by CP Patrick
Mama told me voodoo was evil. To stay away from it. Something ’bout light and dark can’t dwell together. What Mama know? Got to heaven and got blinded by Jesus and His light.
“So you did your voodoo. Then what happen?”
“It was Christmas time, you know. Who do something like that on Christmas?”
It’s hard for me to look at Miss Angela.
“Don’t know,” I say. “It sound awful. Sound like something only the Klan would do.”
“Christmas Eve. The night they came. They were angry. Manuel had taken a Negro whore off the street and into his house. To love me. That’s why they came, you know. Because of me.”
Polly had told me that part. She say the Klan love Negro women more than they own. That’s why they always hiding behind them white sheets. They the ones afraid. They know if they take off them hoods, every Negro woman they love on gon’ recognize ’em right away.
“Well, perhaps it wasn’t really your fault, Miss Angela. I reckon…”
“Cállate!” Miss Angela shouted at me. “You don’t know what you talking about. I’m telling you. They came for Manuel because of me!”
“All right, Miss Angela. I reckon they must have, like you saying.” I ain’t ’bout to argue with no voodoo woman.
“Manuel want to make them pay. Want the cowards to fight him like a man. So…”
Miss Angela looking at the sky again. I look up too, trying to see what she seeing. Nothing there but blue sky and white clouds. The heavens, as some folks call it. Wonder if Mama looking down on me. Wonder if she mad I’m making friends with a voodoo woman.
“Then what happen?” I ask.
“So Manuel went to find the Klan.”
Miss Angela say this like it’s nothing. Like Mr. Manuel set out on Front Street to find the beach.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. Need to make sure I got my facts straight. “You tellin’ me, you and Mr. Manuel at home getting ready for Christmas? The Klan come and tar and feather Mr. Manuel? He happen to see some of the Klan who tar him? And then he set out to find ’em?”
Miss Angela nod at every word I say.
“Well, did he?” I ask. “Did he find the Klan?”
“Yes.”
“And what he do once he found ’em?”
“He kill him.”
Damn. It’s true. Everything Polly done told me is true.
“Did Polly tell you the rest of the story?” Miss Angela asks me. “Since she seem to know so much? Talk so much?”
I can tell Miss Angela hurt. All these folks ’round Key West talking ’bout her and Mr. Manuel. Telling her story.
“No, Miss Angela,” I lie. “Polly the one told me to come see you.”
“Lies! But it’s okay. I know Polly is your friend. Friends lie for one another, you know?”
“Yes, Miss Angela.”
Since everything Polly told me been true, guess the rest of the story is too. The Klan finding out about the death of one they own. Sheriff putting Mr. Manuel in jail on Christmas Eve, claiming to protect Mr. Manuel from the Klan. Marines come too, trying to keep the peace ’cause White folks call from all ’round demanding to have a piece of Mr. Manuel for killing one of they own.
But late at night, the Sheriff send everybody home. Say he got things under control. But he really sent everybody away so he could let the Klan can come in and beat on Mr. Manuel. Next morning, Christmas Day, Mr. Manuel hanging from a tree. Dead.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Miss Angela turn away from me. Her shoulders moving up and down like she crying. I feel bad. But she don’t seem like the type of woman who want you to hug on her. I can tell she work on her problems alone.
“I understand, Miss Angela.”
“Do you?”
“No, Miss Angela.”
I was trying to be nice. No way I understand.
“I make them pay, you know. Anyone who touch my Manuel? Who hurt him? I make them pay.”
“How?” I ask. “With your voodoo that work like Jesus?”
Miss Angela laugh. “Yeah, something like that.”
“All by yourself?”
“Sometimes. But sometimes, others help me.”
“Like who?” I ask. “Folks like me?”
Wonder how many folks it is like me. Can’t move on ’cause they Mama forgot to watch over ’em once she got to heaven. I’m afraid I might see Mama in heaven. That’s why I won’t go. I’d end up fighting with Mama and Jesus so bad, I’d sure ’nuff get sent straight to hell.
Living was so hard! It seemed the best thing for me to do was end it than to go on another day. Wasn’t even hard for me to put that knife on my wrists. Slit ’em open like I was guttin’ a fish. Don’t even remember the pain. Just remember being free. I’d like to meet some folks like that. Folks like me. Can’t have Polly be my only friend forever.
“Come,” Miss Angela says.
She look at me and she smile. Miss Angela done smiled at me again! This right here the best day of my life since Mama died.
“Ella. I want you to meet Awiti. Me and Awiti got plans for Key West. For Labor Day. Big, big plans.”
20
City of roses
Quai de la Fosse, France (1946)
I used to love Quai de la Fosse in the summer. My sister and I would walk about the streets, arm in arm, laughing and talking about some wonderful memory. We were simply happy to be together.
We were the living image of a postcard, a picture of beauty, youth, family, and love. Long dark hair blowing in the wind, and our lips, always rouge, wore smiles. Our biggest worry was to make certain that our heels did not get stuck in the cobblestone streets.
Emilie was happy then, the fiancé of one of Nantes’ most desirable bachelors. I was still too young to wed, but not too young to plan for that fateful day. I dreamed I would meet a brave soldier who survived the war. My love would nurture his tortured soul and erase the memories of battle. We would have children and grow old together. And we would visit my sister on Quai de la Fosse every summer.
These were my dreams before my sister became ill.
Emilie is not well. We have all tried to deny this for too long. We wanted to believe she was mourning the loss of her children that their deaths had pushed her into a momentary place of sadness from which she would recover. But this is far worse.
A sickness has entered her mind, and I fear I will have to institutionalize her. There is no other choice.
To find Emilie wandering the streets, it pains me. Whenever I touch her arm to guide her home, she is seeing me for the first time. I am a stranger. I bring her back to Maison Montaudoin, and she wants to listen to Edith Piaf all day.
Before the tragedy, we saw Edith Piaf perform live in Paris, and Emilie, like so many others, fell in love with her voice. Edith made us forget the war and think of love, if only for a moment. The war was all around us. We all knew someone who had suffered loss.
“La Vie En Rose,” Emilie says with a smile. “La Vie En Rose, n’est-cette pas une belle chanson, tout comme ma Rose…”
“Isn’t it such a beautiful song? Like my Rose?”
I already knew she would ask this question.
“Oui, c’est magnifique,” I always say, for it is a beautiful song.
But Emilie’s demanding repetition of it and the same questions she asks about Rose, well, I am starting to loathe the recording. But this is the only conversation we have, and so, I endure it.
“Yes,” I say to her.
“Rose was beautiful.”
Then Emilie begins to cry out for the daughter she will never see again.
I blame Michael. Five children were too many for any woman to bear, even one of wealth and prestige. But he wanted many children to carry on the Montaudoin legacy. Of course, once Emilie had them all, she could not manage them.
I watched my beautiful sister, so full of promise, go from enjoying the simple pleasures of life to what is surely hell on Earth. Her dark hair, once shiny, luxurious, and
the envy of many, now dull and limp, unwashed and unkempt. When I look into her blue eyes, they are empty. Nothing is there.
Emilie is gone.
It was Michael who suggested she hire help. We were from a modest family, and Emilie wished to keep the house herself. But keeping a maison was different from keeping a small maisonnette.
And with the birth of her children so frequent, she was soon overwhelmed with not just the upkeep of the young, but their home. Still, she took great joy in trying to care for the home and children herself.
“They bring me life,” Emilie would say of her children. “I did not know love until I became a mother.”
They were petite versions of her and Michael. There was Michael Jr., whom we called Little Mister. He was a mirror image of his father, with dark brown hair and serious brown eyes. Why, to have Michael look upon his heir was to watch a man look upon the thing he loved most.
I believe it was the birth of Little Mister, a boy child to secure the family name and legacy that started Michael’s desire for a large family. His wish for miniature versions of himself to admire.
Sarah soon followed with her fiery spirit and a smile that would melt the hardest heart. She had her mother’s blue eyes and dark brown curls that made her look angelic even in her most devious moments of childhood. She was feisty, yes, but a joy. We all speculated on the amazing woman she would become.
The twins, Alexandre and Antoine, came next and were as mischievous as twin boys could be. They favored their mother. Their dark hair and smiling blue eyes made it difficult for Emilie to discipline them.
Then there was Rose, a sweet cherub of a baby. She was the type of infant that made a childless woman yearn for one of her own.
Yes, Little Mister was Michael’s favorite, and Rose was Emilie’s true love. The rest of the children were also loved. They filled in the gaps between the oldest and youngest and entertained each other as middle children do.
They would run through the maison, their feet pounding the marble floor, leaving minor scratches, as the white marble was not intended for such roughhousing.
Emilie, unmoved, all the while rocking Rose in her arms, would say, “Let them be children.”
Their childhood was nothing like ours. We ran through medieval streets of Rochefort-en-Terre while our mother and father grew vegetables and sold them at the market. We had great freedom, and we roamed about exploring the beauty of our country.
Perhaps that was why Emilie let them be, wild children running about their meadow made of white marble, glass, and expensive things. It was the best she could give them as a normal childhood.
It drove Michael into a fury, for they were not normal children. They were aristocrats. Their surname alone opened doors throughout France. He felt they behaved as animals, but he was unable to control and discipline them.
He was always on travel, his shipping company heavily involved in supplying goods for the war. He came home bearing gifts only to leave again. And so he was a father they knew by name, not by presence.
“You must get help,” Michael told Emilie after arriving home from one of his trips to find the maison in disarray. “We have more money than half of the families in France, and yet, you are the wife who wishes to tend to her children and keep to the house as if we are poor.”
Michael had spoken, and it was final. Emilie started her search for hired help the next day.
After interviewing many, Emilie chose a French African woman named Awiti Akoth. Michael was pleased Emilie had acquired a nanny and housekeeper. And Emilie, after heeding the advice of other rich women about the importance of hiring help the man of the house would find undesirable, felt comfortable and certain in her choice. Her only criteria had been that the woman not be blonde and attractive.
Awiti cooked and cleaned well. She was different, something new and exciting, so the children loved her. All but Rose.
The baby would cry a screaming rage whenever Awiti tried to tend to her. Spoiled from being held daily by her mother, no doubt. So Awiti tended to all the children except Rose and kept to the house.
Awiti took great care to keep Michael’s office clean. She spent much time there dusting and cleaning. I am sure she looked at the photos of the old men, who years ago had brought many of her people to France.
Slavery is a messy, embarrassing piece of our history, one not often discussed—except by Michael, whose name and wealth reflected the legacy of one of the most prosperous families in the Nantes’ slave trade. This must have been odd for Awiti, but she cleaned Michael’s office nonetheless.
The twins were the first to fall ill, the fever ravishing their bodies until they succumbed to the heat within them and died. Such a terrible funeral it was, two small, polished silver caskets holding the bodies of once rambunctious boys.
A few months earlier, they had broken an expensive vase, and Emilie had been furious. The vase, an import from one of Michael’s many travels, meant nothing now. How she would allow them to break a dozen vases if she could hold them again.
The maison was quiet without the twins, for they had been the liveliest of the children. The other children mourned in their own way, playing with the twins’ toys and hiding in nooks and crannies where they once played games. It was an effort to be close to the siblings they would never see again.
Sarah fell ill next, her body already frail from her insistence to eat only cheese and fruit. The fever took hold of her tiny body within a matter of days. The sickness coupled with the heartbreak of losing her younger brothers made Sarah weak, and she succumbed to the fever more quickly than the twins.
Never was there a sadder time than to watch Emilie and Michael bury another child within such a short time after losing the twins. Well-wishers filled Maison Montaudoin. And Michael, unable to deal with the tragedy affecting his family, threw himself into his work.
Emilie held Rose nonstop, unwilling to put her down for even a moment. She clung to the child she loved the most.
Little Mister hid within his heartbreak and developed a silence, his laughter taken by childhood tragedy. He rarely spoke, and this was fine for the adults, for no one knew how to answer his questions about sadness and death.
Awiti continued to help tend the house and looked after Little Mister. When he fell ill, it was too much for all to bear.
Michael stayed by his bedside throughout the ravaging fever. He wiped the sweat from Little Mister’s body and changed the bed linens as soon as they soaked. He begged Little Mister to survive. And Little Mister held on for much longer than any of the younger children, but soon, he could fight no more.
Emilie was a waif. Her figure dwindled in size with each child’s death, and at the time of Little Mister’s burial, she was but skin and bones. The black dress that had hugged her curves during the twins’ funeral hung as an oversized drape over her tiny frame.
Michael wept at the funeral. While he had been stoic and a pillar of strength at all the others, being strong for Emilie, he could not contain his pain and loss any longer.
There was nothing more heart-wrenching than the sound of a man weeping. Emilie held Rose close, her body too weak to cry for her firstborn.
“I have run out of tears,” she told me.
Although troublesome and a handful, the handsome boy had been her first experience with motherhood, and they had learned together. Emilie and Little Mister had shared a special bond that was only overshadowed by the bond he had with his father.
I stayed with them for a while after the death of Little Mister. The large maison was quiet. Michael and Emilie passed like ghosts, invisible to each other.
Emilie took to having Rose in the bed with her, as Michael slept in his office, exhausting himself with work and scotch. Emilie would stare at Rose while she slept. She watched Rose’s little body rise and fall as she took tiny breaths.
I watched the entire scene in sadness as my sister’s once joyful, chaotic life had turned to one of eerie silence and predictability.
; Awiti cleaned the house after each death. She tried to wipe out the sickness and memories. She washed the fevered bed lines and small clothing. She cleaned and hid the tiny cups used to offer the children water and medicine to break the fever.
Michael and Emilie hoped the clean environment would erase the proof of their tragedy, but it left the house medicinal and sterile. The memories of the children still lingered.
The day Rose became weak and started to show familiar signs of fever, Emilie became a shell of the sister I once knew. Certain of what was imminent, she refused to let anyone near Rose, not even the doctors. She allowed Rose to be comforted only by her mother’s arms. And that is where Rose died.
Her casket was so small, none could bear to look at it for longer than a few moments. The church echoed with sniffles and the sounds of women weeping softly. Michael somehow found the strength to carry the silver casket in his arms, the single pallbearer to his last child.
Emilie sat lifeless and still. She clasped her hands together in her lap, so tight that her knuckles turned white. Within a few months’ time, the life she had grown to cherish was gone.
Emilie and Michael came home to the large, empty maison, the marble floors so cold and the space so vast without the busyness of the children. They had made the maison a home. Awiti’s services were no longer needed, and so, she left.
Michael could not bear with Emilie’s emptiness. She was not someone to talk with or cling to. They could not mourn and rebuild their lives together.
Emilie was simply there. A body in their empty house. She was a constant reminder that he was once a father and she was once a mother.
Like most men in times of sorrow, Michael dedicated himself to his work, an excuse to be away rather than confront the pain. He left Emilie home alone to deal with the memories. Especially once they found the note.
It was written by Awiti. Each word written perfectly, each phrase written with the intent to hurt them. She was happy the little Montaudoins were gone forever. It was her revenge. For her people. For all of the Africans Michael’s forefathers had packed into boats and sold into slavery.
The words were written in red ink to remind them of the blood of her people… and of their children. Michael took the letter directly to the authorities, but Awiti could not be found.