Cane River

by Lalita Tademy

  Most days the full burden of the store fell to her. She and Joseph had built up their merchandise until it included almost anything a family needed that they couldn’t make or grow for themselves. They kept a regular stock of staples, brown and white sugar, flour, salt, coffee beans, vanilla beans, cream of tartar, and the like, but they often laid in raisins on the stems, figs, and dates. The local women chose from the bolt of gingham and two of calico for making their shirts and dresses, cottonade for bedsheets, and lowells for cotton sacks. The assortment of ribbons, buttons, thread, needles, scissors, sunhats, stockings, and shoes was small, but so was the town. They even carried a few pots and skillets, smoothing irons, stovepipes, ax handles, and axle grease. The section nearest the front of the store was for medicine, castor oil, calomel, quinine, liniment, snake oil, iodine, and laudanum. Peppermint and licorice in sticks or blocks were favorites, but by far the biggest sellers were the whiskey and chewing tobacco Emily kept behind the counter. Most of her day was spent in the store, checking the shelves, stocking and restocking, waiting on customers, writing down deliveries and purchases in the big book. Cash was preferred, but usually they tallied their neighbors’ purchases as credit until the crops were in and sold and they could afford to settle up their bills.

  For months after little T.O. was born, the store suffered. There were many days Emily couldn’t break free to cross the river, and if Joseph was gone, the store stayed closed, supplies sometimes disappearing from the dock. When Joseph handled the store alone, his memory never failed about who bought what, but Emily often found that he had not written down the transaction, and she would have to double back and reconstruct the lost day. Now that Angelite and T.O. were older, she could leave them with the Grands or bring them with her during the day, but Emily still dreaded the deliveries if she was alone. She could barely straighten up after rolling the barrels. Her hundred pounds were no match for a barrel filled with flour.

  But she didn’t complain.

  * * *

  “We need to talk about Emily.”

  Philomene spoke directly to Joseph, her face arranged into its most severe expression, and although she never raised her voice, everyone in the dining room grew silent.

  “Go on, then, madame,” Joseph said. He stroked the stiff hairs of his mustache between forefinger and thumb in an absent gesture Emily knew well. The Sunday dinner had been heavy, and he had overeaten.

  “You’re going to suck the life right out of her, loading her up with babies and still expecting her to run the store,” Philomene said.

  Emily was horrified. She tried to catch Joseph’s eye to let him know she had nothing to do with her mother’s outrageous behavior, but Joseph and Philomene were locked in to one another as if they were the only ones in the room.

  “Emily would follow you to the bottom of the swamp if you led her there,” Philomene went on. “Since she doesn’t have good sense when it comes to pleasing you, you need to be the one to look after her, better than you’ve been doing. Are you paying any attention to how run-down she’s gotten, or are your eyes only for that store of yours?”

  Emily reached out for Joseph’s arm to give him a reassuring touch, but he had already pushed away from the table, storming out of the house without a word. She ran after him into the full heat of the day. Emily caught up to him as he put boot to stirrup and swung up onto his horse. The bright sun blazed yellow orange from behind his head, and she had to use her hand to shield her eyes as she looked up at him.

  “You know how my mother is, Joseph,” Emily said quickly. “I’m just tired with the children, that’s all. I want to help out.”

  He scanned her face, and she knew he took notice then of what they had all been telling her, the dark circles that had become a permanent fixture under her eyes, the edgy exhaustion in her voice.

  “Don’t come to the store tomorrow,” Joseph said. “I can work something else out.”

  “Are you coming back?” Emily’s voice was small.

  “She’s right, ’Tite,” Joseph said. “Don’t tell her I said so. We have to do this another way.” His voice softened. “Of course I’ll be back.”

  * * *

  Joseph began to clear a spot on his land to build a new house a mile inland from Billes Landing on Red River. Within a few weeks he had raised the barn and moved into it until the house could be finished. Emily prepared his old room behind the store for the arrival of his relatives from New Orleans.

  “These are my people, ’Tite, to help you in the store,” Joseph said. Emily knew that for them to refuse him would have been difficult; they still owed him their passage money from France.

  Within six weeks of Philomene’s scolding, the cousins arrived in Aloha, five of them in all. Joseph’s young cousin and her husband, both in their twenties, slightly older than Emily, with their three small children.

  The arrangement did not go well from the start. Joseph set his cousin and her husband to work alongside Emily, and even so there were tasks that went undone every day. The cousins complained bitterly about the isolation, the tightness of their living quarters, Joseph’s stinginess, the heat, the inadequate help, Joseph’s absences, and the monotony of country life. Their children were constantly underfoot. It was true that Emily no longer had to cross the river so early to open up the store, but if Joseph was not present, the cousins would follow neither her suggestions nor her requests.

  Over the weeks, and then months, an uneasy truce developed between Emily and the cousins, a truce that held only because they treated her as if she were their servant, no different from Joseph’s other hired hands. Even the little cousins came to the practice.

  “My mama says fetch me lunch,” the youngest girl would say, and not wanting to upset the order of things, Emily did, but she stopped bringing her own children to the other side of the river each day. T.O. was too young to know the difference, but she didn’t want Angelite to see how they treated her. As time went on, Emily began to make excuses for why she couldn’t go in to the store at all. She squeezed an extra day or two to stay away if the baby fell sick, or the water had risen too high to cross safely, or Elisabeth needed tending. Anything to avoid the cousins.

  When the house on Billes Landing was finally finished, the cousins claimed two of the rooms in the new house as their own, relieved and pleased to be able to spread out. For a time everyone was in a better humor, and even the tension in the store eased.

  “At least we will be able to entertain again,” said the cousin.

  * * *

  Joseph came hat in hand to Philomene’s farm. Late rains had resulted in extraordinary fruit harvests, and the kitchen reeked with the rummy odor of the overripe mayhews the women boiled down into preserves for the season. Joseph paid his respects to all of them, Elisabeth, Suzette, Bet, Emily, but it was to Philomene that he eventually turned.

  “This concerns Emily.” Joseph used the same serious voice as when he conducted his business.

  Emily stayed seated at the kitchen table with her head down, as if she were studying the glass jar that threatened to shake out of her trembling grip.

  “Madame Philomene, you suggested that I was not taking proper care of Emily,” Joseph said. His thin lips were taut, and his deep-set eyes had turned dark. It was a look Emily recognized, a look that said he had thought the matter through, had made a decision, and would not be denied. “I am requesting that she and the children move with me into my new house on Billes Landing. There are no other claims for my affection, and as you know, I have the means.”

  “There will be trouble,” Philomene said without hesitation. “It is dangerous for Emily to be caught in the middle.”

  “I have friends in Aloha,” Joseph said. “Most owe their livelihood to me, one way or the other. We’ll see to it she is all right. Monsieur Narcisse will help.”

  “The girl is better off here, with you gone so often,” Philomene said.

  “They belong with me,” Joseph said.

  Emily stole a loo
k at Joseph’s face in the long, quiet moment that passed. The uncompromising set of his jaw matched her mother’s own.

  Philomene appraised Joseph carefully before she spoke again. “She was raised quality. Emily can go with you if that’s her mind, but we’ll be watching.” As if an afterthought, she said, “There is something to be said for a father who wants to take care of his woman and his children.”

  The tautness in the muscles of Joseph’s face relaxed. “That’s done, then,” he said. “There is one thing more. If you could bring yourself to part with the oil painting, I would like to hang it in the new house. I propose an exchange. The painting for the new potbellied stove I just got into the store.”

  Philomene leaned back into her chair and took a moment to consider. “Her papa gave that painting to Emily. It’s hers to take where she pleases. Looks like she settled on you, and you on her. No one is going to make it easy for the two of you, but it won’t be me blocking your path, as long as you treat her decent.”

  “I will,” Joseph said.

  Philomene checked the consistency of the simmering fruit in the kettle. “We need to get back to the canning.”

  “I’d like Emily to go for a walk with me,” Joseph said to Philomene, and she nodded.

  Emily followed Joseph outside, and as they walked he put his arm around her waist. “Now you’re free to move to Billes Landing,” he said.

  Emily hesitated. “Your cousins won’t like it, Joseph.”

  “The cousins live in my house, not the other way around. That’s my responsibility to handle them. I want you there, ’Tite. The house will be ours. We’ll put your picture in the front room over the fireplace for everyone to see. We have nothing to hide.”

  “My people are all here.”

  “And they’ll still be right across the river. You can come back to visit anytime.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “A woman’s place is with her man,” Joseph said.

  Emily agreed then, quietly.

  * * *

  “Emily and the children will be moving into the house in a few weeks,” Joseph announced to his cousin and her husband as they closed up the store the next evening.

  The cousin’s face grew flushed, shock mixing with outrage. “How could you think to bring such shame into your house?” Her mouth twisted to show her contempt. “It is pure evil.”

  “You betray your race, cousin,” her husband said. “She has put some spell on you. We hear of such things with those people down in New Orleans.”

  Unblinking, barely breathing, Emily waited for Joseph’s response.

  “Enough,” Joseph said, holding up his hand, his thin nostrils flaring. “You will not talk to me like that in my own house. It’s natural for me to want Emily and the children near, and that is the way of it. There need be no further discussion.”

  From that moment the cousins whispered among themselves and did as little as they could in the store. Debt or no debt, they packed themselves up and moved back to New Orleans within the week rather than continue to live side by side with evil.

  * * *

  Joseph arrived early to Philomene’s farm and loaded up the wagon with Emily’s belongings for the long overland trip to the other side of the river. Philomene came outside to say her good-byes, fussing over the children in the wagon.

  “Replant the rosebush as soon as you get to the other side,” she said to Emily, checking the tightly drawn rope that anchored the burlapped rootball of one of her best bushes to the wagon. “Dig the hole wide and deep. It will take some care and patience, but you can get it blooming again.”

  “Yes, Maman.” Emily felt Joseph’s unease beside her on the buckboard, as if something remained undone, when normally he would be anxious to get under way.

  Joseph coughed into his hand, and Emily held her breath. “I do have eyes for other than the store,” he announced to Philomene. “I understand my responsibilities, and intend to protect Emily. Angelite and T.O. are dearer to me than my own life.”

  Philomene flicked the back of her hand twice, as if shooing chickens away, but she nodded in acknowledgment. Joseph tipped his hat to Philomene, then snapped the reins for the horse.

  * * *

  Joseph accumulated more land beyond the Natchitoches Parish borders. Common wisdom held that the land was too thick with trees, the farming inferior to that of Cane River’s rich bottomlands. Emily did not know exactly where the money came from, but he bought a parcel here and a foreclosure there, always in cash. First sixty or one hundred acres at a time, and then two to three hundred. Joseph managed to follow behind other people’s financial failures and profit. He worked hard and spent little, and he expected Emily to do the same, and for many years they lived a life they both understood. They hired a man to help with the store even though it was an added expense. Without the cousins underfoot, the work itself lost its sourness, and except for Joseph’s absences, Emily considered herself happy.

  With the cousins gone and Joseph so often away, Emily had a house bigger than her mother’s almost to herself. It felt empty in comparison, and late at night after the children were asleep, she roamed the rooms in awe of the stillness she would find in unoccupied corners. Her brothers got in the habit of riding out to check on her often, especially when Joseph was out of town, and she packed up the children and went back across the river every Sunday for the dinners at Philomene’s, appreciating the adult contact.

  When she couldn’t sleep, in the pause when demands were gathering their strength for tomorrow’s chores, when fugitive thought threatened to rob her of her sense of herself, Emily would slip out of bed, light the lamp, and go to the front room. She considered the girl in the painting over the fireplace, remembering the confidence that allowed her to gaze not back or down or up, but straight ahead to a future she believed was waiting for her. Joseph had picked out the spot for the painting and hung it himself, in a place of honor. It reminded her that this was her house, too.

  * * *

  Bet stepped tentatively through the entrance of Billes General Store, holding the door ajar. “You sounded a little melancholy last Sunday, and Mère Philomene thought you might want some company.” She nodded toward Isaac in the wagon outside, the reins still loose in his hands. “She sent Isaac to tend to patching the chicken coop while Joseph is away.”

  Bet’s brown-skinned face glistened in the heat, drops of sweat sliding down her cheek from hairline to chin, and she took off her small brown hat to fan herself with it. Her hands were rough and chapped from taking in other people’s washing. Emily was glad of company, even Bet’s.

  Emily made a quick decision. “It’s such a slow morning, and so hot, I think I’ll close up the store for a few hours. We can go up to the house. It will be a pleasure to visit.” She gathered up Angelite and T.O. and locked the door behind her, and Isaac drove them the short trip to the house on Billes Landing.

  After gathering his tools from the wagon, Isaac set off in the direction of the chicken coop, Angelite and T.O. trailing behind to watch. Bet and Emily were left alone.

  Emily made small talk, leading Bet through the front room and back to the kitchen. “You’ve never been to the house before.”

  “You never asked me to come,” said Bet, quiet as always.

  Emily put the water on to boil and ground beans for coffee. Although they sat in the kitchen, she passed over the everyday mugs and brought out the good cups to serve the coffee, pleased to be able to show them off.

  Bet looked around the room, at everything in its proper place. “You have so many nice things.” She sipped the chicory-laced coffee. “These are pretty little cups. So dainty.”

  “Monsieur Narcisse gave us the entire coffee service,” Emily said.

  Bet paused midsip and deliberately replaced the cup in the raised hollow of the saucer.

  “I am sorry,” said Emily. “I know you have no fondness for Monsieur Narcisse.”

  Bet’s soft voice was firm. “He stole both my mother and
my father from me. Maybe he sent you to New Orleans to learn fancy ways and fancy talk, but he kept me from my own people.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say. Bet stared down at her hands, as if she were surprised at her own words. “How is Maman?” Emily said at last.

  Bet relaxed a little. “Mère Philomene still misses you under her roof, after all this time and you coming every Sunday.”

  Curiosity overcame Emily’s good manners. “Why don’t you call her Maman?” she asked.

  Bet looked ill at ease. “I came so late to the family, Mère Philomene seems to suit us better.”

  There was an awkward silence. Emily rose and arranged tea cakes on a plate, setting them in the center of the table between them, then sat back down. “I was jealous of you, in the beginning,” Emily said.

  “I know.”

  Another moment of stillness passed.

  “Mère Suzette would be pleased to see your roses bloom scarlet here,” Bet said. “Bad luck follows yellow roses, but red brings good.”

  Emily laughed. “Who told you that?”

  Bet did not join in the laughter. “Mère Suzette believes in the color of roses, the same way Mère Philomene’s lucky fruit is persimmon and Mère Elisabeth buries a hair from a horse’s tail beside the front door each April to protect the house and honor Gerasíme.”