If Elisabeth was the guiding mind in the kitchen, Suzette provided the hands. Philomene had finally gotten her mother to move in with her after the death of Nicolas Mulon in the late spring flood of 1880.
Suzette was Madame Mulon, and Philomene hoped she never saw herself through the eyes of some along Cane River who talked of her as if she had been a second-class keeper for someone else’s children, now grown and on their own. Philomene had watched her mother make the long leap from no last name at all to Jackson and then Mulon. Suzette embraced Jackson, as if it could erase the indignities of the past and make her whole. After she and Nicolas married, she had been just as fervent about becoming Suzette Mulon.
Nicolas’s people still looked down on Suzette. The old, deep ruts of class temporarily dislocated by emancipation reasserted themselves, but Nicolas had been clear in his choice. A more stable time would have rejected the match outright as crossing too many lines of color and class, but the years after the war were no such time, and the circumstances called for compromise. Philomene was grateful at how peaceful her mother seemed to be now, how sure she had been of Nicolas.
They gathered around the Sunday dinner table. Elisabeth, an old woman stooped and marked with life, had an active face, a participating face that made itself felt. She lived with Philomene in the main house, and they all took care of her in tribute to the way she had taken care of each of them, the oldest of the old generation. Next to her at the table were Doralise and Yellow John, beyond the age of parenthood but content in a quiet and comfortable marriage. Gerant and his wife, Melantine, lived in one of the outer houses, had five children already, and never came empty-handed, bringing a jar of preserves or a three-layer jelly cake as their offering. And Philomene’s own children, ranging in age from twenty to not quite three: Emily with her own daughter, Angelite, and Eugene, Nick, Henry, and Joseph. And Bet.
Bet was a miracle, a piece of Clement. Philomene could see him in Bet’s face, in the slope of her forehead, the way it swept out and up. Fresh faced at twenty-two, she was already married to a serious boy named Isaac Purnell. Bet was larger, darker, more accepting, and without Emily’s fire or charm, but she also had a quiet gentleness that sought out only the best in everyone and put them at ease. Philomene regretted that Emily and Bet didn’t get along better than they did, but she could recognize Emily’s resentment at having to give up her cherished spot as the only daughter, her bewilderment at Bet’s late-coming challenge. Philomene was just beginning to know the shy young woman who was her other daughter. Bet and Isaac lived with her in the main house.
Philomene was glad to sit. She was almost to term carrying her tenth child, including the one buried under the willow on Ferrier’s farm and two buried at Marco cemetery. It wasn’t difficult to see herself through her people’s eyes, the huge swelling of her belly straining against the material of her dress, again, the tired circles under her eyes, the downward pull that time demanded of most of her body. Her face was even beginning to take on a roundness like Suzette’s, a wild departure from the haughty look of the sharp-faced young woman she had been.
It felt like a time of triumph. Noisy chatter and full-throated laughter rang out at the big table. At the children’s table there was so much youthful energy between her children and their cousins that she had to fix her eye on them to make sure they behaved.
Joseph Billes, Emily’s Frenchman, had taken it upon himself to entertain, telling noisy stories at the dinner table. This was the serious occasion of his first Sunday dinner at Philomene’s, and he was trying hard to be accepted, as if he fully understood the significance of the invitation. The women of the house debated for some time how best to handle the Frenchman who always went away and always came back to Emily and baby Angelite when he returned. Joseph and Emily were like magnets, a union not of convenience or opportunity, but of the most central necessity, a union that threatened such permanence that the household had to make special arrangements to accommodate it.
The familiarity of the scene teased at Philomene’s mind as they passed the food around the table, filling up their plates. They were all here together: Elisabeth, Suzette, Doralise, Gerant, Emily, Bet.
Philomene leaned forward to take the large blue-banded bowl of creamed corn from Bet’s hands when her fingers seized up with the sudden recognition. The bowl dropped, breaking into several large, jagged pieces, and too many smaller shards to count, the yellow juice leaking into the floorboards. As both Bet and Emily jumped to their feet to clean up the mess, Philomene laughed aloud.
Everyone around the table stared at her in surprise, but there was too much joy in the moment for her to try to contain her gladness. The final glimpsing had come to pass. The one that had brought hope to Elisabeth, Suzette, and herself when it seemed the world had taken a perverse personal interest in making sure that their family would be torn apart.
They were all together again, and there were seeds of new beginnings.
P ART T HREE
Emily
31
I f Emily hadn’t been so nervous about how Joseph would react to this thinly disguised Sunday appraisal, it would have been almost entertaining to watch her women swarm him without ever leaving their seats around the dining room table. They probed him with veiled eyes and unasked questions, all moving inexorably toward the same challenges. Will you be good for our Emily? When will you get tired enough to pick up and leave? Will you take care of the children? How long?
This Sunday dinner was an acknowledgment of the seriousness of their liaison, a public act as momentous as the arrival of Angelite. Today was Joseph’s first official family function.
The new house near the meeting point of Cane River and Red River seemed to Emily to be shrinking, so many relatives had been taken in. With Joseph’s frequent absences, the company was welcome, but the house, although much bigger than their old cabin, was already bursting at the seams, too small for so many generations of women. And it was difficult to watch her mother moon over Bet under the same roof.
Emily could see the snaking of each of their thoughts as they inched toward Joseph. Elisabeth had taken to him as soon as she saw how he held Angelite with fondness and protection. Suzette, always a changeling in the presence of white folks, was wary. She fussed and flitted, smiled wide enough to reveal the gap between her front teeth, and pressed food and drink on him, all the while listening over the noisy conversations of Sunday dinner for evidence of the timing of Joseph’s inevitable departure from her granddaughter.
But it was her mother’s opinion that worried Emily most. Philomene tolerated Joseph and was civil to a fault, but Emily knew her mother was waiting for Joseph to somehow prove himself further, this Sunday dinner invitation notwithstanding.
Emily was proud to bring Joseph into this den of women and young boys, a man of her own who was making something of himself. A man who came willingly into her mother’s house and sat to table under the critical eye of three generations of women.
They fawned over Emily’s chosen, but that didn’t mean they were accepting, that they weren’t watching for signs, unwilling to forget they had been property of the likes of him a dozen years before. Emily didn’t remember the twisted life they hinted at, the slavery times, and each of the women hid the memory of those days as if there were shame in them, seldom talking particulars, at least when she was within earshot. They talked obliquely, as if it were an affliction she had escaped, a void of understanding that made her fortunate.
Emily and Joseph had no part of those long-ago days. Her only memory was of dancing for her father in the woods before he went off to war, with her mother looking on. Joseph had still been in France, undergoing his own struggle, trying to overcome the bitterness of being cheated of his inheritance by his older brothers, working his way toward the idea of opportunity in America. Neither of them was so tied to a past that they couldn’t see a future stretched out before them like a twisting stream they could ford together. Joseph was full of infectious ideas of land and
money, and when he was in a good mood, he talked to Emily for hours about his plans. He burned as hot with proving to his brothers back in France that he could acquire a fortune as he did for the company of Emily and their child.
It had taken six months after the baby was born for her wardens to finally invite Joseph to Sunday dinner, the time reserved for family. The table was full, piled high with food, every chair in the house pulled into the dining room to accommodate the guests. They were all here: Elisabeth, Suzette, Doralise and Yellow John, Gerant and Melantine, Bet and Isaac, and the small ones at the children’s table. And Philomene, heavy with her tenth child, who would be uncle or aunt to Emily’s little Angelite, although Angelite would be a year older. Broad and full around the middle, Philomene carried this baby low and was so big that she had to slowly ease herself into the chair at the dining room table.
Emily thought about how different she was from each of them sitting around Sunday’s table, marveling that she could have come from them at all. The old ones had not shaken the submissive ways of their years as slaves. Even her mother was scarred, incapable of looking for the joy Emily intended to claim as her due. Her half-sister, Bet, was more like them, tame and too easily content.
Suddenly a blue-banded bowl went crashing to the floor, spilling the creamed corn. Philomene stared around the table, looking in wonderment from face to face, as if the gummy yellow mixture had not splattered on her shoe or the sharp splintering of the bowl had not set Angelite to crying. Philomene settled her hands high across her stomach, fingers laced one over the other, and began to laugh.
“We got them this far,” Philomene said, exchanging a satisfied look with Elisabeth and Suzette. “We can ease up just a little. My two girls can handle it now.”
Side by side, light and dark, Emily joined Bet in cleaning up the mess.
32
N arcisse removed Emily’s portrait from the wall opposite his bedroom door. The room was to be repainted a cool cream color before Liza moved in on Saturday.
He studied the picture as he had done so many times before. Emily stared back at him, chin tilted just so, the jaunty hat atop her head. He would give up the painting tomorrow, but it was still his to enjoy today. Her grace and dignity disarmed him as always, reached out to him, making him both sad and proud. He had protected her as best he could.
Narcisse had been without a wife for twelve years, drifting too long without a legitimate heir. Circumstances were no longer as rosy as they had been in the full bloom of his youth, back when he still counted upon the earth to deliver its bounty to him and fortune always smiled. The time had come to get his tangled affairs in order, to make right what had somehow gone so wrong. Within a few days he would marry again for the third time, and there were still the legal matters to finish off first.
So much time wasted, and misspent energy. How long ago could he have produced an heir if he hadn’t been fooled? It had turned out to be the women’s fault after all, not destiny, not some curse. Once the white children started coming, his manhood reasserted itself vigorously, building to a potency that produced five children in the last four years and another on the way. Whether they came from the former slave woman who had managed to twist his thinking for so many years, the hill woman who had broken the former’s hold, or the respectable Natchitoches woman who was to become his wife, Narcisse loved each of his children. They were his own blood after all, but his dreams were fastened on Edd, the youngest, the son he would legitimize in just a few days.
Just yesterday he stood up in the courthouse to formally adopt his two daughters by Clemmie Larioux, and he would continue to care for them as he would his colored children. Of course, he couldn’t adopt his children by Philomene, but they all carried his last name, even the two little ones dead in the ground. One had come out blue, a son, the cord wrapped around his neck, never taking a breath, and another, tiny Josephine, wasn’t strong enough to reach her first birthday, but they were christened Fredieus just the same.
Ten years of barren wives, fifteen more tricked into believing he couldn’t sire a white child, four more before he had the inescapable proof of a white son who could live. The evidence swept away the last of his superstitions planted by Philomene and allowed him with a clear heart to bring the mother of his heir into the light and make her his wife. His heir, Edd, named after his own father, Eduord. There was peace in knowing that when his life was done, his lands, everything he was, would pass to his son.
Narcisse planned to teach him to hunt, fish, farm, and dance, how to live life with gusto. He could carry him into town openly, starting him out early with a private tutor to open up the world of possibilities for the boy. Narcisse didn’t hold to the notion the carpetbagger government pushed, that all children should attend a public school set up in the parish, regardless of their color, race, or previous condition of servitude, mixing indiscriminately. No good could come from that. It was wrongheaded to expect his taxes to pay for children he didn’t know and had no responsibility for, whose own parents couldn’t pay for their education. Everyone should take care of their own. He had engaged tutors for all of his children, white or colored. Those who couldn’t afford to do similarly would have to fall by the wayside.
The wedding would be simple, small, with Joseph Billes as his best man and witness. Narcisse was very fond of Joseph, had been drawn to him from their first meeting in New Orleans almost a decade before, but he was beginning to pose a real dilemma. Already a few of the local men from town had come to him, speaking against Joseph. It was awkward, intercepting warnings about Emily and the man who was like a son.
Just a few weeks ago Narcisse had counseled Joseph about being so open about Emily. It wasn’t the way things were done. Joseph listened politely, leaned forward, spat out his tobacco, and changed the subject. It wasn’t that Narcisse didn’t understand. He had gone down a similar path not so many years before. The difference was that Narcisse had the good sense to know how far he could go. Joseph flaunted.
Emily was as precious to Narcisse as his right arm, but his daughter was as headstrong in her own way as Joseph. She would be forgiven some things as Narcisse Fredieu’s daughter, but she would never be forgiven forgetting her place.
At the end of the week Narcisse would marry. It was time to put certain things behind him. When his wife-to-be told him pointedly that the portrait made her uncomfortable, he knew what he had to do. She knew about his past, all of the wives, all of the children, many of the alliances, but there was no need to exhibit them.
Tomorrow he would give the painting to Emily. He hated to part with it after all this time, but a new chapter in his life was beginning.
33
B ehind Billes General Store in Aloha, Emily heard the sharp, shrill whistle of the steamboat Danube in its steady advance upriver, announcing its intended stop at Billes Landing to deliver supplies. One long, two short, and another long. Rivulets of sweat ran down her face from the steady fire under the kettle, and when she wiped at her eyes, stubborn bits of lukewarm wax still clung to her hands from her candle making. She had hoped for the warm, rich signal of the Bart Able, whose captain, like the full-throated whistle of his steamboat, seemed much more respectful toward her. Although Joseph had told both Captain Montgomery of the Danube and Captain Meecham of the Bart Able that Emily acted on his behalf for deliveries, this captain did everything he could to put Emily in her place. He looked her up and down as if she were his for the taking whenever Joseph wasn’t there, or spat in her direction and refused to allow his stevedores to load supplies into her wagon, even when she waited on the dock.
She locked up the store, hitched the horse to the wagon, loaded her basket of boiled eggs, and got down to the landing just in time to watch the broad stern of the steamboat pull away from the Billes Landing dock. The need to hurry gone, she eased her grip on the reins and slowed the horse’s pace. They had already unloaded the delivery and moved on. The sharp, rich odor from the sacks of coffee reached her even before she got
down from the wagon, mixed in with the sweetness of the oranges in their wooden crates. Sacks of cotton seed, two barrels of flour, two of beer, and several of sugar also lay heaped on the pier.
The captain, well aware that the steamboat’s passing was an opportunity for her to sell her eggs for five cents a dozen to the passengers and crew aboard, hadn’t waited for her, again. Captain Meecham would have waited.
The two cords of oak wood her uncle Gerant left were gone, and the landing was messy with the hasty leavings of the pine knots and pine kindling the stevedores loaded for use under their boilers. Joseph had a contract with the steamship line to leave timber for them weekly, and he employed Gerant to cut it. The landing needed sweeping after she got the supplies to the store. Yet another task added to the day.
There had been a time when Emily found each steamboat’s unique whistle romantic, an intimate invitation from some mysterious place. Lately they all just signaled more backbreaking work, and she found herself relieved whenever she heard the one long blast that meant there was no delivery today, that the ship was just passing through.
Joseph was due back in town tomorrow, Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday she looked forward to him crossing the river for dinner at her mother’s. Emily pulled on her heavy gloves, retied the fastening on her long-billed bonnet, and adjusted the sleeves of her shirtwaist so the sun couldn’t get to her skin. Gerant was off working somewhere in the woods this week, and the other hired man was running errands, so it was up to her to get the provisions from the landing to the store. At least this was a small shipment. The sacks weighed almost as much as Emily, but she pulled and tugged, inching the bags forward bit by bit until she got each into a position where she could pull it up into the bed of the wagon. No matter how she maneuvered, she couldn’t lift the barrels, and she dared not leave them on the landing for too long. She would have to take the wagon home and come back on foot for the barrels, turning them on their side and rolling them the mile to the store, pushing them up the gentle rolls of the forest bottom, and making sure they didn’t gather too much speed on the declines. Her back ached just thinking about it.