“I see,” he commented, and as he dipped his spoon into his bowl, he raised his eyes and saw two fat tears stream down her cheeks.
Chapter Four
...........................
Gabriel and Alcee washed the dishes, removed the tablecloth, and discussed the idea of cake. But his sister decided she wanted to relieve her body of the weight and heat of satin, petticoats, camisoles, and a list of other garments he would have preferred she’d not mention. “I may sit outside on the back gallery and finish Romeo and Juliet. Or I may sleep,” she’d told Gabriel before she glided out of the dining room. He had attempted more conversation about the school, but she said tomorrow would be better because she would have more time to think about the day.
About to retire to bed himself, Gabriel heard his mother’s “Mon dieu!” before she slid open the door that separated her from the dining room. She stepped in and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I must learn when to stop listening,” she said. She collapsed into the closest chair, her skirt billowing around her in waves of silver silk. “Alcee has gone to bed?”
“Yes. She said she might read, but she hasn’t left her bedroom.” Gabriel opened the shutters, hoping for a cool night breeze, then sat in the chair next to his mother. “It seems she had an eventful day.”
Rosette smiled. “How kind of you to call it such.” She leaned closer to him. “You and I can talk at the café, so there will be no danger of her only pretending to be asleep while we talk. She’s already learned far too much using that ruse.”
Once a friend of Rosette’s complained that the hairdresser they both used made no effort to learn the latest styles. The next month when Eliza came to the house, a then-eight-year-old Alcee informed her that Madame Chatengier thought, “Eliza is too old or too slow to bother to learn what fashionable ladies want.” Fortunately, Rosette had time to tell Louise Chatengier what happened before her appointment with Eliza, else, as Rosette said, “Louise may have never needed a hairdresser again after Eliza finished with her hot irons.” His mother and sister had had a long discussion about eavesdropping and the danger of angering a woman who could make wearing a tignon necessary inside the house as well as outside.
“André stopped in at the café today. He brought me home in his carriage.”
“And nothing happened in between?”
Of course she already knew the answer to her own question. In fact, Gabriel supposed she knew his cousin would be visiting him at the café. The Tremé neighborhood didn’t need a newspaper as long as André’s mother lived there. Tante Virgine reported whatever she heard to whoever would listen. She knew how many of Old Man Mouton’s Creole tomatoes the Beranays’ mutt trampled when he ran through Mouton’s garden chasing the one-eyed calico that belonged to the German family whose daughter secretly met an American, whose family might be on the verge of bankruptcy because of the father’s frequent racetrack visits.
“Would I be able to tell you more than Tante Virgine told you?”
“Maybe this time, because you are home before André and she keeps too busy entertaining him to stroll here with gossip.” She patted her cheeks with her palms and looked around the room. “The evening is not as cool as expected. Have you seen my fan?”
“Yes, I did.” Gabriel had spotted it earlier, surprised to see it on the corner of the breakfront. She didn’t use it often. He handed it to her, sat again, and watched as she separated the carved ivory sticks to reveal an explosion of flowers hand-painted on sapphire-blue silk edged with lace.
“It is exquisite, isn’t it?” She held it in front of her and gazed at it as if it spoke a language only she understood.
Perhaps it did. The first Christmas Jean Noel Reynaud did not join them for dinner, a carriage delivered three packages. Rosette gave one to Gabriel and one to his sister and sent the other back with the driver. The next Christmas was the same, except that four packages came. Rosette handed two back, gave one to him and the other to Alcee. By the third year, when three packages were delivered for Rosette, she stopped returning them. Jean Noel sent her a fan every year after she ended their relationship. Gabriel wondered if Madame Reynaud knew the destination of the carriage at Christmas. Or did she, like almost all wives of men who had placées, choose to ignore anything connected with the woman her husband protected? Except in Rosette’s case and by her choice, his mother no longer defined herself by her relationship with Jean Noel.
“So, you do not want to discuss your visit with your cousin?” She paused. “Were there harsh words between you?”
No, just a harsh reality. “We aren’t boys fighting over who really won at marbles.”
Rosette’s raised eyebrows warned Gabriel that his remark bordered on insolent. Over the years, he learned that that expression tended to precede what Agnes referred to as a “come to Jesus meeting” that almost always ended in tears or unhappiness for Gabriel or his sister.
“Forgive me,” said Gabriel. “The conversation was pleasant. And he looks well.”
His mother’s face softened. She closed her fan and set it on the table. “Sometimes I forget that talking to your cousin is difficult.”
“I am content where I am.” Not happy, but she did not need to know that. “I want to hear about your young lady visitor, but let’s move to the parlor where we can be cooler.” Gabriel followed his mother to the front room and lifted the windows to open the shutters.
“Our café needs a cooler January,” Rosette remarked, opening her fan again. “My visitor Serafina resides in a cottage built for her by Paul Bastion. You understand?”
He nodded. Gabriel did not need Rosette to explain the relationship any further. The white Bastions were cotton brokers and landowners, more than happy to fill anyone’s ear with tales of their wealth. Madame Bastion did not flaunt their money as much as her husband and sons. She seemed to have misplaced her joie de vivre not long after her daughter’s marriage to a plantation owner who moved her away from New Orleans. But whatever joy of life she’d lost, her husband Emile made up for in his new interest in ships and riverfront property. Paul, their son, spent money with a vengeance. “So, he is her protector.”
“Pauvre ti bebe,” Rosette said, shaking her head in dismay. “Monsieur Bastion must have been exceedingly and uncharacteristically charming to the poor little thing the night of the ball, else she would have rightly refused him.”
Gabriel recoiled at the thought of his mother or his sister as one of those young women, girls groomed to attract rich white Creole men. He shifted his eyes to the ornate French enameled ormolu clock on the side table and then turned his attention back to his mother. “And now?”
“And now she is worried the Bastions may one day become grandparents of a child they will never acknowledge.”
* * * * *
The next morning, while Rosette walked an uncertain Alcee to the Academy, Gabriel readied the last batch of pralines to take to the café that day. Cooling on a marble slab, the creamy brown-sugar-and-pecan candies smelled as sweet as they tasted. His mother’s recipe used more pecans than the other vendors who roamed the market balancing their baskets of pralines on their tignons. It meant spending days shelling the pecans that rained from the surrounding trees and avoiding the temptation of eating more than were tossed into the basket for cooking. But that effort meant Rosette sold out of pralines almost daily.
Business in the café had increased every year since Rosette first opened her small stand. Gabriel remembered Agnes and Rosette’s conversations about money those first few months after Jean Noel stopped coming to their house. Gabriel would crouch in the dining room behind the closed parlor doors, his bare feet ready in case he had to dash into his bedroom. The first visits involved mostly Rosette’s sobbing as Agnes hummed any number of hymns about Jesus. Eventually the crying and hymns gave way to practical issues. When Gabriel heard that Agnes would teach Rosette how to cook, he covered his mouth with his hands so as not to expel a yelp of gratitude. Letting go of Jean Noel had
also meant letting go of their servant Olivia, which meant letting go of mouthwatering meals. In the years since, Rosette had evolved into a competent cook and an equally competent businesswoman.
Before he saw his mother return from the Academy, Gabriel heard her talking in French. He hoped her conversation was with herself, because some of the words he didn’t recognize, and if words could stomp their feet, hers certainly would be doing so. She emerged from the alley between their house and the neighbor’s, snapped her parasol closed, and clenched it in her hands as if it were a branch she wanted to snap in half. Although tempted to speak first, Gabriel decided it was best to wait for her boiling emotions to simmer.
“Your sister was almost expelled from the Academy before her first class.” She sounded angry, but her neck and cheeks did not have the crimson flush that generally accompanied her ire. She stared blankly, as if in hearing herself, she’d realized her own confusion.
Gabriel broke a praline in two and offered her half. “Would you care to taste this batch?” He saw the “no” in her narrowed eyes and put it back on the table. Since she remained quiet, he knew he needed to ask. “What happened?”
“Alcee asked Monsieur Seligny if she could enroll in the Greek or Latin classes. He informed her that girls learned French.” She released the parasol, held it by her side, and gently tapped it against her lemonand-white-striped linen skirt. “She asked him what would happen if the girls learned the same languages as the boys. He said he didn’t know and it didn’t matter. That’s how the school had always taught and would continue to teach.” Rosette stopped tapping, turned her face upward for a moment, and sighed. “Then she wanted to know, if she wore trousers, could she be in the class.”
They looked at one another, and though Gabriel wasn’t sure which of them laughed first, the exasperation on his mother’s face surrendered itself to the humor of Alcee’s persistence.
“And could you imagine my daughter being told she would be someone’s placée?” She shook her head. “Never doubt, Gabriel, even when you do not understand situations or decisions, that God has a plan and a purpose.”
When Gabriel continued removing the hardened pralines from the slab and didn’t respond, Rosette placed her hand under his chin and turned his face to hers. “Even when He does not reveal it right away,” she said so softly it could have been a prayer.
After the experience at Alcee’s school, Gabriel didn’t want to disagree with his mother. It wasn’t that he doubted God’s plans. But what should be obvious to her was some things God could not change. Even if his skin was lighter than that of the riverfront workers, they would always be white and he would always be a free man of color. And even though he enjoyed Lottie’s company, admired her honesty, and shared her compassion, his feelings for her would stay locked in his heart with his other dreams. Dreams of a life of his choosing. Dreams of a love of his choosing.
Chapter Five
...........................
“And jus’ where you think you headed out to, Miss Lottie, with that cat tucked under your arm?” Agnes looked up from where she sat in the courtyard, stitching a piece from the rippled mound of cream-colored gauzy fabric covering her lap and feet.
“Are you mending a tablecloth or Grand-mère’s summer dress?”
Agnes stopped sewing, leaned over, and, with an abundance of care, rearranged the delicate folds of the froth. Lottie figured she didn’t want her to see her laugh. But even though she concealed her face, Agnes couldn’t hide or control the pulsating top of her body. She straightened herself in the chair and adjusted the gray tignon she wore. She squint-eyed Henri. “You better get a holt of that cat. If he get loose on this, he’ll be finding himself lost in that swampland behind Tremé.”
“Agnes, his name is not ‘that cat.’ It is Ahn-ree.” Not at all impressed with the discussion of his name, the cat squirmed and meowed his dissatisfaction. Lottie transferred him to the other side of her body and hoped she could escape Agnes before Henri escaped her.
“En don’t you go changing what we talkin’ about. Whenever you do that, I knows trouble is arount the corner.” She pulled the thread through the fabric as if the needle were a thin sliver of a silver whip. “We been together too many years. When my heart don’t hear the truth, it most beat out of my chest. Like it doing now.”
Why did I think I could deceive Agnes? She isn’t Grand-mère, whose heart beats rules and manners. “Is my grandmother at the dressmaker’s?”
Agnes looked at Lottie as if she’d asked for permission to play in the Mississippi River. “Why? You want to meet her there?”
“Of course not. I told Gabriel—” Henri let out a mangled meow and then bolted from Lottie’s arms, leaving behind pulled threads on her new violet day dress and a trail of scratches on her arm underneath the sleeves. A rogue cat on tiptoed paws and with an arched back, covered with a patchwork quilt of black, brown, and white fur, had ambled into the courtyard. As soon as the intruder hissed, Henri bounded in the opposite direction.
“Maybe your cat tryin’ to teach you something. When trouble around the corner, best be close to home.” Agnes tied a knot and bit the thread free of what Lottie could now see was her grandmother’s cream-colored cotton skirt. Agnes smoothed the section where she’d been stitching, moving her dark hands back and forth across the fabric like Lottie had seen her do so many times. Her hands, always moving, always doing something for the LeClercs. Sewing, cooking, cleaning, washing. The cycle only changed by more of some, less of the others. And she and Abram lived in a room half the size of Lottie’s bedroom.
“Now you know you not suppost to be sneaking around. And Agnes is not going to lie to your grandparents.” She gazed up and spoke to the sky. “Jesus, you know I am a faithful woman.”
“I’m not sneaking. I’m telling you where I will be, and I promise to be home before Grand-mère.” Lottie didn’t want to speak to the sky to ask Jesus about the difference between sneaking and waiting until her grandmother left the house. “The orphanage is just a few blocks away.”
“You not parading up and down the Vieux Carré without a chaperone. Miz LeClerc hear about dat and…” She looked skyward again. “She don’t want to know, Jesus, how Agnes would suffer for that.”
“Gabriel is meeting me here to walk with me. Rosette gave him food to deliver there.” The longer this went on, the less time Lottie had to spend at the orphanage and with Gabriel. They hadn’t seen one another in the weeks since Justine’s bonnet led to the remarks Lottie had made to her grandmother, followed by the discussion with her grandfather. Gabriel helped her make sense of her life. A life that, as she grew, became more confusing. And their latest decision about her coming-out party only added to it.
“Your chaperone here. You better hurry on.” Agnes waved her hands much like she did when she ordered Henri to “shoo” from the house.
Lottie didn’t know if Agnes’s face softened from growing tired of their conversation or from the sight of Gabriel as he swung open the black wrought-iron gate. Seeing him, Lottie’s anxiety gave way to joy and she smiled at her friend. His tan frock coat tapered from his shoulders over his brown trousers, and he walked with self-assurance, comfortable in himself. Gabriel and André were no longer annoying boys dragging disgusting creatures out of gutters, the streets, or the river and pestering her with them. Gabriel had become this confident, handsome young man who appeared before her, and Lottie felt a door opening in her heart. And he was stepping through it.
Holding both her hands in his, Gabriel stood back at arm’s length and looked at Lottie, his eyes appraising her from head to toe. “This is new, yes? I don’t recall ever seeing you in this color. Very pretty. It brightens your face.”
Her smile in response felt clumsy on her face. She didn’t want to tell him that what brought the flush of crimson to her cheeks was not the dress. Gabriel’s touch warmed her in a way it never had before. And even though she enjoyed her hands being enveloped by his, she wondered if perhaps sh
e should. We fished together. Pushed one another into puddles. Am I supposed to feel this way? Do I want to feel this way?
“Just what she need for that orphanage.”
Gabriel must have been as startled by Agnes as Lottie was, because he released her hands so unexpectedly that she almost lost her balance. He walked over to Agnes, who stood with Grand-mère’s dress draped over one arm and the other bent at the elbow, fist on her hip, as if she dared him to move closer. Not at all intimidated by her scowl, one that could wilt bricks, he performed an over-exaggerated bow then tugged her fist from her side.
Agnes swatted his head as if a fly had just landed. “Go on. Don’t you think you can mind your manners after you already forgot them. Walk right past me.” She sniffed loudly—and if Gabriel had not glanced at her right at that moment, she might have continued the pretense. Instead, she let him hug her. Grand-mère’s skirt billowed between them until Agnes patted his back with her free hand and, in a voice that could rock an infant to sleep, said, “Honey, I understand. Some habits hard to break.”
Lottie realized what Agnes meant and shamefully wished she didn’t have to. In their social structure, it made no difference that Agnes had loved Gabriel as a grandson for years. Slaves were invisible until they were needed.
As soon as Gabriel let her go, Agnes wagged her finger at Charlotte. “You best be sitting on that divan when your grandmother open the door.” She shook her head and looked up at Gabriel. “Une tête dure, that one,” she said and tilted her head toward Lottie. “Too hardhead for her own good. She had best not be that for me.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he answered with his charming voice. The one that made Agnes grin.
Love Finds You in New Orleans, LA Page 4