Joseph put his hand on top of hers. Emily took a deep breath to allow her voice to regain some of its steadiness.
“Maman pushed Bet and her children toward the bed, and then me, as if I wouldn’t know what to do on my own.”
Emily drew her shoulders back and mimicked Philomene’s voice. “Emily is here, Mémère Elisabeth, and her children by the Frenchman.”
Shamefaced, Emily abruptly stopped the imitation of her mother. “That was just how she said it,” she went on. “Great-Grand Elisabeth reached out and touched me on the arm, her hand drawn up into itself with almost no weight to it, like being pecked by a bird’s beak. She was under the covers to her neck, only her head and arms showing, and all I could think was how big she always looked, and how small she really was.”
Carrying a marker, a burned image of the moon on her arm, Emily thought. The unfinished circle of the moon.
“I had to get in close for her to tell me she wanted to give me the quilt from the bed. Angelite was trembling, but I brought her forward and the old woman touched her. When it was T.O.’s turn, he walked up to the bed on his own and took her hand. She stroked his hair, and he stood straight, looking right at her. We had to pull him away from her side so the others could take their turn.”
Joseph Billes.
Her family, Emily thought, paraded past the dimming eyes of the oldest of them, shouting their summarized stories out loud. Children of the Frenchman. Eight-year-old Angelite, the china doll beauty. T.O., the devoted six-year-old. Josephine, the toddler, a throwback, who faintly carried a traceable stain of color. Joe, still a babe in arms. Elisabeth touched her own children, and their children, and their children’s children, one by one, all the way down the line.
Emily sobbed briefly, a tired strangle of a cry. Joseph scraped back his chair, patted her on the shoulder, and went out to the barn to feed the horses.
Emily sought Bet out a few weeks later and found her hanging clothes on the line behind Philomene’s farmhouse. A small, unsatisfactory breeze kicked up briefly, with barely enough authority to make itself felt, nudging stale pockets of hot air a small distance before dying out. Emily selected a pillowcase from the wet wash basket and, standing on tiptoe, pushed home the wooden clothespin to attach it to the line.
“The middle of the week and you here again,” Bet said. “Who’s watching the store?”
“Joseph,” Emily said indifferently. “Or the hired man.”
They worked side by side, the two sisters, smoothing oversize sheets between them before hanging, the small items such as handkerchiefs and rags seeming to dry almost as soon as they were fastened to the line.
“I miss her, Bet.”
“We all miss her,” Bet said. “Mémère Elisabeth connected us.”
Emily agreed. “It’s been months, and the old woman has a hold on me, stronger in death than in life. I wish I had thought to ask her about herself when she was alive, that I had been ready to listen, the way you did.”
“She didn’t answer questions. It wasn’t her way.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know much more than you. Why not ask Mère Philomene?”
“She won’t talk about their before-life with me.”
“Joseph is worried about you. He’s even come to talk to Mère Philomene about how you’ve changed.”
“I love Joseph dearly, there can be no other man for me, but this has nothing to do with him. He wants to be a man and rule in his own house, but I am not sure I can be my old self.”
“Is that why you’ve been spending so much time here, away from Billes Landing?”
“I need this side of the river. To spend more time with Maman and Mémère Suzette. And you.”
“We’re always here,” Bet said.
“I was ashamed of her, you know, of her dark skin and nappy hair and broken speech.”
There was a long moment when pure hurt darted across Bet’s face. “Like me? Someone who takes in other people’s washing and ironing?”
Emily regretted her words at once. “Don’t be cross with me, Bet. I couldn’t bear it.” She wanted to explain herself. “It’s just that I have more advantage because of how I look. My children will have a better life because of how they look.”
A large white sheet separated them, droplets slowly splattering at their feet from the hemmed bottom edge, Bet on one side and Emily on the other. Emily could not see Bet’s face, and when her sister spoke, her voice seemed slightly disconnected. “She talked to me while we worked a quilt once. She called it the bleaching of the line, and I think she was puzzled by it. It wasn’t about color for her. Not good. Not bad. Just a stubborn course our family seems to keep following.”
“I want my children to become more than anything she could even dream of,” said Emily. “I want her to be proud of how far we can go.”
“That would surely please her,” said Bet.
* * *
Joseph and Emily’s house on Billes Landing saw a fair amount of traffic, despite its remoteness in the backwoods. Emily thrived on company. Many of their neighbors were friendly enough, woodsmen and their families. The old women, Bet and the brothers, cousins, and uncles all stopped by as often as they could. But there were others who came to their home to see only Joseph, and Emily faded into the workings of the house until they were finished with their men’s business.
She saw after the babies, and the cooking, and the cleaning while Joseph sat on the gallery, drinking homemade wine and chewing tobacco with these men. She could always figure out later what sort of visit it had been, either by his words or by his mood. Some things Joseph talked about with her, and some he did not. Often when he came in, he would announce that he was going to the courthouse in the morning to buy up a piece of land.
One evening, late in the summer of 1888, a knock at the door interrupted the silence as Emily washed supper dishes. Joseph sat at the table, making an elaborate ceremony of shelling, picking, and eating the pecans her uncle Gerant had brought them earlier that day. Emily answered, drying her wet hands on her apron. She recognized all three men at their door, although two of them stood back in the shadows, partially hidden by the half-light on the gallery. Each had frequented her dinner table before. Narcisse was in front, and behind him she recognized the broad, smooth face of Joseph’s cousin and business partner, Antoine Morat, and Joseph Ferrier, a man her mother helped raise, son of Oreline Derbanne and her first husband.
“Come in,” Emily said, holding the screen door open. “I have tea cakes.”
The three men fidgeted but didn’t make a move to come inside. “We’ve come to speak to Joseph,” Narcisse said, his eyes shifting away from hers.
Joseph got up and went outside then, and as the men settled themselves on the front gallery, little T.O. came barreling straight out the front door barefoot, his nighttime shirt flapping.
“Grandpère,” he whooped, trying to scramble onto Narcisse’s lap, Emily directly behind him.
Narcisse didn’t smile and blocked his grandson’s path.
“Go to your mother, T.O.,” Narcisse said, the look on his face grim. “We have serious business to discuss tonight.”
T.O. made a small questioning sound, sat down hard on his bottom at Narcisse’s feet on the gallery, and then began to wail. Emily soothed T.O. the best she could, bringing him inside and putting him back to bed. Her stomach churned.
The men sat out on the gallery and talked in low tones, too low for Emily to make out. Long after she heard the creaking of the gallery chairs and the sounds of retreating horses, Joseph stayed outside. When he finally came into the house, his eyes had receded deeper into his face, and they glided past her own, as if unwilling to make the connection.
Joseph slumped wearily in his chair, and Emily stood behind him, massaging his temples, careful to keep the circular pressure even.
“Joseph, what is it?”
Joseph shifted uneasily, taking a long time to respond. “I need to go away, for lo
nger than usual, to New Orleans.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The folks in town have gotten themselves worked up about us living out here together. Someone had hard feelings about property that came my way instead of his, and he’s been stirring the pot. You’ll be safer with me gone than with me here. It’ll take the steam out.”
“How can we be safer without you here?”
“You can always get to me through Narcisse. Use the money from the store for whatever you need.” Joseph seemed numb, as if he had been turned to stone. “I’ll be back, ’Tite, as soon as I can, and in the meantime, count on the three that came tonight to look after you and the children.”
And so, in 1888, with hardly any warning, Joseph moved away from the house on Billes Landing and took up permanent residence in New Orleans.
36
J oseph could not imagine life with any woman other than Emily at his side, but in the year he had been away from Aloha she had changed. Not in drastic or obvious ways, but something had shifted between them. Emily’s devotion to the children was never in question, and she was as beautiful to his eye as ever. Her skin was creamy smooth, her long chestnut hair soft and inviting, her long neck gave her a bright elegance he couldn’t quite define, and she still had the gift of finding delight in everything she touched. Emily sang in her high, sweet voice as she fed the chickens or slopped the hogs, and she smiled at him the way she used to, coaxing him toward happiness. But now that he was back from his extended stay in New Orleans, Emily had become increasingly bold in asking for money of her own. As if she didn’t trust him to take care of the household. It offended his masculine pride that she could doubt his commitment in this manner.
“Joseph,” she had said just today, “when our customers settle their accounts after the crops come in, I would like to keep a little of the cash from the store. For myself.” As if that were the most simple of requests.
By then the store had been enlarged to accommodate the Mexican workers pouring into the parish with the coming of the railroad, the hill workers flush with the novelty of cash money in their pockets from the sawmill, and the Negroes who scratched out a living from the soil.
He should have paid more attention to the beginnings of change in those difficult few months after her Grand Elisabeth died. Emily had become distant from him, aloof, spending so much of her time across the river with kin that he feared he had lost her. Before then she had always seen to him as her first priority, making him laugh, calming him, igniting his passion. He came and went as needed, without burden of the silliness he saw in other women who looked pretty without real benefit or who were helpful to their men but too severe to enjoy.
Not long after Elisabeth died, Joseph had awoken one night and discovered Emily’s side of the bed empty and cold to the touch. He’d found her in the common room on the settee, hugging her knees to her chest, a small figure in her nightgown. “Joseph,” she’d said, the urgency in her pleading eyes almost breaking his heart, “I need something for my own, whatever you can spare. An allowance.”
She had seemed so fragile to him at that moment, suffering, her pain within his power to ease. Against his better judgment he had indulged her, to help her through her grief. He’d faithfully handed over two dollars in coin each month, even though he knew she simply hoarded it, hid it, even from him. Joseph had been relieved when Emily finally seemed to find herself again, thought of his needs again. He intended to put a stop to the payments, but before he could do so he was forced away to New Orleans. Now she asked outright for more.
“If you aren’t here, I need to be able to take care of all of us.” Joseph noticed the hard little points behind Emily’s eyes. It was becoming an old argument, repeated often. “Our children need a future.”
Joseph bristled. He considered himself a good provider. “I will always make sure you’re taken care of, ’Tite. We’ve talked about this before. I had to stay in New Orleans last year to keep us safe.”
Emily gave no quarter. “We have no rights in the eyes of the law, not me, and not the four children I brought into the world. If you love the children, protect us now, with land and money.”
Joseph went outside to sit on the gallery, refusing to argue. More than anything, he just wanted his old Emily back.
* * *
Joseph and Emily had one last child, Mary, their fifth. Mary grew from babe in arms to a stubborn-minded three-year-old, strong and healthy, suffering only the normal childhood ailments.
On Billes Landing, the store and the family prospered. Back in the Aloha woods, where poor families white and black were dependent on his largesse, Joseph and his family were left mostly unchallenged, the level of interest in Joseph’s affairs leaning more toward how much liquor and tobacco he had on hand and less toward his living arrangements. But in town, in the parish seat of Colfax, people who used to smile at Joseph or at least leave him alone grew cold and turned away. Even when his acquaintances seemed polite, Joseph read judgment in their posture, their forced tip of a hat.
“Leave that colored woman alone,” they began to urge him. “Take care of the children, if you must. But come back to your own kind before it’s too late.”
Circa 1895. L–R. Mary Billes, Emily Fredieu, Josephine Billes, Angelite Billes, Theodore (T.O.) Billes, Joe Billes Jr.
One balmy Tuesday, after a brief afternoon shower cleared the air and brought relief from the late-summer heat, Joseph set out the nine miles to the Colfax courthouse to register a mundane land transfer. He thought nothing of the two ragged youngsters with the look of underfed farmboys who trailed behind him on the wide, dusty thoroughfare of the main street once he got to town. It flashed through his mind that they seemed misplaced, at loose ends, maybe too old for the schoolhouse and too young for the mill. He tethered his horse and went inside the courthouse, and when he came out, his business done, the boys were still idling near the hitching post in front of the notary’s office. As Joseph turned to mount his horse, he felt the dull burst of an egg gone bad against his cheek and its long, gooey slide from the fleshy part of his ear to his chin.
“Nigger lover,” he heard, but by the time he collected himself and looked around, the boys had run. There were few others out in the heat, two old men on the bench in front of the courthouse, a woman strolling on the wooden sidewalk with an umbrella open against the sun, but no one moved to help or raise their voice in either outrage or sympathy. Riding out of town toward the Colfax border, Joseph used his crisp, freshly ironed pocket handkerchief to wipe at the sticky mess. He didn’t share the incident with Emily when he got back to Billes Landing, but the next week he moved a majority of his business to his New Orleans bank rather than use the local bank in Colfax. The climate in town had changed, and it was getting more difficult to know whom to trust.
* * *
Meny years ago there were several young rich white French Men left France to make their homes in the U.S.A. each one had a deference trade. Mr. Joe Billis was Timber, He had Mr. Ephenborn the LRN rail road owner to put a switch near the main track so he could ship His Cross Ties, Pilling, Logs for Lumber and Stave bolts away. This became a very useful flag stop, it was named, Billis La.
--Cousin Gurtie Fredieu, written family history, 1975
* * *
In early spring of 1894 Joseph rode out to check on Narcisse Fredieu. Liza, Narcisse’s wife, brought the two men coffee and left them to talk on the front gallery. Scanning the homestead, Joseph took in the decline in the state of the property.
“You look well, my friend,” he said to Narcisse. Narcisse’s long white beard had thinned, and the milky clouding of his eyes had robbed them of color.
“I’m almost seventy, slow and tired, and most of my friends are already dead,” Narcisse said with a forced chuckle. “But I do appreciate the thought.” He lit his cigar. “How is Emily? She hasn’t been by for weeks.”
“’Tite is fine. The younger children and the store keep her busy.”
“Every
one of my children still visits the old man,” Narcisse bragged.
Joseph knew how much time Joe F. and Matchie, Narcisse’s two youngest boys by Philomene, put into his farm, providing their labor, helping the old man out. Even Narcisse’s wife didn’t complain about his colored children being so visible, they were of such benefit.
“The boys brought Angelite over Tuesday. They heard I was feeling a little poorly, and Angelite made a Sarah Bernhardt. Thoughtful girl. She knows my favorite cake, and stuffed it with double helpings of ollenberry jam.” Narcisse gave a fond pat to the broad mound that had become his midsection. “She has her mother’s beauty and spirit, that one does, and I detect a mischievous streak from you. Did she tell you she met Jacques Andrieu here last Tuesday? We had a little party for him, as welcome to the community. A delightful fellow, fresh off the boat this month from Perpignan. Jacques has interest in Angelite. She dazzled him. He hasn’t stopped talking about her yet.”
“Angelite is only fifteen,” Joseph said.
“And how old was Emily when the two of you came together?”
This wasn’t a conversation Joseph wanted to pursue. He changed the subject. “Are you prepared to part with that little piece of land we talked about near Monette’s Ferry?” Joseph asked. “I am ready to buy.”
“I hear you struck a deal with Louisiana Railway and Navigation for your own switch off the main track, that you have a flagstop named after you now.”
Joseph enjoyed the easy camaraderie of men, sliding effortlessly between business and social matters. “The steamboats haul in the materials to build the railroads that will put them out of business. The flagstop makes it easier to ship my timber away. We have to change with the times.”
Cane River Page 30