Through the Storm

by Beverly Jenkins

  Grinning innocently, he asked, “If it wasn’t under the bed, where was it?”

  Her eyes widened and she punched him in his well muscled arm. “Stop it,” she demanded, scandalized.

  The brothers were all chuckling.

  Before things got any more out of hand, Juliana said, “Sable, I want you to meet Henri Vincent, an old and dear friend.”

  Sable wondered if anyone else could see how Juliana was glowing. “I’m pleased to meet you, monsieur.”

  “Enchanté,” he replied, rising to his feet.

  Sable watched as he and Raimond embraced each other with genuine emotion. It was easy to see the two men shared a special bond. Sable knew from her talks with Juliana that Henri had helped her when her beloved François died, and that he’d been a substitute father to her sons. Raimond and Gerrold had been in their early twenties the year François died, but the Brats had ranged in ages from Phillipe’s seven to Archer’s eleven, and Henri’s presence had meant a lot to them.

  “Henri’s birthday is a few days away and I’m going to have a ball in his honor,” Juliana declared.

  The tall, handsome Henri looked at Juliana affectionately but countered, “Ana, that isn’t necessary.”

  “Yes, it is. I told you long ago that on your sixtieth we would celebrate, and the year is here.”

  Beau said, “Oncle Henri, you know once she has set her mind, not even the angels can change it, so you may as well surrender.”

  “I am well aware of her determination. It was one of the things your father loved most about her.”

  Sable watched the silent interplay between Juliana and Henri and wondered if anyone else in the room realized the two were in love.

  She asked Raimond about it later that evening as Raimond drove his carriage over to Archer’s hotel to pick up the Vachons for a night at the theater.

  He responded by saying, “Mama in love with Henri? You think so?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, I share your opinion. I believe they’ve been in love for years but haven’t acted upon it out of respect for François’s memory.”

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but François’s death occurred many years ago. Your mother deserves some happiness.”

  “I agree.”

  After retrieving the Vachons, the two couples journeyed through the congested streets to the Orleans Theater. On the program tonight would be the noted Northern poet Louise DeMortie and the Black composer Edmund Dede, whose symphonic arrangements were especially adored by the citizens in his hometown of New Orleans.

  The couples took their seats among the other elegantly attired members of the crowd. Most in attendance were the French Creole and free Black elite, though Sable did see a few soldiers and some missionaries who’d come South to help the freedmen. She also saw more than a few hostile eyes cutting her way.

  Hester must have noticed them too because she leaned over and said quietly, “You and I are probably the two most despised women here.”

  “I know why the daggers are coming my way—I’m reviled for marrying above my head—but what bone do they have to pick with you?”

  “The same. I am married to Galeno and they are not.”

  Sable caught the eye of a particularly hostile older woman who’d accosted Sable at the market one morning. “See that old bat over there?”

  Hester did.

  “Her name’s Heloise Trudeau. She told me to my face that I had absolutely no business marrying into the house of LeVeq. She said slaves belong in the shacks in Freetown, not in the ballrooms of their betters.”

  “Oh, really. She had Raimond picked out for her own daughter, I’m guessing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m treated no better. I met Galen’s set for the first time when his grandmother Vada died back in ’59. Some of the people were pleasant, but many were as cold as Michigan in January. Galen promised me we’d have very few dealings with them from then on, and he’s kept that promise. I avoid them whenever possible.”

  “I lack that luxury. I live here.”

  The lights went down, curtailing further conversation.

  The performances were magnificent, and afterward many in the crowd retired to Archer’s restaurant for sustenance and socializing. Upon securing a table for their wives, Raimond and Galeno spent a good portion of the evening engaged in debating the topic on everyone’s lips, Louisiana’s political situation.

  The most intriguing bit of new news had to do with a convention being proposed for early fall. It would reportedly bring together native White radicals and influential members of the free elite. The purpose: to affiliate Blacks with the Republican Party. The convention was being promoted in part by the former editor of the now defunct L’Union, Louis-Charles Roundanez, and his new publishing partner Jean-Charles Houzeau, a Belgian-born aristocrat and astronomer whose radical politics had cost him his job at the Belgian Royal Observatory in 1849. The two men were now publishing a newspaper called La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orleans, more commonly known as the Tribune, the first and only Black daily in the nation. Unlike L’Union which had spoken mainly for the French-speaking, free Black Catholic interests of New Orleans, the Tribune was published in both French and English. It also took a wider view and attempted to tie the fates of the freed and the free together. The new paper had been widely embraced by White radical elements in Louisiana state politics and by Blacks of all classes. Its editorials called for suffrage for all men of color, equality, and desegregation of the state’s schools and New Orleans’s streetcars. It also called for clear laws to govern the division of Union-confiscated plantation land anong the freedmen.

  When Raimond and Galeno finally made their way back to their table, they found their wives surrounded by admirers, and seemingly involved in a serious discussion. Raimond heard Sable declare to someone, “Sir, you are an idiot.”

  A few chuckles rose from the crowd. The recipient of Sable’s comment, a thin young Black man in a cleric’s collar, appeared stunned. “Madame LeVeq, surely you agree that education is essential. You yourself are an enlightened woman.”

  “Yes, I am, and I agree education is essential to our race. However, I take issue with Northern Gideonites who wish to replace our preachers and our teachers with men handpicked by themselves.”

  “But we are well trained and I am ordained. We came down here to help these unfortunate souls.”

  “And we unfortunate souls are truly grateful, but you can’t mandate how people worship.”

  “But the preachers here are ignorant.”

  Sable said coolly, “In some parts of the South those same men preached the Word in the quarters when it was against the law to do so. They may lack your extensive training, Brother Julius, but many are eloquent and all are committed. How many of the freedmen preachers have you met?”

  “Enough to know that they should be replaced. Condoning and encouraging all that shouting and yelling and jumping up and down is not the way to conduct a service to Him.”

  “We unfortunate souls are tasting freedom for the first time in generations, Brother Julius,” Hester told him. “If folks want to praise Him by standing on their heads, who are you to say it’s wrong?”

  He hastily turned away from Hester’s condemning eyes and said to Sable, “Madame LeVeq, I conducted a service on Sunday at one of those tent churches. My service was both saintly and dignified. In response they called it boring and mocked me as a Presbyterian.”

  Sable tried to hide her smile. “Then find a congregation that will appreciate your saintly dignity, and leave other folks be.” She turned to her adoring male crowd and asked, “Wouldn’t you agree, gentlemen?”

  Raimond noted that not a single man protested, but then, they would have agreed that the moon consisted of cheese if she’d asked.

  Unfortunately, the young cleric didn’t have enough sense to lick his wounds and retire. “Fine. I’d like your opinion on this then. I heard a so-called preacher open the service by ask
ing his followers to ‘tumble with him through the third chapter of John’! What does that mean?”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Of course not!”

  Hester asked, “How on earth are you going to learn enough about the freedman to be of any help if you don’t ask?”

  Both women waited for an answer.

  When he gave none, Sable spoke to him honestly. “Brother Julius, you are an intelligent and educated member of the race and therefore very valuable to our future, but the freedmen need your help, not your contempt.”

  His pause suggested he took her words to heart, but his terse words said otherwise. “I will try and remember that. Good evening ladies.”

  He pushed his way through the crowd and was gone.

  Raimond moved to his wife’s side, and in response to her welcoming smile, said, “You have such a wide array of admirers, ma reine. First Gaspar and now Brother Julius. Where are they all coming from?”

  “The Gaspars I don’t mind,” she replied, “but Brother Parham Julius and his ilk annoy me no end.”

  Julius was not the first Northern missionary to come South and complain about the uninhibited nature of many of the freedmen church services. The teachers in the freedmen schools had also come under fire. Sable agreed that some of the teachers were unskilled, but they were helping those who had even less learning than themselves, and every letter learned was a step forward. In her opinion the missionaries should be rolling up their sleeves and jumping into the fray instead of standing on the perimeter shaking their fingers.

  Raimond asked, “Are you ready to go home?”

  She nodded. Because of all that discussing last night, she hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  As the couples walked back to the adjoining hotel, Raimond told Hester and Galeno about Juliana’s upcoming birthday ball for Henri. Though the ball wouldn’t be held for another two weeks, Galeno consulted his wife and they agreed to postpone their departure so they could attend. Galeno hadn’t seen Henri in many years and wanted to stay in town so he could also raise his glass in the birthday toasts. The couples promised to see each other the next day, then said good-bye.

  That night while Raimond slept beside her, Sable lay awake thinking. It was now late August, and last year at this time, she’d been a Fontaine slave struggling to find enough to eat on a dying plantation. Mahti had been alive and Vashti living in the cabin next door. Rhine’s whereabouts had been a mystery, and she had not owned one good dress to her name. Now, she had more dresses than Queen Victoria and a family and friends who cared. Rhine crossed her thoughts often. Had he found peace? If she passed him on the street, would he acknowledge her or walk past her with the nonseeing eyes of a White stranger? The sadness of not being able to answer those questions lingered in her heart.

  But she had much to be thankful for. Out of the flames of Mahti’s tragic death, Sable’s life had been reborn like the fabled phoenix. From the camps to Boston. From a contraband queen to a wife in the celebrated house of LeVeq. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she would go from digging yams with her bare hands to finding a freedom that included a dessert named in her honor! Life was amazing, and she vowed to be thankful for it every day for as long as she lived. Amen.

  Sable and Hester spent the next few days conducting interviews for Sable’s new house staff. Although the small mansion had so many rooms that just the thought of mopping all the floors gave Sable nightmares, she’d told Raimond she didn’t need help. He’d insisted. He’d cited her status as a LeVeq wife as one of the reasons she had to hire servants. Also, the freedmen needed jobs.

  Sable finally settled on a housekeeper called Mrs. Bernice Vine. Sable liked her, as did Hester. Mrs. Vine was a tall, big-boned woman who’d been a house slave in Mississippi before the war. She boasted of being an excellent cook and had extensive experience running a large household.

  Mrs. Vine did have one concern, however. “Will I have time off to see my daughters up in Baton Rouge?”

  “Of course,” Sable replied.

  “I’m only asking because my last employer wouldn’t allow it.”

  “He wouldn’t allow you to see your family?” Hester asked, both outraged and surprised.

  “No. He said the contract I signed didn’t provide for it.”

  It was a common problem. Planters were taking advantage of the quasi-legal work contracts the government demanded Blacks now sign. Many former slaves were unwittingly hiring themselves out for life.

  Sable asked, “How did he come to free you from the contract?”

  “I freed myself. I got up one morning, packed my belongings, and headed down the road. Since my daughters were here in Louisiana, this is where I ended up.”

  “Rest assured, you’ll have plenty of time of your own,” Sable told her.

  When the formalitites were completed, Sable took Mrs. Vine around to her room on the far side of the house. The new housekeeper peered around the large space. “Who will I be sharing this with?”

  “No one.”

  Mrs. Vine’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I’ll have this room to myself?”

  “As long as you are with us, yes. And feel free to fix it up however you like.”

  Sable watched Mrs. Vine walk slowly around the room. She took a seat on the edge of the canopy bed and bounced a few times to test the mattress. She examined the newly upholstered chairs and the highly polished armoire and writing desk. “I believe I will like it here, Mrs. LeVeq.”

  “I believe you will too.”

  Sable and Hester took a walk outside later that day. Earlier in the week, they’d hired a gardener who was planting shrubs when the two women walked up.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. LeVeq, Mrs. Vachon,” he said, smiling.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Harper,” Sable replied. “How’re things with you?”

  Without stopping his work he said, “No complaints, ma’am. I’m still trying to accustom myself to being called mister, though.”

  Sable replied, “I’m having a simillar problem, but mine is adjusting to having hired help. I’m a former slave too, you know.”

  “As am I,” Hester admitted. “Watching someone else do the chores I’d been doing all my life took a bit of getting used to.”

  Harper looked them both over as if seeing them in a new light. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  Sable nodded. “Mr. LeVeq has been free all his life, but I have not.”

  Sable knew from her interview with Mr. Harper that he’d purchased some of the confiscated acres owned by the government. He had a wife, Sara, and twin little boys, Grant and Sherman. By day he worked as a gardener, then went home to them in the evenings.

  Mr. Harper and Hester spent a few moments discussing landscaping plans, then the ladies settled beneath the sheltering canopy of a large tree. Hester stripped off the black crocheted gloves Sable had never seen her without and began scratching the backs of her hands, saying, “I don’t think this baby likes my gloves very much. My hands itch constantly.”

  Sable tried not to stare at the startling sight of her friend’s indigo-colored hands, but she apparently didn’t hide her surprise well enough because Hester said, “When I was a child, I was a slave on an indigo plantation in the Carolinas. They’ll be stained this way until I die.”

  “I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “Don’t apologize. I used to be very secretive about them around strangers, but Galen has helped change my attitude. I still wear my gloves more often than not when we’re away from home though. Maybe the baby is trying to make me set them aside for good.”

  “Maybe.”

  They were still seated there sometime later when they spied their husbands walking in their direction. “You know,” Hester remarked, “if there were a contest to determine which one of them is the handsomest, there would have to be a tie.”

  “I agree. They are two handsome men, and if you don’t believe it, just ask them. They’ll tell you.”

  “They certainly will.�
� Hester laughed.

  The men had been spending their days seeing to business, meeting with ship builders, accountants, and potential customers and merchants. As they approached, the ladies stood to greet them with short kisses of welcome.

  Raimond asked, “What have the two of you been doing while we were away?”

  “I hired a housekeeper,” Sable declared. “Her name is Mrs. Bernice Vine.”

  “Very good,” Raimond said. “And are you going to let Mrs. Vine do her job without helping?”

  “I suppose so, but it is very hard for me to have servants, Raimond. Mrs. Vine hasn’t served a single meal, yet already I feel guilty making her wait on me.”

  “I felt the same way at first,” Hester admitted as she stood in the circle of her husband’s loving arms. “Maxi finally and firmly explained to me that service was her job, and that we had hired her for that purpose. For a long time she woudn’t let me even enter the kitchen, because I always wanted to help her.”

  “So how do you feel about servants now?” Sable asked her.

  “After six years, I’m more comfortable around them, but I still jump up and help more than I probably should.”

  “Yes, you do,” Galeno said, “but Maxi has learned to tolerate it because she loves you as much as I do.”

  He kissed her softly, making Sable wonder if she and Raimond would ever be so close.

  The men escorted their wives back to the house. After Raimond met the new housekeeper, they all piled into Raimond’s carriage to attend dinner at Juliana’s.

  Dinner with Juliana and Henri was a sumptous affair. Little Reba now ruled over Juliana’s kitchen, and the wonderful food she prepared made Sable understand why Juliana had been so keen on hiring her.

  After the dinner dishes were cleared away by one of the new kitchen maids, they sat and discussed Henri’s upcoming birthday ball. Sable couldn’t believe how many people Juliana had invited. “Will there truly be so many people attending?”

  “There’d be even more if the house could hold more. Henri is a very well-known and popular man,” her mother-in-law responded proudly. “He’s been in the suffrage fight for many years and knows people of all races and from all walks of life. It will be considered an honor just to receive an invitation.”