Agnes’s calling her name pierced the dream. Lottie was trying to capture the images before they drifted away when a warm light exploded near her face. She covered her eyes with her hands and summoned her voice from the girl left running that Agnes made disappear. “Make it go away. Make it go away,” she begged, before rolling over and mashing her face into her pillow.
“That sun going nowhere till evening.”
Lottie lifted her head only long enough to mumble, “I can wait.”
“A girl might not be so ornery in the mornings if she don’t go to bed late.”
The new torture of the pillow almost suffocating her and Agnes’s comment moved Lottie to turn her head and squint as one panel of the heavy damask drapes closed.
“That better? You ready to join the living now?”
“Yes,” she answered, knowing that even if she had disagreed, nothing would change. Like most things in my life right now. Lottie propped herself up on her elbows as Agnes stood at the foot of her bed picking up the bed linens that had spilled onto the carpet. Maybe I ran harder than I thought. “What makes you think I stayed up late?”
Agnes folded the down comforter in sections at the end of her bed. “See that candle on your desk?” Her hands now busy with the blanket, she nodded her head in that direction. “When I come in here, I see hain’t nothing hardly left to burn on the candle. So, you maybe forgot to put it out ’fore you went to bed, but since the house still standing and we still here, then it’s something else. Some mornings I come here, like this one, and that foolscap still on your desk. That quill a-yours all dis away and dat.” She moved her hand up and down as if holding the quill. Agnes walked over to the desk, picked up the blank sheet of writing paper, tucked it into a drawer, and closed the inkwell.
Lottie sat up in bed as her stomach plummeted, hitting bottom like a carriage wheel in a sinkhole. Could there have been times she forgot to put her letters away? Suppose Grand-mère had read one? If so, that might explain why her grandmother soured in her presence. She wanted to simultaneously leap out of bed to inspect the bundle hidden in her armoire and also slink under the bedcovers. Agnes could know about the letters. Lottie could accept that. Even her grandfather… Lottie trusted that he would not only understand, but he would respect her privacy. But her grandmother? Given a choice, she would rather wear only her petticoat to church. “Agnes, could you close the window, please? There’s a chill in the room.” Lottie rubbed her arms while she thought of a response.
“No window open, Miss Lottie, but I close this curtain.” Agnes picked up the candle stub. “Just so you remember. Agnes is the first person that comes in this room every morning. And you don’t have nothin’ to worry ’bout with me. Even if I could read those words you write, I’d never tell.”
“I know, Agnes. I know.” Lottie hugged her knees to her chest. “I only wish you had the choice.”
As a child first learning to read, Lottie had sat next to Agnes, opened her books, and read out loud. When she stumbled on a word, she’d look up at Agnes who, every time, would pat her hand and whisper, “You just go on. We pick it up next time.” No one seemed to mind, the two of them side by side in the gallery or outside in the courtyard, shaded by one of the lemon trees. No one, that is, until Madame Narcisse visited and reminded Grand-mère about the year-long imprisonment for anyone caught teaching a slave to read or write. Lottie wasn’t allowed to read with Agnes after that. She told her grandparents she would go to jail, but she wanted to share her books with Agnes. Grand-père laughed and said, “Ah, my p’tit, you are so small, you would slip right through the bars.” It was only when he gently explained the risk for Agnes that Lottie promised to never do it again. She had cried, thinking of Agnes being flogged at the public whipping post or losing part of a finger or a toe.
“Miss Lottie.” Agnes now lowered her voice. “We learning to read. Maybe writing come later. But we so bad wanted to read the Bible for ourselves. That’s why Gabriel spend so much time here and us there. Every chance we gets, we learn more.” She stepped to the side of Lottie’s bed and pulled a folded square of paper out of her apron pocket. Agnes opened it with such attention that Lottie imagined the words might slip off the paper were she not so careful. “We got this from Proverbs.” She pointed to the word on the top line and smiled. “I carry ’em with me so’s I can practice. And don’t you worry. We always been careful.
“First, when Gabriel start tearing them pages out of the Bible, I waited for something powerful to rain down.” Agnes refolded her treasure and returned it to her pocket. “But he told me Jesus would rather us tear up the Bible so we can read than just let that book sit there with all those blessings locked inside.”
So, Lottie thought, Gabriel has been doing all along what I volunteered to do at the orphanage.
Chapter Eleven
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Agnes and Abram left for the French Market to prepare for the LeClercs’ return, and Lottie finished the breakfast of coffee and fruit that Agnes had brought her before they left. Moving the tray off her lap and onto the bed, Lottie mashed and fluffed the mound of pillows behind her. Somewhere between deciding what to do for the rest of the morning and the thumping from downstairs, she drifted off to sleep.
Thinking they had returned with the hot calas she had given them the money to buy, Lottie slid out of bed and decided to risk Agnes’s wrath and venture downstairs in her bare feet and nightgown. In the time she’d need to grab a calas or two, she figured she could be back in her bedroom before Agnes ever finished her tirade. But as she stepped out, it was her grandparents’ voices she heard over the shuffle of bags. Lottie almost called to them but realized they would have expected her to be dressed for the day, not for bedtime. Her stomach rumbled in disappointment, and she had started to back into her room when she heard her grandfather mention her name.
“I do not think this is the proper time to have this conversation, as Lottie could hear us.”
The soft clinks as cups met saucers and chair legs bumping along the carpet as they moved from the table meant they had settled in the dining room. Lottie perched on the floor in the small alcove outside her room and hoped Agnes and Abram were taking their time at the market.
“If she were here, we would have seen her by now. Agnes and Abram are gone, so she is either with them at the French Market or she stayed with Justine another night,” her grandmother said.
“As I tried to explain to you earlier, there are more considerations than making sure of the marriage arrangements. We cannot ignore them, and I am concerned. More so than you, I fear.”
“I am not unaware.” Grand-mère’s words sounded like whips whistling through the air. “But we are in a situation ourselves. We were fortunate the Bastions happened to be at the event this weekend and that they decided to stay another day so we could talk.”
Bastion. That is the man Grand-père spoke to after church.
“No, my sweet. That was not fortune. That was planning. I invited Emile after receiving word from Judge Rost that he and his wife would be welcomed as our guests. I thought it would work in our favor to spend time with the Bastions in a more comfortable social setting before we went any further.”
“Oh, then…” She paused. “You were correct.”
If the intention of the party was for several eligible men to attend, why was their son singled out? The one person who might be able to tell her about the Bastions was the one person Lottie couldn’t ask. Gabriel, because of the café, was acquainted with people from political to poor. If a name was not familiar, it traveled the lines of communication until it reached again, who could then attach it to a face, a cottage, a business, or, in some cases, one to avoid. But just the thought of asking after a man she did not care about from the man she did made her stomach turn. As Lottie unfolded herself from the floor, Agnes and Abram returned to the house and interrupted the lull in her grandparents’ conversation. Grand-père asked where his granddaughter was and when Agnes
expected her home.
When she heard Agnes answer, “She home right now. Miz Charlotte stay while Abram and me went to the market,” Lottie tiptoed into her bedroom, tucked herself under the comforter and sheets, and burrowed into the pillows. If her grandparents planned to be angry with her, it was better to be because they thought she’d overslept than overheard.
* * * * *
Gabriel entered the well-appointed store of Cordeviolle and LaCroix tailors on Chartres Street, where distinguishing between their employees and customers was made complicated by the popular dress of both. Himself a free man of color, François LaCroix elevated his business with imported silks and linens and fabrics from Belgium for the particular tastes of his clients desiring the latest styles. Even the store’s elaborately scrolled billhead, designed in Paris, reflected LaCroix and Cordeviolle’s attention to detail for “fashionable articles pertaining to the Gentleman’s Wardrobe, imported, and kept constantly on hand.”
Gabriel was there to pick up his new wardrobe—after losing the discussion with his mother several weeks beforehand regarding his need for it. He might have come away victorious but for his one fatal declaration: “Maman, perhaps you should be more mindful of how you spend your money.”
They had been working on a fresh batch of pralines. Gabriel shelled the pecans, and Rosette chopped them to add later to the mixture she had just moved over the fire. He’d stopped to roll up the sleeves of his shirt when she remarked that the cuffs appeared to be frayed.
“Hardly,” he’d said and shrugged. “Where do I go that it matters? The café, to visit the homes? It’s fine.” He rewarded himself with a few of the fresh halves then pushed the hill of shelled pecans across the table to his mother. She scooped the chopped pieces into a bowl then rocked the half-moon blade back and forth over the ones just peeled.
“You attended the opera with André. I doubt his cuffs were worn thin.”
“He lives in Paris. Styles there change too quickly for anything to show signs of wear. Except maybe the dressmakers and the tailors.” He rolled more pecans out of the firkin onto the table and set the wooden bucket on the stool next to his.
“Still. I know you devote much of your time to the business. And to me and to Alcee. But it is important for you to have some joie de la vie, especially while you are still young.”
Not bundled in the yards of fabric required in public, her hair gathered loosely at her neck by a scant piece of lace, Rosette looked far younger than her thirty-eight years. A stranger would not suspect that she no longer lived a pampered life, except for a few places on her hands and along her forearms that had healed darker after being burned. At times, the praline mixture boiled over, sending the thick mixture onto her arms and hands and taking a layer of skin as it did.
“You could use some joie de la vie as well.” Gabriel knew she cut down and reworked some of her own dresses for Alcee. Later, Gabriel realized he should have shared his heart instead of his head because his next statement was, “Maman, perhaps you should be more mindful of how you spend your money.”
If the look on her face could have baked bread, the torrent of French assaulting his ears could have sliced it. Caught off guard by his mother’s considerable reaction, Gabriel decided that riding out the storm of her vexation would be the wiser course. But the damage had been done, and he paid the cost of repairing his mother’s dignity by submitting himself to the tailors.
But what he’d just heard from Monsieur LaCroix was prelude to another tempest.
“I do not understand. Who might have settled my account?” Gabriel lowered his voice, hoping the tailor would do the same. Overheard, the news of the son of a former placée discussing a mysteriously paid bill would appear in the next day’s New Orleans Bee, published in both French and English so as to cause more embarrassment.
LaCroix examined the bill again. His finger scanned each line as he read. “Tan trousers”—he looked up at Gabriel—“with the dark blue pinstripe, of course.” Gabriel nodded, so the tailor continued. “One tan waistcoat and a black frock coat with pocket flaps at the hip.” He placed his hands on his hips and eyed Gabriel again, who nodded once more. “Oh, the frock coat shows flared open-cuff sleeves, and there are two white shirts. One with pleats, one without. And two silk cravats, one yellow and one dark blue, of course.” LaCroix stared at Gabriel as if waiting for applause.
“The payment?” This time it was Gabriel who pointed to a line, where the balance of almost two hundred dollars had been subtracted.
“Yes, yes. I will ask Etienne.” He walked off with bill in hand, toward the back of the store where Monsieur Cordeviolle held out a black tailcoat for a young man wearing a white waistcoat and black silk pants. The man’s long sideburns, mustache, and goatee had not disguised his protruding jaw and lower lip, which was heavier than the upper one. Tante Virgine would describe him as having une gueule de benitier, a mouth like a holy water font. And, no doubt, she would not be as discreet as Gabriel hoped LaCroix remained.
The tailor moved away from his customer to talk to LaCroix, their conversation peppered with a symphony of gestures. Gabriel examined a selection of silk top hats displayed on a nearby table while he waited. Next to him, a gentleman who should have been refitted for his frock coat forty pounds before spoke to one whose chin identified him as the father of Etienne’s customer. As Gabriel walked over to look at the wool felt bowlers, he overheard the LeClercs’ name mentioned in their conversation. He kept his head down, passing the brim of an ordinary derby hat through his hands with meticulous care. Not that he had to make an effort to appear invisible. As a homme de couleur libre among two white men, especially ones of wealth, Gabriel was already disregarded, unless, like LaCroix, he resurrected himself in a successful business.
The rounder of the two pointed his cane in the direction of the younger version of the man to whom he spoke. “So, Benjamin is being fitted with a new wardrobe. What does he think about this LeClerc soirée?”
Gabriel moved on to a bowler, treating it with the same painstaking interest. He looked in the men’s general direction, but only briefly and always with his head down.
The young man’s father yawned, adjusted his spectacles, and said, “Benjamin and I share a strong physical resemblance. Benjamin and his mother share a strong propensity for spending. He will be equally satisfied with a new wardrobe or a new wife.”
Equal fulfillment. Lottie and a set of clothes. If this is what fathers teach sons, then I’m grateful mine left before this lesson.
Indignation and restraint met Gabriel as a child after Rosette had explained to him that the word illegitimate and the one used to taunt him meant the same. “But people give the other word more power. Never forget, we decide the degree of power we allow words to have over us,” she said. Later that evening, he had sat next to his father, who went through the Bible and showed him passages about everyone being children of God. He never directly answered Gabriel’s question that night about whether he really was “the nicer word” those boys screamed at him after pitching handfuls of mud and telling him “that’s ya real color.” His father started talking about God’s laws and man’s laws, but Gabriel didn’t remember much. The next day, Rosette told him he’d fallen asleep. “And that’s why you never ask lawyers about the law.”
Ever since then, Gabriel understood that indignity might burrow into his gut at any time, and if he didn’t allow restraint to take over, that sick creature could win. Though, at this moment, I would welcome it. He clenched his hands and, when he felt the damp wool, realized he’d molded part of the brim into a felt tube.
Gabriel returned the hat to the table, turning the part he’d bent to resemble one of Alcee’s curls to the back. On his way to meet LaCroix, he walked past the two men, who did not pause their conversation as he went by. They might be blind to him, but he was not deaf to them. From Benjamin’s father he heard something about a front-runner by the name of Paul, the son of Emile, a prosperous ship-industry family.
Chapter Twelve
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“Monsieur Girod, I have the answer to your question.” LaCroix folded the bill in half and handed it to Gabriel. “However, according to my partner, the person does not want to be known.”
“How is it the person knew I had ordered this wardrobe?”
LaCroix pressed his palms together and rested his chin on his fingertips. “Hmm. This, I do not know.” He stared, eyebrows drawn together, and appeared as if he might be praying for an answer. Pointing to Cordeviolle, he said, “If you will excuse me, it may be better for you to speak directly with him.” He showed Gabriel to a seating area off the main showroom. “You would be more comfortable here, yes?”
Gabriel sat in one of the two mahogany chairs that flanked a round table. This had become more than he expected, and he had promised Rosette he would return with the fiacre so she could take the coach to the market. Once again, the partners engaged in a conversation punctuated with finger-wagging and forehead-holding.
He forced his thoughts to solving the mystery of the donor. Though he knew a broad spectrum of people because of the café business, most were acquaintances with little knowledge, as far as he knew, of his personal affairs. Considering those who had the means to accomplish paying his debt narrowed the possibilities to less than a handful. For Tante Virgine and even André, the money owed was not beyond their reach. But his aunt would never undertake such a stunt for fear of her sister’s wrath, which displayed itself in ignoring Virgine. And for someone who required human contact to survive along with air, food, and water, that separation would be a death. André, while able to use his money freely, probably had no knowledge of Gabriel’s visits to the tailors. More importantly, he would not undermine Gabriel’s pride.
Love Finds You in New Orleans, LA Page 8