Feast of All Saints (89 page)

“Drink it, pretty child,” said Ma’ame Lola, “drink it down.” And then with a smile, she lounged back against the high brass footboard of the bed and drank her own tea from a broken cup.

It was good, the taste, laced with peppermint perhaps, Marie was not sure. She stared at the murky substance in the bottle and saw the little spout of the teapot in front of her and the pouring liquid stirring the sediment again as the cup grew heavy in her hands. Her ears began to ring with the pain that had been in her head all the long afternoon. Lisette was talking in a low rapid voice about a charm, a charm to take away her charms. “And those charms,” Madame Lola said, “such charms as those charms, you can’t kill those charms without a powerful charm.” The cup had almost slipped from Marie’s hands! The black woman gave it to her again, and Madame Lola sang out, “Yes, drink that,
chérie
, precious
chérie,”
and this time the tea burnt her mouth but strangely enough this burning was outside of her and she almost liked the sensation of this in her chest. She rested back against the chair and stared forward at the flowers on the wall. The flowers danced-on the wall, thousands and thousands of tiny roses marched upward at long angles toward the ceiling and there it seemed a yellow smoke gathered, a smoke that she had not seen before. It wound itself about
the candles in wreaths and was alive but dissipating rapidly into the shimmering air. And just below the candles as it vanished in an ever-thinning haze were the two women, Lisette and Madame Lola, with their heads together again, each tilted toward the other, Lisette’s breasts almost touching this woman’s breasts and their skirts descending in long flowing lines. Little paisley tails of gold wound in and out on the red silk of Madame Lola’s skirts, had Marie even seen these before? She wanted to remark that she had not even seen them, seen only the redness, but she had the most curious sensation of not being able to open her lips. And the two women had become perfectly flat.

They were perfectly flat. They could have been cut from cardboard and placed there together, or no, rather cut from the same piece as nothing showed of the room behind them where they were joined, Madame Lola’s dark hair filling the gap between the flesh of their cheeks. And they had been standing there for the longest time perfectly, perfectly still. And Marie had been sitting here watching them. She had been sitting forever here, her back against the chair, her head thrown to one side, her hair trailing down on her breasts. Slowly, ever so slowly she shifted her gaze down and saw the teacup lying on the floor. Tea ran out over the cypress boards, tea ran in rivulets into the cracks between the boards and tea had stained her taffeta dress, tea had burned her hands. Lisette’s voice was a rumble, urgent, argumentative, then soft, and right before Marie’s eyes the cardboard cutout of the two women was broken and Ma’ame Lola bending now to the open drawer of her chest drew out dollar bills. One of these bills fell to the floor. That tapestry was drawn back, and the black woman had gone out. But then again it seemed the tapestry had not been drawn back because it was perfectly in place, and Madame Lola was facing her, leaning against the brass bars of her bed again, smiling at her, and Lisette was gone.

Lisette, Marie thought, Lisette, and she brought her tongue up between her teeth. She could feel the first syllable forming and then it came out of her in a long, never-ending hiss.

“You best drink some more tea, gal,” Madame Lola’s face was right in front of hers suddenly. And the most magical thing had happened. The tea was all back in the cup again, and the cup was in her hands. Marie wanted to say, I cannot do it, I cannot even move my lips, but the tea was in her mouth and Madame Lola’s hand did the most intimate and slightly repulsive thing of touching her on the throat.

When she looked down, afraid of vomiting the tea, she had drunk it and Madame Lola’s hand was on her breast. This was quite out of the question, unbuttoning her dress for her, she did not wish to stay
here, she did not wish to be lifted out of the chair like this, and suddenly she opened her mouth wide to scream but her mouth didn’t open. It was as if the scream rolled up and filled her mouth, pressing against the teeth, she saw her naked breasts when she looked down and the opened buttons of her white chemise. Her dress was on a chair across the room.

Sometime during the long night Marie was awake and knew exactly what had happened.

There were five white men, gentlemen all of them with their stinking breath and their stinking pomade, this big one with the black whiskers digging his knee against the inside of her thigh, his thumbs pressed down into the flesh under her raised arms so that she arched her body, that scream rising against to suffocate her, a stream of vomit rolling up with it that leapt out in silence to make peaks on the walls. They didn’t bother to take off their clothes.

The young one with the blond hair wept in his wine until the tall one threw the wine in his face, and he sat there, long arms hung between his sprawling knees, the tears and the wine dripping from his swollen face, little whines coming out of him. The man beside her on his elbow said, “Now you’re not going to try to hit me now, no, you don’t want to do that,” and untied her hands. Darkness. Only to awaken to that room again. And again. And again.

Until in darkness, she heard the morning sounds.

Sun shone on the mud-streaked floor, and the rain teeming on the shell yard became a glare as it hit the puddles in the sun. Not one particle of this had been imagined, it was all true. And the blond-haired man, drunk, blubbering, listed still in the chair with his wine-soaked cravat, his opera cape with its white satin lining hanging down so far it was caught under the leg of the chair. He tilted his head to one side, crying, murmuring, crying. Everyone else was gone. Except that singsong voice that sang to him, “You go home now, Michie DeLande, you just go on home now, Michie, you got to get some sleep now, Michie, party’s over now, Michie,” while he sat there, head to one side, whining and murmuring, and sobbing with a sudden shift of his shoulders, the snot and the spit on his lips and his face.

Marie watched that woman moving about the room. She watched her emptying the whiskey from the glasses into a brown bottle, she saw her pitch the butts of the cigars out the open door. She saw her nudge the drunken man again and to her surprise the drunken man did not get out of the chair. His gray red-rimmed eyes were still fixed on Marie, and his mouth shuddered, thick and the color of salmon, with his whimpering cries. “You go home now, Michie, you best get out of
here, your brother’s going to come looking for you, Michie, party’s over.” So that was it, he was not a man, he was a boy.

Ever so slowly Marie moved her left hand. She lay with her head twisted so that her neck ached, but she did not move her head, her eyes following the woman, she merely lifted, slowly, her left hand. She could feel the strap of her chemise and moved it up ever so slowly to her shoulder. She could feel the other strap and moved it ever so slowly up over her shoulder and let her hand drop then as the woman turned, “Michie, now you got to get out of here, Elsa get that boy to take this man out of here, Elsa?” Ever so slowly, Marie’s hand tugged at the white muslin until the button loop closed over the button, it would have been infinitely easier with her right hand, but her right hand was twisted upside down under the bar, and she could not move it without turning over, so she just kept on working with her left hand. One button. Two buttons, three buttons, four. She could see her naked knee against the wall, and the thigh black with bruises and the smears of blood. With her left hand, she slid the muslin down. There was blood over it, it was impossible to get out of here like this. She stared at the blond-haired man.

But Madame Lola had seen her eyes. “You just lie back, girl,” she was saying in that singsong voice, and had snapped her fingers. Another woman had come into the room. There was the sound of a rag being squeezed through water, and beside Marie there was a bottle of green glass with a long narrow neck. If she reached out quick with her left hand…But now this woman had touched her right wrist and was turning her hand painfully under the brass bar and had it free. It was absolutely essential to act before they got rid of that man.

Her head nearly pitched to the floor when she turned over but she had that bottle and it took two slams at the corner of the marble to break it. She was sitting up with it, and staring at the voodooienne for the first time.

“Now why you want to go and do that now,
chérie
,” said Madame Lola. “Now why you don’t want to lie still now?” She came forward motioning to that other woman who was wringing the rag in the water, “You put that down,
chérie
, you got to have a nice bath now, you got to rest.”

“Don’t you hurt her!” The drunken man blurted out. But he could not stand. He had put his hand on the back of the chair and nearly fallen just as the woman with the rag had reached out and Marie scraped the broken bottle down the length of her arm. Both women stood still. “Don’t you hurt her!” he was roaring, trying to get up on his feet, his opera cape dragging on the muddy floor.

“You get out of here, Michie!” Madame Lola growled at him over her shoulder. “You’re in bad trouble, Michie, now you want to make it
worse, you just stay, this ain’t no nigger girl, this is a white girl…” Perfectly stupid, the man didn’t hear a word she was saying. But that other woman had run out of the room. It was absolutely essential to get up before that woman brought someone else back.

And Marie sprang off the bed and rushing past Madame Lola with the bottle clenched in her right hand, got behind the white man, her left fingers digging right through his coat.

“You leave her alone!” he said at once, and reached back behind himself to hold onto her. She pulled him toward the door, his big stumbling feet crushing down on her toes; no time to think about that, she felt herself back suddenly into the cold downpour of the rain.

She grabbed the cloak off his neck nearly pulling him over and he helped to put it on her shoulders now, the hem of her chemise and the hem of the cape disappearing into the great sheet of water that was spreading out endlessly in the alleyway and in the yard.

“Now, you come back here, girl.” Madame Lola put a hand up against the rain, eyes squinting, “Where you think you’re going, girl? You belong with us, girl, your Maman don’t want you now, you belong with us, now you come back in here, girl, you got to have a nice bath and lie down.”

Marie was stepping backwards through the water, the shells cutting into her feet, the big cumbersome drunken man soft and stumbling as he backed away with her, his hand fluttering behind him trying to catch hold of her as reaching under his coat, she dug her fingernails into his side right through the linen of his shirt.

“Animals, animals!” he bawled at the advancing woman. They had reached the street.

The water spread in all directions obliterating the banquettes, streaming from the gutters along the galleries, flooding down the dirty plaster of the houses, shooting off the ends of the sloping roofs. Figures stood behind the half-opened doors, men clustered under the eaves of the little grocery, and someone had come out splashing in the rain, and at the edge of the wall the woman stopped.

Marie could see the dark folds of the cape coming together as slowly she let down the bottle, and let go of the drunken man. She held the cape together from the inside and squinting at the buildings around her, the rain blinding her, felt that scream rising again in her throat like a convulsion until again it curled against the roof of her mouth as she had to reach out again, get hold of that man’s shoulder or fall down. He was babbling foolishness that he would protect her while her eyes moved back and forth from one side of the street to the other and at last she knew where she was, this was the Rue St. Peter at Rampart, she knew where she was, and how to get home.

She saw him fall as she ran, splashing through the water toward
the alleyway that would lead her to the bracken at the middle of the block. He was trying to get to his feet, but seeing that great mass of snarled vines and trees ahead of her, she ran.

And it was from that bracken behind the Ste. Marie cottage, that she finally emerged to limp across the courtyard toward the back door.

She saw the bed first. She did not see her mother but then she knew her mother was there, and that her mother was screaming and Tante Louisa was telling her to wait, to be still. “I know it’s her, it’s her, it’s her…” her mother was saying, but her mother did not know she was in the house, did not know the she was holding on to the post of the bed and falling forward toward the white spread.

Then again she heard her mother scream. When she turned it seemed they were at a great remove from her, her mother screaming and Tante Louisa with her arm around her mother’s waist. Tante Louisa was lifting her mother right off the floor. And then her mother got free and tore at the bloody chemise with both her hands. Marie felt her mouth open, she felt it open and the scream inside filled it silently so that she couldn’t breathe.

“RUINED, RUINED!” Cecile roared, “RUINED, RUINED,” it seemed the roar was filling the room and Marie reached to cover up her ears. “RUINED, RUINED,” her mother bellowed, and rising again and again in Tante Louisa’s arms brought her feet down with a clonk against the floor. Marie was gasping, choking, at her effort to scream, her eyes growing wider and wider, her mother’s face convulsed and swollen as suddenly her hand flew out and caught Marie on the side of the face. Marie clutched at the neck of the broken bottle only to realize that she had lost the broken bottle, her hand was empty, her mother’s hand struck her again and her forehead hit the heavy post of the bed. She had dropped the bottle in the street. “RUINED, RUINED,” came that bellow again and again until it was one great insensate roar through her mother’s clenched teeth in time with the blows that struck Marie until Marie reeled again and grabbed for the far post of the bed with both hands.

“Stop it, Cecile, stop it, stop it!” Tante Louisa was grabbing at her mother, but her mother lunged forward, and when she lunged forward, Marie was ready this time. That scream was throbbing DON’T YOU TOUCH ME, DON’T YOU HIT ME, DON’T YOU SAY THAT TO ME RUINED RUINED DON’T YOU COME NEAR ME all the while not a syllable of sound was passing her lips, as she swung her hand right against her mother’s face and felt her mother’s teeth cut the flesh. She saw her mother’s head jerked around and up as if it were going to be broken right off her body, DON’T YOU HIT ME, DON’T YOU HIT ME, DON’T YOU SAY THAT TO ME RUINED
RUINED. And her fingers got her mother’s hair, dug right down to the scalp and rushing forward she banged that head into the wall. Again and again she banged it, her mother’s eyes were rolling, and with her right hand she slapped that swollen cheek, that shoulder, DON’T YOU HIT ME, DON’T YOU HIT ME, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU. And when her fingers were rigid, the strength of her mother’s hair tangled around her fingers was not enough and tore loose as her mother slid free down the wall to the floor. She let Tante Louisa have the back of her hand and Tante Louise broke the kerosene lamp with her elbow as she toppled over and crouched down behind the dresser, whimpering, on her knees.