by Rita Woods
“Was there something?” she snapped.
“It is early yet, Madame. Every morning you are up nearly before the sun.” Margot tried to smile. “Let me get you some café, perhaps a sweet biscuit, oui?”
But her mistress was already moving down the hall toward the front door. “No … merci, no. I must go. I must make sure that James is properly laid to rest.”
She smoothed a hair from her face, fixed the lace collar of her mourning suit. Margot watched, uneasy. In black from head to toe, Catherine Hannigan looked like a ghost.
“But…,” began Margot.
The white woman whirled, her wide crinoline skirt whispering against the narrow walls of the hallway. Desperation and sorrow rolled off of her in waves.
“The gentlemen from the shipping yard will be here again today.” Margot spoke fast, trying to hold her mistress there. “They will want to speak with you. What shall I tell them?”
In the early morning light, her mistress’s face seemed to collapse on itself. Catherine Hannigan’s mouth quivered, her eyes blinking rapidly. For a moment it looked as if she might crumple, but she quickly regained her composure, her expression hardening. She fingered the brooch at her throat, the one made from the hair of her dead husband.
“Tell them…” She breathed out a short, irritated sigh. “Tell them I have gone to visit my beloved husband.”
She turned and disappeared through the front door. Margot followed, her heart pounding in her chest. Girard, assisting the mistress into the barouche, caught her eye. Under the porte cochere, the two slaves gazed at each other, a silent eternity passing between them, until the groom gave a nearly imperceptible shrug and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Margot watched him pull out into the street. From somewhere on the other side of Sixth Street, she could hear the milk wagon rattling across the cobblestones.
Fall had come to New Orleans and the air was sweet and cool, but she struggled to catch her breath. She had seen it in Girard’s eyes. Fear. Because he knew, just as she did … that whatever the spirits had whispered in Grandmere’s ear, there were still more bad things coming to this house.
* * *
The white men came. And kept coming. The cotton men. The timber men. The sugar men. All wanting to speak to the mistress. All bringing with them thick sheaves of paper: bills of sale, orders of lading, shipping requests, receipts. Catherine Hannigan refused to meet with any of them. Every morning, just as the sun cleared the trees, she left the house, not returning until late in the afternoon, when she would then take to her bed.
She acted as a woman possessed. She had one purpose now: to see her husband moved from the Lafayette Cemetery to the Rousse vault in the St. Louis Cemetery. Nothing could distract her: not her children, not the increasingly insistent businessmen that came daily to her door.
Every morning Girard drove her to see a different city official, a different priest. And every morning she was met with resistance on every front. Though Catherine Hannigan came from a well-respected French Creole family, she had married on the wrong side of Canal Street. Her family had tolerated James Hannigan because of his wealth, his business connections, but the priests of St. Louis were not so impressed. Worse than his birth, it was well known throughout the city that he was a nonbeliever. His gods were the things he could buy and sell, the silver and paper currency that lined his pockets. Let him stay in Lafayette, it was whispered, it is good enough for les Américaines.
“You have to speak to her, you have to make her listen. Those men that come grow angrier by the day. They curse. Make threats now.”
Margot was in the kitchen house with her sister and grandmother, canning tomatoes and peaches to be put up for the winter. Steam from the boiling pots had plastered her hair against her neck.
Her grandmother made a sound in the back of her throat without turning around. She shook her head as she strained boiled peaches through a cheesecloth.
“She will listen to you,” persisted Margot.
“And what should I tell her, chére? To stop begging at the feet of those priests? That they will never allow the master’s bones to taint their graveyard? That she has two living children that she should be tending to?”
“Oui, Grandmere! That, and more.”
Grandmere grunted as she squeezed thick juice through the cheesecloth. “No, chére. She listens to no one.”
“You should at least try,” said Margot. “You—”
“Assez, chére!” cried Grandmere. “It is a white-folks affair. If the woman wants to drown in widow’s weeds and spend her days howling at the church’s door, it is not our place—”
“There is no money!”
The old woman froze. From the corner of her eye, Margot saw Veronique jerk, the knife she’d been holding to skin tomatoes hovering in midair.
“There is no money,” Margot whispered. She stared down into the swirling water, unable to meet her grandmother’s eyes, her tears mixing with the steamy sweat on her face. She could feel them, her sister and her grandmother, watching her, waiting in shocked silence. Taking a deep breath, she turned. Her grandmother stood at the table, still holding the cheesecloth, golden peach juice dripping down her arm onto the floor.
“They come day after day,” said Margot. “Those men. Asking for Mistress Catherine. At first polite. Asking that I give my condolences to the mistress.”
She stared at her hands.
“Then, when she wouldn’t see them, not so polite. They don’t believe me that she is not at home. They force me to take the papers—even when I say that I cannot. Some of them don’t even go away. They sit for hours, watching the door from their carriages.”
The three Hannigan slaves stood in silence breathing in the heavy, sweet aroma of boiling fruit.
“You read them,” said Veronique—a statement not a question.
Margot nodded.
“Mon Dieu,” murmured Grandmere. She sank into a chair.
Margot nodded. “I had to. Finally. When they kept coming. And the mistress refused to look at them.”
“But…,” said Grandmere. “Master James … the money.”
Veronique was watching her, her eyes wide.
“There is no money, Grandmere. Only debt.” She sighed. “He owes money to everyone. To cattlemen from Texas, sugar and coffee men from the islands. There is a promissory note for nearly twenty thousand dollars silver to a bank in New York. And another to a shipyard in Cuba.”
She stopped, unable to go on.
“But what does it mean?” asked her sister.
Margot turned to look at her sister, so tiny and fragile looking. “It means,” she said softly, “that Mistress Catherine is in trouble whether she wants to hear it or not.” She looked pointedly at her grandmother.
“It means that she may have to sell everything.” She swallowed hard, choking on the next word. “Everyone.”
“Margot!” Their grandmother was on her feet again. She glowered at her granddaughter. “Enough. The mistress would never sell us. Never. We have been a part of this family since her father was a child. She would never.…”
Margot pressed her lips together and said nothing. Her grandmother knew even better than she that nothing was guaranteed for a slave. It was her grandmother’s hope talking.
“And the master promised you girls your freedom at eighteen,” Grandmere pressed on. “For you, that is only two months away.”
“He also always said he was the richest man he knew,” snapped Margot.
The three of them exchanged looks.
“James Hannigan was a rough man, coarsely spoken,” said Grandmere finally. “He may have had no god, but he had his word.”
Margot sighed and closed her eyes. Dark images whirled through her mind. She thought she might throw up. “I pray the saints that you are right, Grandmere. I pray for all of us.”
6
“Mere de Dieu!”
The banging felt as if it had been going on all her life. It reverberated through the house,
working its way into her dreams. Jerked awake, she leaped from her bed. One ankle caught in the covers, and she crashed to the floor, landing hard on one knee. A few feet away, Veronique murmured in her sleep, oblivious to the pounding—and the cursing.
“Merde,” she swore again as she hobbled from her room behind the butler’s pantry and down the hall to the front door. It was barely dawn. Who could possibly be pounding at the door at this hour? And more importantly: how in the name of the Virgin could anyone still be sleeping through all the commotion? It sounded as if wild horses had been let loose beneath the portico. A vision of the angry businessmen that had been haunting the mansion flashed through her mind. What if it was one of those white men Master James owed so much money to? What if they had come at this ridiculous hour hoping to surprise the mistress at home?
She hesitated, her hand hovering over the doorknob. The pounding suddenly became so fierce that the walls themselves shuddered, the doorframe threatening to crash into the foyer. Margot snatched open the door.
“How dare—” She stopped midsentence and gaped. It was not a white man at the door but a white woman: a short, very round, very old white woman.
“Well, it is about time,” the old woman declared. “I had begun to think that everyone in this house was deaf as wood. I’ve been out there banging away since Methusalah was a young boy.”
She pushed her way into the foyer, followed by a servant, a dark-skinned, gaunt-faced slave in a satin waistcoat.
“Margot? It is Margot, isn’t it?” She spoke with a faint French accent.
Margot nodded.
“Get your mistress for me, si vous plait. And I am desperate for your grandmother’s coffee since I am forced out at this obscene hour.”
Margot clutched the bodice of her dressing gown and stared mutely. Ninette Rousse stood in the dim foyer like a bright hummingbird. Her green brocade traveling suit was decades out of date yet looked newly made. The trademark red hair of all the Rousse women had faded to all white but was meticulously curled, two neat spirals bobbing on either side of her round face.
She thrust her bonnet at Margot, who took it wordlessly. Like her suit, it was old-fashioned: broad brimmed, extravagantly decorated with colored ribbon and bright feathers, a design from the twenties. She frowned at Margot’s silence.
“The mistress is still sleeping,” Margot managed finally.
The old woman flicked an impatient hand, brushing the words away. Despite her wealth, Margot noticed she wore only a simple wedding band and a small cameo at her throat, so unlike the layers of pearls and diamonds Catherine Hannigan encrusted herself in.
“Of course she’s still sleeping,” said Ninette Rousse with an irritated chuckle. “My granddaughter has never seen the sunrise a day in her life.” She cocked her head and peered at the slave girl with narrowed eyes. “Except now I hear she has developed a most distressing new preoccupation and manages to rise much earlier.”
Margot glanced uneasily at the stairs leading to Mistress Hannigan’s bedchamber. “I will wake the mistress,” she said. “Grandmere will be pleased to make you her café.”
She was talking to the old woman’s back. Ninette Rousse was already heading for the parlor, leaning only slightly on her cane. Margot glanced at the servant. His face remained expressionless.
She woke her mistress, who stared at her in bewilderment before rising from her bed, then Margot went to wake Grandmere.
“What does it mean, Grandmere?” asked Veronique as the three of them scrambled about the kitchen.
“I don’t know, chére,” muttered Grandmere, pulling ginger cookies from a tin. She shrugged, sighing. “Madame Ninette follows her own mind. Always has. And now, old as she is, it’s most likely she always will.”
She took the hot water from Veronique and poured it over the newly ground coffee beans, following it with a sprinkle of cinnamon; a teaspoon of dark molasses.
“She looks harmless as a pigeon, all soft and round, all that white hair.” She chuckled grimly. “But more than one white man has found out the hard way that it is a mistake to cross her. She is more alligator than pigeon.”
“I don’t like her.” Margot inspected the silver service for spots while she waited for the coffee to brew. “She follows you everywhere with her eyes, always watching. Like she is waiting for something.”
Grandmere sighed and strained the coffee into the carafe. “Guess the old woman has her reasons to be cautious of the world.”
Margot had been arranging the cups on the tray. At her grandmother’s words, she stopped and faced her, frowning. “And what would the matriach of the great Rousse family have to be so cautious of?”
“It was her husband that had the first Far Water, the one across the sea, in Haiti,” said Grandmere. Margot was silent.
“He died there,” the old woman added. “Killed by his own slaves, they say.”
She glanced anxiously at the door. It would not do for the mistress to know that her slaves even knew the story. Slaves killing whites. The unspoken fear of every slave owner. Such talk would result in the harshest penalty.
Margot snorted. She’d heard the stories—nearly every slave in New Orleans had. There had even been a slave revolt here in New Orleans years ago. Short lived and ending in tragedy for the slaves. But still …
“One white master for all the Negro men, women, and children killed,” she said. “How sad.”
Her grandmother drew a sharp breath as Veronique gaped. “Margot!” Grandmere’s eyes were wide with fear.
Margot pressed her lips together as she picked up the tray. What was it to her that the old woman had lost her man? Ancient history, and nothing to do with her. Besides, she had kept her money. She had kept her son, non? And even if she was only a woman, she was free and she was white. Soon she, Margot, would be eighteen, and she would be free. But she would never be white.
“The Yon Nwa once belonged to her.”
Margot jerked, whirling to face her grandmother. Hot coffee sloshed from the spout of the carafe, dampening some of the cookies. Veronique stopped pulling bits of straw from the broom by the stove and stared.
“What?” Margot saw a shadow cross the old woman’s face.
“The Yon Nwa isn’t real, Grandmere,” said Veronique. She laughed uneasily.
The Yon Nwa. The Dark One. The Evil One.
She was a character in the stories the old superstitious slaves told the little ones to get them to behave: Go to sleep or Yon Nwa will come for you in your nightmares. Do not tell lies or Yon Nwa will cut out your tongue and use it to sweeten her poisons.
The oldest ones said she had come from across the water, from Haiti before it was Haiti, that she lived deep in the bayous and conversed with the alligators and panthers, that she could stop the tides from coming in, cause a bird to fall from the sky with a single look. They said no priestess had ever been born more powerful.
“Oui,” said Grandmere. “She is real. Or at least used to be. And old Madame Rousse used to own her.”
“Own the Yon Nwa?” Margot felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
Her grandmother nodded. They stared at each other in silence.
“Is it true what they say about her?” asked Veronique finally. “That at night she turns into a raven and flies about the world listening to your secrets? That she can turn water into molasses?”
The old woman was shaking her head. “She was a great priestess, a babaloo. The spirits ran through her like blood, used her. She could do things, real things. People disappeared around her, just … vanished. She could draw metal to her. Make clocks run backward.”
Margot laughed but she felt something dark lurking in the shadows just out of sight. “You saw this? Yourself? The whites would never have allowed it. They would have stopped her. Slaves have been killed for less.”
Grandmere’s eyes burned into her, and Margot felt a surge of fear. She gripped the tray harder to stop the cups from rattling. “She was no longer a slave by then
. And the whites were terrified of her. She came and went as she pleased. And when she was gone, no one knew where she went. Few had the stomach to look for her. Most were happy to be shed of her.”
She was silent for a long while.
“I saw her once,” said Grandmere.
Margot grunted in surprise. The air in the kitchen seemed thick as soup.
“I saw her,” Grandmere repeated. She stared off into the distance. “I was a young woman then. Master Julian had just bought me. As a wedding gift for his new wife. We were visiting his mama. Madame Ninette had asked me to go to market with her. We weren’t but a few blocks from the house when Madame turns pale as water. She jumps out of that carriage and goes running down a back street quick as a cat. I lit out after her.”
Grandmere stopped and hung her head, remembering.
“Did you find her?” asked Veronique.
“Oui, I found her.” Grandmere sighed. “She was standing behind an old outhouse, hair undone and falling down her back, filth up to her ankles, but it was like she didn’t even notice.”
She shuddered.
“There was a black woman standing there in front of her, tall, broad as a man through the shoulders. Skin the color of ink. She had these big eyes that burned like fire. Madame and this colored woman, they just stare at each other across the alleyway. They don’t speak. They don’t move. They just stare. Like there was no one else in the world.”
She looked up, her eyes moving between the two girls, who stood still as death, listening.
“I grab hold of Madame. Try to pull her away. Because whatever that black woman was, she wasn’t from this world. But Madame Ninette, she doesn’t come. Just stands there like she is carved from stone. And that black woman just look and look. And then she look at me and it was like I split in two. If the whole sky had crashed down on my head then, I couldn’t have run away.”
The old woman was breathless, reliving that long-ago moment. Margot glanced at her sister. Veronique’s face had gone pale, her knuckles white from gripping the table’s edge.