Cane River

  Suzette saw Philomene appear silently in the front room, as if she had called out loud for her. “Philomene, there you are. Go get Mam’zelle some tea, and send Gerant for Eugene Daurat and Narcisse Fredieu. Madame has passed.”

  An unspoken signal passed from mother to daughter. And make sure the news gets to the field that she’s dead.

  Suzette kept Elisabeth’s words in the front of her mind to keep herself from wavering. “You do whatever you can, whatever you have to, in order to protect you and yours.” She knew the Ones with Last Names could buy those she loved, if they chose. Eugene Daurat. Oreline Derbanne. Doralise Derbanne. Narcisse Fredieu.

  In the days following Françoise’s last rites, the panic had come in waves, threatening to overpower Suzette unless she practiced her appeals over and over. She had repeated them to herself so many times that they chased each other around in her head, appearing in wake and in sleep in random order. She had begun to wonder if she would be strong enough now that the time had come, terrified that her pleas might not strike the right chords. That they would turn a deaf ear because she would sound as if she had forgotten her place.

  Would anyone else know how valuable they were? Her fiddler father, Gerasíme? Her deaf and dumb sister Palmire, whose remaining senses allowed her to see her three children taken from her and sold? Her clever Gerant, who at the age of eleven already showed signs of being able to make anything out of wood? Her mother, Elisabeth, whose breeding years were at an end and whose tongue still stumbled sometimes over her French words, but whose cooking was second to none? And Philomene. Her little Philomene with her thick wavy hair and creamy skin, who did not know how to bend enough, yet. Whose expectations were even higher than Suzette’s own at that age. She needed more time with Philomene to get her ready.

  * * *

  Leaving Philomene to watch over Oreline, Suzette hurried to the cookhouse. There would be many mourners visiting Rosedew today, and grief would not overpower the need for hospitality or nourishment.

  “Mère Elisabeth, I have to try to catch M’sieu Eugene and M’sieu Narcisse alone when they come. I’ll send Philomene in to help with supper as soon as I can.”

  Elisabeth nodded, her face hard as she continued to stir the contents of the heavy iron pot suspended over the fire.

  Suzette picked up her skirts and ran to the front of the house to see if anyone had come yet. There were no horses. She hurried around to the back door and entered the house, passing down the hall to the front room, and motioned Philomene away from Oreline’s side.

  “Go down and help Mère Elisabeth,” she whispered. “But be ready to be useful in the house, too.”

  “Yes, Maman,” Philomene said gravely, and headed for the back door.

  Suzette took her position again in the front room with Oreline, and they waited.

  Eugene Daurat was the first to arrive.

  “Cousin Oreline,” he said, arms outstretched as he strode in through the front door. “Françoise Derbanne was a good woman.”

  Oreline held fast to him for a moment, and then they sat together on the settee. Eugene stayed close by her side for the next two hours.

  Shortly before supper was to be served, Eugene took up his hat to go outdoors for a smoke. Suzette followed him quietly, and when he stopped to light his cigar just out of sight of the house, she assumed her humble pose, eyes downcast, making small noises with her feet to let him know she was there.

  Eugene turned. “Suzette?”

  “M’sieu Daurat. If I could just talk to you. You’re a gentleman, like Louis Derbanne was. And he freed his children. Look at what he did for Doralise.”

  It was the wrong beginning. Suzette knew it, but the words she had rehearsed were taking a crooked course of their own. She spoke in a rush, needing to get it out while she had this chance.

  “M’sieu Derbanne recognized blood ties,” Suzette said. “He did the right thing for his own flesh and blood.”

  She tried not to think of Palmire’s children, sold one after the other by the Widow Derbanne. Because they had Derbanne blood. She circled Eugene quickly and dropped to her knees, head bowed, in front of where he stood. A small sharp stone cut at her knee, and she rocked herself on it to clear her mind.

  “He treated you like a son. He would want you to look out after Gerant and Philomene. He would say it was your responsibility. M’sieu, please.”

  Suzette forced herself to stay on her knees, staring at the eyelets of Eugene Daurat’s shoes as she talked, willing the crisscross pattern of the laces to hold her together. Something dangerous and wild was threatening to lift her up, to set her clawing at the doll man’s throat. Even through the material of her dress and undershift she could feel the soft, warm pulsing and the stickiness around her knee where the blood had been loosed. She ground her knee down harder on the rock.

  “Gerant has been trained in the house. He knows how to be around people of quality. He’s clever with his hands. He could help you around your own house, or in your store. You’ve seen yourself how he can make tools out of wood, and fix things better than grown men. If you don’t step in, he could end up on the McAlpin place, where they whip their Negroes into early graves. I’m begging. I never asked you for anything for myself. You can figure out a way to free him.”

  Suzette knew she had pushed in the wrong direction, but she couldn’t seem to stop. It used to be that Eugene would make vague promises about freeing his children, but any talk of freedom now just set his jaw. She didn’t have to see his face to feel the tightening of his body, like a cornered loggerhead turtle pulling its head into its shell.

  “Or buy him for yourself. Save him. I’m begging you, save him. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t let him be sold away from Cane River.”

  Eugene backed away from her, leaving her there, and turned to walk back toward the house.

  “I’ll do what I can for the boy,” he said over his shoulder, and with quickened steps he hurried away.

  Even with her eyes closed and the stale taste of dust in her mouth, Suzette could still see the crisscross of his shoelaces, long after he was gone.

  * * *

  Narcisse didn’t arrive until midafternoon. Suzette listened for his approach and went out to him as he rode on to Rosedew atop his sorrel mare.

  He looked prosperous in his dark broadcloth suit and new riding boots. He had recently married and bought land downriver near the parish line, close to the farm where Oreline and her husband lived. Suzette had been lent to both of them to cook and serve for their opening parties.

  This time, she promised herself, she would say the words as she had practiced them. “M’sieu Narcisse. I am so sorry for the loss of your aunt.”

  In front of her was an aspiring young planter sitting high on his horse in his stiff black jacket and tie, but Suzette could still see the pudgy little boy trying to order her and Oreline around in the piney woods behind the big house.

  Suzette did not look directly at him. “You know us here on Rosedew. You spent time in my mother’s kitchen. She always thought high on you. More than any of the other cousins who came to visit. She always told me that you would make something of yourself, even when we were little. She knew you had a good heart. A kind heart.”

  The lies were second nature. They were expected and easily accepted.

  “Our family was always faithful to the Derbannes. My father was born here. My mother has been cook for thirty years. You must need good workers you know and trust. Take Elisabeth and Gerasíme together. They would be grateful and work hard for you. You’ve tasted my mother’s cooking. With Mademoiselle Tranquillin being so new to marriage, Elisabeth could help her get the house set up and running smooth. And Gerasíme is a steady hand in the field. He handles an ox as well as he plays the fiddle.”

  Narcisse’s heavy brows pushed together toward the center of his wrinkled forehead in a gesture Suzette knew well. He was anxious to get down from his horse and get inside out of the drizzle, but he was also drawn
by the idea.

  “Oui, Suzette, I know your family,” Narcisse said uncomfortably, “but I can’t afford to buy two more slaves now no matter how helpful they might be.”

  “M’sieu Narcisse, they need to be sold together to a good place. The kind of place you would run. They’ve been together for over thirty years on Rosedew. Already they’ll be separated from all of their children and grandchildren. They’d work harder if they were sold together.”

  “I can’t go into debt trying to keep the two of them in the same place. It’s likely they’ll both end up on Cane River somewhere and they can visit each other Sundays.”

  Narcisse spoke into the distance as if Suzette were not standing close enough to the sweating mare to feel the heat pouring off her.

  Narcisse paused. “But I could use someone for the house who would give Tranquillin a hand with the cooking,” he said, as if the notion had just appeared out of the sky. Just as quickly he was finished with the subject. “I need to go in to Cousin Oreline. See to it that someone takes care of my horse.”

  He swung himself easily off his mare, splattering mud on Suzette’s dress as his boots landed in a small puddle. He threw the reins in Suzette’s direction without looking back and disappeared into the house.

  Suzette had wanted to do more than plant a seed with Narcisse Fredieu, but a seed planted was better than nothing.

  * * *

  Suzette asked Oreline for permission to go to mass the next morning to say prayers for Madame Françoise, and Oreline wrote the pass. Suzette set out on foot before daybreak to get to St. Augustine by six o’clock. Doralise Derbanne would be there, as she always was on Wednesday mornings. Suzette listened to the mass from outside on the gallery. St. Augustine had risen in status since its struggling early years and no longer allowed slaves inside the sanctuary for any reason.

  Doralise was one of the first out of the church. She looked calm and steady, older than Suzette remembered, with fine lines around her eyes, and the corset couldn’t hide the thickness around her middle. But she was still the portrait of refinement to Suzette, and the few gray strands in her hair only made her more stately. Doralise might be colored, a woman, and her marraine, but she was still one of the Ones with Last Names. Suzette had to be careful.

  “Suzette?” Doralise said, surprised.

  “Madame, I have come to see you,” Suzette said. “Rosedew is finished, and they are going to sell all of us away.”

  Doralise reached out and touched Suzette on the arm, nothing more than a moment’s contact. Suzette reminded herself that this was the woman now living with the father of her children.

  The words poured out too hot and fast and random. “You’re a mother. You understand. Have mercy on us. What if your daughter, Elisida, was in danger of being sold away from you and there was nothing you could do? You have a part in this family. They’re planning to sell Gerasíme and Elisabeth and Palmire and Apphia and Solataire all to different places, and our children somewhere else altogether.”

  Suzette took a deep breath. This was too important to let get away from her. The thought of the fleeting touch steadied her. Doralise was listening, even sympathetic. She began again.

  “Mam’zelle Oreline has promised to buy Philomene and me together. But that leaves Gerant. Mam’zelle Oreline can’t get M’sieu Ferrier to buy in an eleven-year-old boy. It’s no use, his mind is set against it. If you or M’sieu Eugene could buy Gerant, he’ll be treated right. M’sieu Eugene told me he would free them both, but now he doesn’t say anything at all except that the times aren’t the same as they were before. Please. Please. Think about what could happen to my boy. Help M’sieu Daurat do what is right. I talked to him already, but he didn’t say what he’s going to do. Gerant could get sold away from Cane River.”

  Suzette began to sob. “I don’t have anything but my family, and now even my children could be taken away from me. Madame Doralise, if you help me now, I’ll always do anything I can for you. Always.”

  Doralise shook her head slowly.

  “I do not have as much power as you think, Suzette.” She reached out to her again, and Suzette felt the smoothness of the soft gloves wrapped around one of her callused hands. “But I will try to find a way to help. Now I must go.”

  With each step of the long walk back to Rosedew from St. Augustine, Suzette felt the tiredness spread beneath her skin and lodge itself deeper than muscle or bone. She had done what she could. Nothing was certain. Nothing was settled.

  8

  T he girl came to Elisabeth one afternoon in the cookhouse. The wind had been howling for the better part of the day, an unearthly screeching sound that made Elisabeth restless.

  “Mémère Elisabeth, I cannot talk to Maman,” her granddaughter began without preamble. “She is . . .” Philomene paused and looked away. “She is nervous again.”

  “Then talk to me,” Elisabeth said.

  “I’ve had two glimpsings.” Philomene made the announcement as if this were an everyday occurrence.

  Elisabeth looked closely at Philomene, staring deep into the intensity of her buttermilk-colored face. She swiftly crossed to the door, leaned out, and spat in the dirt outdoors.

  “Tell me about both of them, quick.”

  Philomene sat in one of the cane-bottom chairs, her feet swinging free, not reaching the floor. “On wash day, Maman was telling me the story of her white dress and St. Augustine. I heard her voice, I saw the steam from the washtub, but all of a sudden there was a different picture in my head. It was like floating, being in two places at once. I was the one in the white dress, with flowers in my hair, and Clement and I were in front of a priest, grown. Heavy drops ran down the side of Clement’s face, as if he just came in from working bareheaded in the sun. I thought maybe we were taking first communion, the way that Maman did, but then this morning, the second picture came.”

  “Go on,” Elisabeth urged.

  “Clement and I are sitting inside a cabin, and each of us is holding a baby. Both the babies are the same size, and they are ours. I know this.”

  Elisabeth allowed herself to grin. “That gives you meaning, bringing a child into life. It looks like you’re glimpsing yourself some good.”

  “Both of the pictures feel happy, Mémère,” Philomene went on, “but in the first glimpsing, Clement’s hands are too big, thick and rough and bright white, and he has a long split up his back.”

  “Were the pictures clear or dim?” Elisabeth asked.

  “They came to me for a long time, Mémère Elisabeth, long enough for me to study. Clement has those big white hands, and he looks scared. And I don’t know why he is in two pieces up the back. What could it mean? Should I tell Clement?”

  “I don’t know what each part means, Philomene, but at the heart, it seems you and Clement are going to have some life together. The rest will come to you in time, if it’s meant. Store away what you don’t understand for now. As for Clement, what do you think will happen if you tell him?”

  “He might turn scared of me, the way some people are, or nervous, the way Maman gets.”

  “Have you told him about the other things you’ve seen?”

  “Always. He listens, and asks me questions, like you. He hasn’t been scared yet. But this time, he is in the glimpsing. That never happened before.” Philomene pulled at her hair, coiling the tip of one braid around her finger. “You know Maman doesn’t like me to talk too much about Clement.”

  “Philomene, sometimes Suzette gets beside herself over color. His brown doesn’t make him bad, and your yellow doesn’t make you good. Your mama follows her road, your path may be different. You go on and tell Clement everything you can, for as long as you can. See what he’s made of. There are things so hard that they refuse telling. Not this.”

  “What hard things, Mémère?”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “You glimpse the best that can happen to a woman, and it takes me back to the worst.”

  “The worst?” Philomene asked.

/>   Elisabeth looked beyond her granddaughter’s young face into the depths of her old-soul eyes. She judged Philomene strong enough. “Other people can tell you that you’re nothing, that you have nothing, not even your own flesh and blood.”

  “Like Aunt Palmire’s children?”

  “Yes.” The shrill wind dared Elisabeth forward. “Before I came to Louisiana, I lived on a big plantation in Virginia, working in the big house there, too. I wasn’t long past girlhood when the young Marse got to pestering me. He was older, and whenever his mother wasn’t around he came after me. I didn’t want him fooling with me, but there was no need fighting. There’s no winning against what white men take into their heads to do on their own place.

  “So I became his thing when he wanted. And it wasn’t so long before I had a boy-child.

  “I named him John and just kept on. The boy had light eyes from the beginning, even when he was struggling just to keep them open. They made me laugh at this little person I had made. He was mine. Wasn’t nobody else going to claim a blood tie.

  “The Mistress turned against me then and whipped me for dropping the bread, for looking at her wrong, for anything that came into her head, but I still had my John. I loved that little baby, and at first I kept him with me whenever I could. It didn’t take long to figure out that whenever she saw me with him it put her in the mind to reach out and hurt me, or worse, John. It made the Mistress a little crazy to see that pale baby peeking out of those blankets, or in my arms.

  “I started to leave him down in the quarter then, looked after along with the rest of the babies by whoever could tend him. I got down there when I could, especially to nurse him. I got whipped for that, too, when I wasn’t where they wanted me to be.

  “The young Marse kept away from me for a while, and his mother got him married, but he still looked to me when he was feeling a certain way. I nursed John as often and for as long as I could. They said in the quarter that nursing kept you from the next baby. It worked. I didn’t come up caught again until after John finished nursing. He was almost two. I had another boy, and this time the Mistress and the new wife got together and said they were going to remove temptation. They sold me away from both of my boys. I didn’t have much time to get to know the second one. I named him Jacob. That name was in the Bible, too.