At that time there were many free people of color in New Orleans, for under the Spanish government it was not difficult to obtain or buy freedom and the Americans had not as yet imposed their laws on us. I spent most of my time in the city looking after the house and Maurice, who had to study, while the master was out at the plantation. On Sundays I never missed the bambousses in the place Congo, drums and dancing, only a few blocks from where we lived. These bambousses were like the kalendas in Saint-Domingue, but without the services of the loas because at that time everyone in Louisiana was Catholic. Now many are Baptist, because there is singing and dancing in their churches, so it is joyful to worship Jesus. Voodoo, brought from Saint-Domingue by the slaves, was just getting started, and it mixed so much with Christian beliefs that now it's difficult for me to recognize it. In the place Congo we danced from midday to night, and the whites came to be scandalized, and to give them bad thoughts our behinds whirled like windmills, and to make them envious we rubbed against each other like lovers.
In the morning, after buying the water and firewood that was distributed from house to house in a cart, I would go out shopping. The Marche Francais had been in existence for a couple of years, but now it covered several blocks and, after the dike, was the preferred place for social life. It still is. They sell everything there from food to jewels, and there you find the stalls of seers, magicians, and docteurs feuilles. There is no shortage of charlatans who "cure" with red-dye water and a tonic of sarsaparilla for sterility, birth pain, rheumatic fever, bloody vomit, heart fatigue, broken bones, and almost every other misfortune of the human body. I have no faith in that tonic. If it were that miraculous, Tante Rose would have used it, but she was never interested in the sarsaparilla vine, even though it grew around Saint-Lazare.
In the market I made friends with other slaves and so learned the customs of Louisiana. As it was in Saint-Domingue, many free persons of color are educated, living from their work and professions, and some are owners of plantations. They say they tend to be more cruel with their slaves than the whites, but I haven't seen that. This is what they told me. In the market you see women of color and whites with their maids carrying baskets. They themselves carry nothing in their hands except gloves and a little bead embroidered reticule for their money. By law, the mulattas dress modestly so as not to annoy the whites. They keep their silks and jewels for nighttime. The men wear ties, wool breeches, high boots, kidskin gloves, and rabbit hair hats. According to Don Sancho, the quadroons of New Orleans are the most beautiful women in the world. "You could be like them, Tete. Look how they walk, light on their feet, swishing their hips, head proud, buttocks held high, bosom defiant. They move like fine fillies. No white woman can walk like that," he told me.
I will never be like those women, but Rosette may be. What would become of my daughter? The master asked me the same thing when I mentioned my freedom again. "Do you want your daughter to live in misery? A slave cannot be emancipated before she is thirty. You have six years to go, so don't bother me with this again!" Six years! I didn't know that law. It was an eternity for me, but it would give Rosette time to grow up protected by her father.
Festivities
In 1795 the Valmorain plantation was inaugurated with a country festival that lasted three days, pure extravagance, as Sancho wanted and as was the practice in Louisiana. The house, Greek in inspiration, was rectangular with two floors; it was surrounded by columns, with a gallery below and a roofed balcony overhead that went around the four sides, with bright rooms and mahogany floors. It was painted with pale colors as the French Creoles and Catholics chose to do, unlike the houses of the American Protestants, which were always white. According to Sancho, it looked like a sugar copy of the Acropolis, but the general opinion cataloged it as one of the most beautiful mansions along the Mississippi River. It still lacked adornment, but it wasn't bare because it was filled with flowers and so many lights that the three nights of celebration were as bright as day. Everyone in the family came, including the tutor, Gaspard Severin, wearing a new jacket, a gift from Sancho, and a less pathetic air because in the country he ate and took the sun. In the summer months, when he was taken to the country so Maurice could continue his classes, he could send his entire salary to his siblings in Saint-Domingue. Valmorain rented two barges with bright canopies and twelve oarsmen to transport his guests, who arrived with trunks and personal slaves, even their hairdressers. He hired orchestras of free mulattoes, who took turns so there would always be music, and had obtained enough porcelain plates and silver settings for a regiment. There were walks, horseback riding, hunts, salon games, dances, and always the soul of the gaiety was the indefatigable Sancho, much more hospitable than Valmorain, comfortable either on binges with troublemakers in Le Marais or at parties demanding the best etiquette. The women spent the morning resting; they went outdoors after siesta wearing heavy veils and gloves, and at night attired themselves in their finest gowns. In the gentle lamplight they all seemed natural beauties, with dark eyes, shiny hair, and mother-of-pearl skin, none of the brightly painted faces and false beauty spots used in France, but in the intimacy of the boudoir they darkened their eyebrows with charcoal, rubbed red rose petals on their cheeks, traced their lips with carmine, and burnished their gray hair--if they had any--with coffee grounds, and half the curls they pinned atop their heads had belonged to a different head. They wore pastel colors and light fabric; not even recent widows dressed in black, a lugubrious color neither becoming or consoling.
At the three balls the women competed in elegance, some followed by little slaves carrying their trains. Maurice and Rosette, eight and five, performed a demonstration of the waltz, the polka, and the cotillion, which justified the dance teacher's thumps with the rod and provoked exclamations of delight among the crowd. Tete heard the comment that the girl must be Spanish, the daughter of the brother-in-law, what is his name? Sancho or something like that. Rosette, dressed in white silk and black slippers, with a pink ribbon in her long hair, danced with aplomb while Maurice perspired with embarrassment in his gala outfit, counting his steps: two hops to the left, one to the right, bow and half turn, back, forward, and deep bow. Repeat. She led him, ready to disguise with a pirouette of her own inspiration her companion's bumbles. "When I grow up, I will go to balls every night, Maurice. If you want to marry me, you had better learn," she warned him in their practices.
Valmorain had acquired a majordomo for the plantation, and Tete performed the same function, impeccably, in New Orleans, thanks to her lessons in Le Cap from the handsome Zacharie. Both respected the limits of their mutual authority, and during the party had collaborated so that service would run as smooth as oil. They chose three slaves just to carry water and remove chamber pots, and a boy to clean up the foul trail left by two little dogs belonging to Mademoiselle Hortense Guizot that had fallen ill. Valmorain hired two cooks, free mulattoes, and assigned several helpers to Celestine, the house cook. Even among all of them they were barely able to prepare all the fish and shrimp, domesticated and wild birds, Creole dishes, and desserts. A calf was slaughtered, and Owen Murphy directed the outdoor roasting. Valmorain showed his guests the sugar factory, the rum distillery, and the stables, but what he exhibited with most pride were the slave quarters. Murphy had given the slaves three free days, clothing, and sweets, and afterward had them sing in honor of the Virgin Mary. Several women were moved to tears by the blacks' religious fervor. All the guests congratulated Valmorain, although more than one commented behind his back that he would be ruined by such idealism.
At first Tete did not distinguish Hortense Guizot from the other ladies, except by the picky little diarrhea plagued dogs; her instinct failed to warn her of the role that woman would play in her life. Hortense had reached twenty-nine and still was not married, not because she was ugly or poor but because the sweetheart she'd had when she was twenty-four had fallen from his horse while prancing and pirouetting to impress her, and broken his neck. It had been a rare courtshi
p of love, not of convenience, as was usual among Creoles of high breeding. Denise, her personal slave, told Tete that Hortense was the first to come running and find him dead. "She had no chance to tell him good-bye," she added. At the end of the official mourning, Hortense's father began to look for another suitor. The young woman's name had gone from mouth to mouth because of her fiance's premature death, but she had an irreproachable past. She was tall, blond, rosy cheeked, and robust, like so many Louisiana women who ate with gusto and had little exercise. Her bodice lifted her breasts like melons, to the pleasure of masculine glances. Hortense Guizot spent those three days changing clothing every two or three hours, happy that the memory of her fiance had not followed her to the celebration. She took over the piano, singing with a soprano voice, and danced with brio till dawn, exhausting all her partners except Sancho. The woman capable of outdoing him had not been born, he said, but he admitted that Hortense was a formidable contender.
On the third day, when the barges had left with their cargo of weary visitors, musicians, servants, and lap dogs and the slaves were cleaning up the scattered trash, an agitated Owen Murphy brought the news that a band of Maroons were coming upriver, killing whites and inciting the Negroes to rebel. It was known that American Indians were sheltering runaway slaves, and others were surviving in the swamps, transformed into beings of mud, water, and green water growth, immune to mosquitoes and serpents' poisons, invisible to the eye of their pursuers, armed with rusted knives and machetes and sharpened rocks, wild with hunger and freedom. First it was heard that there were about thirty attackers, but within a few hours that number had risen to a hundred and fifty.
"Will they come here, Murphy? Do you think our blacks will join them?" Valmorain asked.
"I don't know, monsieur. They're nearby, and they can overrun us. As for our people, no one can predict how they will react."
"And why can't that be predicted? They receive every kind of consideration here--they would not be better off anywhere. Go talk with them!" exclaimed Valmorain, pacing around the drawing room, extremely perturbed.
"These things are not arranged by talking, monsieur," Murphy explained.
"This nightmare is following me! It's useless to treat the blacks well! They are all incorrigible."
"Be calm, brother-in-law," Sancho interrupted. "Nothing has happened yet. We are in Louisiana, not Saint-Domingue, where there were a half million up in arms Negroes and a handful of merciless whites."
"I must save Maurice. Get a boat ready, Murphy," Valmorain ordered. "I am going to the city immediately."
"No, not that!" yelled Sancho. "No one moves from here. We are not going to scurry away like rats. Besides, the river isn't safe; the rebelling blacks have boats. Monsieur Murphy, we are going to protect the property. Bring all the weapons you can lay hands on."
They lined up the weapons on the dining table, and Murphy's two older sons, thirteen and eleven, loaded them and then distributed them among the four whites, including Gaspard Severin, who had never pressed a trigger and could not aim with his trembling hands. Murphy looked to the slaves, locking the men in the stables and the children in the master's house; the women would not move from the cabins without their children. The majordomo and Tete took charge of the domestics, disoriented by the news. All the Louisiana slaves had heard the whites talk about the danger of an uprising, but they thought that happened only in exotic places, and could not imagine it. Tete charged two women with looking after the children, then helped the majordomo bolt the doors and windows. Celestine reacted better than expected, given her character. She had worked frenetically during the festival, quarrelsome and despotic, competing with the cooks from outside: "Lazy and impudent," she muttered, "being paid for what I am doing for free." She was soaking her feet when Tete came to tell her what was happening. "No one will be hungry," she announced, and with her helpers went into action to feed everyone.
They waited that entire day, Valmorain, Sancho, and the terrified Gaspard Severin with pistols in hand, while Murphy mounted guard in front of the stables and his sons watched the river to raise the alarm should it be necessary. Leanne Murphy calmed the women with the promise that their children were safe in the house, where they had been given cups of chocolate. At ten o'clock that night, when they were so fatigued that no one could keep on their feet, Brandan, the eldest of the Murphy boys, came on horseback with a torch in one hand and a pistol at his waist to announce that a patrol was approaching. Ten minutes later the men dismounted in front of the house. Valmorain, who by that time had relived the horrors of Saint-Lazare and Le Cap, received them with such a show of relief that Sancho was embarrassed for him. He listened to the report from the patrol and ordered bottles of his best liquor uncorked to celebrate. The crisis had passed: nineteen black rebels had been arrested, eleven were dead, and the rest would be hanged at dawn. All the others had dispersed and were probably headed to their refuges in the swamps. One of the militiamen, a redhead about eighteen years old, excited by the night of adventure and the alcohol, assured Gaspard Severin that from living so long in mud the men they hanged had feet like frogs, gills like fish, and a caiman's teeth. Several planters in the area had joined the patrols with enthusiasm for the hunt, a sport they rarely had opportunity to practice on a big scale and swearing to crush the insurgent Negroes to the last man. The losses on the white side were minimal: a murdered overseer, a planter, three wounded patrolmen, and a horse with a broken leg. The uprising was suffocated quickly because a domestic slave had given the alarm. Tomorrow, when the rebels are hanging from their nooses, that man will be free, thought Tete.
The Spanish Hidalgo
Sancho Garcia del Solar came and went between the plantation and the city; he spent more time on a boat or on horseback than in either of the two destinations. Tete never knew when he was going to appear, his horse winded, in the house in the city, day or night; he was always smiling, noisy, gluttonous. One early Monday he fought a duel with another Spaniard, a government official, in the Saint Antoine gardens, the usual place for gentlemen to be killed or at least wounded, the only way to avenge honor. It was a favorite pastime, and the gardens, with their leafy trees, offered the needed privacy. In the house no one knew anything about it until time for breakfast, when Sancho arrived wearing a bloody shirt and asking for coffee and cognac. Laughing heartily, he announced to Tete that he had only a scratch on his ribs, whereas his rival was left with a slash across his face. "Why were you dueling?" she asked as she cleaned the path of the sword thrust, so near the heart that had it entered a little deeper she would be dressing him for the cemetery. "Because he looked at me the wrong way," was his explanation. He was happy he didn't have a dead man on his back. Later Tete found out that the duel had been over Adi Soupir, a quadroon with disturbing curves whom both men claimed.
Sancho would wake the children in the middle of the night to teach them card tricks, and if Tete objected he lifted her off her feet, gave her a couple of whirls, and proceeded to explain that no one can survive in this world without a trick or two, and it was best to learn as soon as possible. At six in the morning it would suddenly occur to him that he wanted roast pig, and she had to fly to the market looking for one, or he would announce that he was going to the tailor, disappear for two days, and come home stupefied with whiskey, accompanied by several comrades to whom he had offered hospitality. He dressed with great care, although soberly, scrutinizing each detail of his appearance in the mirror. He trained the slave who ran errands, a fourteen-year-old boy, to wax his mustache and shave his cheeks with the Spanish gold-handled razor that had been in the Garcia del Solar family for three generations. "Are you going to marry me when I grow up, Uncle Sancho?" Rosette would ask. "Tomorrow if you wish, precious," he would answer, and plant a couple of big smacks on her cheek. Tete he treated like a relative fallen on bad times, with a mixture of familiarity and respect, spiced with jokes. Sometimes, when he suspected she had reached the limit of her patience, he brought her a gift and gave it t
o her with a compliment and a kiss on the hand, which she accepted with embarrassment. "Hurry and grow up, Rosette, before I marry your mother," he would tease.