Wild, Beautiful, and Free(10)

In the kitchen Dorinda rummaged through her basket of scrap cloths and found a rough and faded piece of blue muslin. She wrapped up the curls of my hair so they were hidden. Then she pulled me close to her.

“Somethin’s gonna happen. It’ll be in the dark of night or the early morning, before anyone’s awake enough to see. You gotta be ready, Jeannette.”

She went to the larder and wrapped biscuits and corn cakes in a cloth. She put two apples in another.

“Keep this food in your pockets. If something happens tonight, you’ll have it on you. If you sleep here, go to bed in this dress and eat the food in the morning. If you’re here in the morning, God willing, I’ll bring you a proper sack to keep with you, take with you. You understand?”

I nodded, but one thing I didn’t understand—where would I be going? I had no other family, had lived nowhere else but Catalpa Plantation.

Like she had read my mind, Dorinda said, “I don’t know, chile, I don’t know. But God will go with you.” Her eyes widened with a spark of a thought. She opened the door outside and motioned for me to follow her out into the backyard. We went over to the kitchen garden, a few steps away. In one corner she kept a small pile of stones that she collected on her walks down to the creek. She used them to mark new plantings. Dorinda grasped one, and we took it inside to look at it by the light of the fire. It was small enough to go unnoticed; big enough to not be lost. It was dark gray in color with reddish-brown and white streaks. She shoved it into the pocket of my dress.

“Take this rock from your papa’s land. You hold on to it, never lose it. That rock comes from clear water, so your mind will be clear. Keep the land on your heart and on your mind. Maybe one day it’ll help you find your way back. Your papa’s always with you. Don’t forget that, Jeannette. I’ll be praying for you. Now go. She’s waiting for you.”

I hurried out, but when I came to the front hall, I paused. To the right was Papa’s office. To the left was the parlor. I heard Madame moving about in the office, and I figured she wouldn’t miss me for a few more minutes.

Papa’s body lay in a box polished so well that its sides gleamed in the candlelight. He didn’t look like he was sleeping, as I’d heard people say of the dead. He looked shrunken, more like a shell, like something left behind. His face held no expression other than that of a man who had dropped everything within himself and moved on. To see him that way confirmed what I had already felt in my heart. Papa wasn’t there. He had flown from his room that night, and I had been with him when he had done so. Our goodbye had happened then. But this body had held his spirit, and I was glad to see it well cared for and to know it would go in the ground of Catalpa. It was where he belonged.

I heard a low and bitter laugh behind me.

“Every promise he ever made to me was a lie.”

Madame stood at the parlor entrance. She wore a black silk gown and clutched a fine lace handkerchief, though I doubted she had cried as Calista or I had. Her eyes were not red. She moved past me and spoke close to Papa’s ear.

“Wasn’t it, Jean? You made damn sure of that.”

I thought she would spit in his face, and I wondered what I would do then, because I couldn’t let her disrespect Papa’s body. Instead she turned to me, and I saw what Calista had meant. I was used to Madame being a crouching thing, pinching me, hitting me, pouring words of bitterness all over me. It was like the weight of the world bore her down. Now she held herself up, her shoulders back, her head level.

“When Jean Bébinn courted me, he said I would be the jewel of his life. He took me from my father’s New Orleans mansion and said he would bring me to a place where I could shine and make his world bright. That place was Catalpa Valley Plantation.”

She touched the gilded frame of a painting on the wall and then ran her fingers over the fabric framing the windows. “We were happy early on, I think. I loved how the air smelled of flowers and green things growing. The city stank to high heaven even on the best of days. Soon I was with child. I gave birth to a boy. And Jean? A man couldn’t have been more thrilled. But my baby died of the fever before he was a year old. I had Calista, but I don’t think Jean got over losing that boy.”

She snatched me by the arm and pulled me into Papa’s office. Again, I noticed a difference. She was resolute in her actions, not frantic like she’d been when she’d pushed me down the stairs. “Next thing I knew, he was whistling again. Laughing again. And I thought things were gonna get better. But he wasn’t laughing or smiling because of me. He’d gotten himself enchanted by your nigger mama. Like she’d cast a spell on him.

“I had to put up with her in my house and then you! Now he’s up and died, and what do I have to show for it?” She grabbed some papers from Papa’s desk and shook them in my face.

“Nothing! He leaves everything to Calista! And leaves land to you! He thinks he’s had the last laugh. Well, I’m the one left standing. I don’t have to live on his lies. I can make my world the way it’s supposed to be, and that starts tonight.”

I smiled. “The land belongs to us. Papa always said so.”

“We’ll see about that. You may be fair enough, but at the end of the day you’re just a little nigger girl. You have to go where you can remember that.”

I heard a horse outside and the sounds that said the horse was pulling a carriage or a wagon. Madame went to the door and opened it herself, not waiting for Dorinda or one of the men.