A Million Nightingales (32 page)

Leaving the hotel's slave quarters for the market, I looked for his face. But I could never kiss him again. His lips might form words, but I could not listen. My faith was now in Msieu Antoine, not in treasure or what might have been love.

Msieu Antoine was gone most of the day and night, pursuing his business, waiting for Mr. Jonah Greene's ship to arrive. He wrote list after list, and letters as if his fingers could not stop, as if he were a gambler moving cards across a table.

On the second morning, I asked, “Is he older than you?”

Msieu Antoine glanced up sharply, taking his shoes from my hand. “By five years.”

Was Mr. Greene wealthier? Msieu Antoine was so anxious to please him.

I gathered his clothes from the floor. “The cook spoke of a house south of here. Orange Grove. It is very near Azure. The owner has died, and the contents of the house are being sold. People used to talk of the furniture from Paris in that house. You could purchase a desk, perhaps, and we could then go to Azure, to see about your new cook.” I smoothed my lips with my fingers and waited.

He nodded. “Tomorrow.”

His clothes were clean, and the hotel cook made meals here. The narrow slave quarters behind the hotel were crowded, and the coachmen gambled and argued constantly. I remembered the pantry where coffee sacks were my bed, the smell that clung to my hair. Coralie, the hotel maid, was required to sew one shirt a day for her mistress, for extra money. I sewed with her, making my stitches small.

The cook bought onions, peppers, and nutmeg from peddlers with baskets riding on their heads. African faces, with tribal marks on the cheeks. What if my mother had run years ago and hid here to wait for me? What would she sell?

Money clinked and folded and passed hand to hand, tucked into pockets and dressfronts. Every brick, every coffee bean, every hand holding out an egg or a madras tignon.

Each stitch small as an eyelash. Jean-Paul's eyelash. My eyelash, when she held me as a child.

I said the right words over and over in my head, but Msieu Antoine had to speak for me. If Msieu Bordelon refused, at least my mother would know where I was. With no one else looking, I would write down for her my name, and Jean-Paul, on a scrap of paper she could tuck into her pocket with her coffee bean and her pinches of sugar.

The river surged past the batture, the tangle of driftwood and cane trash. English Turn, where the river bent. Then the allée of blooming trees at Orange Grove. I had seen it only from the boat, that night, the trees lit by lantern. Now I followed Msieu Antoine through the orange trees to the plantation house, which was cold and empty, the fireplace clean, the furniture marked for sale, the walls dirty around white places where portraits had hung.

My heart. It pushed the blood hard against the bones in my chest, against the bones in my wrists, even somehow in my forehead. Did my mother feel me coming?

Once, standing behind her where she ironed, I had yawned silently, and she'd yawned, too. We were so tired, folding clothes late at night, the fire drying the last of the linens. I yawned again, and I heard her mouth open so wide something rustled in her jaw.

Msieu Antoine bought two chairs at Orange Grove. The light moved past the ghost squares on the wall. In late afternoon, a boat stopped for us, then took us the ten miles to Azure.

“The end of the world, eh?” Msieu Antoine said, looking down the river. “The beginning of the sea. I'm waiting for a boat from Philadelphia coming north, and we could be passing it now.”

“Thank you.” I could say nothing else.

The old landing at Azure trembled under my feet. We passed under the front oaks that belonged to Madame Bordelon. The moss for decoration. For her eyes. Could she see me? Was she still in her room?

We walked toward the house. Could my mother see me? Was
she in the kitchen with Tretite? Tablecloths and napkins. Wine stains.

Christophe. He came around the side of the house, leading a horse, and stopped when he saw Msieu Antoine.

“Msieu?” he said, indifferently. Then he looked at my dress first, my face, and his eyes narrowed to gashes of black under his brows. “Madame?” But in his brain, he said, Cadeau. Gift girl. I was not a girl now.

I said, “Christophe. You are well. Msieu Antoine would like to speak to Msieu Bordelon.”

He said nothing, but led us around to the kitchen.

Tretite was not there. A huge mulatto woman threw shelled corn to chickens in a pen behind the kitchen. She said, “What you want?” to me. Then Msieu Antoine rounded the corner, and she curtsied.

Christophe rode to find Msieu Bordelon. I stood outside the kitchen. The path, my path, to the clearing was wet and muddy. My hand shaded my eyes from the low sun, my fingers a shelf as Madame Bordelon's had been all those years ago.

I couldn't run down the path. My feet wore shoes, and my body did not belong to my mother.

I touched his cuff.

I had never touched his body. Only his clothes. “I will walk down to le quartier, if you permit.”

He nodded.

The huge cook had on a white apron. She was waiting for me to say who I was. All my life in this yard, when strangers saw me, my mother had explained my existence however she chose.

“I am Moinette,” I said in French. The cook only nodded. “Where is Tretite?”

Now her face had a guarded look. She nodded toward the street. “Là-bas.”

My blood moved faster. “And Marie-Thérèse?”

The name. The name. The feel of my tongue against my teeth, my lips against each other.

She frowned and shrugged, shoulders lifting like flour sacks.

I walked quickly to the clearing. Only a thread of smoke, wisp
of moss curling upward into the sky. I ran the last few yards, and in our doorway sat Tretite, holding a pipe to her mouth. “Cher bébé, bébé,” she said, holding out her arms.

“Last year. Cinq année, she say to me one night. Five year I wait. One night we don't see her, and we look everywhere. She gone.”

I didn't know what my face would do. But nothing collected in the hollows of my cheeks. Eveline, Hera, and Phrodite crowded into the room. Tretite sat in the corner with her pipe.

I said, “Where was she going to look for me? The city?” She could have been walking past the hotel every morning before I'd finished cleaning Msieu Antoine's boots.

Eveline covered her mouth with her fingers. “Moinette. She wait so long, and she so tired.” She went to her trunk, rough cypress planks with a lock. A cloth bag with braided hair, coffee beans, and three shards of broken plate. Feathered tail and purple wing.

“She go down Bayou Les Palmiers. Where the traders come. Say that water go into another bayou and down to Barataria. Slave stealer used to come up that way. She tell me, I go now. She leave this by her door. Christophe—he say he saw her in a pirogue on the bayou. By where the white birds live.”

She couldn't have made it all the way to Barataria. I saw her nightwater eyes, her thick wrists covered with scars. Mamère. She was going to New Orleans.

She wouldn't have known I went to Barataria. She would find something to sell in New Orleans. We could go back and look for her.

The fire was burning high. All those eyes on me—Eveline was crying, Hera's tears smeared over the scars on her cheeks. Phrodite—I had hardly known her. She was pregnant, hands on her belly.

Christophe stood outside the door and said, “Msieu Bordelon back from the field.”

He waited outside. Tretite said, “Madame look out her window one day, see me wear that white dress, and say never come to
the house again. Say do the wash and leave it on the back step. No bride here.”

“Tretite,” I breathed, and held her close. She felt full of air, soft and collapsed. “If she comes back, tell her I am in Opelousas. North. Opelousas. Court Street.”

Christophe waited near the ashes heaped under the pecan trees. “You married Phrodite,” I said.

He nodded and we began walking.

“Your mother don't get in no pirogue,” he said suddenly when we reached the back gallery. “I say that for Eveline and Tretite. For they feel better. I don't think you come back. Never.”

“Was she sold?” My fingernails buried in my palms. Red moons.

“She walk in the bayou and go under.”

His teeth didn't show, and he didn't raise his chin as he had when we were children; no anger in his eyes, no desire to push me onto a rock and pull up my dress.

“It's not true,” I said. “Pas vrai.”

“I see her go out past Petit Clair, and I follow.”

“You hate me, and I will never see you again.”

Then he shook his head. “I don't hate you. Never think of you.” He was wide in the shoulders now and dressed in groom's clothing, with tall boots splashed by mud. “I follow her down by my traps. Maybe she have a boat hide there. But when she get in the bayou, she roll over on her back. Like she swim before. Roll over on her back and look up in the trees, and float down the water.”

On her back. Resting. It is frightening to be so rested. You might never get up. Like flying.

I put my knuckles in my mouth. Maybe she was truly gone. Maybe he was lying. Msieu Bordelon's voice rose high. “Where's the damn scraper?”

“Christophe,” I whispered. “If you're telling the truth, go get Tretite. Please. Bring her to the house. Tell her to only walk and not think. Not talk.”

He began to walk, and I began to cry.

At the back gallery where Madame had stood all those times with her hand shading her eyes, the door where my palm measured
Msieu's head, I wiped the tears from my eyes, pulled at the skin beside them. This would never work if I cried.

Msieu Bordelon knocked the mud from his boots onto the gallery. I had to say it to him now, before he went inside. He did not own me. I belonged to Mamère. But if she was là-bas, and she belonged to God, then I belonged to God now, too.

“Do you remember me, msieu?”

He turned. His lips were even thinner, only an edge of skin over his long teeth, and his eyes were still fierce. Céphaline's eyes. “No. I do not.”

“Moinette. Your daughter's servant.” I was afraid to say her name.

He ran the scraper under his boot. “I sold you.”

“Oui, msieu. Msieu Antoine owns me now. He would like to buy my mother.”

He put down the scraper. “Your mother ran away.”

My brain was filling with blood, the wrinkles running red inside my skull. He was a coat. A black wool coat, hanging on the line, the sleeves moving gently. “Msieu Antoine wishes to buy Tretite. She can be called my mother. She isn't useful to you now. You can strike me for disrespect, but I know there is a man buried in the woods. I saw it. It is written on paper in Opelousas.”

He frowned and inclined his head, as if listening even after I was quiet. Then he said, “You cannot write.”

He could whip me for admitting it—no, I was not his property now but Msieu Antoine's, and yet he could demand that Msieu Antoine whip me. My back trembled under my dress. “Mademoiselle Céphaline taught me to read and write,” I said, turning sideways. “She taught me things while we made her beautiful.”

“Do not say her name,” he shouted behind me.

Msieu Antoine sat in the parlor, drinking coffee and looking at the paintings over the fireplace. “Msieu,” I said, calmly as possible. My mother. Her hands trailing in the water. The water cold.

“Did you find her?”

“Oui. She is coming.”

Msieu Bordelon stood looking down on Msieu Antoine. “You are a lawyer? I don't like lawyers or speculators.”

Msieu Antoine stood and smiled. “Then it is fortunate that I
am not a speculator. I am a clerk of the court in Opelousas.” He lifted his hand to the portrait. Céphaline. Her eyes open, her cheeks flushed. Not dead. “That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen painted. Your wife?”

Msieu Bordelon's chest rose high and fell. “My wife has not left her bedroom for five years. Since the day her daughter died. What is the reason for your visit?”

“Not for speculation but for sentiment—I came to buy my housekeeper's mother.”

“Her mother?”

The red moons on my palms stung. I said, “Christophe is bringing her. My mother is coming.”

Msieu Bordelon disappeared into his office, and he came out with the ledger I had dusted so many times but been afraid to open.

“Moinette. Creole mulâtresse. Born September 19, 1797, Azure.”

Tretite came silently inside and stood with her small mashed-in face turned to the floor. I said, “My mother used to be the cook. She has been replaced, no?” My eyes stayed on Msieu Bordelon's fingers. Short and strong, with webs of thick skin where he held his reins.

He waited for a long time. I waited for him to say my mother's name, to say my lie out loud. But he read, “Jeannette. Nègre. Born 1765, St. Domingue.”

“How much would you ask?” Msieu Antoine said, frowning at Tretite's wrinkles, her shoulders slumped like dove wings flat to her sides. “For the mother?”

Msieu Bordelon didn't look at me. “Her breeding days are certainly past now. But that doesn't mean she has turned into a bargain.”

Christophe put out the flag to signal a steamboat. Tretite held my hand as she stepped onto the cargo deck, and she trembled with fear when the engines groaned. “Jamais en bateau,” she whispered. Never on a boat.

“Don't move,” I said. “Don't look at the foam.”

———

Back at the hotel, we learned Mr. Jonah Greene's ship had docked.

He was olive-skinned and tall, with wells of darkness around his eyes. He asked me to make tea. He handed me a tin filled with curled black leaves, and Msieu Antoine said carefully, “In a city famous for coffee, you bring an English drink.”

He waited for Mr. Jonah Greene to smile and again shake his hand.

Tretite slept in the slave quarters. I walked back to the kitchen. All the years I'd waited, and now I stood beside a hearth waiting for water to boil. As every day. No ladder to heaven. To là-bas. No pirogue to the gods of water. Only leaves in a cup.

All the heat inside my face, stored in my cheeks and behind my eyes and even under my tignon—I squatted near the fire and covered my skull with my hands and cried until my face felt as if it had melted into wax.