The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  She opened the truck door and got inside. She tore off fast but skidded to a stop in front of me, banging the steering wheel.

  “Damn! I wish you didn’t bring out the nice inside me. I was all set to leave you, but I…”

  “What?”

  “There’s a door behind a bookcase. I didn’t mean to lock it, Frances, I swear it. I was trying to get him out but couldn’t.”

  “To take him away? Or bring him back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I hadn’t made up my mind. I just wanted you to know.”

  She skidded away again, only this time, she seemed to take the entire storm with her.

  Danny was waiting for me at the wide front doors of the Ursuline Convent. “Who knew a hurricane could make things in this town convenient?” he said, throwing them open. “Don’t have to worry about anybody getting in our way. You okay?”

  “I am. I think. Let’s get Jack. This storm just changed course, people’ll be filling up these streets too soon.”

  Danny threw open those wide doors and we walked in, side by side.

  “Now where?” he asked.

  “Up,” I said.

  “What did Millie say to you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know why she did this or where she’s going,” I responded sadly. He gave my hand a squeeze as we went up the dark stairs.

  We found the little bookcase on the top floor just like Millie said.

  Danny walked straight to it, shoving it aside. And there was the hidden door. He went to turn the knob.

  “Dan. Wait. It’s locked.”

  I reached around my neck, lifting out the key I’d worn for ages on a bit of ribbon. The one he’d given me before the world fell to pieces. “Of course,” I thought … “of course…”

  “She came from the sea,” I said, handing it to him.

  It fit perfectly, and the spring lock popped back, and there he was, our Lost Boy.

  Jack looked so peaceful in that white wrought-iron bed, burrowed safely in pillows and quilts. Something inside of me thanked Millie for making him so comfortable.

  Love is complicated.

  Danny sat on one side and I on the other. We both kissed him, shaking him gently. “Jack, baby, time to wake up.… Jack?” we whispered softly.

  It felt like forever before he stretched, yawned, looked around the room, and said, “You guys back together again? Damn, when I have an idea, it sure is a good one!”

  “You are in a heap of trouble, boy,” said Danny, burying us both in a hug so big and so tight, I thought we might get lost in it.

  When we got back, the TV over the bar flickered on—like most things Sorrow, it had a mind of its own—and a news guy reported the storm had suddenly died down and shifted course entirely. That southern Louisiana would be spared.

  “I trusted her, Mama. I really did. And I know I shouldn’t have…,” said Jack, walking up the stairs. I felt dizzy with relief and guilty about Millie.

  “Go easy on Millie, Jack. Sometimes it’s real hard to be our best selves,” I said.

  “I guess so,” Jack said thoughtfully.

  We got to the apartment and walked in. “Because, Jack … see, your mama was not her best self for a long, long time. I … Jack, look at me, I have something to tell you.”

  “Jack, look at your mother,” said Danny, trying to sound harsh, but still so damn happy to see him.

  “Where’s my—,” he asked, ignoring us. That boy, I swear.

  “I’m right here, Jack.”

  “Sippie!” he said, running to her. They held on to each other for a long time, while I told Danny about the dream Sippie had—the one that brought us all together—and grabbed extra quilts and pillows, making them a bed on the floor under a makeshift fort of sheets and blankets and old gowns.

  Danny and I went to bed, listening to the sound of dying winds and stifled laughter. I couldn’t help thinking about all the years they could have had together. Years I stole from them.

  “Don’t look backward, Frankie,” Danny said, as if reading my mind. “We have right now.”

  Sometimes we lose things for a reason. We lose them because we wouldn’t ever know their true value otherwise.

  30

  Rosella’s Defense

  Frances

  A knocking sound coming from the mirror woke me up. I got up, slowly moving to stand in front of it, only it wasn’t me looking back. It was another wild-haired woman, looking lost.

  I began to place my hands against the mirror, but she shook her head. And then walked straight on through. It’s one thing to question whether or not you walked through a mirror into another time. It’s a heck of another thing altogether watching someone else do it. But, I suppose, reality on 13 Bourbon Street could be skewed, as Mr. Craven said. It made some sort of odd sense.

  Besides, she was standing right in front of me!

  Her face was bathed in a growing light—was it morning, was the storm over?—and she wasn’t blurry at the edges or an echo of a feeling. She was as real as anything else around me. The room became bathed in sunlight. And though it looked unchanged, Jack and Danny and Sippie were nowhere to be seen, and the blanket fort had completely disappeared. The old furniture was a little newer, the carpet far less worn. And the smell, that was different, too, a perfume of figs and rain I remember inhaling from the trunks of clothes we used to play dress-up in at Sorrow Hall. Spicy and old-fashioned.

  “This was my room,” she said. She sat on a wingback chair next to the windows. They were no longer cracked or dirty, they sparkled. She smoothed back her thick, dark brown hair, attempting to refasten some hairpins in her easy bun.

  “Rosella,” I said.

  “Don’t fret, ma chère,” she said, taking a hairpin from her mouth and trying once more to tame her curls. “Your children and your man are still safe and sleeping, you and I just need to have a little visit, ça va?”

  She had a kind, clever face and wore a dress that was navy-blue satin with white lace at the cuffs and collar. She didn’t look one bit like the voodoo mistress Albert had painted in his journals.

  “It seems,” she said, “that you have acquired some information about me, Frances.”

  “I have,” I said.

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be given the opportunity to clear up a few things. So maybe I can finally rest. It’s not so bad, you know, being caught in time. But I think I’m ready to see what’s on the other side. I’d always assumed that once our bones were found, mine and Bee’s…” She paused, looking out the window. I could tell she was trying to stay the course, to clarify without muddying the water with some ghostly emotion. “I’d thought perhaps we’d be set free.”

  “That’s the way it always happens in the stories.”

  “Yes, well, those stories are wrong. Or at least they’re wrong when it comes to me. Because, as you can see, I’ve not gone anywhere. I am well aware of that wonderful thing called subjective truth, so I thought the only thing left to do was tell my side. Serafina was clear about truths in The Book of Shadows, was she not?”

  “She was…”

  We looked at each other, beginning in the same breath, “We must always be mindful of what we see, for how we feel is not the way others see and feel. Let us vow to be like the live oak trees, rooted in a constant, changing landscape, thriving on difference. Yet always knowing who we are and what our own truth is, as we grow ever skyward.”

  “One of my favorites.” Rosella smiled.

  “I’d forgotten how many passages I memorized from that book. It’s been so long.”

  “I could reprimand you, as a proper Sorrow witch would, but as you know, I fell from grace long ago.”

  She stood up, smoothing the skirt of her dress.

  “Come, let’s retire to the parlor. It’s lovely there, and this room holds too much pain for you. I can still feel it.”

  The door opened on its own as Rosella took my hand, guiding me into the front room. It was full
of women dressed in beautiful gowns, practicing one form of fortune-telling or another. I heard one, a pretty little thing with a large bow in her hair, say, “No, Estella, you mustn’t ever tell the truth if what you see is bad. That’s not why they come to us! If we start telling the truth, we’ll lose our business!”

  “They were always so dedicated, so talented, our ‘grove’ of girls. Of all the sad things I watched happen from the other side, the most troubling was the death of our art,” Rosella said wistfully. “And, Frances, if it is any consolation to you, you have been on the right side of history.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, taking a liking to her.

  “One moment,” she said, stepping into the middle of the parlor. She clapped her hands twice. An almost incandescent light emerged. It could have been sunshine. “Serafinas! Please leave us. I must meet for a while with our future.”

  And they were gone.

  “That’s a nice skill, clapping and making people disappear. I could have used that one,” I said.

  “Oh, Frances, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why we so often do the opposite of what we want. We come from a family … many families, no, a people, that have an overabundance of certain types of skills. Our minds, they can do magnificent and terrible things. But I don’t want you to think there is any miracle involved. We are at our worst when we try to change things for ourselves. That’s why we honed a few of them, the easiest to control. Herbal magic, root work. Talents that could help others and keep us away from the dark art of self-exploration. The reading of minds, the fortune-telling, even the prophecies … they only work with willing participants. The cards, runes, bones … crystal balls, those are translations of something larger, something we are not evolved enough yet to understand. Most of that is … how do you say … smoke and mirrors. And through the years, our people began to believe in the pageantry more than we believe in ourselves.”

  “I found that out the hard way,” I said. “And then I shut it all down. I’m just now trying to relearn everything.”

  She’d sat down on the sofa, smoothing her skirt. “It isn’t easy, ma petite chère. Telling ourselves the truth is the hardest thing of all.”

  “And you want me to know your truth, isn’t that why I’m here?”

  “Yes, I just don’t know how to begin. I must admit, there is something delicious about the lies that have been told about me—something far more dark and lovely, more memorable, than the truth. A legacy is something I never thought I’d care about. But I don’t think I understood what it would feel like to slip through time, watching the traditions you love the most fall to pieces. And then, to know that you are the one who is to blame? Magnifique, non?”

  I went to her and sat down, breathing in the scent of roses coming from the small veranda as I sat. Topiaries. “It was so lovely then. I wish … I never knew it this way. It’s dreary here now, like a half-forgotten thought.”

  “Not like a half-forgotten thought. You have all forgotten completely. But I will not judge you for that. Sometimes there are things we should all forget. Maybe you are supposed to let go of all of this. As I was supposed to let go of Edmond.” Rosella gazed off into the distance. “Because that is where my story begins.”

  I curled up on the sofa, and Rosella turned to face me. I could feel the edges of that blue satin dress on my bare shins. It was crisp and new. She took my hand, and we sat like old friends as she told me her side of the story, set herself free. She laughed and cried, the edges of her fading until I could no longer feel the hem of her dress.

  “The first thing you need to know is how beautiful he was. I know you must have seen photographs, or paintings, or even his ghost, but nothing … none of that could ever do him justice. Oh, Frances, the way he walked, so confident, and with humor, too. And when he left a room, he left a vibrant veil of constant summer in his wake.

  “I loved him for my whole life. And he loved me.

  “We were supposed to wed. It was determined before we knew what it would mean. When my family settled in Serafina’s Bayou and my maman, Patrice, became the traiteuse, Edmond’s family was thrilled because there’d been too many children born ‘outside’ our people, and we were going to save the family.”

  That’s why Jack is the way he is; Sippie, too.

  “I know how that must have felt,” I said softly.

  “I’m sure you do. And because of that, I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you next, though I’m still uncertain about my motivations back then.

  “The wedding was to be in June of 1887. On the solstice, of course. And Edmond and I were madly in love. Not only in love, we were friends, the best of friends. I don’t think a day went by that we didn’t laugh about something, share a secret, or show our affection. Which is why he was so angry when I told him I wanted to postpone the wedding.”

  For a moment, I looked at her, confused. And then understood it perfectly.

  “There was this heavy feeling inside me that I should explore, see the world, take advantage of the way the women of Tivoli Parish were unshackled by the rest of society. I never said I didn’t want to marry him. I simply wanted to wait. I wanted to go to France and find out more about Serafina. I wanted to dance in the streets and touch all there was to touch in life.

  “And I wanted him to come with me.

  “I should have known he wouldn’t understand. Sorrow or no Sorrow, men do have a peculiar way of hearing things completely false. He thought I was saying he suffocated me or held me back. He thought I wanted to explore the world to see if there was someone else I might love better. As if there were ever a chance of that.” She laughed sadly.

  “We had a terrible argument that ended with me on a ship out of Port Orleans, and at the last moment, he’d come to apologize—or so he told me later—and waved to me when he saw me on the deck. But I was angry, so angry. I turned away from him. What a silly girl of a woman I was. If I’d known that he’d go to Thirteen Bourbon that night, get drunk, and decide to fall in love with Helene Dupuis, I would have jumped right off the boat.

  “So, if you have heard that I am responsible for the death of that family, then it is true. Because if I’d listened to my heart and not my ego, I wouldn’t have altered the course of so many futures.”

  “You don’t know that, Rosella. Maybe you were supposed to go, and Helene was supposed to be his wife. Maybe … maybe they were supposed to die.”

  “I would agree with you, ma chère. Mais non.” She shook her head. “It was the feeling I had, queasy and straining, as if I’d taken too much of the loss tea. It felt as if I had a hot poison running through my veins. And when I returned, cutting my entire adventure short because my heart was aching, he was already married and on a honeymoon with Helene.

  “I will never forget meeting her for the first time. How I hated her. And if you have heard that I seduced Edmond into my arms again … how could I not? And if you heard that I practiced the dark magic taught to me by the Cajun women living deep in the bayou, that is true as well. For the first few years of their marriage, I wanted her dead. Out of my life. A life I’d left behind. I was so selfish. I punished her for my decisions. And I punished Edmond, too, because he loved us both. Though I didn’t want to admit it at the time. And for some reason, being torn between the two of us tore apart that thing inside of him that made him strong. Year by year, I watched him give in to all his weaknesses. Vices. That is when Helene and I banded together. You seem surprised, Frances. Was this part left out of the story? I thought it might be. But Helene came to me at my little cottage. I must have looked half-crazed that night, chanting and wandering around writing symbols on the walls. I was trying to learn new forms of magic to help him, but nothing was working.

  “She asked me to come up to Sorrow Hall and have a drink.

  “I believe I may have said, ‘I don’t drink tea, I spit it out and read your death in the leaves,’ or something ridiculous like that.

  “That is when she turned to
me and smiled, the first real smile between us, and I saw the woman Edmond loved. ‘I was going to offer you a glass of port. Come, Rosella, leave this hoodoo behind and have a drink with your enemy out on the back gallery, will you? Ça va?’

  “I washed up a bit before I joined her. And we sat there, staring out over Sorrow Bay, getting to know each other, taking turns tending to the endless needs of the children. She’d had Mae by then.

  “‘What shall we do about Edmond?’ she asked me.

  “‘He will not survive the life he is living, Helene. We must try to keep him here, with us. Safe.’”

  “So, you lived together, the three of you, happily?” I asked, curious.

  “For years, yes. We did. Until the poison in those Jesus beads ate into Helene’s mind, and of course, there was the baby.”

  “Egg?”

  “No, Frances. We have come to the end of my story, because as soon as I say this one piece, you will know the rest. I was Belinda B’Lovely’s true mother.”

  “But why did Helene raise her?” I asked, trying to let the revelation settle inside me slowly. It was as if each word she said opened up new doors of understanding in my mind. The past is nothing but a reflection in the mirror. It can’t harm us, but it can teach us if we let it … I thought.

  “Because Edmond gave me no choice.” Rosella continued. “Things had changed. Helene had fallen into a wild obsession with religion, and our docile—if odd—years of living together happily had ended. I’d been lucky not to be with child before, and thought maybe that was the true reason the fates had led him to Helene. She’d gone quite mad after the birth of the twins and was no longer letting Edmond in her rooms. Men, such fools. She told him she’d lie with him again only if I allowed her to raise Belinda. And he promised me it would only be for a short while, until he could get her back to some sort of sanity. I didn’t know about the oleander. I swear it. We did not know about the mercury in those beads. We did not know that he was carrying a terrible disease. Belinda … well, she had my blood. Our blood. And we managed to stay safe from the madness. That nun, she was no help. Stuck in her beliefs and lying to herself about it. Right before the storm, Belinda came to me, begging me to help her. She was so scared. Scared of the storm, scared she’d die, too. Everyone she loved was gone. Everyone but me. So, I gave her a sleeping tonic and hid her in what I thought was the safest place, the lighthouse while I tried to help others from the remote reaches of the bayou escape the rising waters. But then, that storm, it came on so fast and fierce and sudden. I watched as the water rose higher and higher. I went to save her, I had to save her. I’d put her there. I can’t…”