French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

  She’d just wait and see about Celina. She was pretty. Tilly was waiting to see too, but said she thought Celina might be okay. Nanny Summers wouldn’t like it though. Mama had been Nanny’s only child and she said they should never forget Mama.

  At the top of the stairs another door opened into the attic. A pointed ceiling rose high over Amelia’s head, and boxes were stacked against every wall. There was also an old sewing machine with ivy leaves painted on it, and a dummy thing for pinning clothes on. The dummy didn’t have a head, so Amelia had put a hat on it and draped a piece of lace over the top so you couldn’t tell about the head unless you looked really close.

  In one corner was a trunk. On the front, fancy letters on a dirty metal label spelled out ELISE SUMMERS. That was Amelia’s mama. She lifted the lid carefully so it wouldn’t bang when she leaned it against the wall. Inside was a big box with a window of plastic in the top. The box was taped and Amelia had left it that way. She knew this was Mama’s wedding dress. She’s seen it in photographs of Mama and Daddy on their wedding day anyway, but one day she’d get to take it out of the box because she was going to wear it when she got married. That reminded her that she needed to get going on that. Daddy said you should take your time finding someone to marry, just to be certain you’d keep on loving them no matter what. Amelia wasn’t sure what he meant by “no matter what.”

  Under the box were other pretty things wrapped in tissue paper. Pieces of lace. A white nightie and robe, and slippers with little pearls sewn on them. And there were books from when Mama and Daddy were in school. Amelia had found their pictures. They looked funny.

  And there were baby clothes. She was sure they had been hers, and it was hard to wait to ask Daddy. Meanwhile she had brought her big baby doll, Fanny, up to live in the attic and she wore Amelia’s baby clothes all the time.

  Would Celina come to live in their house, Amelia wondered. And if she did, would everything change?

  Daddy had taken Celina home, but would probably be back soon.

  Roland’s mama had got married again just before he came to kindergarten. Amelia knew because she and Roland were friends and he’d told her. She’d tried not to be rude when she asked questions, but she’d asked them anyway. Roland said it was okay to have a new dad, that his new dad played ball with him. But now his mama was having another baby. Amelia said, “Yuck” aloud. She wouldn’t like it if Daddy got married and there was a new baby. It would probably want to touch all her things.

  She cuddled Fanny and closed the trunk again. From the little window set low in the sloping roof, Amelia could peek all the way down to the street. She went to climb on the suitcase she kept there. She could watch for Daddy to come home. Then she’d run down to bed.

  Outside it was very dark. There wasn’t any moon, but she’d see him come under the streetlights.

  She wasn’t going to look at the house across the street anymore. There was a lady who lived there who didn’t go out. She had another lady who looked after her. Tilly had told Amelia that.

  Amelia thought the lady who lived there might not be nice. Of course she wasn’t a ghost, Amelia had made that up, but she might be a witch, and she might be the kind of witch who wanted to kidnap little girls and make them work for her. That nearly happened to Phillymeana once when she’d been mean to the dragon prince and he’d gone away to mend his heart. She didn’t have him to help her then. If she hadn’t sent a message to the North Pole so Santa’s friend, Polar Bear, could tie up the witch with a rope made from her own broom bristles, the witch would have got Phillymeana.

  A little light flashed on and off—a red light, but really small. It was in the window in the lady’s house.

  Amelia had turned off her flashlight before she climbed onto the suitcase. She pressed her nose to the glass and peered down at the red light. It went out and didn’t come back on again.

  The lady had lace curtains in her windows.

  One of them moved, one in the same window where the red light had come on and off.

  Amelia shivered. She wasn’t cold, just scared of that mean old lady over there who stayed up in the night to spy on people. At least, Amelia was almost certain that’s what she did. And she’d seen the curtain move in the daytime too.

  The curtain moved again.

  A face. Amelia covered her own face, then separated her fingers and looked through them.

  A white face was looking through the window, and after a moment or two it put something over its eyes. Amelia made herself look as closely as she could.

  Why that wicked lady had binoculars, didn’t she? And she was looking straight into Amelia’s own apartment—right into Amelia’s bedroom.

  Fourteen

  Antoine needed to relieve himself. He moved on the hard metal chair and made noises. Noises were the best he could do with a dirty rag crammed into his mouth and tied behind his head.

  “Hey, I do believe the boy’s got some’tin he wants t’say. That’s very smart of you, boy. Our patience is gettin’ short, and you ain’t even met the guy with the really short fuse.” A man whose face he couldn’t see, a man who stayed beyond the blinding glare of a white light that swung from the ceiling, delivered a kick to Antoine’s shin, and then kicked him again. “You got some’tin to say, boy? Nod your fuckin’ head if the answer’s yes.”

  Pain blasted in his legs, but Antoine nodded. He knew who these people must be and why they’d grabbed him and stuffed him into a car while he was walking to catch the cable car. He’d got scared after he tried to talk to Miss Celina the second time. The other people left and he went back, but Mr. Charbonnet was still there and Antoine wasn’t sure he should talk in front of him, so he decided to leave Royal Street. Now he wished he’d stayed.

  “The boy’s got some’tin t’say,” the man behind the light shouted. “What say we find out what it is?”

  “You do that,” another voice said, a deeper, slower voice. “It better be what we want to hear, old man, or you’ll be goin’ to heaven sooner than you planned.”

  The light swung in an arc, casting crazy shadows on brick walls. He’d been blindfolded in the car, and although he’d tried to note what turns they’d made, he’d soon lost all sense of where he was. Smells made him suspect they were near the river. And he’d heard what sounded like a ship’s horn in the distance.

  The cloth was taken from his mouth and he coughed, and thought he might get sick.

  Another kick, this one to his knee, made him lean forward and choke back vomit. His arms were tied behind the chair, and his ankles were lashed together.

  “You puke, you eat it, boy,” the man with the hard shoes said. “I don’t like smellin’ what someone else ate. You got that?”

  “Go easy,” the other voice said.

  “I’m doin’ this for you, boss. And you know how stupid his kind are. You gotta keep remindin’ ‘em who’s in charge and what they’re supposed to do. They ain’t got no natural respect for their betters. That’s because they been around dumb fuckers who make ‘em think they’re equal or some’tin stupid like that.”

  “Antoine,” the quieter man said. “What is it you want to tell us? We’re all ears, and we want to be your friends.”

  “I…I got to use the facilities, me.”

  In the silence that followed Antoine could hear the beat of his own heart.

  “You gotta use the facilities?” He saw the dark shadows of the face that bent over him. “You gotta take a shit, you mean? Or a piss? Both, maybe?”

  Antoine swallowed his disgust. These were not good men, not men with any of the grace his own quiet parents, poor, hardworking parents, had instilled in him. He and Rose had taught their boys the same things, although it was harder now.

  “Answer me, boy!” A blow to the side of his head with a closed fist caught the corner of his eye, and he felt blood there. “What you gotta do in the facilities? You gonna try to escape, ain’t that it? You gonna try to make us look like fools in front of the nice people we work for
.”

  “I need to relieve myself,” Antoine said quietly. “You got my word I don’t try to get away. I’m an honest man, me.”

  “You a stupid man who minds other people’s business. You got pants on, use ‘em. You ain’t goin’ to no facilities.

  “Maybe you should take him.”

  “You goin’ soft or somethin’?” The man who struck another with such pleasure sounded angry with his companion. “You’re the one who asked for insurance. I’m givin’ it to you.”

  “Make this faster,” the other man said. “I’m tired of it already. You don’t gotta prove nothin’ to me. You’re doin’ a good job for me. And I need you back on the other thing. I don’t trust your buddy not to do somethin’ I wouldn’t like. You hurry up here and get back there. Then you tell him he does nothin’ without I say so. Got that?”

  “Got it. Okay, Antoine, I’m gonna ask you again. What do you think you saw the mornin’ after your owner bought it?”

  “Mr. Petrie he don’t own me. Nobody own nobody no more.”

  “Well, excuse me, sir. Maybe I’ll help you get more comfortable.”

  Cold water drenched Antoine from head to foot. Then, while he shook his head to clear his eyes, a punch landed on his full bladder, and another, and another. He cried out, and couldn’t stop himself from crying out again. And his bladder let go. He felt the warm urine soil his trousers, and he burned with shame.

  “Better now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What did you see that morning?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What time was it?”

  “I did not see nothing.”

  “Didn’t you tell someone you saw a person early in the mornin’. This person came to Petrie’s place before it was light and went into the house.”

  “No. I did not see nothing.” He had to lie, because if he didn’t he could put Dwayne in danger. Antoine didn’t want to think what these men might do to someone like Dwayne.

  “So why’d you say so, dummy? You know why? Because I think you did see someone and I think you could do a very nice job of describin’ that person. Why don’t you prove me right? I get real happy when I’m right. I might just let you go home to that wife you’re so fond of—and those boys.”

  Despite his soaked clothes and his misery, Antoine sat straighter. They knew about his family. “I saw nothin’, me.”

  “THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FRΕΕ. That’s what your fuckin’ T-shirt says, Antoine. Maybe you can’t read so good. Can you fuckin’ read?”

  “We don’t have time for this,” the man behind Antoine said. “If Win finds out someone made a careless move, he’s goin’ to be even harder to deal with.”

  “You never did tell me why Win’s on your case, boss,”

  “I don’t pay you to ask questions.”

  Antoine wondered who Win was but knew better than to ask. “It was a difficult day,” he said, trying to figure a way to make them think he wasn’t worth their time. “They found Mr. Petrie dead in his bathroom. You can read it in the papers, you. Old papers, but you get them at the paper office, they say.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Antoine decided to press on. “You can ask for the old ones. I see him with my own eyes. He on the bathroom floor. They say his heart kill him, but now it the word of the man from the police. He say Mr. Petrie drown. No one know how. Perhaps he hit his head.”

  “He was on the floor,” the quiet man said. “Isn’t that what you just told us?”

  “That’s what I say, me.”

  “So,” his tormentor said, “how the fuck does a drowned man get out of the tub and onto the floor?”

  Another knuckle blow landed on Antoine’s temple and pain blossomed inside his head. Two more punches, in quick succession, made certain he couldn’t see out of his left eye at all. The swelling instantly grew tight.

  “What did you see, fucker?”

  Antoine shook his bead slowly from side to side. Blood ran into the corner of his mouth.

  “You didn’t get around to telling the LeChat queen everythin’. You saw someone was watchin’ you at the fairy palace and quit talkin’, didn’t you?”

  Dwayne LeChat was a kind man. Antoine didn’t want to say anything that might hurt him. “I didn’t tell Dwayne nothin’.”

  “Stupid,” he was told before a flurry of punches battered his face and neck, then his belly. The man sounded breathless when he said, “All you gotta do is tell me who else you talked to about this and we’ll take you home to Rose. How’s that?”

  Antoine’s brain was on fire. How did they know Rose’s name? They weren’t going to let him go.

  “All you gotta do is let us know you respect us. Let us know you got honest feelin’s of admiration for us. You revere us. When you revere someone, you don’t try to keep things from them. Who else did you tell about what you thought you saw that mornin’?”

  “No one.”

  He braced himself for whatever punishment might come. When it didn’t, he relaxed a little.

  Something cracked his front teeth, but Antoine didn’t know what it was. He let his head hang forward, not that he could have held it up. A piece of a tooth went down his throat. He spat another piece out. His mouth was filled with blood now.

  “We saw the queen talk to Jack Charbonnet. You like Jack Charbonnet?”

  Antoine nodded, every move bringing a fresh agony. “Wrong answer. We don’t. We think the queen told Charbonnet about your little visit.”

  He didn’t want to die. But more than that, he didn’t want his family to suffer because of him.

  “He—” Antoine spat blood into his lap. It didn’t seem to matter anymore that he’d relieved himself in his pants, or that he could smell his own urine and excrement. “Dwayne, he can’t tell Mr. Charbonnet. I don’t finish te1lin’ Dwayne, so he can’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, the boy’s decided to believe his shirt and be honest with the best friends he’s ever goin’ to have. Ain’t that nice? But you went to LeChat to tell tales, ain’t that right?”

  “I went to ask him advice. Him wise, Mr. LeChat. Not many know him wise.”

  “His kind make real men sick,” his brave questioner said. “We gotta stamp out dirt like that. Unnatural, that’s what they are. But you asked him advice. And what advice does he give you?”

  “No advice. I don’t finish askin’, me. I get nervous because I not sure I see anythin’. Maybe I just get a visit from a spirit come to wish me peace in the mornin’, only I don’ recognize him.”

  “I think our friend here is tryin’ to divert us,” the second man said. “And I think his time is runnin’ out. What do you think?”

  The man behind Antoine was obviously the boss. The one who was giving Antoine the hands-on attention wanted to impress his boss. He said, “You got it. His time’s runnin’ out. I’m gonna ask one more time. Who else did you tell about what you thought you saw?”

  “No one.”

  “Rose is a lot younger than you, old man. Ain’t that true?”

  He saw the shadowed bricks through a haze of blood and spittle, and tears he didn’t remember shedding.

  “Ain’t it the case that your woman’s a lot younger than you? They say that black meat is sweet. At least, that’s what I heard. Maybe if your lady’s lonely, I could go over and keep her company.”

  The agony of helplessness and fear closed Antoine’s throat as tightly as any pair of hands could. He moaned and rocked his head from side to side.

  “Trust us, Antoine,” the boss man said. “We don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is very regretful that we’ve had to cause you a little discomfort, but we have to know who else you spoke to about whatever it was you thought you saw in the Royal Street courtyard the morning after Errol Petrie died.”

  “I no see nothin’. Believe me. I tell you if see somethin’.”

  “Then why did you go to Dwayne LeChat?”

  If only his mind would stay clear long enough. “I go because Mr
. LeChat, him, believe in the old ways, and him respectful of the old arts. I know he listen when I talk about the spirit.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar, boy. And you ain’t good at it.”

  The next swat knocked him backward, and he crashed to the concrete floor. He screamed. His weight landed on his arms, and his arms were strapped behind the chair. The cracking he heard had to be bones, and the pain that exploded afterward all but made him faint.

  “Okay, boss, I say we leave him here and go visit his old lady.”

  “Oh, why disrupt the whole home like that. We could always bring one of his boys here. Simon, is it? Pretentious name, but kinda cute for a cute little ass like that. How old is Simon, Antoine?”

  No one would come to his aid, but Antoine didn’t care anymore. He wouldn’t answer these people again. Sound gurgled. It came from his own throat.

  “He’s fifteen,” the boss man said. “I remember now. I asked a few questions and learned he was fifteen and very good in school. You and Rose are proud of him. He wants to be a doctor and you save money all the time to help him. I’d say you people got ideas above your station, but why shouldn’t people make up dreams You saw someone come into the courtyard at Royal Street and go up into the house. Is that right?”

  Simon was gentle and clever and wise. He saw good where there was no good.

  A solid toe connected with Antoine’s right kidney. “Is that right?”

  He nodded. What could they make of that anyway?

  The boss said, “Push him on his side. He’s chokin’.”