Ruined

by Paula Morris

  "Really?" Rebecca's mind was swimming. "Who? When? What did ..."

  Aunt Claudia held up her hand.

  "Over a hundred years ago," she said. "Let me go back a little, so you'll understand. After the curse was placed on the family, it was some years before another Bowman daughter reached her teens. She was about to turn seventeen, sometime in the l880s, when she contracted pneumonia and died. This girl was the granddaughter of the original residents of the house, the Mr. Bowman who died of yellow fever and his wife."

  "The woman who murdered Lisette," breathed Rebecca. Aunt Claudia nodded.

  "Their son had inherited the house after the Civil War, when his mother died. This girl was his only daughter. But he scoffed at the idea of a curse, and he and his wife wouldn't believe it had anything to do with their daughter's death. His two sons grew up "and married and had many sons of their

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  own, but one of the sons had a daughter. Just before her seventeenth birthday, she was up in St. Francisville visiting friends, when she was killed in a riding accident."

  "And that's when they started taking the curse seriously?"

  "It could have been coincidence, but the family began to get very, very nervous. There'd been just two girls born into the Bowman family since that terrible day in 1853, and both had died suddenly, practically on the eve of their seventeenth birthdays. The new mistress of the house didn't want to take any chances. She wanted the curse to be lifted."

  "But Lisette's mother was dead by then," Rebecca told her aunt. "She dropped dead in the street a few months after Lisette was murdered. And anyway, she would have died of old age by then, right?"

  "Probably, if she wasn't dead already-- 1905 was the year they tried to take the curse off the house. The new Mrs. Bowman invited anyone she could think of to help them -- all sorts of self-proclaimed voodoo queens and mystics. Someone who called himself the High Priest of Hoodoo. A priest was even asked to perform an exorcism, I hear."

  "Did any of this work?"

  "Not a thing. But one day someone came to visit them, someone they hadn't invited. She was an old Creole woman who lived down by the river on the other side of town -- Miss Celia, everyone called her. She'd been born in Haiti early in the previous century, people said, during the revolution there, the daughter of free people of color. Her family had fled to New Orleans in 1809, escaping the bloodshed and political turbulence on that ravaged island. So the day she came to call on the Bowmans, she was a very old lady, over a

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  hundred years old, and half blind. But still famous, in certain parts of the city, for her powers of second sight."

  "Did she know Lisette and her mother?"

  "Oh, yes. She'd known Rose Villieux very well. She'd lived in Tremé for fifty years after she arrived in New Orleans, and she knew both Marie Laveaus ..."

  "I didn't know there was more than one." Rebecca had only a vague idea about the famous voodoo priestess.

  "She knew Marie Laveau and her daughter, the one who mysteriously disappeared. She'd known Dr. Jim Alexander, and Eliza Nicaud, who were famous in voodoo circles here for years. And, of course, she knew all about the curse on the Bowman house. The very day Lisette's mother came to the house, she'd returned home to Tremé and summoned her closest friends, Miss Celia included. These were women who knew about these things, because many of them were refugees from Saint-Domingue, or the daughters of these refugees. That night, they came together in her house on St. Philip Street and prepared an altar. They carved the name "Bowman" onto seven black candles, and Rose repeated the curse she'd made. She wanted to make sure the family would suffer, the way she was suffering."

  "And Miss Celia was there?" Rebecca asked, even though her aunt had already told her this.

  "She was." Aunt Claudia nodded. "So the Bowmans were very interested in what she had to say. The curse had taken its first victim almost immediately, she told them...."

  "But wait a minute," Rebecca interrupted. "Didn't you say that the first Bowman daughter didn't die until after the Civil War? Like, in the l880s?"

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  "That girl wasn't the first victim," said Aunt Claudia quietly. She looked warily at Rebecca. "The first person the curse killed was Lisette's mother. To make a curse so strong and so brutal ... well, there's a price to be paid. Karma, if you like, if you don't mind mixing religious traditions. As you know, I'm not a stickler about these things."

  Her aunt cast a wry glance around the living room, with its mixture of Buddhist statuettes, African masks, pictures of saints, and brass Indian gods.

  "Rose knew she wouldn't survive long after inflicting so cruel a curse," she continued, "but she had nothing left to live for, Miss Celia said. The man she loved was dead. Their daughter, Lisette, had been killed, without any consequences for the murderer. And things were starting to get very bad in the city for her community. They were seen as a subversive presence, fueling the discontent of the slave population. Rose must have decided that she had nothing to lose but her life, and that it was worth it, to take revenge for her daughter's death."

  "Who told you all this? About what Miss Celia said, I mean?" Aunt Claudia looked old, but she couldn't be more than fifty, at most, Rebecca decided: There was no way she could have been alive the same time as this strange old crone, Miss Celia. She seemed totally averse to having anything to do with the Bowmans. So where did she get all this inside information?

  Her aunt seemed in no hurry to answer. She picked up one of the carved wooden elephants from the side table and scratched at some dust gathered in the thick folds of one of its ears. Then she put it down again, wheezing out a tired sigh.

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  "I never met Miss Celia," she said. "But I feel as though I know her well. My grandmother was her great-granddaughter and a favorite of the old lady's. Miss Celia was so close to her that she told her the whole story when my grandmother was just a child. Frightened my poor Maw-Maw half to death. And when she died, Miss Celia left every penny of her savings to my grandmother, including the money the Bowmans gave her for telling them more about the curse. And with that money, my grandmother eventually bought this house. During the war, like I told you. She left it to me when she died. We needed to keep an eye on things, she always said. One day, she told me, we'd be of service again."

  Rebecca could not believe her ears. Aunt Claudia was a descendant of one of the Haitian refugees? This strange little house was part of the Bowmans' story? All those months when her aunt wouldn't tell her a thing ... when she knew more than anyone, practically, in the neighborhood.

  "So you're ... you're ..." She wasn't even sure what she was trying to ask. "You really are a descendant of a voodoo priestess?"

  "A spiritual advisor," Aunt Claudia corrected her. "That's how she preferred to be known. I haven't inherited many of her powers, I'm ashamed to admit. Miss Celia had second sight, as they say. She was the one who said it would all end the day of the Septimus parade."

  "So she came to the house and just said that to them?" Rebecca asked. This strange old Miss Celia sounded as secretive and eccentric as Aunt Claudia. "I don't get why she waited so long to tell them, if she was prepared to just turn up and blab all the details."

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  "I don't think she knew in advance." Aunt Claudia got up and walked to the window, twitching the heavy lace curtain as though it was out of place. She peered out into the street, in the direction of the cemetery. "It was only when she went to the Bowman house that she started seeing things."

  "Like what?" Rebecca prompted, because her aunt seemed more interested in looking out at the street than finishing her story.

  "My grandmother told me she walked into that house, and went straight to the staircase, bending down to touch it." "That's where Lisette was killed!" Aunt Claudia nodded.

  "And then she walked out of the house and across the street to the cemetery, with the Bowmans trotting along behind her. She headed straight for their family vault, like she
knew exactly where it was located, even though later she swore she'd never been there before in her life."

  "Weird."

  "And it was when she stood on the steps of the tomb that Miss Celia could really see things. Flames coming down, she said."

  "The house on fire!" Rebecca said, thinking of the curse.

  "Darkness and light." Aunt Claudia turned sharply to stare at Rebecca. She looked nervous, as though she was afraid of something. "People in masks and colorful costumes, shivering in the cold -- that's why she thought it was the night of the Septimus parade. A flame tumbling from the sky. A girl falling to the ground. The seventh Bowman girl to die, and the last. Once she fell, the curse would be complete."

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  "And Helena ... is she the seventh girl to die?" Rebecca's stomach lurched when her aunt nodded. For the first time, she really felt sorry for Helena. "It's so awful."

  And so unfair, she thought, that more than a hundred and fifty years after Lisette's murder, a girl still had to pay with her life. However odious Helena Bowman acted most of the time, it wasn't her fault that Lisette had been killed.

  "And another girl." Her aunt's voice, shrill all of a sudden, cut through the dead air of the parlor. "Miss Celia saw another girl, high above. She pointed up to the stone angel on top of the tomb, and at first the Bowmans thought that was the second girl, that Miss Celia must be talking about the angel. But she told them there'd be another Bowman daughter, of the same age. That night the two girls would come face-to-face, lit by torchlight. One girl would live, and the other would die. And the curse would die with her."

  "But Helena doesn't have any sisters," Rebecca protested. This didn't make sense at all. "And even if she did, they wouldn't be the same age. Are you sure Miss Celia wasn't talking about the angel?"

  Aunt Claudia shook her head, clutching at pieces of furniture as she made her way back to her seat. The room was very dark now; they needed to turn on some lights, Rebecca thought. But she didn't want to break the spell of the story.

  "Maybe she meant Lisette?" Rebecca suggested. After all, Lisette was a Bowman daughter -- the only other Bowman girl Rebecca had ever met -- and she was sixteen, just like Helena. In a permanent state of sixteen, in fact.

  "Lisette is already dead," her aunt pointed out, her voice

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  soft again. "And you're right, Helena doesn't have a sister. But she does have a first cousin, born just a few weeks after she was."

  "Really?" Rebecca sat up straight. "Who? Does she live in New Orleans, too?"

  Aunt Claudia looked at Rebecca, green eyes blurring with the beginning of tears.

  "Baby," she said, starting to say something and then swallowing it back.

  "What?" Rebecca's skin was tingling with anticipation. This story was getting more and more strange. Who was Helena Bowman's mystery cousin? And why was talking about this making her aunt so upset?

  "I have something to tell you," she said, reaching out a hand to stroke Rebecca's arm. "Helena's cousin, the other girl ... oh, Rebecca. It's you."

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  ***

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ***

  Rebecca couldn't see straight. she stared into space, the room's furniture and clusters of tired knickknacks disappearing into the gloom. She could be in the cemetery now, so mysterious were the dark shapes of the parlor, so oppressive its claustrophobic atmosphere. Aunt Claudia was talking on and on, but nothing she said made sense.

  Helena Bowman had a first cousin; their birthdays were just a few weeks apart. This girl was the daughter of Helena's uncle, Paul Bowman. Paul had left New Orleans as a young man and never returned; he'd married a girl named Sarah in some other city. Very few people in New Orleans knew where he'd gone or that he was married; very few knew this daughter even existed, because Paul and Sarah had raised her elsewhere. They'd hoped somehow to defy the Bowman curse by leaving behind the city and the mansion and the family's terrible history -- even though it meant Paul, the older of the two Bowman brothers, was turning his back on

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  his considerable inheritance and all the advantages of being part of one of New Orleans's most powerful families.

  Rebecca shook her head: Her ears felt clogged, as though she'd been bowled over by a wave while swimming in the ocean.

  "But I don't know anything about this Paul and Sarah!" she protested. "And I wasn't born just a few weeks after Helena -- I'm almost a year younger than she is!"

  Aunt Claudia reached over to the lamp on the side table and clicked it on: A sickly pool of light illuminated their corner of the parlor.

  "Paul and Sarah moved all around," she said, her voice quiet but very firm. "They were determined to lose all contact with the Bowmans, all connection with the past. Paul grew a beard, so he'd be harder to recognize, and before their daughter was born they changed their names as well. To Michael and Millie Brown."

  Rebecca wanted to cry out, but she couldn't make a sound. Everything she knew about her life and her parents and her family -- could it really be a lie?

  "And," Aunt Claudia continued, reaching out to grasp Rebecca's hand, "through a friend in the CIA, they even managed to change their daughter's birth certificate, taking more than a year off her age. She was given the birthday of June twenty-eighth, 1993- But actually, she was born in 1992, on March twelfth. That's your real birthday, Rebecca. You're almost ... you're about to turn seventeen."

  Rebecca drew her hand away from her aunt, and shuffled through the calendar pages lying on the chaise longue. There it was: March twelfth. The day she was born. Her

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  parents had lied to her. All these years, her father had kept the truth from her. She felt sick to her stomach, unable to speak. A fat, hot tear rolled down her face, and Rebecca wiped it away with the back of her hand.

  "They were trying to protect you, Rebecca." Aunt Claudia could read her mind. "If Miss Celia was right, then this terrible curse still has one victim to claim. That's why your father's done all he could to keep your very existence a secret."

  "Then why has he just dumped me here now?" Rebecca spat out, her voice shaking, "If it's so dangerous for me to be here?"

  "I talked him into it," said Aunt Claudia calmly, and suddenly she didn't seem so batty and eccentric anymore. This woman Rebecca barely knew ... she was holding Rebecca's life in her hands! "He's spent all your life trying to dodge this curse, trying to hide you from its power. But I made him see there was no escaping it. Bowman girls have died in other places, far from New Orleans. Staying away wouldn't save you. The curse needs to play out, just as Miss Celia predicted. I'm doing everything I can to protect you."

  "But he should be here," Rebecca said, barely able to listen, sobs welling up in her throat. She missed her father so much. "Why is he in China, when he should be here?"

  "Rebecca, baby." Aunt Claudia's voice was gentle. "He is here. He was only in China for a little while, when you first came in November."

  "I got another postcard from him, just last week!"

  "Someone sent it for him. He left a stack for a colleague to mail to you. When you came back to New Orleans after

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  the holidays, he flew down on the next flight. He's been here, watching over you as well."

  "I want to see him," said Rebecca through a sob. She needed her father to tell her this whole story was true, to reassure her that everything was going to be OK. But Aunt Claudia was shaking her head.

  "It would be very dangerous for the two of you to be seen together. Although it's a long time since he lived here, and he looks very different these days, there's always a chance someone will recognize him. He has to keep away from this neighborhood. Believe me, I don't even see him, though he's staying somewhere in the Quarter. It's just too risky."

  "If he can't do anything, then why is he even here?" Rebecca felt irrationally angry with him right now.

  Aunt Claudia patted her hand, as though she was trying to calm Rebecca down.

  "
Your mother died trying to protect you," she said. "The two of you were crossing that street in Paris, hand in hand, and when Sarah saw a car heading for you, she flung you out of the way, not even thinking about saving herself. Your father insists he'll do the same. I keep telling him to stay away, because right now nobody has any idea that you're a Bowman. You look more like your mother, thank god."

  "You knew her?" Now Rebecca really wanted to cry.

  "I never met her." Aunt Claudia smiled sadly at Rebecca. "But I saw her photograph."

  "I had a picture of her in my wallet, but it disappeared."

  "Your father took it. He didn't want anyone here to see it -- to see him with you, and put two and two together. After losing your mother, he couldn't bear the thought of losing