Cane River

by Lalita Tademy

  “They never told me those things,” said Emily.

  “They don’t tell me,” said Bet. “I listen hard.”

  Emily became serious again. “Sometimes, the way you sit with Maman and the Grands, sewing or shelling, plucking or picking, or just quiet, I envy you. I need to move, dance, ride my horse, not sit still. You seem more able to be like one of them.”

  Bet thought this over, took her time. “We understand one another, Mère Philomene, the Grands, and me.”

  “I grew up a little scared of the Grands,” Emily confided. “Especially Mémère Elisabeth.”

  “But they spoiled you, all of them, gave you everything they could.”

  “You think I don’t know what people say, how they talk about me?” Emily said. “The quadroon, the uppity one, the temptress, the one who doesn’t know her place.”

  “Not your family.”

  “No, not the family.”

  Bet picked up her coffee cup again, shyness creeping back into the features of her face. “You must be lonely when Joseph is gone. I could no more bear Isaac going off and leaving me alone for weeks at a time than he would think to pick up and go. We like things steady, him and me.”

  Emily searched for signs that Bet was trying to mock her but found none. Her brother Eugene suddenly came to her mind. He had left Cane River for Texas the previous spring, determined to pass for white, maybe lost to them forever. She thought of being separated from her people by the river, and of Joseph’s frequent absences.

  “I do get lonely,” she admitted. “Joseph used to be more interested in the store, but now I am the one to keep it going, managing this big house, raising the children. People expect too much, and I am by myself.”

  “By yourself?” Bet drew her cheeks in tight as if to stop herself from speaking, then released the air in a measured breath. “You grew up knowing a mother and a father. You can read and write. A man with influence takes care of you. One word from you, and they drop everything on the other side of the river and come running, send all of us running. How can you call that by yourself?” The faint edge in Bet’s voice dissolved. “I used to wake up every day wondering who my mother and father were, whether they were sold or dead, looking into every face to find a likeness.”

  “I am sorry, Bet.”

  “No. Don’t be sorry. Mère Philomene searching me out was the best thing that ever happened to me. That and Isaac. There is no place I’d rather be than with them.”

  “It is just that none of this is mine. Not the store, not the house. If anything happened to Joseph, I would have nothing.”

  “We have the Grands and Mère Philomene,” Bet said. “Look to our mother. She says there are always choices. If you want something enough, you keep working toward it.” She looked around the kitchen again, and Emily saw her take in the polished table, the store-bought stove, the indoor plants placed perfectly in their bright ceramic pots. “There’s no telling what important things Monsieur Joseph would be willing to do for you if you asked.”

  Emily stopped to reconsider her half-sister. Maybe Bet had fire after all.

  34

  O n the front gallery of Philomene’s house, Elisabeth’s great-great-grandchildren whipped small piles of cotton with peach tree switches.

  “You’ve beat it enough,” she said hoarsely. “Bring it here. It should be plenty fluffy by now.”

  Angelite and T.O. threw down their sticks and scooped up the cotton, carefully carrying the fleecy mounds over to where Elisabeth supervised the others in the making of the patchwork quilt. The circle of women took the cotton and pressed it between layers of material, stitching the insulation inside.

  Working the quilt gave Elisabeth time to think in the way she liked best. She could let the thoughts take shape and reveal themselves in between the steady progress of the stitches, even as she brought forward the creation of a new thing. She would gather together slighted and separate scraps, forgotten leavings from some other project, and piece them together, using tricks of eye or material or craft to form a handsome design that held at the center and became more than any of the fragments. Her fingers could barely hold a needle, and her eyes were no longer keen with patterns, but the young ones asked her advice every so often, and most times they seemed sincere.

  She was almost through with this life, having put in over eighty-five years, weathering all the changes that came her way, good and bad. Tossed about from here to there, and still she kept going, waiting for the spider to come home. There had been two things that sustained her along the way and made the letting go bearable. One was her God, and the other was her family.

  Five years before, her family pride had blossomed to bursting. Getting up after her afternoon nap, she’d known by the hush to the house that everyone else was gone, taken with chores or off playing. She had the house to herself. She had just set the coffee to drip when the dogs set up a racket outside. Even with her dimmed eyesight she could make out the caller coming up the front steps as one of the Prudhomme boys, grown up. She knew their family well, had done some washing and ironing for them years back. The children had all come out dark haired and oversize, awkward but powerful, built for the backcountry. They all had that same ruddy look to their face, boys and girls alike.

  She shouted at the dogs to cut the racket and answered the knock on the door. He introduced himself, backwoods courteous, and asked her to come out to answer a few questions, but at that time of day it was cooler in the house than in the oven of the Louisiana summer. Elisabeth knew that she had to get off her feet soon before they swelled up and invited him inside instead, offering him fresh-brewed coffee. She put a few tea cakes on one of their good plates and brought the coffee out in the cups with the bird patterns, all the while studying the man sitting in her granddaughter’s front room. He seemed a pleasant enough white man, unlikely to do immediate harm, although with his red leather-bound recording book and pen, he came ready to poke into their business as though it belonged to him and he had a right to it. For the government, he said, for the 1880 census.

  She could tell he was playing it over in his mind whether she could be trusted to recall each member of the household. That was foolishness. Of all of the ways that time had reduced her, remembering family and who belonged where and when and to whom remained firm.

  She was living with her granddaughter Philomene then, same as now, the girl whose visions dried up in her when she forced them to come true. Back then they all lived on Philomene’s land. Her daughter Suzette, Bet and her family, her son Yellow John and Doralise, Emily and baby Angelite. That was before T.O. was born, before Emily moved off to the other side of the river to live with the Frenchman, and when they still took Sunday dinner together every week, no excuses. They were more scattered now.

  The first thing the census man wanted to know was who headed the household. That was easy. It was Philomene. Elisabeth kept repeating “Philomene Daurat” slow and clear for the census man, because he was an English speaker. He kept asking her to say the name until they both got tired. She told him she couldn’t help him out on the spelling of the names, he had to puzzle that out for himself. They didn’t get to reading, writing, and spelling until Emily.

  The census man finally scratched something down in the book. Elisabeth wasn’t sure whether he got it right or not, but they went on. He didn’t have so much trouble with any of the other names that came after, or he didn’t want to take so much time on them, she didn’t know which. He asked about each person who lived in the house and what their relationship was to Philomene. He didn’t seem interested in what they were good at doing or what kind of people they were, so she didn’t offer. He only wanted to know what they did to make ends meet, farmer, laborer, or housekeeper, like that. She gave names and ages, as best she knew. He even asked where each was born and where their mothers and fathers were born. When he asked about marital status, married or single, that really wasn’t any of his business. If the father of the children was living, she said married,
and if he was dead, she said widowed. That satisfied him, and it satisfied her.

  She answered all the questions the census man asked, and he recorded her answers, and then he got up, thanked her for the tea cakes, and went away down the road to the next house. She watched the dogs sniff after him as they followed him partway down the road, more forgiving because he was on his way off their property.

  Elisabeth did some hard thinking for the rest of the afternoon, into the time when the house filled again for three o’clock coffee and throughout preparation for supper. She deliberated on the census taker’s visit into the next day, but still the troublesome notion refused to declare itself. It was not until the full family had gathered in all of its breadth that Sunday that she finally could see what had been in front of her all along.

  Five generations under one roof, all women, in an unbroken sequence, starting with her and descending down to Angelite. From coffee, to cocoa, to cream, to milk, to lily. A conscious and not-so-conscious bleaching of the line.

  Each held a place of honor in her mind, no one any better than the other or less valuable in the inevitable formation of the chain. Where would any of them be without Philomene’s determined and clever ways, her clarity, her austerity, her singular focus? Where would Philomene be if not for Suzette’s way of bending in a storm, her ability to pull into herself that brought her safely to the dawning of another day to begin again? Could Emily be the joyous one, petted and adored, refusing to allow sadness around her, taking the step beyond survival, without the halo of the others as both a beacon and a shield? They were handing down the birthright, one after the other. Her birthright.

  Back then, on the Sunday of Elisabeth’s insight, there had been only the one great-granddaughter. Now Emily had a boy-child, too. Theodore was his christening name, but he was known as T.O., a quiet and watchful boy with a quenchless thirst for all things family. Elisabeth felt a special relationship with him that crossed generations, the way it sometimes happened. Physically he took after his father, not just about the ears, which made the connection so easy to spot. T.O. had the same nervous air, the same tendency to withdraw and pull away from the crowd when things became difficult. He was a center of attention among the women in Philomene’s house. They cherished him for his maleness, even at the tender age of four, as if he were a precious creature delivered to them from some other sensibility, some other place. He seemed to always be right up under one of them, silent, eyes darting, drinking in the stability, breathing in the attachment.

  It heartened Elisabeth to see how generous Joseph was with Emily and his children, in material matters and affection. He doted on all of them, his little family, indulging and coddling them. Angelite had stolen his heart, Theodore had turned his thoughts to legacy, and now Emily was carrying their third child. Elisabeth knew they played with fire. She was no stranger to a white father taking pride in his side family; she had seen just about everything in her time. But Joseph refused to pretend that Emily and the children were on the side, publicly declaring them the only family he intended. Flaunting the forbidden invited danger, and Emily was just as headstrong as Joseph in her circumspect way.

  There were two years between T.O. and Angelite. The two children weren’t allowed to play with others outside of the family, and they had to find ways to amuse themselves. As the oldest, Angelite took the lead. Elisabeth watched them with worry and amusement both. Theodore followed Angelite around, trying to imitate whatever she did, sticking as close as he could before she shooed him away.

  There had been the time of being worked and sold, like an ox, with nothing to hold on to except each other over increasing distances. They bided their time and collected themselves back together again as they were able, from up and down Cane River and as far away as Virginia, because in family there was strength that couldn’t be drawn from anywhere else.

  When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew.

  Now that she was old and had the time, Elisabeth was proud of each one of them for how they had come through. They would continue to find their own way, as she had found hers. And the ones who came after would build from that.

  * * *

  1880 Federal Population Schedule

  Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana

  p.691-A (s.d.2, e.d.36, p.35)

  Ward 10, 23 June

  Isaac Purnell

  B

  M

  23

  father

  Elizabeth

  B

  F

  22

  wife

  Albert

  B

  M

  7

  son

  Alfred Hubner

  W

  M

  76

  —

  Suzette Jackson

  B

  F

  66

  Philomene Dorald

  B

  F

  40

  Emelie Fredieu

  B

  F

  20

  dtr

  Angelique

  B

  F

  1

  dtr

  Eugene Fredieu

  B

  M

  14

  son

  Nicolas

  B

  M

  8

  son

  Henry

  B

  M

  5

  son

  Joseph

  B

  M

  2

  son

  John Jackson

  B

  M

  72

  father

  Doralise

  B

  F

  71

  wife

  Isaac Purnell

  married

  laborer

  Elizabeth

  married

  laborer

  Albert

  single

  Alfred Hubner

  widowed

  laborer

  Suzette Jackson

  widowed

  laborer

  Philomene Dorald

  married

  laborer

  Emelie Fredieu

  laborer

  Angelique

  single

  Eugene Fredieu

  single

  laborer

  Nicolas

  single

  Henry

  single

  Joseph

  single

  John Jackson

  married

  laborer

  Doralise

  married

  1880 Natchitoches, Louisiana, Federal Census.

  * * *

  35

  S hortly after dusk, Joseph walked into the kitchen of the house on Billes Landing, his workclothes and hair filthy with sap and pine chips. Emily knew how it must look to him, the disorder of the kitchen, her unkempt appearance, the dimness of the room. She hadn’t yet lit the lamps. A ball of biscuit dough and the rolling pin lay abandoned on the counter, and Angelite’s dark eyes darted from Emily to Joseph and back again as she attempted to put supper together. At eight she was overmatched. Josephine played on the floor at Emily’s feet, disconnected to the gloom laying claim to the house. She smiled and clapped when she saw Joseph, holding out her arms to be picked up. Alongside, T.O. sucked his thumb, a habit he had given up the year before, his brown eyes moist, wide, and questioning, his face streaked with the residue of old tears. Joe slept in the crib.

  Joseph scooped up Josephine, and she
began to play with his mustache. “What has happened, ’Tite?” Anxiety gripped his voice.

  Emily was powerless to halt another round of tears rising from deep in her chest. “Great-Grand Elisabeth died today,” she said.

  “I am so sorry,” Joseph said, touching Emily’s shoulder, the contact comforting and familiar. “She was old. It was her time.”

  Emily nodded tiredly, pushed herself up from the table, and wiped her face with her apron. It didn’t take long to rescue Angelite’s efforts and turn out a supper of biscuits, cane syrup, and fried ham. She remained silent preparing the meal and silent as they ate. Joseph kept his head down, his movements small and cautious. Emily wasn’t hungry but watched the others eat. She set the dishes in the tin washtub to soak, put the children to bed, and sat down again opposite Joseph at the table.

  “Maman sent Uncle Gerant over by boat to fetch us early this morning, not long after you left.” Emily’s voice labored, stopping and starting with difficulty. “There were as many horses and wagons outside as on a Sunday. We went directly back into Great-Grand Elisabeth’s bedroom. She looked so small.”

  Emily sorted through a jumble of images. The stark white of the often washed sheets on the bed, the closeness of the room that had gone unaired for too long, the wooden tray in the corner with a bowl of forgotten broth, the chamber pot half-visible under the bed.

  “She judged me harshly at the end. I know it. I stood in that room with the rest of the family, but I couldn’t look in her eyes.”

  “She thought the world of you, ’Tite.”

  “Her arms were so thin that the skin sagged, but she had a perfect quarter moon just below her elbow. The tips curved around and came to points at the top and bottom. Mémère Suzette and Great-Uncle Yellow John were in the room. It was like going into church, each generation marching in front of her. Great-Uncle never had children, so next it was Uncle Gerant and Maman’s turn. Gerant was oldest, so he went first. He and Melantine took their children forward. One by one she laid her hands on them. I saw how it was to be done.”