Part 6 (1/2)
Only Francoise Derbanne was left in the big house on Rosedew, Francoise and her visitors and her servants.
7.
I n the ten years following the death of Louis Derbanne, everyone on Rosedew had learned to adjust to the hard luck that kept to the heels of the plantation like a mean-spirited dog. n the ten years following the death of Louis Derbanne, everyone on Rosedew had learned to adjust to the hard luck that kept to the heels of the plantation like a mean-spirited dog.
Suzette endured, always standing, waiting to serve, without complaint. She had spent her entire life taking care of people who could not take care of themselves. She pretended to care about the knot of infirmities that tightened around Francoise. She pretended to care that Eugene Daurat brought little candies and trinkets from his store for Gerant and Philomene. As the children grew older, Eugene even gave Gerant a real carpenter's awl, the handle nicked and worn and the point dulled but still serviceable, and he often brought bits of calico for Philomene to patch a skirt or sew up a new josie. Suzette pretended to care each week when Oreline confided during her visits how homesick she was for Rosedew and how worried she was about Francoise's physical decline. Since the birth of her children and the selling of her niece and nephews, Suzette had become unflinchingly certain about what mattered.
All she really cared about now was her own family.
Outside Francoise Derbanne's bedroom, Suzette drew Gerant and Philomene close to her. She stooped low and whispered so only they could hear. ”Philomene, you stay where Madame can see you in case she wakes. If she starts to fret, send Gerant to come find me.”
”You know you can count on me, Maman, Maman,” Philomene said in the matter-of-fact way she had. ”I can handle Madame by myself, get her to calm down and do whatever I want.”
Suzette stared at her daughter's serious face, then pinched her hard on the arm. ”That is dangerous talk, and you must never say anything like it again.”
Philomene looked surprised but not sorry. ”Yes, Maman, Maman,” she said at last.
Suzette hurriedly left the big house by the back door.
Despite the gauzy shadows of haze across the evening sky, the full moon lit the way for Suzette's nightly journey to the quarter. As she began her walk, she reached into her ap.r.o.n pocket. Her fingers found the items she carried with her everywhere, the rosary Francoise Derbanne had given her over a decade before and the stiff sc.r.a.p of tanned cowhide, a present from a young boy to a young girl who still had dreams.
Only a few steps down the path, she suddenly turned and began to run back to the house, almost stumbling on a loose stone in the dark.
”Gerant, Philomene,” Suzette whispered urgently into the stillness of the back room, opening her arms wide. They came to her, and she clutched her children, pressing them to her as tightly as she could. The boy smell of Gerant mixed with the odor of wax from his lighting of the candles, and the sharp scent of lye soap from the supper dishes had found its way into Philomene's braided hair.
”My babies,” she said. Then, loosening her grip, she stepped back to put distance between herself and them. To Philomene she said, ”Why can't you understand the danger?”
”I will send for you if Madame stirs,” Philomene said. ”Please do not worry, Maman Maman.”
Suzette felt their eyes looking after her as she went out again into the night. Sometimes she couldn't get enough of Gerant and Philomene. Other times she couldn't attach herself to them at all, as if they were already gone. Her children were house raised, she thought. Maybe she could keep them safer than Palmire's children.
Suzette was still small, and she was still pretty. It was easy to trace in her facial features and body proportions the African ancestors on her mother's side and the stray drops of Caddo Indian from her father. For a time, the spicy snap of her name and the way she had been brought up had tricked her into believing that she was also partly colored Creole, immune. At twenty-five, she saw more clearly now. The open-faced sweetness of her youth had been replaced by a nagging vagueness that came and went of its own accord, and although she still claimed a child's distinction of soft brown eyes too big for her face, the s.h.i.+mmering of possibilities was no longer reflected there.
The few chickens stirring around the henhouse scattered as she walked into their domain, and she clucked at them softly. They were used to her. The straw p.r.i.c.ked at her fingers as she felt around in the setting beds. She took only two eggs, putting them in her ap.r.o.n pocket. After pulling the door shut behind her and fastening the latch, she kept on the path to the cookhouse. Three b.u.t.termilk biscuits were hidden in the pantry where she had left them this morning, wrapped in a white rag. She put those in her other pocket, along with a jar she had filled with mola.s.ses and a small kitchen knife.
Instead of the footpath that would take her past the overseer's house, Suzette cut through a small patch of pines to approach the quarter from behind.
She went to see her father first, careful to step around the rotted plank on the porch. The place held the tight, close odor of mold and waste. The cabin had not been whitewashed for three planting seasons, and the floors had not been limed for well over a year.
”How is he?” Suzette whispered to Elisabeth as she came through the door.
A small fire burned in the fireplace and threw patterns of light and dark around the room, highlighting the spare furnis.h.i.+ngs. There were two pallets at opposite corners and three seats at a small table set with wooden plates and several drinking gourds. Only Gerasime, Elisabeth, and Solataire lived in the cabin now. Gerasime breathed loudly, his head protruding from a ragged gray blanket on the pallet, his hair long and wild, tangled and sweat soaked on the log pillow. Elisabeth sat by his side on a pine stump.
”Better,” Elisabeth said. ”I salved the cuts, and he's able to sleep now. This overseer's meaner than the last. Five stripes this time.” She lightly wiped Gerasime's face with a damp rag. ”If he doesn't get back out to the field tomorrow, there'll be more lashes on top of these. I'll make sure he doesn't miss the morning bell.”
”You need to get some sleep, too,” Suzette whispered as she unwrapped the rag from her pocket. ”I brought an egg and biscuits. Where is Solataire?”
”Trying to hunt up some meat.”
”I'll be going to sit with Palmire a little, then.”
”Move around careful,” Elisabeth warned. ”Even Madame may not be able to help if the overseer finds eggs in your ap.r.o.n.”
”I'll say it's for the house.”
Suzette continued down the line of cabins in the quarter. Several men and women holding gourds waited their turn around the small hand mill to grind their corn ration for tomorrow's dinner in the field. They stopped talking as she neared.
”Good evening,” Suzette said, slowing a little.
”How is Madame?” one of them asked.
”Still poorly,” Suzette answered. ”Mam'zelle Oreline comes back to Rosedew tomorrow to stay until Madame is better. With her son.”
The group nodded tiredly, and Suzette kept moving along the line of cabins, almost to the end.
Young Clement and his mother, Eliza, ate their evening meal outdoors on the elevated porch of the cabin next to Palmire's. Suzette waved. Eliza was Suzette's age, and Philomene and Clement were inseparable whenever she allowed her children to come down to the quarter.
”Has Madame picked up any?” Eliza called out.
”Still about the same,” Suzette said in pa.s.sing, and tried to continue on, but Eliza motioned her in.
”What's to come of us when Madame dies?” the young woman asked with urgency, and although Clement sat quiet, he listened hard, as if Suzette's words could make the future.
No matter how many times someone asked Suzette the question, the pain was raw and caught her fresh. She surprised herself with her outward calm, walking, talking, performing her ch.o.r.es, all the while on the edge of a consuming terror.
”I don't know, Eliza. The talk is they will sell the place.”
”Can you say something about me and the boy going together?” Eliza implored.
”There's nothing I can do,” Suzette said, turning away. ”I have to see to Palmire.”
No light came from her sister's cabin, no smoke from the chimney. A sadness engulfed the small dwelling, an emptiness that flowed from the inside out. The door was open, and Palmire sat motionless on her pallet. Suzette almost expected to see Paul's chubby legs pumping as he ran to greet her, Solais behind his older brother, and Melantine in the corner, blowing bubbles to amuse herself. It had been seven years since the children had been sold from Rosedew, and Suzette still thought of them as babies. They were as grown as her own two, and although she knew they were still on Cane River, they belonged now to some other place.
Suzette walked over and touched Palmire's shoulder. Palmire looked up, lines etched deep in her forehead and around her eyes.
”You must eat, sister,” Suzette motioned, and unwrapped the last of the biscuits and the other egg.
She lit a fire in the fireplace and waited for the flames to take hold, gathering up Palmire's small skillet and wooden plate. Suzette took the covering off Palmire's weekly ration of bacon in the corner, cut off a small piece with the kitchen knife she brought, and put it in the skillet to fry. When there was enough grease in the pan, she cracked the egg and fried it up, too, and scooped it all out onto the wooden plate alongside the biscuits and mola.s.ses.
She sat stiffly in Palmire's pine chair, watching her sister listlessly swallow the food. When Palmire finished, Suzette wiped the skillet and dishes as clean as she could, and the two of them sat in the childless cabin wrapped in silence.
Suzette finally got up. She needed to get back to the big house to make sure Francoise had not called for her. She touched the door and pointed out toward the moon.