“What do you think about Doralise and M’sieu Eugene?” Philomene said in a furtive undertone. They whispered their wash day gossip, even though they were out of earshot of the house.
“It was just a matter of when she moved out of his house,” Suzette whispered back.
“Not his house, her house, Maman,” Philomene said. “Or at least it was. She got him to sign the house over before she ever moved in. She was shrewd.”
“And not such a young woman anymore, either,” said Suzette.
Philomene added another bundle of clothes to the steaming water. “Mémère Elisabeth says Doralise knows how to turn a situation around to suit her.”
“Like a cat, that one lands on her feet,” Suzette said. “She got M’sieu Daurat to get her a divorce, and then she takes up with him in his house, in the open. Him so full of her pretty ways that he signs over his house and land to her, with her already having land of her own.” She snorted, a flat, humorless sound full of wonder.
Philomene glanced up at the look of concentration on her mother’s face as she handled the growing mound of white linen. Suzette always seemed to speak of Eugene Daurat as a distant stranger, without passion or anger.
“Maman,” Philomene began cautiously, “you carry no grudge about Doralise going with M’sieu Eugene?”
“That hurt scabbed over almost as long ago as you have been on this earth. Doralise has my regard, coming out on the other side of a tangle with a white man with something in her own pocket to show for it.”
“You never talk about you and Papa.” What Philomene knew about her father, she had learned from her grandmother. She was surprised when Suzette replied.
“He moved easy from me to Doralise, without ever looking back. I do not care one way or the other about Eugene Daurat except for what he can do for my children. The only thing he gave me was children closer to white. That makes you better than most. Blood counts, but instead you make babies with a brown-skinned boy, when it is on you to carry this family forward now.”
“Why do we always go back to that? My light skin and straight hair and fancy speech does not make me free like Madame Doralise, does not get me out from under Madame Oreline. Every morning, I still wake up a mulatto slave.” Philomene used the word mulatto deliberately, although she hated it. Mules were mixed breeds, too, set apart.
“You better learn how to hold your tongue, gal. Sometimes you seem to forget which of us is the mother and which is the daughter.”
“I am sorry,” Philomene said dutifully, eyes cast downward, hidden beneath her dark lashes. “No disrespect intended, Maman.” It was an old argument that couldn’t be won. “So is Doralise family?” she prodded.
“Oui, she helped when we needed,” Suzette said, and made the sign of the cross. “Doralise did more for you and Gerant than M’sieu Eugene ever did. He may be through with her now, but she is still my marraine. And yours.”
Suzette poked at the laundry with the wooden paddle and plunged it under the sudsy water. “They hounded them apart, because he put her up in his own house. Or her house. You know what I mean. They don’t like to see that around here.”
“Who is ‘they,’ Maman?”
“White, black, colored, free, slave. Nobody likes it. M’sieu Eugene was crazy to think he could just move a colored woman, free or not, into his own house in the daylight, and not pay. And white folks expect land to flow to their own. They cut him out then, all but a few too fond or too old to care. The ones who sheltered him in the beginning are all dead now. Doralise knew from the start, getting him to give her the house before he got worn down. White men always choose the same way in the end.
“You ask about grudges,” Suzette went on. “What good are grudges? Doralise went with the man for her own reasons. She is still like family, although there’s nothing we can do for her. She is the one who is free.”
Philomene listened politely, showing her mother the silent respect age entitled her to. She didn’t agree at all about grudges. It was important to keep an accounting of rights and wrongs, even if there was nothing to be done about them right away. Even if there was nothing that could ever be done.
“Could you have stopped M’sieu Eugene from coming for you?”
“You go too far, girl.”
They worked in silence until Suzette broke it.
“What got you asking about Eugene Daurat and me now?”
“I have a white man looking at me.” Philomene pushed the words out. “He puts his eyes on me like the next step is his hands. He comes at me out of nowhere, throwing his big shadow and blocking the light.”
“Narcisse Fredieu.” Suzette pursed her lips and shook her head. “I see him sniffing around. He say anything direct?”
“He said Clement is not good enough for me. That he could help me do better. He said he talked to M’sieu Ferrier about calling off the marriage ceremony.”
“I heard them last night while serving. M’sieu is not going to let Narcisse Fredieu or anyone else come on his place and tell him what to do. You and Clement are as good as married.”
“It has to be more than ‘as good as.’ What if that man comes to me in the night? He has it in his mind.”
“You stay out of his way as much as you can.”
“But what if he forces himself on me? What can I do?”
Suzette averted her eyes from her daughter, and when she finally spoke she was brusque. “You ask the wrong person.”
12
P hilomene heard the whippoorwill call as she patched a frayed shirt collar of Ferrier’s in the farmhouse.
She threw aside her mending and hurried into the children’s room. Little Josephina was heavy in sleep. Oreline’s daughter had settled some in her breathing. The thimbleful of brandy was having an effect. Philomene smoothed the girl’s sandy hair from her face, rearranged the blanket, and gave her one last glance. The whippoorwill call sounded again.
She raced to the back door of the farmhouse and saw Clement, tousled and sweaty, waiting for her just beyond the clearing. His shirt had mud splotches down one sleeve, and one leg of his homespun trousers was shorter than the other, but he grinned widely and raised a palm skyward in salute. The upturned palm was an old signal between the two of them from Rosedew. Then it had meant “I’m here, you’re there. But we’ll manage to be together later.” Philomene raised her palm in response and broke into a run to him. She hurled herself into his arms.
“I cannot stay away from the house for long,” she said, breathless, looking back anxiously toward the farmhouse. “The girl has a cold and is sleeping. I gave her a little brandy.”
“I only have a short while myself. I took a detour in making this delivery to M’sieu Narcisse. I took a chance you’d be here.”
“If the little one hadn’t gotten sick, that is where I would be now, along with the rest, visiting on M’sieu Narcisse’s place,” Philomene said, leaning into Clement. “Maman went, too. They will not return until after supper.”
“I had to see you,” Clement said. His arms around her waist, he lifted her until her feet no longer touched the ground.
“Put me down.” Philomene backed away from Clement, laughing. “You’re wet,” she said, looking up from his bare feet to the waterline at the knee on his trousers. The force of a frisson, a small chill, passed through her, and she shivered. “That leaky boat doesn’t belong on the river.”
“I’m good with the boat,” Clement boasted. “As long as I have bailing gourds, I can outsmart the river every time. M’sieu Tessier doesn’t trust anyone else with that one, she’s tricky. It saves two hours of walking getting to you.”
Philomene frowned.
“The river was in a playful mood today,” Clement said. “I scooped more than I rowed.” He caught Philomene around the middle, pulling her close enough to catch the damp smell of the boat’s cypress planks on him. “What mood are you in?”
Philomene couldn’t prevent herself from smiling. “Clement, is that all you think about?�
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“Close to it,” he answered with a slow, lazy smile. “Out in the field when the sun burns, I think of you. In the stable over the red hot anvil, I think of you. At night on my pallet, I think of you. You and the baby. The rest doesn’t mean anything.”
“I saw you in a glimpsing last night,” Philomene blurted out, “and it made me afraid. The glimpsings do not come as strong as they used to, they are more like feelings than pictures now, but I saw your body cold and still, near a river.”
Clement let Philomene go and considered her for a long time. He made a visible effort to shake the mood. “Death by drowning is a better death than most, but I don’t plan on going yet,” he said simply as he stepped forward and held her again. “At least it won’t be smallpox or cholera or yellow jack, or being beaten or starved to death.”
“Should I have told you?” Philomene asked.
“Yes. You can always tell me anything,” Clement said. “Meanwhile, we’re here together. Let’s go to the shed. I have something to show you.”
He carried a stack of skins by the bundler’s knot in one hand, and with the other he pulled Philomene close to him by the waist as they walked to the toolshed. It was a small shed, barely big enough to hold the plow, hoes, pickaxes, and other tools for the farm, but it had a door, and it was out of the weather.
Clement cleared a narrow space on the ground, unknotted the bundle, spread one of the bearskins skin side down on the cold, packed ground, and brought another bearskin and put it skin side up on top of the other.
“Get in between. I want you to feel these skins,” he said. “Nothing is too good for you.”
“Clement, what if they find out you used the skins?”
“They’ll never know. Take off your dress first.”
Philomene stepped out of her shift and crawled into the shelter he had made for them, and Clement shed his wet pantaloons and shirt and followed. Under the bearskins he cupped his hands around her bottom and began to move his hands slowly. “What do you have for your brown-skinned boy?”
“Please do not make fun of Maman, Clement. I should never have told you she called you that. She’s come around,” Philomene said. “Listen. Maman went to Madame Oreline about you.”
She imitated her mother’s voice, as if she were talking to Oreline. “‘M’sieu Ferrier is looking mighty tired these days, working out in the field like an animal, putting his hands in the dirt. And we should not be doing all this fieldwork, either. None of us was raised this way. M’sieu Ferrier should have some strong boy out helping him, and Clement is just the one. You should get M’sieu Ferrier to buy him in.’”
“What did Madame Oreline say?”
“That M’sieu Ferrier already went to your M’sieu. M’sieu Tessier does not care to sell.”
“I thought your mother disapproved of your brown-skinned boy,” Clement said, grinning.
“Now what she says is, ‘The brown-skinned boy is family.’” Philomene guided his hand to her stomach. “This changed her mind.”
Clement left his hand there and massaged her stomach with his fingertips.
“You take too many chances,” Philomene said. “What if they miss you, or find out you used the skins?”
“They won’t. I made good time on the river coming, I have my pass. I’ll head over to M’sieu Narcisse directly and make the delivery, and get back to M’sieu Tessier’s without him worrying.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Too much talking,” Clement said, and moved his hand from where he stroked the high ridge of her rounding belly lower. Philomene smoothed out under his touch.
“You make me feel soft as this fur,” she said, sighing. “Like if I lean, you can hold the weight.”
The strong smell of the tanning chemicals still clung to the skin side, but the softness of the fur was intoxicating.
“In three days we will be married,” Philomene said.
“They put a marrying suit together for me, mostly from M’sieu Tessier’s things,” Clement said. “I’ll do you proud.”
“Married by a priest,” Philomene said drowsily.
“Maybe M’sieu Eugene got the priest to come, but that doesn’t make it any more legal.”
“It is as legal as we can get it,” Philomene said, her body starting to go tight.
“We can’t afford to waste our time arguing. These bearskins need to get where they’re going.” Clement used his foot to stroke Philomene’s leg and gathered the bearskin closer around them. “And we need to get where we’re going.”
He traced his finger lightly down her cheek, stopping at the corner of her mouth.
“Open the gate, girl.”
Philomene relaxed again and smiled wide, revealing the evenly spaced gap between her two front teeth.
“That’s my gap,” Clement said, and he kissed her.
“Those are my lips,” Philomene said, touching his mouth.
He unknotted her tignon, threw it to the side, and used his slim fingers to fluff her long, shiny chestnut hair. “Like cornsilk,” he said, “but thick and wavy deep. I could get lost in it.”
She lifted first her lips and then her body to meet his.
* * *
The Saturday afternoon of the wedding, Philomene delivered herself over to Oreline while Suzette kept at the baking. For two days Philomene and her mother had been preparing for the party. Philomene sat stock still in Oreline’s bedroom as the mistress herself stood behind, patiently arranging her hair in complicated basket plaits. The room that Philomene swept, scrubbed down, and aired out every day seemed unfamiliar from the chair where she sat as the center of attention.
Philomene could hear the steady murmur of voices from the front of the house. The wagons had been arriving since early afternoon.
“There,” Oreline said, satisfied. “You’re ready. Stand up. Let me look at you.”
Philomene stood uncertainly. Suzette had taken apart an old white muslin dress of Oreline’s and made it over, and the hem floated just above the floor over one of Oreline’s double steel hoops. The dress had been left a little loose to accommodate her expanding waistline, and the hoop felt awkward, but Philomene was striking.
Suzette bustled in at that moment, flush, carrying a tangle of wildflowers.
“Oh, Philomene,” she said, circling her daughter slowly. “Is that you? You look beautiful, like a lady.”
“Merci, Maman.”
Suzette turned to Oreline. “They’re all out there waiting, Madame. The priest, M’sieu Eugene, M’sieu Narcisse,” she said. “M’sieu Ferrier sent me in to say it’s time to tend your guests.”
Suzette looked down at the flowers she had brought. “These are for Philomene’s hair. I could place them.”
“Good,” said Oreline. “I am finished with the rest. You do look beautiful, Philomene.”
“Merci, Madame,” Philomene said.
“Give me a little time to greet the guests, then come out,” Oreline said, and left the room to join the gathering.
Suzette sat Philomene at the dressing table again and began to weave the pale lavender buds and green stems through the thick mass of the basket plaits. Philomene would have been indifferent to her hair were it not for the fact that when people stared at it, they seemed to soften toward her, and Clement seemed mesmerized by it. Philomene’s hair was unlike the tight, deep knots and naps of Elisabeth’s hair, unlike the springy coils of Suzette’s, unlike Gerasíme’s snaky twists. It was always a challenge to make it behave, and there was always too much of it pushing onto her face and down her back, but Oreline had tamed it today.
They looked into the mirror, daughter and mother. Both were small boned, but where Suzette’s face was round and pleasant, the color of cocoa, Philomene’s face was angular, her skin smooth and unblemished, even at fourteen. The eager inquisitiveness that had marked Suzette as a child had been pushed deep inside, far away from view, but a glimmer remained. Philomene was the color of buttermilk biscuits, and the high chee
kbones that came down from her grandfather Gerasíme seemed caught in a flight to meet the outer corners of her eyes, giving her entire face a confident and determined air.
“Did they all come, Maman?” Philomene asked. “Mémère Elisabeth? Gerant?”
“They all wait on you out there, to see you marry this brown-skinned boy.”
“Clement, Maman.”
“Clement,” Suzette repeated. “There will be little sleeping tonight. Everyone got overnight permissions. M’sieu just got back from fetching Gerasíme to play fiddle at the party.”
“I wish Aunt Palmire could have been here,” Philomene said.
“Yes, I miss her, too.” Suzette fussed with the flower arrangement in Philomene’s hair. “It would have done her good to see you standing in front of a priest with your man.”
“It was meant to be,” Philomene said.
Suzette took a step back. “This is a happy day, a day to show off that pretty face. Smile, Philomene.”
Philomene obeyed her mother, at first tentatively, but when she caught sight of Suzette’s full-to-bursting grin in the mirror, her own smile widened.
“You’re mine all right,” Suzette said, staring at the telltale gap between their front teeth that made it easy to spot the connection between these generations of women. “But you have it in you to do better, for yourself and the child you carry.”
The room became still.
“Come. It is time,” Suzette said, and she gave Philomene a small push out the door and down the hallway.
Philomene took a deep breath and stepped into the Ferriers’ dining room. Her thick corded hairdo made her feel as if she needed to hold her neck stiffly just to keep in balance. About twenty people were collected in the room, white toward the front and colored farther back, and they all stopped talking when she came in. She saw Eugene and Doralise, Narcisse next to Ferrier, Elisabeth and Gerasíme, and Clement’s mother.
Then Philomene saw Clement near the priest from St. Augustine. Clement had on a pair of borrowed black trousers, too long in the leg and patched at the knee. His coat was a heavy formal one of thick worsted wool, with two long tails that fanned out behind him. It could not have been a better fit, but it was more suitable for the dead of winter weather than summer. The stiff white waistcoat and white cravat made him look the man of distinction. Clement clasped his two hands tightly together in front of him, fingers interlocked, as if he didn’t know what else to do with them. Just as Philomene entered the room, he brought up his arm and brushed away the sweat running from his forehead with his sleeve, never once unclasping his hands. He had on a pair of oversize gardening gloves, bleached a blinding white. Philomene had to stop herself from giggling. It was her glimpsing come to life. The white hands, the split up the back.
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