***
“You black hellion!” said Mrs. Whitby, her face the color of a tomato.
Hazel stood over the shattered remains of a soup tureen.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said. She looked down at the floor, the scattered shards.
“Why must you be so careless,” Mrs. Whitby continued.
The platter Hazel had broken was “genuine porcelain from China.” Furthermore, it was a “gift from a dear, dear friend.” The blue and white platter showed gnarled willow trees and women in odd dresses, carrying parasols. It was a pretty scene, and a shame that she had broken it. But it was worth it; Hazel was sure that she wouldn’t be on kitchen duty in the near future. How she hated tending the fire and lifting boiling vats of delicious things that she would never be able to eat. “It was so slippery!” she exclaimed. (Hazel deliberately exaggerated her pronunciation; white people loved that.) She immediately burst into hysterical tears, dropping to her knees and throwing in a couple of “Lordy lordys” for good measure. That stopped the worst of the beating Mrs. Whitby gave her. (And frankly, Mrs. Whitby’s blows were as soft as a baby’s punch.)
The Missus banished her from the kitchen, exiling her to work on clothes, mending them. Needlework was Hazel’s passion. She had gotten quite good at it, too. She could thread needles in her sleep, and sewing was a time when she didn’t have to be on her feet. She could forget that she was the youngest slave in a house run by fairy tale tyrants.
Master Whitby drank too much, and when he was drunk, he was mean. His were cold rages, given to cruel, cutting remarks. She remembered a recent exchange he’d had with Caleb, the house steward. Master Whitby been mucking about the ledger figures, muttering aloud adding or subtracting some mathematical figure. Caleb, who had lived as a freeman for a number of years, had overheard Master Whitby murmur the equation out loud. He provided his master with the correct answer to whatever the sum was.
That was a mistake. Whitby had also been nipping at the brandy. The look he’d given Caleb was chilling.
“You know, boy, I can’t stand an arrogant nigger.” (Caleb was maybe fifteen years older than Whitby.)
“Master Whitby, I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning,” Caleb had said, his face respectfully downcast, his body in a submissive stance.
“You think you’re smarter than me, on account of your education.”
“I do not, sir.”
“You’re a damn liar.”
Caleb wisely didn’t respond.
“I said, you’re a liar, boy.”
“Is there anything else you would like, sir?”
Whitby let Caleb leave, snarling and muttering under his breath.
Mrs. Whitby was a dithering mess of a woman. She was so high- strung that Hazel thought that it would be better if she nipped some of the Master’s brandy. Helena Whitby was always finding invisible dust on furniture, or stains no one else could see. Judith told Hazel that Missus wasn’t fond of the Eastern Shore, with its unpredictable floods and swarms of nits and chiggers that swirled around the marsh. She had come from Boston, and was more comfortable with city living. The relentless damp affected her “delicate constitution.”
The couple’s children, fifteen-year-old Nathaniel and eighteen-year-old Viktor were the rough and tumble sort, always getting into trouble in town for gambling and liquor. Judith, with whom she shared a room, told her not to complain. There were some slave masters who horse-whipped their niggers, and did even worse things to slave women. The Whitbys were relatively benign.
Maybe that was so, but she still hated them the same.
Hazel took a basket of laundry that needed repairs up to the attic. It was cooler than the rest of house, but Hazel didn’t care. She was guaranteed not be disturbed up here among the Whitbys’ castoff possessions. She sat on an old wooden chair, and wrapped herself in dusty, moth-eaten shawl and got to work.
An hour or more passed as she mended an assortment of socks, handkerchiefs, bonnets, petticoats and trousers.
Hazel took a break, stood and stretched. She cracked her knuckles, which were stiff. Her eyes fell upon the oddities stored up here. There were old toys, including a pewter whirligig, an old tin drum, a box of marbles, and a rocking horse covered in dust. There was a pile of yellowed linen: tablecloths and napkins.
A crate was filled with papers, doubtlessly old ledgers that Hazel couldn’t read anyway. A quick glance showed that at least the top paper was a drawing of some kind. She saw color, and odd shapes. She found herself riffling through the crate. She felt something flutter—a butterfly tremble behind her eyes, in her brain.
To her surprise, the papers were pictures. She’d never seen anything like them. All of the pictures were of flowers. Or, maybe, it was the same flower. It was a weird looking thing, this flower, with petals that looked like misshapen bells. This flower, sphere-like, had antennae sticking out of the bell-like ends, giving it an odd, insectile look. But the thing that made Hazel sure that it was a flower was the color of the petals.
She’d only seen that color once. There had been a fancy Christmas party last year. A young woman guest had worn a dress that color, not quite pink, or purple. The young woman herself wasn’t particularly remarkable. She was tanner than most of the ladies at the affair; apparently she was visiting from one of the islands in the Caribbean, where the sun was especially harsh on white skin. Hazel recalled her name: Letitia. Unfortunately, Miss Letty (as they called her) wasn’t very nice to anyone (including the hosts), complaining of the rich food that didn’t agree with her. She had diarrhea that evening (Hazel had had to empty endless chamber pots full of Miss Letty’s excretions). But Hazel always remembered that dress, with its graceful folds of fabric, and especially, that peculiar hue.
As she flipped through the stack of ink drawings—all of which featured the flower in different settings, mostly the scary marsh Judith was always telling her to avoid—time slipped by. The thing was, when she looked at the images—the blue water, the fat fingers of cattail grass, and, of course, that marvelously weird flower—it was like she was actually in the marsh. And the marsh wasn’t scary at all. It was beautiful and serene. Hazel felt the languid water beneath her finger tips, and heard the weird cries of marsh birds in the distance.
It felt real, like a half-remembered dream. She felt that she recognized this tranquil landscape of billowing grasses, murky waters and endless blue skies. And the flower, that glowed on the paper, firefly bright, was deeply familiar.
But, how was that possible? She had never been in the marsh, had been expressly warned against going there.
She gathered up the drawings, and put them in the basket, beneath the linens.
***
Fuchsia shuddered when Hazel saw the drawings. For weeks or months, she’d been dormant inside the girl. Somehow, she had managed to shut out the onslaught of chatter and images that volleyed through the adolescent’s mind. She was only dimly aware of the emotional atmosphere, the rages and frustrations, and the various ever-evolving mood storms. She’d managed to eke out a relatively quiet space, an oasis in Hazel’s sentience. Fuchsia had curled herself up small, like a fetus or a seed. She would only expand during the night, when she could roam the gallery of the girl’s mind.
But when Hazel caught sight of those drawings, she quivered awake.
The flowers captured on paper and India ink jogged her memory. She knew that she had drawn them. She recalled crouching over the paper in candlelight, shaping the petals and then etching the landscape into existence.
For one briefly, glorious moment, she controlled Hazel. It was clumsy and disorienting, but she made her obey her impulse. Fuchsia flooded her with purpose, and transferred her desire.
It was a small victory, one she cherished, as Hazel’s babbling brook of a mind rushed back in.
10: Xavier
“How’s the research going?” Iris asked. She placed a plate of spaghetti slathered with marinara sauce and two golf ball-sized meatballs in front
of him. The garlic bread and salad were already on the table.
“It’s going well enough,” Xavier replied. “I don’t know how that museum stays open, though. Many days, I’m the only one there.”
“I have no idea,” she said. Her face was blank and noncommittal. She sat down with her own laden plate.
So, it’s going to be like that, Xavier thought. He’d given it much consideration, how he would approach this subject. The museum archive had scant information on Tamar Dupré, not even a birthdate. A couple of her pieces hung in the Descendants’ gallery, a small alcove of artists who had been inspired by Hazel’s and Shadrach’s work. One piece, “Dark Muse,” had the head of a young black woman behind a sheet of white tissue paper on which a marsh-bell was drawn. The stem was a green marker of some sort, and the blossom head was an explosion of glue and glitter. The second piece was a layered collage made of marbleized paper and magazine cut-outs. It was entitled “Sanctuary.” Both of these pieces were listless next to the ones in the bin downstairs. When Iris retired for the night, he snuck down to the basement an hour or two afterward and examined the Dupré oeuvre, struck by how powerfully they affected him. The colors popped, and the flowers and faces seemed to live beyond their temporarily frozen moments. He felt he understood the thing that Dupré was trying to express. The flowers and the women somehow fed off each other, in a symbiotic fashion. Marsh biomes were full of such biological relationships, some beneficial and some parasitical. The marsh-muse was somewhere in between that paradigm.
He could imagine Dr. Devine castigating him. “Don’t be so timid!”
An opportunity presented itself after dinner.
“Care for an after-dinner drink?” Iris said. “I used to be a bartender. Back in the day.”
“Sure,” Xavier said, “but don’t make it too strong.”
“Okeydokey,” she said with a playful salute. He watched as she made some concoction out of Bourbon, sugar and bitters.
“What’s the story of the picture in my room?” he asked as she peeled an orange. “The one above my bed?”
“That was a gift from a close friend of mine,” she replied. Her voice was neutral. Was she being evasive? He couldn’t tell.
She handed him a glass filled with amber-brown liquid with a peel of orange floating in it. Xavier eyed the drink suspiciously. He wasn’t a fan of dark liquor. It reminded him of the endless parties he had to go to with his parents; all of the adults’ breath smelled of whiskey and brandy. He preferred sweeter, ‘girly’ drinks with fruit flavors and umbrellas.
“Is that right?” he said. “It looks awfully similar to one of the artists’ work in the museum.”
She sipped her cocktail. Her eyes looked away from him, to somewhere distant. She said, still not looking at him, “Of course, you would notice that. Tamar and I…”
Her voice wavered a bit. He waited a moment. Iris continued, her voice steadying. “Tamar and I lived together. This used to be her house. Well, her father’s house.”
“When did she pass?” he asked with what he hoped was the appropriate amount of softness. He’d been hoping that she was still alive so that he could interview her.
“A year ago. But she moved away five years ago, to her aunt’s house in Oakland. Her aunt was getting up there in years, so she had to take care of her. We’d lived together, here, for a number of years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He paused. “I hope that I’m not imposing too much on you, but since I am studying the Shimmer Artists, it would help me if you tell me a little about her.”
“Of course I’ll help you. I don’t know what sort of information you’re looking for.”
He smiled at her, while internally he had a bit of a nerdgasm. “Why don’t you start with how you met Tamar Dupré.”
“We met at a restaurant in Baltimore at the time, a fancy place called the Orchid Lounge,” Iris began, “one of those real trendy late ’90s places. You know the type. Everything had a sauce that was drizzled oh-so-artfully on square white plates. And the desserts came in towers. Pink and black was the main color scheme. Tamar was the hostess there, and I was the bartender. By the way, how do you like your drink?”
He took a sip. It had a nice, smoky flavor free of the alcohol sting he expected. “It’s good.”
“The Orchid Lounge specialized in frilly, floral drinks. Stuff with rosewater and violet liquors, or drops of grenadine. The signature cocktail was bright pink and had a floating orchid petal on it. Anyway, I’m glad you like the drink. I prefer more old-timey stuff myself.
“I had been working at the Lounge for couple of months when Tamar came on. I don’t believe in love at first sight. But she was so beautiful. She had loosely curled hair, smooth skin. She always wore a pink orchid in her hair. Even after she stopped working at the Lounge…”
Iris’s voice grew distant and she looked away from him. Maybe she saw Tamar Dupré as she had been. Her voice began to slur, slightly.
“We started dating a month or so later. She was the one who convinced me to do readings. She was into all of that mystical stuff, much more than I ever was. She studied horoscopes like she was studying for the bar. And she could guess your sign and be correct. It was eerie, how accurate she was. I asked her, ‘What made you interested in this stuff?’
“She told me that when she was ten or so, she had been a child prophet at a small church in a small town in Carolina. Don’t know if it was South or North. Her daddy was the reverend there. Once or twice a month, she put on a show. She’d fall out on the floor of the church and babble nonsense. ‘It started off as baby talk,’ she told me, ‘just repetitive gurgling sounds. Abba-dabba, gaga-goo-goo sounds. The better I got at it, the more complex the sounds I could make, until it actually sounded like a language.’ After thrashing around, she would become statue still, and announce that she had been visited by an angel. ‘I would pass on their prayers to the angel,’ Tamar said.
“Tamar said she did this because her father told her to. Tamar loved her father and would have done anything for him. It all started when she’d seen a woman catch the Spirit once, and she’d imitated her so well that her daddy thought she had real talent. The first few times she did her speaking-in-tongues act had been an experiment, a way to encourage attendance.
“‘Weren’t you worried that you were pulling the wool over the congregation’s eyes?’ I asked her.
“‘No,’ she said. ‘Daddy told me that people needed to see miracles every now and then. It couldn’t all be about studying the scripture.’ And besides, what harm could it do? Tamar wasn’t the only holy-roller in that congregation. She was just the most popular one.
“But eventually, it got out of hand. ‘Word about me talking to an angel spread around, and soon our tiny church got filled with out-of-towners, hoping for a chance to see me. It was standing room only. I had people telling me, an eleven-year-old, about their sick children, or cheating husbands. Women would weep, men would beg me for grace. It was frightening. I told Daddy that I wanted to stop, but he wouldn’t let me. He told me that I was doing such good work, I had such talent. So I continued.’
“Tamar Dupré became the face of the Supreme Light. The congregation grew, and eventually, they moved to a bigger church. She appeared on a couple of regional television shows. She even showed me a video tape of one of her appearances.”
“What was that like?” Xavier asked. By this time, he had drunk half of the Old-Fashioned, and he could feel the lazy golden coil of intoxication unwinding in him.
“It was insane,” said Iris. “Tamar had an old VHS, so it wasn’t the best quality. Plus, the camera work was strictly amateur. You know, shaky shots and really bad lighting.”
“Blair Witch-style.”
“Yeah. In the video, Tamar goes into one of her trances. Even though I knew she was faking it, it still looked creepy as hell. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she began to utter a whole lot of nonsense, like ‘Shambalalalala.’ But the expression on her face was w
hat sold the act. It was somewhere between terror and joy. I didn’t know if she was screaming in pain or singing for joy. Tamar fell backwards, into her daddy’s arms after a long string of syllables. When she opened her eyes, her face was empty. She looked like a doll, with her blank expression. She just stared and stared at the camera as if she was looking just at you….”
Xavier imagined a pretty little girl, dressed in a stiff lace dress with ribbons in her hair glaring coldly at him.
Iris continued: “Anyway. Tamar told me that her days as a child prophet ended abruptly when an undercover news reporter did an exposé on the Church of Supreme Light, revealing that her daddy never went to seminary and had a criminal history. She told me that she was glad that her child prophet days were over.
“‘There was one moment where I actually felt something enter me, during one of my performances,’ she said. ‘I felt someone else’s thoughts intruding on mine. I saw fragments of things, faces, places that I’d never seen before. Words and images slipped over my own. It felt like one song was playing over another one. Nothing made sense.’”
Iris paused here. Both of their glasses were empty.
She said, “That’s what got her interested in all of that otherworldly stuff. She was frightened, but also, curious.”
“When did she start making art?”
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