palmire to work in the west field closest to the quarter after her lay-in month, and she was allowed to come back three times during the day to nurse her own baby daughter, Melantine.
The three boys were already asleep on the other cot, a tangle of arms and legs. Gerant, who was almost three, got along well with Palmire’s boys—Paul, four, and Solais, two—but Gerant had taken to clinging to Suzette all of the time, unused to having his mother so available. She tried not to think about how it would be after the month was up and the Derbannes owned her time again in the big house.
She was still amazed that Gerant and Philomene had come from her. She tried to identify a future in their expressions that could carry them beyond a two-footed ox for the field or an invisible breeder who would disappear into a big house. They didn’t look alike at all. It was too early to tell how Philomene’s features would fix themselves, the final color of her eyes or hair or skin, but already Suzette could see that, in appearance, at least, Philomene favored Eugene Daurat. She had thin fingers and delicate features, a high-yellow baby with a sharp nose and a full, thick head of wiry hair that stood up at peculiar, spiky angles.
Outside the cabin, a small group gathered, eager to share evening gossip, and she picked out the low hum of familiar voices. Her sister Apphia; her brother, Solataire; Eliza; and Old Bertram. Their voices drifted in and found her.
“He beat up on her one too many times, almost killed her twice. After he pulled the knife, she went on up to the Natchitoches courthouse and asked for what they call a divorce. That puts the marriage to the side, official.”
“They wouldn’t give a colored woman leave to quit her husband. No matter how crazy M’sieu Philippe is.”
“I tell you they gave her papers to carry back, papers that say she’s not married to him anymore.”
“Go on. White folks aren’t going to side with a colored woman. I don’t care if she is free.”
“She had help.”
“What kind of help?”
“From a white man looking to take Philippe’s place, but without it going through any church this time.”
“Who?”
“Eugene Daurat, that Frenchman always coming around here.”
Suzette came fully awake. Her godmother Doralise and Eugene Daurat? How could that be?
Doralise Derbanne divorce decree, 1842.
6
F rançoise pushed herself up higher against the pillows in the middle of her four-poster bed, listening to the steady drone of Oreline’s voice as her niece read aloud to her. She wasn’t well, hadn’t felt truly well for years. In mind and body she was as brittle as the two thinning plaits of white hair that Suzette brushed out and rebraided for her every morning. Her hands were busy with her needlework, but her mind had trouble keeping up with the passages as Oreline spoke them. The overseer had requested an audience with her this morning on a matter, he had said, of grave importance, and she dreaded the intrusion, anticipating the worst. She silently cursed Louis for leaving her alone with too many responsibilities, for allowing the plantation’s slide that had started long before he died.
Rosedew still straddled Bayou Derbanne and stretched across both sides of Cane River as far north as Old River, but the plantation had steadily shrunk. It infuriated her still that during the flush times her husband had given pieces of their land away to his freed mulatto children, including Doralise, and had sold even more in the Panic of 1837. After Louis died, Françoise had been forced to sell additional parcels just to make ends meet. Now there was less than eight hundred acres left and fewer than t
hirty slaves.
At first, after Louis’s death, Françoise had tried to take charge of everything that needed to be done, to run the fields and the house, to maintain the religious and social calendar of Rosedew, to visit in the community. But by the time her girl Suzette came back to work after her second child, Françoise had retreated, had begun to live her life from her bedroom. It was more than she could manage to respond to all of the requests that came flying at her from all directions, demanding decisions.
“A pity,” they said in front parlors up and down the river. She knew how they spoke of her. “Poor Françoise never did get over Louis’s death.”
Rosedew had taken blows that Françoise did not know how to reverse or correct. Each year seemed to bring a new set of problems. One year the rains came too early. The next, poison grass choked out part of the crop. The cotton gin broke and cost $300 to repair. They never seemed to have enough money from one year’s crop to breathe into the next after paying for food, clothes, seed, machinery, and tools, and the times were against them. When their troubles were at their worst, the banks had stopped lending money to almost everyone. Françoise had relied on Louis to take care of running the business at Rosedew, and he had in turn relied on her to keep the house running smoothly. That arrangement had suited Françoise’s sensibilities perfectly, but she was too old and unprepared to take on Rosedew all alone.
Other plantations along Cane River weathered five years of sacrifice and uncertainty, outlasting the depressed cotton prices and tight credit aftermath of the Panic of 1837, and eventually cotton prices crept back up and the banks made cash available again for those felt to have a future. Their neighbors bounced back to prepanic levels of production, and king cotton reigned supreme. Relatives and neighbors reverted to their old ways, entertaining, holding soirées and hunts and horse races as if the money worries of the last few years were too far away for anyone to remember. Cane River became truly joyous again. Except for Rosedew.
There always seemed to be too many things to worry about. Françoise looked over to Oreline, her niece’s small bow mouth moving with concentrated intensity, her voice pleasant enough. She had proven to be a devoted companion and a great comfort, attending Françoise through mourning, melancholy, and illness, trying to shoulder some of the responsibilities of Rosedew. But she was too tall and too plain and had no land to attract a proper beau, as was essential at her age.
Her age, Françoise thought. Oreline was getting older, twenty, not yet married, and lovesick over a boy whom she had lost to a more spirited girl. He had been the only suitor Oreline encouraged, a seemingly sincere young man who turned out to have le coeur comme un artichaud, a heart like an artichoke, with a leaf for everyone. He had paid court to a girl in Cloutierville at the same time he charmed Oreline and had recently announced his engagement to the other girl in the spring. Françoise could understand that her niece needed time to let her heart mend, but time was not on her side. If she reached twenty-five unmarried, her chance to be a bride was most likely gone. She might as well throw her corset on the armoire, prepare herself for the spinster’s life. Françoise would miss Oreline’s soothing presence when she married, but she wanted to see her safely matched and starting her own life. She determined to talk discreetly to her friends to unearth a suitable husband for Oreline. Françoise was more confident about her success in this arena than in dealing with the overseer.
No doubt the overseer’s requested audience today would be another in a constant string of complaints about surly Negroes, or missing livestock, or how much food each slave consumed, or broken tools. What was she to do about any of that? It was too overwhelming, the constant appeals and recitations of petty wrongs. The whole business of having to deal with an overseer was unseemly to begin with and contrary to her upbringing. After a time, she had left this latest one to his own devices or waited until her nephew Narcisse Fredieu or kinsman Eugene Daurat came by and asked one of them to handle whatever needed looking after. For anything official that required writing, she sent word to Eugene Daurat, and he took care of it. She was grateful that her kinsman had come to Cane River, and although she did not approve of how he consorted so intimately with Negroes, she ignored that unpleasantness. She trusted him with her business affairs, and she enjoyed his company.
She had stopped making the overseer account to her for punishment meted out in the field. If he had to give more than twenty lashes in order to ensure obedience, why should she question it? Monitoring the overseer’s activities had been Louis’s way, but Louis had died and left her alone. She did not want to know about these things.
In some ways it was a blessing that she did not get outside much anymore, to see how the cabins needed whitewashing or the barn had begun to lean at a curious angle or how her beloved roses lost their petals early and meandered unsupervised. But she saw the evidence of leaks in the roof, when the constant dripping into the catch pots in the corner of her own bedroom disturbed her sleep, and she could count the dwindling number of times meat was part of the meal.
From time to time Suzette approached her on behalf of someone in the quarter, pleading a case for this one or that one, about some specific injustice or cruelty. Françoise often felt that she was in the middle of squabbling children, each insisting on giving his or her particular interpretation of the same event, an event that didn’t really matter anyway. All she cared about was that within her own household the girl knew her place and the work got done. The day-to-day running of the house and grounds was left to Elisabeth, Suzette, and Old Bertram. It was the best she could do.
“The overseer’s here, Madame.”
Her girl’s voice sounded wary. A stumpy man holding a soiled and misshapen hat in his hand followed Suzette into the darkened room.
Françoise had a strong distaste for the overseer. He was uncouth, with a face chapped rough by the sun, an unwashed odor that preceded him, and no family connections to speak of. She didn’t want him inside her house, let alone her bedroom. She would have rather had Narcisse or Eugene deal with him, but the overseer had been insistent that he speak to her immediately.
Françoise heard Oreline quietly close her book. Her niece remained seated in the chair by the bed. Suzette disappeared.
“I hope your health is improved, Madame,” he began, standing a respectful distance from the bed but filling the room nonetheless.
“As well as can be expected, but my vitality comes and goes. You had an urgent matter that required my personal attention?”
“Yes, Madame. The bank won’t extend any more credit to us. We already let part of the south field go last year. We need seed now, or we miss this planting, too. I have a way out of our problem.”
“I’m listening,” said Françoise, impatient with her dependence on this man.
“The deaf and dumb girl has three mulattos that would bring a decent price. If we sell them, we save the season, without losing any workers.”
Oreline gasped. “Aunt Françoise, there must be some other way,” she said, interrupting, her voice shrill. It was unlike her. “Not Palmire’s children.”
“I can get two hundred dollars for the oldest. With such a shortage on Cane River, even the little ones are fetching a good sum,” the overseer continued as if Oreline had not spoken. “They’re banking on the future,” he said with a wink. “If we don’t do this, we put the whole plantation at risk.”
Françoise could picture their faces, two boys and a girl, mulattos carrying Louis’s features. They used to try to hide the children from her when she went to the quarter, but she had seen them.
“Most of the worth of Rosedew is tied up in the quarter. All you have to do, Madame, is give me the go-ahead,” the overseer pressed. “I can take care of the rest.”
And so, without wanting to remember their names, Françoise authorized the sale of first Paul, age five, then Solais, three, and finally Melantine, age two, away from Rosedew.
* * *
Once the slave sales began, the slow b
ut steady outflow continued, one or two from the quarter each year, but Rosedew couldn’t right itself. The smokehouse was never more than half-full, and rations were reduced in both the big house and the quarter. Grass completely reclaimed the south field.
The year that cotton fell to less than seven cents a pound, Françoise managed to arrange a match for Oreline to a poor young farmer from lower Cane River. Her niece was twenty-two.
Two weeks before the wedding Françoise and Oreline sat in Françoise’s bedroom, stitching items for Oreline’s trousseau. Françoise began to cough, a long series of clipped strangles that seemed to feed on themselves, and Oreline threw aside her handiwork.
“It pains me to go away and leave you,” she said, easing Françoise’s upper body forward and rubbing her back in firm, circular movements. “I’ll be so far away.”
“Only downriver, no farther than your cousin Narcisse,” Françoise replied. “It is important to embrace the chance to marry when you have it.”
“Monsieur Ferrier thinks I could learn to be a good wife to him. He says he enjoys my company.” Color dotted Oreline’s pale cheeks. “But it doesn’t seem proper to leave you on Rosedew alone.”
Françoise looked at the young woman she had raised. Oreline was a plain-featured woman, but devoted and as close to her as any daughter who would have been born of her own body. It was difficult to think of her niece paired to a man who worked with his hands, but the union was preferable to having Oreline adopt the hooded bonnet of spinsterhood, with ribbons that tied under the chin. Joseph Ferrier was a tall, long-limbed man, a welcome fit for Oreline’s height, an outdoorsman with sure movements and sandy hair that fell into his eyes. He seemed good-natured and was solicitous of his mother, both good signs, and he had appeared at once to be attracted to Oreline’s quiet, obedient ways. At least someone found the girl attractive, Françoise thought. She didn’t want to dwell on the fact that Ferrier was a small-time farmer, overreaching.