Feast of All Saints (66 page)

Philippe bent over her. Then she opened her eyes again. “Look out for my girl, Michie, look out for my Lisette.” she said, her voice so faint it was barely clear.

“I will, my poor dear,” he said to her. It seemed her eyes rolled up in her head. Marcel was shaken.

“Look out for her, Michie,” she whispered again as if she would not give in. The voice was dry and seemed to scratch inside her throat. “Michie!” her eyes widened. “Michie, she’s your girl, too!”

“Yes, yes, my poor dear,” Monsieur Philippe said.

She was dead.

For a long moment Marcel stood staring down at her. He had never seen the life go out of any living being, and as he watched her face relax in death, he felt the tears come.

With a solicitude that amazed him, Monsieur Philippe drew Zazu’s rosary from the covers, and slipped it over her fingers.
“Adieu, ma chère,”
he whispered heavily. Then he folded her hands atop the counterpane and he brought the lids of her eyes down gently, letting her head sink to one side.

And when he stepped out on the gallery with Marcel behind him, he struck a match hard to light his cigar. “Damn that girl!” he said.

Cecile turned, shuddering, and walked swiftly down the length of the porch to the stairs. Marie had gone into Zazu’s room at once.

Then Marcel touched his father’s arm. Lisette stood at the entrance of the alleyway, her yellow
tignon
bright against the green brush. She was glowering at them, and even from where he stood Marcel could see she was unsteady.

“Is my Maman dead?” she asked in a low voice.

Monsieur Philippe moved so fast Marcel was nearly knocked off balance by him. But Lisette turned and ran. She was gone before Monsieur Philippe ever reached the bottom of the steps. He stamped out the butt of his cigar and beckoning angrily for Marcel, he stalked into the cottage.

“I have to get back to the country,” he said. He was picking up his cape and putting his flat black wallet into the pocket of his coat. Cecile sat in the corner of the parlor, her head bowed.

“Your mother can’t take care of this, go get your friends, the Lermontants,” Monsieur Philippe said with his eyes on her. Indeed, she looked miserable, and extremely weak.

“I imagine they’ve taken care of a few devoted servants in their time.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“So get them to do it right.” He slipped several twenty-dollar bills into Marcel’s hand. “And when you see that girl, you tell her to do what you say. You be the master here now, you get her in line!” He pointed a warning finger at Marcel. “I’d do it myself if I didn’t have to get back to the country and discover what little surprise my young brother-in-law has cooked up for me now. He’s had time enough to flood the entire plantation in my absence and turn the crop to rice!” He gathered his keys, and removing his watch checked it by the clock over the mantel.

“But Monsieur, what’s the matter with her!” Marcel whispered. He was not in the habit of asking his father questions, but this was too much. And there had been those muted arguments for months.

“She wants her freedom, that’s what’s the matter, wants it on a
silver platter now!” Monsieur Philippe declared. “Got some fancy notion I should tell poor Zazu on her deathbed that I was setting her daughter free.”

“Freedom!” Marcel gasped. That she should want it was hardly a surprise to him, but was this the way to get it? Lisette who had been nothing but trouble all her life, Lisette who was rebellious to the marrow of her bones? And now to do this? He shook his head. It was more than folly. It was insane.

“Run off with that woman on her deathbed,” Monsieur Philippe was muttering. “I took that girl out of the kitchen yard at
Bontemps
, gave her money, brought her to live in town!” His face was working with his anger. “Well, she’s not playing games with me! And what would she do if she were free, I’ve seen the nigger trash she runs with and the white trash too!” He hesitated, his lips working angrily, his eyes casting a protective and pointed glance at Cecile. “Don’t you take any sass from her,” he said to Marcel under his breath. “I’ve never whipped a house slave in my life, but by God, I’ll whip her if she doesn’t get back here before you put Zazu in the ground. Go to those Lermontants,” he said over his shoulder. He approached Cecile, his hand out for her shoulder. “And you tell her if she ever wants a petition from me for her freedom, she’s to do as you say!”

It wasn’t until the morning of the funeral that Lisette finally appeared. The Lermontants had buried many a loyal and faithful servant for their white and colored clients alike, and they did well as always, a procession of neighboring servants and friends following the coffin to the grave.

Cecile was trembling violently as the coffin left the house and quickly shut up the windows and the doors as if to keep some unnamed menace away. Marcel disliked leaving her, knowing Marie could be of no comfort to her, and after the brief ceremonies at the St. Louis Cemetery, he hurried home.

A note had come from Anna Bella. His mother behind a veil of netting, her head against her pillow appeared asleep. For a moment all he saw of the note was an ornate and curling script replete with beautiful capitals, and then slowly the sentiments, perfectly and briefly expressed, made their impression on him with a peculiar pain. Anna Bella had commenced her confinement. She had been unable to come. He held the note for a moment, quite unwilling to let any thought form in his mind. Rather, he saw himself in the Rue St. Louis approaching Anna Bella’s gate. But Lisette. Lisette. He slipped the note into his pocket and went out to cross the courtyard to his room.

She did not disappoint him. She came wandering in, her eyes red, her dress filthy and carrying a tattered broken bouquet in her hands.
But as soon as he saw her, her head to one side like a bruised flower, and saw the way that she picked the petals from the chrysanthemums that she carried, letting them fall on the shells of the alleyway, all the anger went out of him.

“They covered her up already, Michie,” she said.

Marcel followed her into the kitchen and into her room.

“You’d better sleep it off, Lisette,” he said.

“Go to hell,” she answered.

He watched her. She was throwing these flowers all around the floor. Now she was tramping on them with her feet. Now she tore the
tignon
off her head, and her copper hair poofed out in thick tight ripples and she scratched at it, shaking her head.

He sighed and sat down in the corner in Zazu’s old rocker.

“You remember after Jean Jacques died?” he started. “You got that diary for me out of the fire.”

She stood in the center of the room scratching at her head.

“I remember it, if you don’t,” he said.

“Well, bless you now, Maitre, you’re one kind man.”

“Lisette, look, I know it’s grief that’s eating at you, and I know what grief is. But Michie Philippe’s really put out at you, Lisette, you’ve got to get yourself in hand!”

“Oh, come on now, Michie. You scared of Michie Philippe?” she demanded.

He sighed. “If it’s your freedom you want, this is no way to get it.” He rose to go.

“Get it, get it?” she came after him. “And what should I do to get it?” she hissed at him. Reluctantly, he turned his head.

“Act like you’d know what to do with it, that’s what! Running off like that with your mother dying. Michie Philippe’s at his wits’ ends with you, don’t you know that?”

But instantly he regretted this. He could see the fury in her eyes.

“He promised me my freedom!” she said, her fists striking at her own breast. “He promised me when I was a little girl, he’d set me free when I was grown! Well, I passed my twenty-third birthday, Michie, I’ve been grown for years, and he broke that promise to me!”

“You can’t get it this way!” he pleaded with her. “You’re being a fool!”

“No, you’re the fool! You’re the fool to believe anything that man ever said. Sending you to Paris, putting you up like a gentleman, don’t you believe it, Michie,” she shook her head, “My Maman served that man for fifty years of her life, she licked his boots, he promised her she’d see me free before she died and he broke that promise to her! If he wouldn’t set me free before she shut her eyes on this world, he’s never going to set me free. ‘Oh, you just be patient, Lisette, you just
be a good girl, you just take care of your Maman, what you want with freedom anyways, Lisette where you going go?’ ” She spat on the brick floor, her face twisted with contempt.

“He’s been good to you,” Marcel said in a low voice. He started for the kitchen door.

“Has he, Michie?” She came after him and reaching out swung the door shut behind her, facing him, so that for an instant he was blinded and saw only a sparkle of light in the rough cracks.

“Now stop this, Lisette,” he said. He felt the first real urge to slap her. He moved to push the door. She clutched at the latch. He could hardly make out the features of her face, and the kitchen seemed at once damp and suffocating. He took a deep breath. “Get out of the way, Lisette.” The sweat broke out on his forehead. “If Maman hears all this, she’s sure to tell him.”

It seemed the faint light gathered slowly in her eyes as he became accustomed to it; her face was a grimace. He could smell the wine on her breath.

“If he can break his promise to me, Michie, he can break it to you,” she said. “You think you’re so special, don’t you, Michie, you think ’cause his blood’s running in your veins, he wouldn’t do you dirt. Well, let me tell you that with all those books of yours and schooling of yours, and that fancy teacher of yours, and that fancy lady you keep up there right under everybody’s nose, you’re not so smart! ’Cause that same blood’s running in my veins, Michie, and you never so much as guessed. We got that in common, my fine little gentleman, I’m his child just as sure as you are! He slept with my Maman same as he slept with yours. And that’s how come he hustled us off
Bontemps
years ago, ’cause his wife caught right on to what you never guessed in fifteen years!”

There was no sound then except that of her breathing. He was staring into the darkness, seeing nothing.

“I don’t believe that,” he whispered.

She was perfectly still.

“I don’t believe that!” he whispered. “He wouldn’t have brought you here!”

“The hell he wouldn’t,” she growled. “Madame Aglae said to him ‘you trouble your house bringing that copper-colored baby into it, I won’t have my children growing up with that copper-colored baby, you trouble your house, you inherit the wind…’ ”

“No,” Marcel shook his head. “He wouldn’t…”
I never whipped a house slave in my life, but by God I’ll whip her, you be the master with her!
“Not here!”

“Yes, here, Michie, here! And your Maman, your pretty black Maman, when she saw me, she said, she said, ‘you ever tell anybody
you’re his whelp so help me I’ll kill you!’ digging those fingernails into my arm. I tell you, Michie, men are blind as bats but women can see in the dark! So what do you have to say to your sister now!”

Marcel let out a long raw moan.

He was not conscious of the turns he took. He only knew that he was walking and that he would continue to walk until some of the tumult in him died away. And the awareness that it was early evening meant little to him, any more than the awareness that he was wandering in the Rue St. Louis not far from the Lermontant house. Only he was not going to the Lermontant house. He felt if he had to sit down to supper with them tonight he would lose his mind. He was going somewhere else, but perhaps not, he could make another decision, there was no law against passing the gate. And what if he stopped when he got there, overcome with the perfume of the jasmine, wanting just to enjoy it for a little while? Two neat crepe myrtles stood on either side of the gate, their hard waxy limbs as clean as bones beneath the lacy foliage, crepe myrtles just like those in Madame Elsie’s yard. Maybe Anna Bella had picked the cottage for those crepe myrtles with their fragile red blooms. A rich wave of the jasmine passed over him, and drifting out into the street, he made a small circle under the night sky. It seemed the world pulsed with the cicadas’ scratching song, and beyond the crepe myrtles was the glow of Anna Bella’s windows, and he had no doubt that she was there. If ever there had been a time in his life when he wanted to fall into her arms, it was now. He did not know whether this was shame or simply horror. And when he thought of Lisette sleeping in that back kitchen room, her dress stained with dirt, her body moist and shuddering from the drink she’d had for three days, it was for him a perfect image of misery, if not hell.

When he saw a dark shape in Anna Bella’s window, he did not look away. And hearing the heavy shutters of the front door creak, he watched for a movement on the path. The moon spilling through the trees made shifting shadows on the figure, on the pale face and the white shawl.

Now he saw her clearly at the gate.

“Marcel,” she beckoned. “Marcel, come inside.”

“Is he there?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “You come on inside!”

It seemed an hour that he talked, he did not know.

Anna Bella, her thickening waist covered with a light quilt, sat in the rocker to one side of the open doorway, tendrils of her soft hair moving in the breeze. She had put out the one candle. And Zurlina to make her disapproval known, puttered in another room. They paid no attention to her. The door was shut. She could not have heard. There
had been no real greeting, he had not so much as touched her hand, none of that polite kissing on either cheek, and she did not seem to expect it, she had merely led him to his chair. He felt exhilarated as he talked, certain of her understanding, and when he saw by the light of the moon the tenderness of her large brown eyes he was not surprised.

“Never tell anyone,” he said thickly. “I can’t stand for anyone to know this! I just can’t bear the thought of it. You must swear to me, you’ll never tell a soul.”

“You know I won’t, Marcel,” she said. “But where is she now? How are you going to stop her from being crazy, and from doing herself some harm?”