Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  It was a heartbreaking story, but instead of being moved the tourists glanced at their watches. Sally had missed an opportunity to milk the tale for all it was worth. Maman would have told the story with tears choking her voice. Any decent storyteller would have!

  The tour came to an end and, despite looking less than satisfied, the tourists tipped Sally with notes not coins. Those people hadn’t signed up for a ghost tour like that, I thought, as I walked home. If they were interested in facts, they would have taken a historical or architectural tour. Instead they’d wanted to hear about objects moving by themselves, lights turning on and off, mysterious footsteps, and transparent figures appearing at the foot of a bed. They’d chosen a ghost tour because they wanted to be scared out of their wits. I knew I could run a better tour than Sally had.

  The following day, I jotted down ideas for ghosts who would interest tourists. There was no use taking them around the French Quarter, where I would be recognised by people who knew me and Maman, so I settled on the Garden District, which had plenty of grand and spooky homes of its own. It was a hundred and fifty years since the French had sold New Orleans to the Americans, and yet we Creoles still maintained our superior attitude towards them. The Americans had been industrious people who worked around the clock and lived prudently in order to make money. We were people who valued leisure and frivolity above all other pursuits. These days, with a sick mother to think about and the de Villeray fortune a thing of the past, perhaps a bit of prudence wasn’t a bad thing.

  As I gathered material for my stories, I decided that I would need to dress the part of a ghost tour guide. My pale skin and dark hair would work well for an ‘otherworldly’ style; all I had to do was wear dark red lipstick and a black velvet dress Maman kept in the back of her wardrobe and hadn’t worn for years.

  I had business cards printed up and left them at luxury hotels like the Roosevelt and the Monteleone:

  Selene Moon

  Specialist Ghost Tour Guide — The Garden District

  Three o’clock, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons

  Corner of St Charles Avenue and Washington Avenue

  ‘Oh!’ said Mae, shaking her head when she learned what I was up to. ‘No good can come of this, Miss Ruby. No good at all! All those stories you’re making up will catch you out one day. Besides, you don’t even have a licence from the city.’

  ‘Don’t be so pessimistic,’ I told her. ‘Of course good will come of it. Wouldn’t you like to see Maman better? Wouldn’t you like a washing machine?’

  To my delight, on my first day twenty tourists turned up at the intersection of St Charles and Washington avenues. As they stepped off the streetcar, I sized them up. The women’s eyes sparkled with excitement, but the men stood with folded arms, aloof and superior.

  I asked the tourists to say where they were from. A couple from New York seemed like hard nuts, while two sisters from Wisconsin shifted from foot to foot eagerly. The others — Texans, Washingtonians and Californians — were difficult to read. It was a varied group to deal with, and I knew that like in a game of vingt-et-un I had to get the upper hand quickly.

  ‘Ghosts are everywhere in this city,’ I told them before we embarked on the tour. ‘We New Orleanians talk about them as naturally as you might speak about the weather or the price of oil. They are part of the fabric of the city.’ I leaned forward and added in a whisper, ‘The wraiths of New Orleans will sit with you in a restaurant and all you’ll feel is a chill on your arm; they’ll stand behind you while you watch the parades and whisper in your ear; they’ll ride with you on the streetcar and the only clue will be a breeze playing in your hair. Most of the time these spirits are harmless but there are evil ones too — those who have performed grim and ghastly deeds in their earthly life and want to take you back into hell with them. That is why you must stick with me at all times.’ I touched the talisman of herbs I wore around my neck and affected a shiver.

  The man from New York shot a glance over his shoulder. He didn’t look so smug now. A woman from San Francisco giggled nervously, while the couple from Washington DC huddled closer to each other. I had them in my grasp.

  I walked towards Coliseum Street and the tourists hurried along behind me, no-one wanting to be left behind lest one of ‘the strange shapes that float around the walls of Lafayette Cemetery’ tapped them on the shoulder and whispered to them, ‘as they are known to do’.

  Although it was the first tour I’d ever run, I made up supernatural experiences that had occurred on my earlier tours. I told them that once when I was walking with a group down Coliseum Street, a little girl joined the tourists and took the hand of one of the women. She bent down to ask the girl where she’d come from, but when the girl opened her mouth to speak water poured out of it. Then she faded away.

  ‘Good Lord!’ cried a woman from Texas, gripping onto her husband’s arm.

  ‘That was the ghost of a little girl who drowned in a pond when the Garden District was part of the Livaudais plantation,’ I told the group. ‘Some say she left the house and disappeared into the sugar cane, called by the spirits of slaves who’d been mistreated on the plantation and wanted their revenge.’

  I stroked my talisman again and this time the woman from New York swallowed hard. I could see that the group was entranced — except for two young men from Los Angeles. No matter how many stories I told about dim shapes, apparitions of men in Civil War uniforms, eerie violin music or mysterious carriages that disappeared at dawn, they didn’t look as fascinated as the others. They’re used to the dramatics of Hollywood, I thought.

  When we came to the last house on my schedule and the men still weren’t impressed by my story of the star-crossed lovers who had leaped from its roof and whose heart-wrenching death cries could still be heard on summer evenings, I was ready to admit defeat. Until a pretty Victorian mansion on Prytania Street caught my eye. On my tour, I’d deliberately chosen antebellum houses or ones that were falling into decay, but this house was immaculate and the garden was a magnificent display of spring roses, honeysuckle and day lilies in full bloom. Everyone is unnerved by a creepy house, I thought, but what could be scarier and more unexpected than an angry ghost inhabiting a home as pretty as this one? It occurred to me that the men from Los Angeles didn’t want to be scared, they wanted to be horrified. A story formed in my mind, drawing on Aunt Elva and Uncle Rex as characters. I brought my group to a stop.

  ‘This is the last house on our tour,’ I said, lowering my voice to an ominous whisper. ‘A couple named Parkinson bought this beautiful home in 1897, but they were unhappily married. He was a kind, generous man, but she was the sort of woman who wouldn’t even spare a few pennies for a limbless Confederate veteran. The couple had a niece whose family had fallen on hard times and whose mother was sick. When the wife found out her husband had been giving this niece money to help with expenses, she became so enraged that she cut her husband’s throat while he lay sleeping, decapitating him.’

  The woman from San Francisco gasped. The others rolled their shoulders or rubbed their necks as if trying to resist prickly feelings of horror. I glanced at the two men from Los Angeles. One of them had his mouth wide open while the other shivered noticeably. I looked down at the ground for a moment to compose myself so they wouldn’t catch me smiling.

  ‘When people asked Mrs Parkinson where her husband was, she answered that he’d deserted her and gone to Chicago. Given her cantankerous disposition, nobody found the story too incredible to believe or questioned that Mr Parkinson’s tolerance might have finally broken. But for years afterwards, on the anniversary of the murder, a headless ghost appeared in the neighbouring houses, pointing to the blood dripping from its neck and beckoning the occupants to follow it. Of course, people were terrified and made all sorts of bedlam to scare away the ghost.

  ‘One night, two young men who were visiting an elderly aunt saw the hideous apparition in her parlour. One of the men shot at the wraith with his pistol, but the other
said he was sure the ghost was trying to tell them something. He followed the eerie figure out the door and down the steps, struggling to keep up with its supernatural speed. It led him to the house you see here, to its back porch, before it disappeared. Although it was summer and the garden was alive with the scents of jasmine and magnolias, the young man detected a whiff of a foul odour. The next morning he went to the police, convinced there was a body under that porch.

  ‘Sure enough, when the police investigated they found the decayed corpse of Mr Parkinson — but not his head. The wife was found guilty of murder and hanged for her crime, but even as she went to the gallows she refused to say what she’d done with her husband’s head. Some say she burned it in the fireplace. Others say she cooked it and served the flesh to the niece as a chicken jambalaya.’

  I paused, readying myself for the clincher. One of the Los Angeles men was opening and closing his fists, the other was staring at me, waiting for what was going to come next.

  I turned and pointed to a live oak tree in the garden. ‘But one thing is for certain: people around here say that on that same night once a year, Mr Parkinson’s severed head appears in that tree there and laughs raucously, knowing that his death has been avenged.’ I stared at the tree as if I was seeing a vision, then turned back to the group. ‘Today is the anniversary. Who dares to come back here with me tonight?’

  Everyone looked very uneasy and slipped me their tips quickly before slinking away. But when the men from Los Angeles tipped me five dollars each I knew that Selene Moon had triumphed!

  I gave most of the money I earned from my growing tour business to Mae for the housekeeping, but once I kept a little back to buy Maman a lilac satin and lace slip and a chiffon peignoir to replace the ones that were worn and frayed. The delighted expression on her face when she found them hanging in her wardrobe made me feel like we were in high cotton again. If I could keep up my success as Selene Moon, maybe I could slowly get us out of our money problems.

  What could possibly go wrong? I thought, lying on my bed and dreaming up more ghost stories. But as Mae always said, it wasn’t a good idea to count your chickens before they hatched.

  FIVE

  Amanda

  Sydney, 2005

  ‘Amandine,’ repeated Tamara. She sipped her carrot juice and stared at the exposed brick walls and pipework of the Newtown café, deep in thought, before turning back to me with an air of appraisal. ‘It sounds exotic. It suits you. But I’m wondering why you’ve waited so long before telling me about your Grandmother Ruby’s letter?’

  ‘Anything to do with my past always brings up complicated feelings that I need to process first,’ I explained. ‘It’s a big name — one that probably comes with an aristocratic history and a sense of duty. I’m not sure I can live up to it.’

  Tamara put down her glass. ‘You could grow into it,’ she replied, grinning. ‘I’m picturing a Southern belle in a satin and lace gown sitting in a rose-covered summerhouse and surrounded by ardent beaus.’

  I grimaced. ‘That’s because we were addicted to Gone with the Wind when we were younger. I don’t know how many times we watched that together.’

  Our kelp noodles and zucchini pasta arrived, and we took a few mouthfuls of the food before Tamara said, ‘So are you going to contact your grandmother in New Orleans?’

  Part of me had wanted to rush off to New Orleans in search of my remaining family as soon as I’d read Grandmother Ruby’s letter. She sounded intriguing, and her mention of a historical family property was like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey for someone who’d specialised in restoration architecture. But old habits die hard. Even thinking about my father’s family made me feel disloyal to Nan. Although she was dead, I couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her.

  ‘I keep wondering how Nan felt when she got that letter,’ I said. ‘Obviously she didn’t want me to go to New Orleans or she’d have shown it to me. But why did she keep it then? Do you think she was conflicted — torn between her desire to keep me and sympathy for Grandmother Ruby’s request?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Tamara. ‘And you’ll never know either. But you shouldn’t be worrying too much about your nan’s feelings now. You have to decide what you want to do. It’s your life.’

  Easier to say than do, I thought. My whole life had been directed by Nan. I’d studied architecture instead of becoming a musician on her advice. When she had shut down the subject of my father, I’d obeyed her. She might be dead, but that only increased my sense of obligation.

  ‘Reverend Taylor said at Nan’s funeral that the departed let go of their worldly anger and forgive everyone from their greater perspective,’ I said. ‘Do you think Nan might have forgiven my father and his family?’

  Tamara frowned. I knew she hated any sort of traditional religion. ‘I don’t know, but I do know you were the best granddaughter you could have been to your nan when she was alive. It’s time to make your own path now, Mademoiselle Amandine Desiree Lalande, and figure out who you are for yourself.’

  A week after that conversation, I lay in Tamara’s spare room with the bedside light still on. Since Nan’s death I’d developed a loathing of going to sleep in the dark and preferred to keep reading until I fell asleep.

  I cast my eye over the items in the room — the odd bits and pieces that Tamara and Leanne didn’t want but for some reason couldn’t part with. There was a bicycle that had only been ridden once; a hideous pair of coral pink ceramic table lamps left by the previous renters; and a computer desk with a wobbly top shelf. Tamara’s early experiments in photography lined the walls, including a black-and-white picture of me taken four years ago in the Central Station concourse. I was standing in front of the train timetables with my arms folded, staring down at the lens, my expression proud, haughty and confident. I resembled a young Anjelica Huston. But I’ve never felt proud, haughty or confident in real life.

  I studied my face in the photograph — those high cheekbones and full lips. Somehow the picture gave me the courage to do something I’d been thinking about ever since reading my mother’s letters. I pulled my laptop from under the bed and connected it to the telephone line. The static bonging sound of the dial-up was so loud that I was worried that I’d wake up Tamara and Leanne who were asleep in the next room. I strained my ears but nobody stirred. They were sound sleepers. I had known my father’s name since I was a child as it had been required on all my school applications, but it was only since reading my mother’s letters that I’d learned of his profession. There might be something about him on the internet that would add to the little I knew.

  I typed Dale Lalande jazz musician New Orleans into the search engine and winced from the tight knot of anxiety that formed in my stomach. Only two results appeared. The first was a souvenir poster for a show at Preservation Hall in 1979 with the listing Dale Lalande and his Band. The second result was a list of well-known New Orleans jazz artists of the 1970s. Would my father’s name really be included among them?

  I scrolled down the page and reeled back when I saw not only my father’s name but a head-and-shoulders photograph of a young man with tawny eyes and dark brown hair: a man who looked uncannily similar to the photograph on the wall, although not so haughty. I waited for the buzz in my head to clear before scrutinising the image more closely. My father had been a masculine version of myself. Our angular features and squarish Egyptian noses were identical. After years of looking at my face and wondering who I resembled, the answer was right in front of me. I used the zoom option to magnify the picture and smiled. While I was ‘creative’ in my dress sense, my father looked like the perfect clean-cut college boy. He was wearing a tan jacket over a striped shirt, and his hair was short and parted severely at one side.

  The description next to the photograph was brief: Dale Lalande is a young up-and-coming jazz musician. His unique style is relaxed, swinging and exuberant all at once. He mesmerises his audiences with a repertoire that ranges from traditional Dixieland cla
rinet to a piano style that incorporates Brazilian and Cuban rhythmic influences.

  I read the description over again slowly, my heart thumping so loudly in my chest I could hear it. His unique style is relaxed, swinging and exuberant all at once. It was as if my father had appeared from a thick fog and was now taking form alongside my mother.

  I rushed to my suitcase and grabbed the box of letters I’d brought with me. Grandmother Ruby’s letter was on top. Printed in the left-hand corner was an address and telephone number. After checking the time in New Orleans — eight o’clock in the morning — I dialled the international code and then the number. What would I say to her? How would I even begin?

  After five rings a woman with a Spanish accent answered: ‘The Lalande residence.’

  I opened my mouth to say something but my nerves got the better of me and I hung up.

  My mind turned over at a million miles per hour. Had that been Grandmother Ruby who’d answered the telephone? No, that couldn’t have been her. My mother had described her as a French Creole and that woman’s accent had been decidedly Latino: maybe Puerto Rican or even Mexican. But she had said ‘The Lalande residence’. I lay back on the bed and took in gulps of air. Given my overwrought state, a telephone call out of the blue was probably not the best way to re-establish contact with my New Orleans family. If it had ruffled me, what might it do to Grandmother Ruby with her weak heart? If I wrote first, she would have time to digest the shock of hearing from me and decide how to respond. I stared at the ceiling, working myself up to a decision. After nearly an hour of deliberation, I took out my notebook and wrote:

  Dear Grandmother Ruby,

  I am sure you will be surprised to hear from me after all these years. My grandmother, Cynthia Darby, passed away last year and I came across some correspondence from you to her regarding my coming of age.